Session Zero
Session Zero is the bootstrap procedure — the one session that happens before the campaign begins. Its job is to establish the conditions that make responsive generation possible: shared palette, starting settlement, faction landscape, and player goals.
Without Session Zero, the Pandemonium Engine has no seeds. With it, the engine has enough pinned content to generate coherently from the first real session.
In This Folder
| File | What It Covers |
|---|---|
| Player Guide | Player expectations, character creation, the open table rhythm |
| Player Expectations Draft | Full working draft — long-form version of the Player Guide |
The Four Outputs
Session Zero needs to produce four things before anyone goes home:
The Palette — What’s in and out of this campaign. Tone, content boundaries, thematic yes/no lists. Done using Microscope’s Palette procedure. Takes 15-20 minutes. Saves significant friction later.
The Starting Settlement — The Guild’s home base. Run full Ex Novo generation (90-120 minutes) with the whole table. This is the most important collaborative worldbuilding session of the campaign — it pins dozens of nodes and establishes the faction landscape.
The Starting Era — What happened before the campaign begins. Use Microscope’s Big Picture to establish the broad strokes of history: what civilizations existed, what major events shaped the present, what’s lost that players might seek. Doesn’t need to be comprehensive — 30-40 minutes of high-level strokes is enough.
Player Goals — Every player leaves Session Zero with three goals for their character. Short-term, medium-term, long-term. These are the seeds for the Seeded Discovery Pool. Without them, the GM can’t build the first round of content. See the Player Guide for the full goal-creation procedure.
Duration
Plan for 3-4 hours. If you need to split it across two sessions, split after the palette and before the settlement generation — the collaborative worldbuilding benefits from everyone being fresh.
Where This Leads
After Session Zero, the GM takes the established factions and player goals and runs Quest Prep for the first real session. Players review the Player Guide, post expedition intent, and the campaign begins.