Session Zero
Welcome to Session Zero!
With D&D Table Play, the first session is typically vital to all of the sessions which follow. For D&D Adventure TxtPlay, it may be less important but still worth doing. This section will introduce the structure, present a vision for the campaign, set some house rules and homebrews, and plan out the characters.
Introduction
The Wardens Guild of Heroes Gate is the premier protectors guild in Amn, and across much of the Sword Coast – at least, that is, according to the founder and foreman of the guild – Marlonmir Emberjaw. The guild is made up of a dozen or so different groups (referred to as “Shields”) of protector wardens. When a fine citizen needs to hire protection (and lets face it… with all the gold floating around in Athkatla, everyone needs a guard or two at hand) The Wardens Guild of Heros Gate is the prime choice.
Setting
The setting for Heroes Gate shall be what I am calling Forgotten Realms NC (Non Canon) in the year DR 1491 – Year of the Scarlet Witch. By referencing the DR Canon just now, I intend to say that much of what has happened in the realms conforms to the histories as detailed in the official WotC modules and books and video games (for example, Minsc and Boo are probably running around the realms somewhere in my story. Who knows, we may run into them…). At the same time, not every major event happened in the same way in NC… for example, I’m thinking Neverwinter is quite different. Mount Hotenow did in fact erupt but rather than destroying a portion of the city, it actually fortified the city. A giant chasm opened up from the Neverwinter Wood all the way to the Sea of Swords creating a massive natural barrier between Neverwinter and the North. Rather than still recovering from the destruction, it has prospered these last many years because there have been far fewer attacks from the North. These kinds of rewrites to canon may come back and bite me… but as I understand fair play within D&D, the Dungeon Master has the perogative. This means that the make-believe world in which I play is a possible Faerun – as is every Faerun. Maybe multiple dimensions would give an explanation, or multiple timelines… maybe that doesn’t matter. If I change things too much, I may have trouble trying to account for it later, but maybe the trouble will be fun too.
Structure
The basic structure of the campaign will be cyclical. We will adventure with three different “Shields” in a rotation. Each rotation, or Cycle, will see each Shield group focus on a single primary quest or adventure. If there is a paying client prompting the quest, we will refer to it as a “Contract”. Not all cycles will involve contracts however, in fact we will run our first couple of cycles telling the stories of how our heros came to be members of the Wardens Guild.
Characters
Speaking of characters… Most of them will be variations on the Monk class. Why? Well… I happen to like playing a Monk. Also, because it is solo play, using mostly the same class simplifies things. Each character is unique however, with unique homebrewed subclasses, unique objectives and personalities. (At least that is the goal). Each Shield will be balanced with a ranged specialist and a healer specialist. It feels overly ambitious, and maybe it is.. but I have 15 main characters (or “PCs”) I am developing for Heroes Gate. It is perhaps strange to call them Player Characters since there is only one “player” and I am playing DM and all the characters, but I wanted to distingiush between a PC and an NPC. I want, at least to some degree, to emulate what you might hear around a table during a roleplaying session, only do it in writing.
Adventure TxtPlay
I have some notes over here on the structure of Adventure TxtPlay. (Honestly I cannot make up my mind on what to call it… Textplay, TxtPlay, Play Text… I don’t know…) It started with an idea to play test some sessions I was getting ready to DM and to do it in writing. I found I quite enjoyed the process and started playing solo just for fun with different characters and different adventures. I decided, somewhere along the way, to try to do the thing in a much larger project and put it online and share the idea and outcomes. I know it seems a bit weird, and I don’t know if anyone is going to enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it… The process is improving my skills in writing, roleplaying, and Dungeon Mastering… I am keeping notes on that all improvement which I will also share online – you know… in case someone finds it helpful.
The Contracts / Quests
I plan on using published adventures to form the basis for most of the contracts. The plan is to use both published adventures from WoTC and from third parties via DMsGuild. I will take liberties with the content, modifying things as a DM will… but I intend to always give credit to the creators who inspired the adventure. Check the opening Scene and Setting block for Credit Notes as well as DM Notes and other things.
Notes
As a part of my process, I write a lot of notes. I even wrote A Note on Notes just so it might be clear exactly what these note-things actually are. I never have a problem with “Writers Block” because of the way I keep notes. They are often just ramblings… maybe this, perhaps that, what if this happened? What is going to happen next? I do not use every idea I spill out into notes. It seems silly to publish them really.. But for the sake of showing my work, I thought it worth doing.