Solo Session Zero: Themes, Feel, and Genre
Welcome dear readers to my first series of topics, Session Zero for solo campaigns.
What is a session zero? In traditional games, session zero is typically the first session of a campaign where things like getting to know each other, rules overviews, safety tools, player expectations, a description of the world, character creation, and sometimes the very start of campaign play. A session zero is the foundation of any campaign, it makes sure the players and the GM are all on the same page and that everyone is prepared to get out there and have fun.
While it takes the place of a session of play, many GMs (including me) wouldn’t dream of starting a long-term campaign without doing a session zero. So this begs the question, should we do a session zero for a solo campaign?
How silly I hear people saying, you're just by yourself, jump into play and start adventuring. And yes, a solo campaign is obviously solo, but there are many aspects of a session zero that can be of benefit to a solo campaign.
I’m not saying you need to sit down for two hours and work through an agenda as you may with a traditional group. You could do lots of this here or there in the lead-up to a campaign, jotting notes down in a diary or note-keeping app as you think of them.
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| Solo RPGs can be lonley but your not alone. Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash |
Now to the main article
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Solo Session Zero: Theme, Feel, Genre
Right, time to get started with your solo campaign. You have your journal ready, your dice arranged by height, weight, and color, and your pencils sharpened to a fine tip. Great, time to start your campaign and fire off into an epic adventure with a great story.
But what kind of game do you want to play? What do you want your campaign to feel like? Do you want to fight dragons in a high fantasy world like Lord of the Rings, or stumble through a slum in a futuristic dystopia?
Time to think about Themes, Feel, and genre.
As an example, I’ll show how each one works in my favorite popular fictional universe, Star Wars.
Themes - The ideas that reoccur and pervade your campaign
So what will be the guiding idea that fills your campaign? Will it be revenge against a cruel empire or will it be about living your life wholesomely? Your themes will be the glue that binds your whole campaign together and eventually your character to the world you live in.
You don’t need to be overly complicated or descriptive right now, a simple phrase will be enough, something like ‘desperate people trying to make a name for themselves or ‘love can conquer all'. That’s enough to go off from and move on to Feel and Genre.
Star Wars has multiple themes but the main one from A New Hope could “brave people banding together can defeat evil” and that theme repeats through the movie and bleeds into the whole franchise.
Feel - The emotion and sensation of your campaign
What do you want to feel playing this game? What do you want your character and NPCs to feel? Do you want it to be a hopeful tale of heroes banding together to conquer all? Or do you want your players to feel greed as they dive through dungeons to gather every flake of gold?
The feel can guide your campaign in many different ways. An extended scene of a village getting burnt to the ground may not show up in a game where you want to feel happy and relaxed. Likewise, a cuddly talking bunny wouldn’t be a good fit in a game where you are meant to feel scared and anxious.
Star Wars goes heavy into the feeling of hope. Hope for a better day, hope that they can stand up to the empire, hope in themselves, and hope in their friends.
Genre - The style and category of your campaign
For many of us, this is where campaign planning normally starts. This is where you decide if you want a high fantasy campaign filled with powerful magic and court intrigue, or if you want a hard sci-fi campaign with realistic spaceship mechanics and combat.
I won’t go into details about all the different genres for solo TTRPGs because there are thousands of potential games that cover potentially hundreds of different distinct genres. The good thing about keeping this last is that you already know the themes and the feel that you want, so picking a genre to match that may be easier.
That being said, you can have vastly different games and settings within a genre, so when it comes to selecting a specific game, keep your themes and feel in mind.
And don't be afraid to try out a new genre and find settings that mix and match key elements from different genres. There are some great fantasy games that have aspects of technology, and great sci-fi games with fantasy elements.
This is an easy one, Star Wars is Space Fantasy. I mean it could also be sci-fi, and it has elements of samurai and western stories, but its strongest genre is Space Fantasy, which is a combination of science fiction and fantasy (the force is space magic in all).
Reader Questions
Do I need to do all of this? Time is already short and I barely have time to get in there and roll a few dice. I definitely don’t have time to set this all up in the lead to my campaign.
Yes, I totally get what you are saying. Some days I just want to get a few rolls in and escape from the real world with my adventures. The answer is, you don’t have to sit down and do this like it's homework. You probably cover this when you’re thinking about what your next campaign will be.
Often this is chosen for you when you select a game to pay. Want to play Mork Borg? That's going to have a theme of desperation, it's going to have a dark and gritty feel, and the genre is low-fantasy in an apocalyptic setting.
Or you do this just daydreaming about your campaign while you are getting ready to sleep, or on the train, or at work (especially at work). And you can keep it casual and relaxed, but now that you know about these three concepts, you can pick them out of your thoughts and jot them down quickly.
But if you like the idea of getting into depth with these things, you can follow a more deliberate process by thinking of the three things and recording some details thoughts about them.
But I just want to jump into a game tonight. All this fluffing around just takes time away from my campaign.
Fair call, this definitely isn’t mandatory and I don’t want anyone to think that it is. There are plenty of solo games that are designed to pick up and play for a session or a few short sessions. Jump into those. I recommend Long Haul 1983 or Grimoire for a quick journaling game. Or Marching Order or Four Against Darkness for a satisfying delve deep into a dungeon.
I'd use these tools more for campaigns where you expect to be playing for weeks or months.
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| Now delve some Dungeons! Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash |
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Well, that's it for this week. Check-in soon for more on my series about Solo Session Zero, and let me know if you like this series and would like to know more about it.
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