Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 272 - Session 0 Redux

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

NOTE:  My apologies for the audio quality.  The entire recording/audio processing chain was rushed this week.   Is your TTRPG campaign falling apart after only a few sessions? The problem might be that you need a Session Zero. In this third part of our "setting expectations" series  we dive into the vital, often-overlooked conversations DMs and players need to have before rolling the first die. Learn how to align your creative visions, manage game logistics, and agree on crucial player safety tools to ensure everyone is on board with the social contract for a lasting, fun adventure. #rpg #ttrpg #dnd #pathfinder #gmtips #playertips #tabletop #startingcampaign #sessionzero #session0 Resources: Ep 47 - Comprehensive Session 0 Guide for DMs - https://www.taking20podcast.com/e/ep-47-comprehensive-session-0-guide-for-dms/  Ep 48 - Session 0 Guide for Players - https://www.taking20podcast.com/e/ep-48-less-comprehensive-session-0-guide-for-pcs/  Ep 271 - Setting & Tone - https://www.taking20podcast.com/e/ep-271-setting-and-tone/  Ep 214 - House Rules to Make Your Game Easier - https://www.taking20podcast.com/e/ep-214-house-rules-to-make-your-game-easier/  Ep 215 - House Rules to Make Your Game Harder - https://www.taking20podcast.com/e/ep-215-house-rules-to-make-your-game-harder/  Buy Me a Coffee! - ko-fi.com/taking20podcast www.taking20podcast.com  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/taking20podcast  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/taking20podcast  Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/taking20podcast.bsky.social

This week on the Taking 20 podcast. There's more to session zero than setting in tone. Yes, they're important, but I also want to talk about setting expectations for the logistics of the game itself. Thank you for listening to The Taking 20 podcast, episode 272, giving DMs some advice about setting expectations in their session zeros. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Water. My neighbor has gone off the water grid, and when I visited him yesterday, I discovered he had dug three vertical shafts deep into the earth to find the local water table. My response? Well, well, well, what do we have here? Yeah, he's not speaking to me anymore. Speaking of contacting me, do you have any topics

that you'd like to hear me discuss or questions you'd like me to answer or issues I can help you with? If so, please send me the ideas somewhere on the socials. Links are in the description of the episode, or email me, feedback at taking20podcast.com, or you can message me on my coffee, k-o-fi.com taking 20 podcasts. My apologies for the overly long episode last week. I started writing and recording, editing, recording some more, rewriting, recording, and didn't realize until I was almost almost 30 minutes long. Sorry about that.

If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have broken up setting and tone into separate episodes. Eh, lesson learned. This week, by the way, is the third and probably final part of a rather impromptu series that I've put together called Setting Expectations. After my first episode of Setting Expectation Series, I did get a couple of questions via email about what Session Zero was and how it helps to set expectations for the game. I've previously talked about Session Zero's in episodes 47 and 48, but those episodes were four years ago. Don't worry, I'm not going to repeat those episodes word for word and call my work done for the next two weeks. I've learned a thing or two since then, so I have some new thoughts.

briefly, though, in those episodes, I emphasize that session zeros are collaborative. They're used to make plans for the campaign. Set the tone, communicate game desires in both directions, players to GM and GM to players. I talked about session zeros where you discuss house rules, how ruled disagreements will be handled, and encourage players to buy into the game that they commit to participating in. All of those lessons, by the way, still true. And if you want more details on anything I just mentioned, please give you a little bit of give episodes 47 and 48

to listen. However, there are other aspects of a session zero that I just didn't have time for in the previous episodes. Things like focusing on setting the expectations for the game. So, that means another session zero episode this week, because there's a lot more to discuss. So, let's

do this thing. First and foremost, session zero is critical to setting expectations because it helps align what the DM wants to run, and the players want to play. I've seen and even been part campaigns that disintegrated two, three sessions in because those expectations weren't aligned. The DM wanted to run a lighthearted game where the PCs wanted something darker or the

players wanted to feel like big damn heroes, but the GM wanted to run a campaign against a world-ending batty designed to make you feel small. By the time the first real games session starts, it's too late to start making huge adjustments. The DMs put hours of work into designing or learning the adventure, getting the challenges prepped, getting maps and miniatures or tokens or whatever. And the players have spent some time designing their characters. And you have spent time designing your characters, right? I mean, I hope you've spent some time thinking about your character's personality and backstory. It's part of the social contract buying in. Hopefully, you didn't just show up to the gaming session with a post-it note that reads, Nome with huge d-a-named Frederick. Or

Frederica or whatever, I don't judge. Hang on, hang on. Writing character concept. Frederica, huge... Got it. Sorry, I got lost for a moment thinking something about gnomes. It doesn't matter. Anyway, to tie this episode to the previous ones, in session zero, you can talk about the feel of the game, also known as the tone, and the location the PCs will be at, the world at large, the society, politics, etc., the setting. Use your session zero to hammer these details out with your players. It helps to set the expectations of the game.

And again, if you want more detail about setting and tone, please see episode 271, link in the description. But there's more to session zero than setting in tone. Yes, they're important, but I also want to talk about setting expectations for the logistics of the game itself. Different gaming groups will have different desires about how often they play. My Saturday group is in every Saturday night thing, almost without fail.

We meet online, and sure, sometimes one player or another isn't there for some reason, but the GM has set the expectation early that the group will meet more often than not, and if a player isn't available, their character probably won't be there either. Contrast that with my Friday night group, which generally meets as long as fewer than two players can't make it. I mean, we have a group of six, and so if four can be there, yeah, we're gaming. So one of the first things you have to decide as a group and discuss in your session zero is a cadence, a duration, and an attendance policy of the game. By cadence, I mean, how often will this group meet? Are you going to game weekly?

Every other week, monthly? This needs to be agreed upon by everyone involved and come to a consensus if at all possible. Groups that meet weekly like my Saturday night game, or at least as close as we can, we keep the momentum going. I mean, it requires less of a recap at the beginning of each session, and we can scratch the itch of those gamers and GMs who want a very regular and very frequent game. However, if you're not careful, the GM, and believe it or not, even sometimes the players can burn out pretty easily if you're meeting so often. Byweekly, or semi-weekly, or whatever the right term is,

I'm not going to get drawn into that fight, by the way. I'm sure one is more technically correct than the other. bi-weekly versus semi-weekly, let's just agree that I mean meeting every other week, whatever the fuck the right term for that is. Meeting every other week provides time for the GM and players to decompress from the game. Usually gives plenty of time for the GM to prepare for the next gaming session. It allows for life to creep in a little bit and hopefully not interrupt gaming too often. Most of us can remember where the game was left like two weeks ago and can pick up the game

relatively quickly. Then again, there are some groups that meet once a month. Life is taking a bat to one or more person's availability, and they can't pull themselves away more often than that. No judgment here, by the way. I have had those times in my life where gaming had to take a backseat to young child at home, master's degree, work commitments, that kind of thing, travel. If that's all you can game, then that's all you can game. Get together however often that you can. But once your group decides on a cadence, you probably need to discuss the duration. How long are gaming sessions going to be? When you do meet, how long are you going to be around the table, virtual or physical?

The good news is, by the way, there's no one right answer here, except for what your players and DM all agree to. Some groups play for two hours at a time and then stop. Some play for three, six, four, eight hours, or even longer. Cadence does play into it. I mean, if we're gaming weekly, I can't imagine prepping for an eight-hour game session every single Saturday.

But that's me. Maybe your group loves those marathon sessions every week and your GM can keep up with it. Also, part of setting expectations is defining your attendance policy. You could be very draconian, fairly lax, or somewhere in between. I know one group where they meet weekly

and if you miss more than one gaming session per month, you're out. Other groups game with whomever can make it to gaming that night. Again, depends on your group, but you do need to discuss that during your session zero to set those expectations around your table. Real world example. My Saturday group meets weekly, almost come hell or high water, for three hours plus or minus. There are very occasional times when we can't meet because of illness or outside commitments that can't be moved. But for the most part, every Saturday night, we're logged into foundry and embarking on an adventure that will end.

somewhere two hours 45, three hours 15. Usually that's about the duration. If you can't make it, your characters assume to be not present with the party and off doing something else. Meanwhile, my Friday night group is much less rigid. We try for every other Friday, but the group is younger. A lot of them have kids now, so their availability is a lot less sure. We game if four of the six players can make it, but if not, we punt to the next weekend or the next scheduled session. The game session is in the two to three hour range usually, and we look for a good stopping point somewhere in that time range.

