Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable

is a Q&A with Aabria Iyengar, Matthew Mercer, and Brennan Lee Mulligan.

Tips for session zero and character creation

 * Matt: They're recommended. They're not strictly necessary if you already know your group well, but even then, it's a good chance to make sure everyone understands the tone and setting of the campaign and reset expectations.
 * Aabria:Agrees, especially about setting the tone and expectations about safety tools/boundaries. She specifically mentions lines and veils.
 * Brennan: He first takes a moment to enthusiastically praise Matt for developing Exandria and allowing them to GM in it (Aabria joins in just as enthusiastically). Session zero is incredibly important for Dimension 20, as those seasons are short so a lot of work needs to be established upfront to ensure the season runs smoothly. In particular, railroading vs player agency is a false dichotomy: to handle a campaign with strict time, plot, or location requirements, use the session zero as a GM to ensure the PCs are thoroughly developed and then build your plot around that so the players actively want to be on the rails. This is much less important for a long-running campaign, where you have the time and space to figure out your characters, but for short campaigns, multiple session zeroes may be necessary and it may be helpful to do character creation as a group.
 * Aabria: Brennan used this method for Exandria Unlimited: Calamity's character creation and it meant Laerryn was well-realized prior to the series beginning and that Brennan knew how to motivate Laerryn through story.
 * Matt: When he GM-ed home games when he was younger, and when Vox Machina's campaign began, most people came to the table with their separately created characters, but even then, players building characters with pre-existing relationships (such as Vax and Vex) added something to the game. For the Mighty Nein, each player had a separate session zero with Matt to develop the character, and then group session zeroes with a few other players to see how they interacted and to explore the character. For Calamity, because it was so short and because the characters were established as knowing each other, it was vital to have those session zeroes to lay the intricate groundwork.
 * All the GMs note that for actual play specifically, a session zero that is not streamed gives people a chance to figure out character voices and otherwise get camera-ready, but this isn't important for home games.
 * Aabria: What is character creation like for the Critical Role main campaigns?
 * Matt: He doesn't tell players what specifically to play but rather tries to help them figure out what interests them, although he also keeps in mind the party balance. It's important to let people know they're not permanently locked in if they don't like the character or the character build, and that those things can be changed down the road.
 * Brennan: What do you do if you can't have a session zero for a last-minute one-shot, for example?
 * Aabria: Ask people why their character is here, and other broad questions to ground them in the setting.
 * Matt: If there's a little lead time but not enough for session zero, email the players and ask them a few key questions about their character background.
 * Brennan: Often when a player isn't having fun with a character, it's because the character isn't properly connected to the world or lacks motivations and history.
 * Matt: One of the first people he GM-ed for had a character with minimal backstory, but that character was still searching for power and didn't know what had killed his parents, so those were hooks that allowed him to find the character through gameplay. A huge backstory isn't necessary, though it's helpful for some people, but it's important to understand where the character is coming from in broad strokes.
 * Brennan: Agrees with Matt - in improv, this is called having justification for the character's behavior. The player should know why their character does anything out of the ordinary, and if they have that, it's often enough.
 * Matt: It's also worth noting that all backstory doesn't need to come up in the game, and it's important to ensure players are aware of that and that if they want something to come up, they tell the GM rather than assuming it will happen. In general, players and GMs need to communicate - most problems are simply a lack of communication.
 * Aabria: Regardless of whether someone wrote a massive backstory or if they wrote a minimal one or forgot to send it, a really good way to get to the heart of things is to ask players shortly before the first session what their backstory is. If they wrote a huge backstory, they will tell you what they think is most important, and if they didn't write much backstory, they will often provide some new information.
 * Brennan: Backstory is very helpful to the GM because, again, it lets them know what motivates the character and what plot hooks will be engaging without having to come up with everything on their own. It also helps in building out the world, if the game is not set in an already-built setting, because the type of classes or character backstory dictate what's necessary to include and what can be left out.