John – Session 0 began simple enough. The first 30mins was spent with technical difficulties and trying to work out whether our American friend was awake yet. I swear he never sleeps. We are using Zoom to handle the session and for the most part it was good, still have not got the background sounds to successfully work without silencing me though. Stupid mic.

After discussing the various session 0 rules and expectations, which went far too quickly for my liking, we ran a few “how you met each other” scenarios to create a little backstory for the players. Simple scenarios where each player chooses how to handle the situation to create character connections.

Wendel was about to commence a fight in a small tavern in Neverwinter, the noise from the pending fight disturbed Asterin from her latest book. Reluctant to leave her wine and good book, Asterin bought Wendel a free round and convinced him to sit down for a spell. The two spent the rest of the evening swapping stories and Wendel became amazed at Asterin’s wealth of knowledge. Asterin valued a good listener and they were quickly becoming friends.

Usually Aurelia and Asterin are joined at the hip, but Aurelia does not appreciate books to the same degree as Asterin and left to explore Neverwinter. During her exploration she intervened in a pending domestic altercation between a merchant and his daughter. Before the merchant could direct his anger towards Aurelia however, Merric appeared, knocked the merchant out cold and admonishing the unconscious merchant about his treatment of women. Aurelia saw the value in Merric then and there. Merric eagerly followed Aurelia as she sashayed back to the inn, revealing to Merric a potential job opportunity. Merric was all ears.

The players were keen to start adventuring… oh crap I had not planned that far in advanced. Session 0 became session 1 and they party was off on the adventure to the town Phandalin. I called a bath time break and quickly drew up two battle maps. Using my phone as another user I had planned to stream the map to everyone. Worked well.

As expected, they cut down the first ambush in two rounds flat then promptly failed some trap checks 5 mins later, leaving a poor Wendel hanging by his leg in the air. Fortunately, his party quickly cut him down, unfortunately they forgot to consider how short the halfling was in relation with the height of the fall. Goblins could not hurt Wendel, but a fall certainly could.

Moving further down the trail, they failed some sneaking checks and were ambushed yet again by a pair of goblins who could not hit the broad side of a barn let alone 4 adventurers. The cave stood in front of them and they eagerly made their way in. After slaying a few chained-up wolves, the session was ended there.

Phew, lucky they did not get any further than that as I need to draw up some battle maps. So far so good.