Report on my S0

Hey Guys!
To fill this community with some content, I´ll start a loose journal of my campaign here. This entry will mark the Start and detail how we did S0!

The group has one person extremely familiar with DnD 5 and the rest very new to TTRPG in general, their biggest experience being a 7 game Monster of the Week fewshot i ran them through before this. We play about 70-80% of the time on FVTT/Discord, some rare (special) occasions at my place.

Since we are all adult, I am lentient in campaign attendance. The group consists of 7 theoretical players, but I count on actual sessions being anywhere from 3-5. I think I wouldnt want to play with many more in a session :)

Topic image is the Landing Page I made for us in foundry.

---

On to actual content:

We started out discussing boundaries with the help of this https://mcpl.info/sites/default/files/images/consent-in-gaming-form-fillable-checklist-2019-09-13.pdf great document. We talked openly and noted down everything that was "in the red" for anyone. A screenshot of the final result is kept in our discord server.

After that, i pitched the campaign concept i had thought of to them. I loosely tried to follow the advice @SlyFlourish gives, and presented:

• a pitch ("Stop the dark god of entropy from being awakened", yes this is the Tharizdun story)
• six truths about our game
• a short blurb on allowed options and house rules (this was rather unnecessary, since they were all new to the game),
• some possible group patrons, and strongly hinted that picking an icon would be ideal
• safety tools we will use
• and some literary/mythical/film inspiration for this campaign.

Quick rundown of the six truths:

1. Theres an evil cult gaining power
2. The wards and glyphs around dragon empire are weakening, letting in monsters
3. The Emperors wife is up to no good
4. Theres a fiery rune in the night sky and noone knows what it means
5. The fabric of reality is breaking, opening passages to lost places, portals, suddenly appearing ruins etc
6. Only the priestess hears the gods, and rumor has it she does NOT like what she is hearing recently.

Only after giving them these documents and having talked about them did i open up foundry. I did that to have their full attention for these imo important steps.

In foundry, i proceeded to show them the map of the dragon empire, tell them about the icons and loosely going through chapter 8 of the core book to establish some things about the world. Me rambling about lore nearly went for half an hour! But they really like the dragon empire and seem stoked. I also asked them wether we should start with engine of ages, Novice tier or just level1. They chose Level1.

At this point i called a break, and during the break, asked them to consider which icon they would like as group patron.

When everyone was back, we did a ranked choice voting that had the prince of shadows come out as everyones favourite, so i made it obligatory to have one positive or neutral icon relationship with them to tie the group together. In retrospect, I would NOT tie this choice of group patron to the mechanics and just use it as a story device! we now have a loooot of possible rolls for the shadow prince every session, especially since some doubled down and took 2 positives with them.

I reminded them of my campaign pitch and the six truths, the group patron and the world, and with all that in mind, we jumped into character creation! Heres the order in which we did that

1. a loose, one or two sentence concept
2. an idea for kin and class (no looking at specific mechanics yet)
3. One unique thing
4. Backgrounds
5. Icon relationships
6. all the things pertaining to actual mechanics and really filling in the sheet

Several of the newer players struggeled with this, especially steps one and 3 (and of course 6). One still has no unique thing. Thats totally ok! just keep going, let the others do it, skip to the next step and at some point ideas will surely come. I am also lentient and will let them change anything about their characters during the first sessions, so maybe he will grow into his uniqueness with play.

Organizationally, this process had to come last (i think, at least?), but you could really feel the hour getting later and them getting a wee bit frustrated at having to learn new game mechanics at 9 pm on a weekday - we should have started earlier, or on a different day. After writing this, I will go over their characters and look or any mistakes - one didnt pick feats for example.

Now heres what they built!:

A demon that was defeated by the crusader and is now cursed with a human form. Human/Rogue

An ex-paladin-acolyte turned smuggler, no unique yet. Human/Fighter

An urban bountyhunter/investigator. They always(!) win at dice games, but lost once to the demon character and are now bound as their servant. Human/Ranger

An imperial courtier turned spy, disconnected from their elf-home and looking for belonging. Woodelf/Monk

A split personality that was mistreated as a youth (these players are a couple and will have a child soon, so it is forseeable that only one of them will participate in any given session, if at all). First half is a Human/Cleric. I will find a way to acommodate the spouse and make the story make sense, even if they want a different kin or something.

Still missing are the second half of that split character, and one player who couldnt make it. I also need to check their sheets now and see if they made any mistakes.

Honestly, yesterday evening I was at a loss on how to get that group into the plot I had thought of, but I am getting more and more ideas. I will probably start with them shipwrecking, and on an island finding an old, already looted temple, now filled with local fauna. Maybe it has clues about the cult, the evil empress etc etc - a good shipwreck experience will surely forge them together as a group, even if several leaned into the self serving criminal trope. I was hoping for at least one goody-two-shoes pious guy, and the monk kiiiinda leans there, but ill make "egocentric criminals and demons against the cult" work somehow haha! A friend of mine once said "You can only railroad at the start of the adventure, but there, you can railroad as much as you want! And you should, to get them to the actual campaign!"

In all of the process, I saw how many of them struggeled, but were really excited. Choice paralysis was definitely a thing, even though many of them willingly limited themselves to the base book (hello 4 human party). It was very notable how the more that person had played 5e, listened to actual play podcasts or similar, the easier it went for them. With help and explanation, everyone got it, so i delegated the player who best understood to help others in a second voice chat - my main struggle was that everyone needed help at the same time, each with specific class talents that i had to read first :D

I think, considering, we did extremely well and I am pumped to start playing!

I am open to suggestionson how to proceed the plot etc and looking forward to your comments :)

i use a copy of Sly Flourishes Notion Template that i adapted a little bit for 13th Age to organize, keep notes and plan. You can find it here: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_dnd_with_notion.html

Thanks to sly, i use a ton of their resources and i feel it really helps me, and i know they hang out in these forums so- thank you