Dark Sun - Cell 17 : Session 0

And the Dark Sun campaign has officially kicked off.

Session "0" was spent drawing up the characters, discussing house rules and building back story.

After the Eberron session where we had some people play numbers instead of their characters I had some ideas to engage the players with their characters before and during character gen, essentially giving the character life instead of just making it a set of numbers.

Firstly I asked the players to think about their character's motivations and back story, the only criteria I had was that the character must end up in slave pens at the end of the back story. These slave pens would serve as the starting point for the actual campaign proper.
This I asked them to do a week in advance, in total I received 3 very detailed written histories, the others aren't fully detailed but those players did spend time and are filling in gaps as they interact wcith the others. I will be "rewarding" the full histories with more plot hooks and NPCs I think. The other will have to work at building their contacts in game.

Secondly I asked them to detail what the characters have been upto in the last three weeks that they have spent in the slave pens. As part of this I had the players do a small scene where their character interacts with one of the other characters.
This actually produced some rather lovely vignettes, with some characters actually learning more about the other characters and even forming tentative bonds and loyalties.

The third thing was more something for me, a kinda "future promise" for the players. I asked each of them to write a short scenario/event that they would like to partake in. Or something they would like to do with their characters.
This actually gave some nice results, ranging from exploring the Forest Ridge to open warfare. Actually looking forward to seeing how I'll incorporate all of it into the campaign. Spoilt for ideas at the moment.

So at a glance all of the above gave me:
1. Nuuta, elven ranger, on a quest to find her brother that was captured by slavers
2. Mikki, a human gladiator, hoping to gain fame and fortune and rise in prominenece in house stel
3. Jaryx, a half-giant gladiator, planning escape and leading others to freedom
4. Krath, a human noble, forced into slavery for a crime he "did" commit, seeking absolution
5. Traiy, a dray trader, that sold himself into slavery to pay off debts, quite possibly the worst trader ever
6. Fullgrin, halfling shaman, fresh from the forest ridge

So I have characters and I have back story, next week will see whether all of this can withstand exposure to the most destructive force in roleplaying... players.