Sunday · Session Zero & One
Everything you need behind the screen on Sunday, in the order you need it. Five hours, four players, two of whom have never held a d20. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, 2014 rules, English at the table.
Timings are a spine, not a cage. The one rule worth holding to is that play starts before the three hour mark. Jeroen and Sam's cousin came to play D&D, not to hear about it.
Sit down, dice out, drinks poured
Hand the two new players dice and let them roll for nothing. Everyone touches a d20 before anything official happens.
What this game actually is
For Jeroen and the cousin. You describe a world, they say what they do, dice settle what's uncertain. Roll one d20 against a made-up DC 12 so they see the whole loop once.
Session zero
Schedule, tone, table norms, what everyone wants. Full agenda in section II. Watch the clock here, this is the part that eats sessions.
Build the characters
Hilze sits with one new player, Sam with the other. You float, answer questions, and tie each character to Phandalin or to Gundren Rockseeker before they stand up.
Break. Real one. Stand up.
Use it to skim the ambush page one last time.
How a fight works
Initiative, move, action, bonus action. Then run one practice round against an imaginary training dummy so nobody's first real turn is also their first turn ever.
The Triboar Trail
The wagon, the job from Gundren, the two dead horses on the road, the goblin ambush. See section IV before you run it.
Cragmaw trail or into town
Follow the tracks to the hideout, or push the wagon on to Phandalin and meet Toblen at the Stonehill Inn. Let them choose. Cut this block if you're running late, and end on the ambush instead.
Land the plane
Stop on something unresolved. One question each, lock the next date in the group chat before anyone puts their coat on.
Tick these off as you go. Anything not ticked by T+1:10 gets moved to the group chat.
You own most of the 5e shelf. That is a problem on Sunday, not an asset. Two of your four players have never made a character, and every extra book is another forty options in front of someone who cannot yet read a stat block.
Run 2014 rules. One Player's Handbook for the build, Xanathar's and Tasha's open for subclasses only, everything else closed until level 4.
| Element | Sunday |
|---|---|
| Ruleset | 2014 5eThe book is written in it. Every stat block, DC and encounter budget assumes it. |
| Species | Player's Handbook onlyAll nine fit the Sword Coast without a word of explanation. |
| Classes | The twelve from the PHB |
| Subclasses | PHB, Xanathar's, Tasha'sSam and Hilze will want these. New players take a PHB one. |
| Backgrounds | PHB, or invent one with youBest hook you have. Tie at least two of them to Phandalin. |
| Feats & multiclass | Off at level 1, revisit at 4 |
| Everything else | Closed for nowStrixhaven, Planescape, Book of Many Things, the Fizban's and Bigby's player options, Radiant Citadel, Heroes of Faerûn. Not banned. Just not on day one. |
| Your side | All of itVolo's, Mordenkainen's, Fizban's, Bigby's, the Epic Monster Cards, the Dungeon Tiles. Nobody gets a vote on what you put in front of them. |
Four reasons, in order of weight. You have not played in a while, so relearning what you already know beats learning something new with two days' notice. The adventure is a 2014 book cover to cover. Running 2024 properly wants the 2024 Player's Handbook, the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide and the 2025 Monster Manual on the table, and those were not on the shelves you photographed. And the two editions do not cleanly mix: the designers' own guidance is that if a class, species, feat or spell has a 2024 version and you are in a 2024 game, you use the 2024 one, which drops a chunk of your Tasha's and Xanathar's options into a grey zone nobody wants to argue about at session one.
Revisit it between campaigns, or at a natural break. Not this weekend.
Offer these by feel, not by name. "Do you want to hit things, heal people, sneak around, or be very angry?"
Hit it. Crit on 19 and 20. The lowest-admin character in the game and never boring in play.
Healing matters enormously at level 1 in this adventure. A handful of spells, all of them obvious.
One extra rule, sneak attack, and it feels incredible the first time it lands.
Rage, swing, very hard to kill. Perfect for someone nervous about getting it wrong.
Steer a first-timer away from wizard, druid, warlock and monk on Sunday. Not because they're bad, because they each hand a beginner a second rules system to learn on top of the first.
English, the group already said so. Two things that make it work. First, the beginners get a standing permission, said out loud in session zero: anyone can drop into Dutch at any moment, mid-sentence, no comment from anyone. That's what Hilze meant and it's the right rule. Second, the boxed text. Read it beforehand, then tell them what's there in your own words. Reading it cold off the page is the one thing that makes a first-time DM sound like a first-time DM.
Mechanics and names stay English regardless. Phandalin is Phandalin. Gundren Rockseeker keeps his name. Roleplay can flip to Dutch whenever it wants to.
Four goblins, AC 15, 7 hit points each, hitting for 1d6+2. That drops a level 1 wizard in two swings, and this encounter has a reputation for exactly that.
Goblins are cowards and the book says so. They shoot from cover, and when two of them go down the rest break and run. That is not you going soft, that is you running them correctly.
If someone does drop, a goblin dragging an unconscious character off toward Cragmaw Hideout is a better Sunday than a dead level 1 character belonging to someone who has played D&D for ninety minutes. The rescue writes your next two sessions for free.
And if they stop at the dead horses and look around, just give them the tracks. Don't gate the plot behind a roll in the first hour.
It's Friday. This is the whole list.
He is the one real variable at this table. A veteran who also DMs will either be your best asset or a second voice at the screen, and which one you get is decided by whether you ask him for something specific. So ask.
"I want you to be my co-pilot, not my rules lawyer. Sit next to one of the new guys and help them through their turns. If I get a rule wrong, tell me after the scene, not during, unless someone's about to die from it."
People like being handed a job, and he will take this one seriously.
For the chat tonight. Fill in the two names and the time.
For the newcomers, the free official basic rules are worth a link if they want more: the 2014 Basic Rules on D&D Beyond or the free player's PDF. Do not make it homework. Nobody has ever been made to enjoy D&D more by reading first.