Scene Zero

Start Playing in Five Minutes

Seven questions. One character. One first "but." Everything else is a future scene.

Drawing from Tomkin (Ironsworn), Morningstar (Fiasco), and the screenwriting tradition of late-attack openings. Full credits at the end.

I. The Setup Trap

Many solo systems front-load worldbuilding as a prerequisite to play. Ironsworn asks you to answer its Truths before your first scene. Starforged invites you to build a sector, establish a home region, define background assets. Kal-Arath has factions, histories, and a cosmology to absorb.

The temptation is to answer all of it before starting. The result is two hours of preparation and no story.

Some players prefer that approach — building world, character, and history before the first session. That's a legitimate way to play and compatible with everything in this document. Scene Zero is for the other situation: when the setup trap has caught you too many times, when you want to discover your world through play rather than before it, when you want to pick up this document and be inside a scene within five minutes of opening it.

You don't need to know your world before you start. You need a character, a drive, and a first "but." Everything else is a future scene.

II. The Seven Questions

Work through the questions below in order. When you reach Q7, you have everything you need for your first scene frame. Q4 gives you the situation. Your response to Q4 is your Want. Q7 is your Obstacle. Q6 is your Stake. Open Scene Framing, run the Protocol, and play.

Single sentences only. If you're writing more than one, cut.

Q1 — Who are you?

Name and role. Nothing else. No backstory, no history, no explanation of how you got here.

Kael Rho, a salvager with a dead captain's debt to settle.
Bram, a disgraced healer looking for the man who burned his village.
Sera, a knight-errant who swore an oath to a dying noble she'd never met before.

Q2 — What drives you?

One present-tense urgency. Verb plus goal. If you find yourself writing more than one sentence, cut everything except the verb and the object.

Recover the captain's final ship logs before the Syndicate destroys them.
Find the warlord who ordered the raid and make him face justice — or just face Bram.
Reach the daughter the noble named with her last breath, before the family that wants her dead does.

Q3 — What does the world feel like?

One word — a mood or situation, not a genre. Situation words do much more work than genre labels.

Examples: Fringe · Broken · Occupied · Forgotten · Hunted · Contested · Fading · Rising · Scarred · Quarantined · Drowned

Q4 — What just forced you into motion?

The inciting disruption — what changed in the world to make this story start now. Pick a disruption type, then finish the sentence.

A note on the word "but." Q4's "but" is the inciting but — the disruption that opens the story. Inside Scene Framing, "but" appears again in a different role: the obstacle but in the scene-frame formula. They're related but distinct. Q4's disruption creates the situation that produces your first scene's obstacle. Don't worry about the difference now — just write Q4 as a single sentence with a "but" in it.

Disruption types:

Arrived somewhere
Found something
Was found by someone
Overheard something
Something ended
Something began

She finally traced the wreck's location — but a Syndicate beacon is already there.
A woman arrived at Bram's camp claiming she was at the village the night of the raid — but she has the warlord's mark on her wrist.
Sera reached the city where the daughter was last known to live — but the neighborhood has been sealed under a quarantine that wasn't there yesterday.

The disruption gives you the situation of your first scene. The Want in your first scene is your immediate response to it: get to the wreck before the Syndicate, find out what the woman knows, get past the quarantine. Q2 is your long-term drive; Q4's response is your scene-one Want.

Q5 — Who else is in this?

One person. Name, role, and whether they're a resource or a complication. They don't need a personality yet. They need to exist.

This can be the same person as your obstacle in Q7, or it can be someone else — a contact, an ally, a family member, a target. If they're the same as Q7, Q5 is asking who they are to your character beyond the immediate scene. If they're different, you've just seeded a second relationship the story can return to later.

The Syndicate enforcer. Complication — he's already on site, and she knows him from before.
The woman with the warlord's mark. Resource and complication — she may know what Bram needs, but she also serves the man he's hunting.
The quarantine captain's sister. Resource — she runs an apothecary inside the sealed district and owes Sera a favor.

Q6 — What does the world lose if you fail?

One sentence. What happens to the world, not just to you. If you can only think of personal consequences, ask who else is affected.

The evidence of what happened to her captain is gone, and whoever killed him goes free.
The warlord consolidates power unopposed, and whatever he's building continues.
The daughter dies in the quarantine, and the noble's line ends.

Q7 — What's in your way right now?

Person or condition? Aware or not? If a person, give them a want that crosses yours.

Person, unaware — the enforcer is focused on the job, not expecting a second salvager.
Person, aware — the woman is watching Bram for any sign of what he knows, and she will lie if pressed.
Condition — the quarantine doesn't know or care that Sera needs to cross.