Sometimes there have been evenings we've barely made it two hours, and there have been a couple times where we hit four hours during long boss fights and that kind of thing. Characters who are not able to attend are said to be burying the horses, which I know that sounds weird, but stick with me. It's a reference to an off-the-cuff joke I made in the second session of an adventure called Crypt of the Everflame, where the first. First session ended with the party finding the remains of a group of local townspeople and their horses outside a cave. The druid couldn't make the second session, so I just off the cuff jokingly said, oh, he's outside the cave burying the horses. You know, druids, the horses matter, but the townspeople don't, that type of thing. I know it was a dumb joke, but you never really know what dumb joke you throw out is really going to stick. I've been gaming with this group now for 10

years, and that's what we always say that the characters are doing when a player can't make the session. The point behind this discussion, attendance policy, cadence, and duration needs to be discussed to make sure everybody signs up for the social contract that comes part and parcel with gaming. Next up, communication. How and how often? How will the GM or scheduler for the group communicate with the party? Are you going to use email, discord, dedicated website, text messages, smoke signals, whatever. Make sure you have one primary way to reach out to everyone to let them know you can or can't make it, and the final decision to play or not can come via that same communications channel.

Early on in one of my campaigns with a group, we used email sometimes, Discord sometimes, text messages others, and it was absolute chaos. We eventually decided, okay, Discord is our official communication channel for everything having to do with attendance, not and anything. going on in the campaign. Since then, it's been, we have one place to go for all of our communication, and it's much easier and better since we made that decision. Now, also part of this communication expectation that you need to set, how far ahead of time do you let the group know you can't make it? I would recommend, by the way, setting like a 24-hour minimum, and some groups can even do 48 hours, and it'd be even better. Because there's nothing worse, by the way, when you're expecting people to show up to gaming, you've got chips ready, you've got pizzas coming, it's going to be amazing,

and then they message you 30 minutes ahead of time to say, I can't make it, because last week they promised Aunt Gladys that they would help her organize her macromay room. You knew you wouldn't make gaming a week ago, and so now you're just telling me 30 minutes ahead of time when everything is all prepped. Come on! Letting everybody know you can't make it as soon as you know you can't make it, even maybe even suspect you may not be able to make it, eliminates these last-minute cancellations that all of us hate.

Hey, don't get me wrong. Shit happens. And especially the time of year of this recording, where I live, flu is running rampant, and we might have to cancel because we're making sounds and excretions like a possessed 12-year-old girl living in Georgetown who needs an old priest and a young priest. Kudos to you, by the way, if you get that reference.

The point is, as soon as you know you can't make a regularly scheduled gaming session, make sure you let the group know. But my next tip is to pick that method of communication and minimum duration you're asking people to let you know when they can't make it. Also, part of setting expectations should be distractions and tech use around the table. Some groups have a no phones, no tablets, no computer use around the table policy because they want everyone there and present, not looking at 15 second cat videos. The drawback, of course, is that there isn't a convenient way to use electronic source books or websites if you do that. Other groups, like mine, allow players free use of electronics,

but part of the social contract that we agree to is that they'll be present at the game and not using the devices as a distraction to themselves or their players. Whoa, shit, I'm starting to run along again. You'd think I'd learn, but okay, here we go. I got three more tips that can be summed up fairly quickly. My fourth tip for setting expectations during session zero is to discuss and agree upon what house rules are going to be used in the game. For example, rules is written a natural 20 is not an automatic success in a skill check in D&D. Maybe your group doesn't like that and wants to change it.

