This week, I worked on a game that serves to build the foundation of a campaign. I split it into a few parts; first, the world, then an individual character creator, and then group connections. These groups were based on some discussions I had about how to create the best game stories. One of the primary ideas that I discussed with a friend of mine was that having the groups all have very close connections was important to creating interesting stories, based on our experience from our own games. I also drew on the consensus that players care more about worlds that they help create, as well as issues that I am having about activation energy in terms of creating a world for a campaign. I wanted the game to be highly customizable, based on play style and game expectations. I wanted it to facilitate a session 0, as often I find those are very difficult. I also based it off of a similar game I saw, whose card prompts weren’t quite right to me. I wanted to make it so that this game could be used across the board to make richer stories. I think that I want to develop this for the final project, and as a part of it, I want to add more support for session 0’s. This is essentially an exercise in seeing if some of my experiences as a DM are right, and if this does create more interesting stories. 

I think this could stand alone as its own game, and it ran pretty fast, which was kind of nice. I don’t want it to be a 2 hour thing, but I also think that I need to get players to talk and think more. I want them to give 2-4 sentences, rather than one word answers. This could be done by expanding some of the questions, but also I think having players write stuff down more. I definitely think that adding more onboarding is a must. Some expectations about the characters and setting must be ironed out beforehand, or at the very least, before the group departs. Some examples of this; are the characters a part of this world, or were they isakei’d? What is the scope and tone of this story? Will the group start together, and how? These are just important things to keep track of. I also think that it’s important to mention safety tools like the X card. They are really helpful, and a must for a session 0 like this.

The players did say that they really liked the questions though, and I was really happy with how it made them think. They went in being a bit silly, and they found themselves in a very real world in a fun, interesting way. I also do want to add more ‘minor worldbuilding’ questions. I was thinking about expanding it in the slice, but wasn’t sure before submitting. Overall though, I would definitely use it in future for my games.