III. From Q7 to Frame — The Handoff

You now have everything for a scene frame:


Character	Q1
Want	Your scene-one response to Q4's disruption
Obstacle	Q7
Stake	Q6

Plug them into the Scene Framing formula:

"[Character] needs to [WANT] but [OBSTACLE], and if they fail, [STAKE]."

Then write the slug. Then play. Open Scene Framing for the full Protocol if you don't have it memorized yet.

Worked Example — Kael, End to End


Q1	Kael Rho, a salvager with a dead captain's debt to settle.
Q2	Recover the captain's final ship logs before the Syndicate destroys them.
Q3	Fringe.
Q4	She finally traced the wreck's location — but a Syndicate beacon is already there.
Q5	The Syndicate enforcer. Complication — he's already on site, and she knows him from before.
Q6	The evidence of what happened to her captain is gone, and whoever killed him goes free.
Q7	Person, unaware — the enforcer is focused on the job, not expecting a second salvager.

The frame, assembled:

Kael needs to reach the derelict's ship core before the Syndicate boarding crew wipes the logs, but the enforcer who denied her salvage claim is already on-site and his team is working fast — and if the logs are erased, the evidence of what happened to her captain is gone forever.

The slug:

INT. DERELICT FREIGHTER — DOCKING COLLAR — NIGHT WATCH — TENSE

Kael cuts through the airlock seal. Somewhere deeper in the 
hull, metal groans as the Syndicate crew works. Twenty minutes 
before the core wipes clean.

Five minutes from blank page. Go.

IV. The World-As-Needed Rule

Scene Zero leaves most of the world undefined. That's not an omission — it's the point.

The rule is simple: only answer a worldbuilding question when a scene physically requires it.

Don't fill out the sector before play. When your character needs to jump to another system, roll the oracle then and discover what's there.
Don't answer the system's Truths in advance. When iron becomes relevant to a scene, decide what iron means to this story.
Don't build factions. When you need to know if the city guard is corrupt, roll and find out.
Don't establish political history. When politics blocks a scene, that's the moment you invent it.

The game's worldbuilding tables are not homework. They are oracle prompts you reach for when a scene demands an answer you don't have yet.

Every oracle roll, every scene outcome, every NPC choice is a world truth being revealed under dramatic pressure rather than invented in advance. Those truths are more specific and surprising than anything planned beforehand, because they were generated at the moment they mattered.

A Note on Interludes

Not every scene needs to be a frame. Once you've played a few framed scenes, you'll find moments where what your character needs is to not be in conflict — to drink, to grieve, to remember, to write a letter. These are interludes, and they belong in your sessions.

Scene Framing covers their structure. Don't reach for one in your first scene — start with a frame, get the engine running, and let interludes appear when the story has earned them.

V. The World Truths List

Keep a short running list as you play. Call it World Truths, or Discoveries, or just Notes. When the story reveals something true about the world, write it down.

Session 1 — The quarantine wasn't posted by the city guard. Someone else put it there.
Session 1 — The enforcer knew Kael's ship name before she gave it.
Session 2 — The warlord's territory has no healers. All of them left or disappeared.

After three sessions this list becomes richer than any setting document you could have written in advance. The world discovers itself. Your job is to play and write it down.

Quick Card


Q1 · Who are you?	Name and role. One sentence, no backstory.
Q2 · What drives you?	One verb + goal. Present tense, one urgency.
Q3 · World feel?	One mood word. Fringe · Broken · Occupied · Hunted.
Q4 · What forced motion?	Disruption type (arrived / found / was found / overheard / ended / began) → write the "but."
Q5 · Who else?	One person. Name, role, resource or complication.
Q6 · Cost of failure?	One sentence. What does the world lose?
Q7 · What's in the way?	Person or condition? Aware or not? Crossing want if person.

Response to Q4 → Want · Q7 → Obstacle · Q6 → Stake · Write the frame · Write the slug · Say "Go."

Companion Documents

Scene Framing — The 60-second protocol for any scene. Run this for every scene you play, starting with scene one.
The Session Shape — Three Acts and Five Beats. For turning your first scene into a complete two-hour story.

Credits & Sources

"Prep is play" — Shawn Tomkin, Ironsworn and Ironsworn: Starforged (Tomkin Press, 2018/2022)
The mandatory structural break and discovery-through-play traditions — Jason Morningstar, Fiasco (Bully Pulpit Games, 2009)
Late-attack scene openings — William Goldman; Dwight V. Swain
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out" — Alfred Hitchcock

v11 — System-agnostic. Compatible with Ironsworn, Starforged, Mythic GME, Kal-Arath, Daggerheart, Traveller, PUM, SUM, and any solo or GM-less system.