Good. Agree on it ahead of time. As an example, my Friday night group, we're here's some house rules that we've agreed upon. We don't track encumbrance or ammunition as long as neither one's abused. You're not allowed to carry a million gallons of water into the desert or 15,000 crossbow bolts or anything like that. Just every now and then throw a silver or two in the point. party loot and the assumption is that you bought the consumables you need. We also assume that things like drinking healing potions outside of combat always gives the maximum number of hit points they

possibly can. The assumption is that if you're outside of combat, you can take your time, get every last drop out of that healing potion, and you probably couldn't do that, though, in a six-second round if you're trying to chug a potion really quick. We started out, by the way, using critical hit and critical fumble decks, but just agreed to do away with them because both happened to the party, way more often than the monsters. I mean, face it, one crit hit on the monster, and they're probably dead. Another house rule, I give hero points for good role-playing and good jokes,

but I'm sure there's other house rules that I'm forgetting. Point being, there's a lot of potential house rules and more than I can possibly cover. I talked about some of them, by the way, in episodes 214 and 215, but if you would like me to do another episode on house rules, I do have some other ideas. But anyway, let me know if that sounds interesting to you.

send me a message on the socials or email. Feedback at taking20podcast.com. Speaking of which, one of the best ways you can set expectations for the campaign is to discuss things called lines and veils. I would have bet a significant amount of money that I had previously discussed lines and veils in an episode all their own, but evidently not. A quick control left through all my episode scripts didn't find it. Hopefully this isn't a repeat of something I've done before, and if it is, please accept my. My apologies. Lines and veils are safety tools used during session zero to establish boundaries and ensure a comfortable playing environment for everyone around the table. It lets everybody, GM and players, identify potentially sensitive or triggering content before the game begins.

This discussion, by the way, helps align the GM's planned adventure content with the player's comfort levels, preventing unexpected and unwelcome moments during gameplay. The list of content that could cause discomfort for the players or DM is infinitely long. Common ones I've seen at games I've run include bugs and claustrophobia, racism, specific kinds of harm such as to eyes or hands or genitals and many others. Needless to say, if a certain type of content bothers the player, you're going to want to steer clear of it. Session Zero is a great opportunity for the GM to discuss.

the general content of the campaign and for the players to mention these topics that might make them feel uncomfortable. If you're gaming with friends, people you've played with before, chances are you know the potential content that might be troublesome for those people. But if you're gaming with people you've never sat around the table with before, maybe at a convention, then you have no idea what those trigger conditions might be, and it's good to discuss those ahead of time. And as an aside, by the way, DMs and players, you don't get to judge or ridicule someone for the content they find troublesome. We don't know what's happened to people in their life, and incidents when we're young can stick with us and bother us for the rest of our lives. Hell, I still don't eat bologna anymore thanks to a traumatic incident when I was a kid involving losing multiple baby teeth in one bite of a bologna and ketchup sandwich.

I know. Gross, right? When I took a bite, I couldn't tell what was ketchup and what was blood anymore. Done. Haven't had baloney since. Anyway, these problem topics and content could take any possible form, even something we wouldn't expect, like heat stroke or terrorism or gaslighting or kidnapping or something like that. GMs use this time to give a brief overview of the campaign and possible areas that could cause problems or concerns for the players. For example, many of you listening have run or played Curse of Straud in D&D. That campaign has scenes in it with child abuse and kidnapping, mind control, gaslighting, murder, lying, racism, sexism, torture, incest, cannibalism, and that's just what I can remember off the top of my head.

from having run the campaign before. I'm sure I'm forgetting others. Similarly, I'm running Abomination Valtz right now, and that has body horror and possession and torture and concepts of suicide and murder, human experimentation, and other potentially problematic content. During my session zero of the Abomination Vault campaign, I discussed these with my players

and allowed them to help decide what content shouldn't appear at all, which is a line, and something that can happen in the game world, but only quote unquote off screen, which would be a veil. So lines are boundaries we do not cross. One of my players has a phobia of spiders. On the first level of the dungeon,

there's a creature who has a pet spider. If I ran it as is, she would have been very disturbed. It would have really bothered her. She wouldn't have had a good time playing the game. So, that spider became a lizard with webbed feet and a poison sting. Same stats, different description. Just re-skinned it to avoid that line.

