The Party that Never Was

My oldest daughter had bought me the core rulebooks for 5e for Christmas several years ago. I had played second edition and that was what we had played as a family while the kids were growing up. It was time to enter the 21-century and start using 5e.

Click the image to see more great art by the contributing artists.

On a snowy February Saturday, my wife, youngest daughter, and I decided to roll up 5e characters to see how it would go. I believe the best way to understand a role-playing game is to go through the process of making characters. I had recently purchased but had not read, Ghosts of Saltmarsh and we decided to make our characters as if we were in a session zero. My youngest daughter wanted to play a human variant rogue. My wife decided to play a dragonborn cleric of Procan (she loves playing clerics). I had the idea to make a warlock based on a character I had created for one of my stories (in retrospect, the sorcerer class would’ve been a better fit for that build).

We then looked at the backgrounds. My daughter liked the Pirate variant of the Sailor background and made her rogue a former pirate who had been with the Sea Princes but had decided that was not the life for him. My wife liked the Folk Hero background and came up with the idea that her dragonborn had stormed a slaver ship and freed all the people in it. I liked that idea and said that my character had been one of those that had been freed. My character had been apprenticed to an artisan and had been cursed with her warlock patron. I picked my patron as the Chained God because my character had been in chains (that’s how much thought and research went into the choice).

The story potential of those three characters was phenomenal. I would’ve loved to have played the Saltmarsh campaign with those characters, bringing in their backstories would’ve been great. That is the key to a good session zero is creating backstories that are inspired by the campaign setting as well as bringing new plot threads that a good DM can weave into the story. Session zero has become one of my favorite parts of a campaign because when it is done right it is always about the story.

In session zero, the time should be spent not rolling stats or power gaming, but discussing your characters. Figuring out ways to link them and make their backstories a cohesive story. To me, that is the essence of D&D, and role-playing, in general, is to create stories together.