Hello students, Professor Crunch here. Welcome to the first in a new series of articles that will be paired with our new Wrought Iron Actual Play episodes. We’re trying something a little different here at the Academy in 2016. We want to share even more about our games and experiences, so every new episode will come with an article that will lift the curtain and discuss all kinds of details from my place as game master. I would recommend listening to the episode first because I will probably get into some spoiler territory.
So to answer your first question, with episode one just airing, why is this titled “episode 0”? Two reasons. One, I wanted to talk about our session zero process and all the planning and development that went into this series of episodes. Two, well, this one is a secret until next time.
When it first came time to plan this new Actual Play series, Michael, Scott, Matthew, and I all got together and pitched our campaign ideas in a round table discussion. We shared our “elevator pitches” about the campaigns; the big-picture ideas that you’d see on the back cover of a novel. Everyone brought some amazing concepts to the table. We talked for a few hours about the different campaigns, the ways they could possibly grow and develop, and what would be the best for the podcast.
The campaign that was finally chosen eventually became Wrought Iron.
I say “eventually” because my idea evolved and changed as we talked. The core concept is still there, but we all worked together to create the best thing possible for this podcast series. I could not have written a story with the details that we discovered in our discussions. The resulting plan was far greater than anything I could’ve brought to the table if I had written a strict outline or plot description.
As a GM, I have a lot of notes about campaign concepts and ideas for random bits and pieces of encounters. The idea that I pitched for Wrought Iron was a very general concept. I knew how I wanted to start the campaign. I had an idea for the big middle event that created a transition toward the eventual climax. And I had a really really rough idea of how that climax would go. But I didn’t have anything specific planned out. I didn’t have any major NPCs or plot points ready during that initial pitch. I think that’s what made this idea so appealing.
When we started digging into my idea, everyone began sharing all kinds of ideas quickly and easily. I presented my core ideas as a foundation, but then everyone else added in their own concepts and the idea instantly grew into something bigger and better than I had originally jotted down.
This might be the most important lesson to bring into your own session zero. It’s a brainstorming session. There are no bad ideas. And the best ideas will come up organically as everyone discusses and contributes.
From this point, we started digging into world-building and campaign planning. We listed all of our ideas on a shared Google Doc just to keep things straight. I started with a general summary of the world’s history. In my younger days, I would’ve written out a detailed timeline with events, names, and places. There’s nothing wrong with approaching a game like that, but it does require a lot of time and effort. It also requires the. buy-in of all the players at the table. They need to agree to follow along with the structure of the created world.
Personally, I prefer to tell a story with my players, instead of for them. I would rather work together to create a rich and vibrant world and then fill it with unique creations. To accomplish that with our Wrought Iron preparation, our notes experienced a lot of editing and discussion. I don’t want you to think that after we had that first meeting that all of our ideas fell together nicely. We still had a lot to figure out. The ideas that we all brought to the table didn’t necessarily fit together immediately. We spent weeks debating what worked and what didn’t. Some things still aren’t completely clear. My notes have some question marks and “TBD”s in there.
For the record, I haven’t discarded any of these original ideas. They might have changed a lot, but they’re all still viable options.
We also talked a lot about the PCs and their places in this world. I decided that for this campaign to work properly, the PCs had to have a solid connection to their home. So that meant fleshing out not only the location, but the people and details that made it feel like a real place. A technique I frequently use is to ask players to define 2 or 3 NPCs that have an important (not necessarily positive) relationship with their PC. This helps the players think about their PC in a larger sense. And it’s a nice way for me to cheat and get some NPCs that I didn’t have to create.
Building a world from scratch takes a lot of work. Even if you are a low-prep and improv-heavy GM, you still have to think of characters and names and locations and relationships and motivations. If the players can pitch in and deliver just a few of these details, your life becomes so much easier.
The planning process of Wrought Iron was incredibly fun. And it is still happening. As a GM, I am not planning ahead. I have ideas about what’s going to happen. And I am building towards those few big moments that I knew had to happen during the initial pitch discussion. But the game is creating itself as we play it. I am lucky to be teamed with three talented and skilled players. As a group, we know how to play off of each other easily. We know how to work together. Because of this connection, we all trust each other when it comes to playing the game. I know that when I ask for details, my players are going to provide information that creates a great story. So I don’t worry about what’s going to happen next.
Not everyone runs or plays a game like this, and that’s ok. You should always do what you feel most comfortable with and what is the most fun for your and your table. But it’s also important to try new things.
In conclusion, Wrought Iron is a group effort. I might be steering that group in certain directions, but we are collectively telling a story. Our session zero lasted a few weeks and allowed us to define the uniqueness of the world we are playing in and create a solid foundation for our PCs and NPCs to inhabit. This detailed level of planning was crucial to not only create a campaign that will run to completion at twentieth level, but to create an entertaining and engaging story.
Next time, I’ll pull back the curtain on episode one and two and we’ll talk about something crazy that I suggested, the gang agreed to try, and whether or not it worked.
