Session Zero

Session Zero brings the players together before play begins — not their characters, but the players themselves. Its purpose is to ensure that everyone arrives at Session One from the same position: a shared understanding of the world, calibrated expectations of what the campaign will demand, and characters built together rather than assembled in isolation.

Vanilla AD&D assumes players can sit down, roll characters, and begin. That assumption works for a dungeon crawl where the fiction is thin and the stakes are immediate. Oath-Bound is a different kind of game. Characters have backgrounds, histories, and relationships to the world that matter from the first session. A character generated without context will spend the early sessions catching up to a world they were not built for. Session Zero closes that gap before it opens.

The agenda covers three things. First, world orientation — enough of the setting’s tone, politics, and oath economy that players can make informed character decisions. Second, character generation — done collaboratively, in conversation with the GM and each other, so the crew arrives with complementary capabilities and plausible relationships. Third, calibrated expectations — the campaign’s tone, its stakes, and what kind of play the table is signing up for. These are easier to establish before play begins than to correct once it is underway.

Session Zero recurs whenever a new campaign begins and whenever a new player joins an existing crew. A player joining mid-campaign has the same orientation needs as the founding members — often greater — and the same investment applies.

For the full procedural treatment, see Session Zero — in detail.