Game Master Resources
Session Zero Checklist for D&D Campaigns
Session zero is a pre-campaign meeting, usually 60-90 minutes, where the group decides what game it's actually playing before anyone rolls initiative. Cover five things: tone and content, table logistics, party building, house rules, and safety tools. Campaigns that skip it don't skip the conversations; they just have them later, mid-crisis, with feelings involved. Here's the checklist we give new campaign GMs, in agenda order.
Why bother (the two-minute case)
Every campaign implosion story you've heard traces back to mismatched expectations: one player came for grim war drama, another for heist comedy; someone assumed weekly attendance was sacred, someone else treated it as a suggestion. Session zero is where those collisions happen cheaply, over snacks, before anyone has forty hours invested. It's also, quietly, a compatibility test for the group itself. Better to learn on night zero than night twelve.
The agenda
1. Pitch and tone (15 minutes)
The GM pitches the campaign in a few sentences: setting, premise, expected length, and the tone dial. "Gritty survival where death sticks" and "heroic romp where you're basically Avengers" are both great campaigns and terrible tablemates. Get the group nodding at the same sentence. Useful extra question: "what's a movie or show this should feel like?"
2. Content lines (10 minutes, less awkward than you think)
Ask two questions: what's off-limits entirely (lines), and what can appear offstage but not in close-up (veils). Common answers involve harm to children, sexual content, spiders, real-world phobias. Write the answers down without requiring anyone to explain themselves, and mention people can add to the list privately later. Total cost: ten minutes. It buys the GM the confidence to write dark material right up to the actual limits, which makes games bolder, not tamer.
Name the in-play tool too: an X-card on the table, or a plain "say 'skip' and we skip" agreement. Pro tables run these by default, and it's part of why paid games feel reliably comfortable for strangers.
3. Logistics, the campaign killer (15 minutes)
Decide and write down: the schedule and its rhythm, the quorum rule (play with four of five? cancel below that?), what happens to absent players' characters, how long you hold a seat, and where session reminders live. Boring? Completely. But campaigns die of scheduling more than anything else, so this section is the checklist's load-bearing wall. Groups that name a quorum rule on night zero survive the first cancelled session; groups that don't often just... stop.
4. Build the party together (30 minutes)
Characters made in a group session beat characters made alone, for one reason: connections. Have each player answer "how do you know one other person in this party?" and "why does your character stay when things get hard?" Coordinate roles loosely (nobody needs a spreadsheet; "are we all squishy wizards? maybe one of us tanks" suffices), and confirm everyone's concept fits the pitched tone. A brooding loner in the heist comedy is a session zero catch, not a session six problem. New builders can lean on our first character walkthrough beforehand.
5. House rules and table norms (10 minutes)
The GM states the defaults: how strictly rules-as-written, how dice-fudging is handled, crit rules, phones at the table, whether PvP is ever on the menu, and the alcohol policy if it's that kind of table. None of these have universal right answers. All of them go smoother declared upfront than discovered by incident.
Close by scheduling session one before anyone leaves. A session zero that ends without a date on the calendar is a book club.
The one-page artifact
Everything decided above fits on one page: pitch, tone, lines and veils, schedule and quorum, party roster, house rules. Post it wherever the group chats. That page settles 90% of future disputes by existing, and updating it together beats relitigating from memory. GMs running public or paid campaigns put most of this on the listing itself, which is session zero's efficient cousin: players self-select into the right expectations before they ever sit down.
Frequently asked questions
What is a session zero in D&D?
A pre-campaign meeting where the group aligns on tone, content boundaries, scheduling, characters, and house rules before play begins. Usually 60-90 minutes, often paired with group character creation.
Do one-shots need a session zero?
Not a separate one. A one-shot gets the thirty-second version at the table: tone in a sentence, a named safety tool, content check if the group is strangers. Our one-shot prep checklist builds it into the opening.
What questions should I ask at session zero?
The load-bearing five: the campaign's tone, the content that's off-limits or offstage, the schedule and quorum rule, how the characters know each other, and which house rules apply. Write the answers down.
How do I bring up safety tools without killing the mood?
Frame and move on: "quick housekeeping so I can write bolder villains: anything off-limits or fade-to-black for this group? You can also tell me privately later." Two sentences, matter-of-fact, done. Treating it as normal logistics is what makes it normal.
Should players make characters before or during session zero?
Concepts before, sheets during. Players arriving with a concept ("grumpy dwarf medic") keeps things moving, while building the mechanical sheet together catches tone mismatches and creates the party ties that make session one feel like a real group.