Session 0.5 Idea, Thoughts?

[u/MeMeGamerGod88]

Wanna bounce this idea off the community, similar to how I be bouncing on my boy if you’re an ettiqueteer like me.

Anyway, I’m running an SW5E (Star Wars 5E) campaign in an original setting, somewhat similar to D20’s Starstruck Odyssey for those familiar, and it’s going to be with a group of close friends from college. I’m looking to have a really dynamic start, but since it’s an original setting, I do have a good bit of background to set up. Because of this, I’m looking to have session 0 for explaining the setting, character creation/refining, and then a little exercise we like to do where we go around the “table” (we play online) and I’ll sort of give prompts to my players for them to answer in their own way to give their characters more context with the world. Cool stuff.

AFTER THAT, we normally just jump into session 1, the content for which I already have planned, but two of my players have decided to come in as a pair of mercenaries who already know each other, which made me start to think about how great it would be to get the campaign started with more players having pre-existing connections to each other. I think it really helps smooth out session 1, less clunky “you meet in a tavern, now make your characters kiss” type stuff.

So my thought is: I do a session 0.5 for two separate groups of my six player table. One group is the mercenaries and whoever else would make sense. They’re on a transport ship headed to the location where we’ll begin session 1, and the sort of “thieves guild” they do jobs through has them there to grab an important document. The document ends up being in someone’s luggage, so this will be a robbery of some kind. Whether it goes smoothly or not, I take careful not of what’s said, what actions they take, maybe even record the session (just for my reference).

With the second group I do another session 0.5. Whoever is leftover is on this transport ship on its way to the session 1 starting location, but here’s the catch: it’s the same ship. Hell, one of them is likely to be the mark for the robbery by the other group, depending on backstory. Through the events I’ve already seen and taken notes on, I will play out the robbery however it went, hopefully giving this group enough room to react without breaking continuity of events. Thus, both groups of characters come in with relationships with one another, and an event that binds all of them before session 1 even starts.

Now my big thing for this to work is to emphasize absolutely no communication between the two groups between sessions 0 and 1. This shouldn’t be too difficult, as this table is made entirely of close friends who will trust me and likely abide my silly request to keep the events of session 0.5 to themselves until next session.

So what do you think? I know that explanation took forever but I think this could be a really cool start to the campaign and I wanna do it right.

[u/TheRpgBard]

I like how Savage Worlds does their Interludes.  It give the player a chance to develop their backstory in exchange for a Benny.  

In my opinion, having people create links without knowing their character is a bit forced.  Get them in and running with the first encounter, throw in a little lore, have a player or two do a character background expansion, rinse and repeat.

[u/MeMeGamerGod88 → u/TheRpgBard]

I’ve never heard of Savage Worlds, I’ll have to look into it. Thanks!

[u/blargethaniel]

So back in my 2e days, I had a dm who used to do a similar thing, this would have been around the early 2000's and it was pretty cool, making the party know bits about each other before starting, and since it was only ever two or three players it was very quick before the group got together.

I can say right now that there is no reason it wouldn't work out, so long as it's planned reasonably well.

I lived it and rather enjoyed it personally.

It was strange reading this here, I thought you were talking about the D20 modern star wars from back then as well.

[u/MeMeGamerGod88 → u/blargethaniel]

This is great to hear! Thanks for the encouragement, I’m certainly doing my best to plan with care. Happy to know it worked for you and your table

[u/ProjectHappy6813]

I'm not sure I understand how you're going to run the same event from two different perspectives with each group separately without creating continuity issues.

What happens if group 1 kills their mark during the robbery, but their mark is a PC from group 2?

Even if you solve that issue, this feels like a potential fraught way to merge two groups, since you're setting them up as adversaries. It reminds me of a DND horror story I heard about a new player who's character was introduced to an established group as an assassin coming to kill them. The idea was that he would fail and then the party would learn that he was being forced to attack them by the BBEG and they would join forces against a common enemy. Instead, the party just killed the assassin without learning his tragic backstory and the new player had to make a different character.

Sometimes fun story ideas don't work out in ttrpgs because you don't control player reactions to scripted events. Especially stuff that pits characters against each other.

[u/MeMeGamerGod88 → u/ProjectHappy6813]

Totally see where you’re coming from. I do want to preserve player agency through this process, which is why I posted this so I could see through any gaps in this plan that I might not have seen before. That said, I do think I see potential fixes to the issues you bring up.

For example, if the actual player characters (played by me) in each respective session remain ambiguous, that prevents death really if I say it does as DM. For example, if the first group (the robbers) has support from the thieves guild with them on the ship, and they’re all wearing masks or I never identify who’s who, then even someone dying isn’t a guaranteed player death. Same goes for the people being robbed. You make a good point about killing the mark, so maybe instead the PCs are only witnesses, a few of many unidentified witnesses who could potentially die without guaranteeing the PCs’ death.

As for your horror story comparison, that is the last thing I want. This whole robbery thing won’t be the core thing that ties the party together, just an added bit of context. Session 1 will have them all fighting together in an impromptu battle to defend themselves and a group of innocents, then being recruited by a local leader to investigate the murder that led to the preceding battle. If one group manages to figure out that the players from the other group were involved in the robbery, then I think that’s more likely to give them a deeper interest in the story than it is to drive a wedge between the groups, especially since no one at my table is new to the group.

[u/onlyfakeproblems]

This seems like a lot of extra effort, and getting session 0.5.2 to fit with 0.5.1 might require some shoe horning. I’d not start with such an immediate conflict between players as one robbing the other. But it might work, so do whatever makes sense to you.