Session Zero

Session Zero’s the night before the first job. You build the crew together and agree on what game you’re all playing. With characters to make, it’ll take about two hours. Go through these in order, and write the answers down where everyone can see them.

1. The Pitch

A good pitch sounds something like this: “Four thieves in a rain-soaked port city, trying to pull off the score that lets them retire, except every job drags them deeper into a guild war they don’t understand.”

The GM brings the pitch, and the table can push back on it. It should say who the crew is and what’s about to go wrong for them. If the players want something different, now’s the time to say so.

If you don’t know what kind of world you want yet, pick a frame. The book’s own world, the Steeplands, is one, and there are five more: the sea, a company delving under a mountain, a fog-drowned city where something feeds at night, a royal court, and a freighter at the edge of settled space. Each one has a pitch you can read out loud, so read a couple and let the table choose.

2. The Tone

Say it in a sentence, then say how funny it gets. A crew that cracks jokes in the vault plays very differently from one that doesn’t.

3. The Lines and the Veils

Go around the table and ask each person for their lines and veils, then write them down where everyone can see them.

The list in Playing Carefully is a good place to start. Put the X-card on the table while you’re at it. If anyone needs the table set up a bit differently, like the dice, the sheets or how long you play, Playing Your Way has tools for that.

4. The Promises

The GM reads the promises from Running the Game out loud. They’re what the players can hold the GM to, so if a player thinks one’s been broken, they can say so, and the table sorts it out.

5. The Characters and Their Threads

Make your characters at the table, so everyone hears everyone else’s archetypes and Titles as they go down. You each pick two archetypes, name each one with a Title and give it three permissions, then pick two traits and fill in your set actions, what you carry and your two attuned things. Each Title gives you 1 Resolve, so that’s 2 to start. Building Your Character takes you through it a step at a time.

Then go around the table with the ten crew questions. Everyone answers at least two, naming another character each time, and a good answer can become a thread. You’ve each got three to write, spread across your bonds however you like, and if you write one as a debt, you’ll get a fourth. A thread with someone in the crew goes on both your sheets and counts for both of you, so agree on it together before it’s written down. Dorrie and Isolde settle on I keep her secrets at court. She keeps mine. It goes on both their sheets, and if either of them strains it, it’s strained for both.

If anyone wants to play tonight without building, they can take one of the ready-made characters.

6. The Party Sheet

Draw it up together. Put every Aspiration at d2 and the Party Goal at d2. Give the crew its starting dice, Power d4 and Wealth d4, and a name if you’ve got one. Then add your first factions, and anything the crew owns together.

The Goal is what the first arc’s about, so take your time over it. A good first Goal is something the whole crew wants and can’t get in one night, like clear Dorrie’s name or own the Low Market. Two or three factions is plenty to start, as long as one of them wants something the crew’s got.

7. Magic and the Strange

Decide how magic sits in this world. Is it rare, feared, common, holy or illegal? When Ash sets a cart on fire, does the crowd scream, pray or shrug? One sentence is enough, and it tells everyone what happens when the crew uses magic in the street.

8. The Map

Grid or theatre of the mind? Zi’Dara’s built for a grid, but it plays fine without one, so decide together. If you use a grid, one square’s one unit, about five feet. There’s more on this in Tactical Play.

9. If You’ve Played Other Games

Players who’ve played other roleplaying games bring habits with them, and most of them are good ones. Spend five minutes on what’s different here:

• Nobody goes first. The GM shows you everything that’s coming, then the crew acts in any order. Talk it through.
• Most threats don’t have hit points. They have tags, and every win strips one, so look for the weak point instead of grinding. The big ones have Tough, and Tough works like hit points.
• You roll their dice too. The GM almost never rolls, so pick up the threat’s die in another colour.

There’s more in Welcome to Zi’Dara.

10. Session Length and Rhythm

• How long? Two to four hours.
• Where does downtime go? After every session, though most tables play it at the start of the next one, so everyone remembers what they wanted.
• How many scenes? Two or three, plus downtime.

11. The First Session

Some of you’ll already know each other from the crew questions, and this job’s the first time you’re all in one room. Don’t spend long on the hiring. Get to the job as fast as you can, and let the crew’s plan come out of what they already know about each other.

Keep the first session small, so everyone learns the rules by using them:

• A short planning scene. Ten minutes, with the GM answering questions about the job.
• One confrontation with two stakes and a scene clock, and a problem in it for every character’s best permission.
• An aftermath that pays them, or doesn’t, and hands them a reason to come back.
• Their first downtime. It’s the first time they choose how their characters grow, so leave twenty minutes for it.