One of my PCs is a summoner, and he promised not to summon any spiders or spider swarms in the game because that would make the other player uncomfortable. Another player has a hard line on harm to children. No problem. There is an incident in the game where harm comes to a child, and so I changed it to be something a little different. No details provided here because it's a minor spoiler for abomination vaults,

But when lines are defined, we don't cross them. We don't reference them. We pull them out of our game. Even if it means more work to do so, trust me, it's worth it. Meanwhile, there were veils that we decided on. We, the players in the GM, know that things like torture, harm to children, cannibalism, happen in the world. So they do in the adventure, but they are not depicted or described. For example, there's one level where torture implements are present and the room is clearly described as having been a torture chamber in the past.

The flavor text even has a brief vision of one such torture session. That didn't get read at my table. They see the manacles, they see the relatively recent blood on the floor, they can put two and two together without my spending two minutes describing what happened. Anyone with half a brain knows that someone had a very bad day in that room. No sense in dwelling on it. It's an agreed-upon veil. We're not going to go into details. In 99% of my games, for example, romance is a veil.

Look, there's a lot of little orcs and little halflings, little teethlings running around, and people are clapping cheeks left and right in the Sword Coast. I know it, you know it. Let's agree that it happens and keep it off screen. Thank you very much. One of my PCs in a game developed romantic interest in an NPC, and after rescuing them said they wanted to see. spend the evening alone with them.

Not a problem. It was time for downtime in the campaign anyway. Everyone's going to spend that time retraining, buying new stuff. So I simply said, okay, we see them sitting in a secluded corner of a tavern table for two and fade to black. And it's next morning. Sex and most of my games is treated as a veil. Not because I'm brutish, but because it can make people uncomfortable around the table.

Hell, one of my games has two married couples among the six players. I'm great friends with both couples, and we tell hilarious stories away from the table all the time. But when we're gaming, no, we don't talk about that kind of stuff. What they do with and to each other is between them and the four walls of their bedroom. And if one couple is to be believed of a photography dark room at college, which kind of sounds hot until you realize that the fixer chemical smells like sulfuric vinegar. Maybe that's their thing. I don't kinkshame. As an aside, by the way, I really.

hope they're listening and give me crap about mentioning that. Love you guys, by the way, if you're listening. Discussing and agreeing upon these boundaries during session zero helps set those expectations of the campaign for the players, and the players can set the expectations for the GM and each other. Lines and veils clearly defined can help your group tell an amazing story while respecting everyone's personal limits. All that being said, you'll occasionally find a situation where one player can't buy into an agreed upon requirement, as harsh as it sounds, if one player wants to violate a line or veil repeatedly or calls it something derogatory or says it's stupid and does it respect the needs and feelings of the DM and other

players, it might be good for that player to find a different group. Nothing is worse than having a game where one player consistently violates a social contract of the game around the table and makes everyone else uncomfortable. In today's episode, we talked about using session zero to set clear expectations for an RPG adventure or campaign. Session Zero is vital for aligning dungeon master's visions with the player's desires regarding campaign tone and setting to prevent the game from disintegrating early on. Beyond the narrative aspects, discuss the essential logistics expectations, including gaming cadence, duration of sessions, and attendance policy, and if you can, minimum

ahead of time notice for cancellations. Other key expectations to discuss in a session zero are rules about technology use at the table, formal agreement on house rules that they're going to be used and not used, and most importantly, lines and veils to set boundaries for sensitive or triggering content. Addressing all these points collaboratively during your session zero ensures everyone is on board with the social contract of the game. They're ready to bring their characters to life, and they will have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening. I'd like to get your feedback, either via social media or email,

feedback at taking20 podcast.com. Please send me a message and let me know your thoughts on the episode. Tune in next time when I'm going to talk about character flaws, both mechanical and flavor. Should players use flawed characters? And if so, how? But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Water. I tried to think of another pun to come up here,

but I think I'm all dried up. This has been episode 272. Another discussion about session zero. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 podcast is copyright 2026 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the host.

References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers.