A session zero questionnaire that turns answers into characters

By Brenn and Lindsay, the two writers who built Inkling

Session zero is where the table agrees what game it is playing. A good questionnaire does that job, and then does a second one: every answer a player gives you is a hook waiting to be used. Here is the questionnaire we hand out, and how we turn it into characters.

We once read a thread on the D&D Beyond forums from a DM who had done everything right. They ran a session zero. They explained that the campaign would be story-heavy, full of NPC relationships and character moments. A few sessions in, half the table loved it and the other half just wanted to fight things. An NPC died because of the party’s choices; some players were upset about the lost story, some did not care. One player quit by email. The DM, understandably, burned out.

The happy ending was that the group split into two campaigns, one for each style of play, and everyone got the game they wanted. The lesson we took from it: a session zero where the DM explains the game is not enough. You need each player to answer, in their own words, and you need those answers written down somewhere you will look at again.

What should you cover in session zero?

Five things, in this order. The first four are about the game; the last is where the characters start.

• Tone. Grim or hopeful? Gritty survival or swashbuckling? Is there comedy, and how much? Give two or three touchstones from books or films instead of adjectives.
• Lines and veils. What is off the table entirely, and what can happen offscreen. More on this below.
• Schedule. How often, how long, what happens when someone cannot make it, and how long a break the group can take before it loses the thread.
• Expectations. What each player enjoys most, ranked. This is the question that would have saved the DM in that thread.
• How the characters know each other. A party that has a reason to be together is a party that stays together when the plan falls apart.

If you want a longer list, Troy Press has a thorough set of session zero questions covering past-campaign feedback, house rules and how absent players are handled. And Sly Flourish’s one-page campaign guide is a good thing to send out before session zero, so players arrive already knowing the pitch.

What are lines and veils, and how do you ask about them?

A line is something that will not appear in the game at all. A veil is something that can happen in the story but offscreen: the door closes, the scene cuts, and you pick up afterward. You ask about them before the campaign starts, you honor them without asking for reasons, and you let players add to them at any time.

We collect them privately first. Some people will happily say “no spiders” at the table; fewer will name something that is actually painful for them in front of four friends. A private message or a short form gets you honest answers. Then the DM shares the combined list with the table, without names attached.

The session zero questionnaire (copy it)

Send part one to the whole group before session zero. Send part two privately to each player, and ask them to reply only to you.

PART ONE: THE GAME (answer before session zero)

1. Tone. Pick the closest, or write your own:
   grim / hopeful / swashbuckling / eerie / cozy / political
   Two books, films or shows that feel like the game you want:

2. Rank these 1 to 5 by how much you enjoy them:
   ___ fights and tactics
   ___ exploring strange places
   ___ talking to NPCs and roleplay
   ___ puzzles and mysteries
   ___ building something (a home, a crew, a reputation)

3. Schedule. How often can you play, and for how long?
   What should happen when someone misses a session?

4. Anything from past games you loved? Anything you never
   want to repeat?

PART TWO: YOUR CHARACTER (reply to the DM only)

5. Lines: things you never want in the game.
   Veils: things that can happen, but offscreen.

6. Your character in one to five sentences. Leave gaps.

7. What does your character WANT? (Something they would
   say out loud.)

8. What do they NEED? (Something they do not see yet.
   It is fine to leave this for the DM to discover.)

9. Name one person, place or thing they cannot walk away from.

10. Tie yourself to the party: who do you already know,
    and what do you owe them (or they owe you)?

11. One secret, for the DM only.

12. What in this backstory is FIXED (please do not change)
    and what is FLEXIBLE (surprise me)?

Question six is deliberately short. Sly Flourish’s advice on building great characters is one to five sentences with gaps left open, and we agree: the gaps are where the campaign gets in. Question twelve comes from a painful pattern on player forums: a DM takes a backstory in a direction the player hated, usually because nobody said which parts mattered. A D&D Beyond vent thread on exactly this landed on the same fix: mark what is fixed and what is flexible, and talk before the big moments.

How do the characters know each other?

The lone orphan with no living ties is a classic for a reason, but it gives the DM nothing to pull on, and players on the forums have been trying to fix it for years. The fix is specific connections. At session zero we go around the table, and each player names one tie to the character on their left: a shared job, a debt, a sibling, a rivalry, a night nobody talks about. By the end, every PC is tied to two others, and the party has a reason to exist before the first scene.

How do you turn a player’s answers into a character card?

This is the part most questionnaires skip. You have the answers; now make them usable at the table. For each PC, we fill in one card with five things:

• Pitch: one line from question six.
• Want: what they are chasing, in their words.
• Need: what the campaign could give them, if they let it.
• Bonds: the person, place or thing they cannot walk away from, plus their ties to the party.
• Secret, fixed and flexible: kept on the DM’s side only.

Then, for each of want, need and bond, write one hook: a situation that could show up in the first three sessions. Here is a made-up example from our own table.

Wren Halloway, a temple novice who was sent away a week before taking her vows. Wants: to find out who reported her to the abbess. Needs: to stop measuring herself by whether the temple takes her back. Bond: her younger brother Pim, still a novice at the temple in Harrowmere, and a debt to the party’s rogue, who got her out of town. Secret: she kept the abbess’s seal when she left. Fixed: her brother is alive. Flexible: who reported her.

• Want hook: a letter from Pim says a new novice has been asking questions about her.
• Need hook: the abbess offers to take Wren back, at a price the party would pay.
• Bond hook: the temple’s seal turns up on a forged order, and someone is looking for the person who has the real one.

These are offers, not scripts. The player can grab one, ignore it, or turn it somewhere you did not expect, which is the point. Prep the situation and let them decide what to do with it. And keep the spotlight moving: a hook per player per arc is plenty, so no one character becomes the whole campaign. If you want to go deeper on growth over a campaign, we wrote about character arcs for D&D characters, and players can start from our backstory template.

Try it with the character card below. It is filled in with another player character, a ranger named Tamsin Vell; type Wren’s want and need over hers and you will see how the answers become an arc.

How do you keep backstory secrets private?

Collect them privately, keep them on your side of the screen, and never reveal one to the party without the player’s say-so. The best reveals are the ones a player chooses to make at the table, in character, when it will hurt the most. Your job is to give them the moment, not to take it. If a secret touches another player’s character, ask both players before it comes out.

One more thing: come back to the questionnaire. After three or four sessions, ask everyone for one thing they have loved and one thing they wish for more of. Tastes change once people actually play, and a five-minute check-in catches a mismatch long before anyone quits by email.

How Inkling fits

We are two writers who play, and Inkling is the writing app we built. For session zero, here is where it helps and where it does not.

• A character card per PC and NPC. Inkling’s character cards have a pitch, what they want, why they want it, what they actually need, the wound, the fear and the lie they believe, plus notes for bonds, voice and quirks. It maps almost one to one onto the questionnaire. The cast is searchable and carries across every story in your account.
• Private by default. Your cards live in your account. Nobody sees them unless you share something, which is where backstory secrets belong.
• Portraits that belong to the player. Upload the player’s own sketch, a commissioned piece, or a photo of their painted mini.
• A primer to go with it. Share a one-page world primer with the table through a private read-only link. Our post on writing a player primer covers what to put in it.

What Inkling is not: it is not a virtual tabletop, and our character cards are story cards, not character sheets. There are no stats, hit points, spell slots or dice, and no battle maps. Keep your character sheets on paper or in your VTT, and use Inkling for who the character is.

Inkling is an independent writing app. Dungeons & Dragons and D&D are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. Inkling is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast.