Intermission: Session 0

Two hours later...

The Banquet Hall had been transformed into a pop-up temple of nerdery. Long tables, usually reserved for champagne brunches and absurdly early board meetings, now groaned under the weight of graph paper, dice towers, mechanical pencils, and carefully color-coded character sheets. Sam surveyed her kingdom with a pride that bordered on delusional. She wore the tiara Shar had provided for her before the first challenge, and felt like a queen. This—her first full party, a nine-top plus herself as DM—was either going to be the greatest session of her life, or the last.

She called it “Session Zero,” a term she insisted on scrawling in blue sharpie on the whiteboard that Mildred had produced from some sub-basement supply closet. Claire had added a tiny stick-figure dragon beneath the words. Norah, in typical Norah fashion, had drawn a cartoon axe splitting the dragon’s head.

Sam lined up her folders. She’d run a million campaigns in college, but this was different. No anonymous avatars here, no safe digital distance—just the girls, Andy, and herself, crammed together under the world's brightest chandeliers, with a buffet of carb-bombs and a cooler of LaCroix within arm’s reach. She’d barely gotten through the basic rules explainer before the questions started flying.

"Wait, you can literally be any race?" Norah asked, skepticism dialed to eleven. She was still working through the differences between the current system, and D&D 3e with which she was more familiar. “I thought it was only the standard ones.”

Sam nodded. "Any. Dwarf, elf, goblin, even something weird like catfolk—"

Catfolk? Claire wrote on her notepad, then pointed vigorously at herself, as if registering first dibs.

Dawn raised a hand, polite as always. "Can I be, like, a gentle orc? Or is that not allowed?"

"Totally allowed!" Sam beamed. "You could be a pacifist orc, if you wanted."

Dawn brightened. “Lyria Featherbow. Half-orc, but gentle. She has a big bow and is always trying to make peace with everyone, even if they are, um, not nice.” She glanced around, anxious. “She’s very awkward, but she tries to help.”

“Love her already,” Emi said, three hands waving their sheet in the air. “I am Whisper of the Clouds! Elven animist. I have weird things.” She declined to elaborate, then belatedly added, “I also have a spirit friend named Duck,” she added, with absolute certainty.

Andy shot a look at Sam. “That legal?”

Sam just nodded. “If it’s funny, it’s always legal.”

Chloe, quietly scribbling on her sheet, looked up. "Can I play a bard who, like, doesn't want to be the center of attention? She hates loud noises and ****. Is that possible?"

"Absolutely," Sam said. "You just play her shy. Maybe she sings behind a curtain, or only when she’s alone."

Chloe nodded, her eyes shining with relief. She wrote "Fiona Stag-song" in careful block letters at the top of her sheet.

Across the table, Erin glared at her character sheet like it had personally wronged her. "I want to play a ranger," she announced. "But not one of those woodsy hippies. She’s ex-military. Is that a thing?"

Sam shrugged. "If you can imagine it, you can play it."

Erin grunted. "Good. Thyra Axebloom. Her axes are bigger than her ego, and she’s in charge."

Marissa, who had arrived late and with the serene composure of someone who read the rules three times before breakfast, calmly stacked her sheet atop her notebook. "I will be Veloria of the Sighs," she said, voice buttery and even. "She’s a psychic. She reads emotional auras in people’s dreams."

Erin groaned. "Of course you’d pick the one character class that’s just therapy with extra steps."

Marissa smiled, unbothered.

Norah, meanwhile, had gone full warlord. "Skull-Cruncher Ironfist," she read from her sheet. "Dwarf barbarian, huge hammer, does not take shit from anyone." She set her jaw and glared around the table, as if daring anyone to challenge her authority.

Liesa, who had spent the entire prep phase quietly drawing elven ears and eyeliner on the margins of her sheet, finally spoke up. “Moonshadow Daggerdance. Elf rogue, but she is… how you say… ‘extra.’ She is here for mischief and not much else, and she will pickpocket everything that is not nailed down. Even then, maybe still.”

Chloe giggled. “Like a magpie.”

“Yes, but with more eyeliner,” Liesa said.

Andy, seated at the end of the table and sipping coffee like a non-combatant at a peace summit, shrugged when Sam prompted him. “Meredin the Gray,” he said. “Human wizard. Convinced he’s the only sane person in the realm.”

“Isn’t that just you, but with a stick?” Norah asked, eyebrow raised.

“Yeah,” Andy said, “but the stick is magic.” His tone was dry, but the edge softened when he caught Erin’s glare. He offered a lazy salute. "Party’s backline. Here to support."

Claire, who had claimed the spot next to Andy as if it were the throne of the Cat Queen, scribbled furiously on the notepad, then passed it to Andy for him to read. “Claire is ‘Silvertail Quill, catfolk rogue.’ Uh, she says, ‘has a collection of thieves’ tools inluding extractors, hook picks, tension wrenches…’” He blinked and looked at Claire. “Er, Claire, how do you know all this?”

The librarian shrugged, reclaimed her notebook, and wrote, It’s not hard to learn. Lockpicking, I mean. I can show you later.

Andy blinked, and let the topic go. Erin chuckled, looking at Claire. “You are the most adorable catgirl I’ve ever seen.” Deadpan, she turned to Sam. “I adopt Silvertail Quill as my animal companion.”

Andy shook his head. “No, I’ll adopt her as my familiar.” Claire, contended between the two, looked remarkably unperturbed, but her tail swished contentedly.

Sam made a dramatic show of cracking her knuckles and then, for effect, rolling all the dice at once in front of her. The sound was somewhere between hail on a roof and a jackpot payout at a doomed casino.

“Okay, ground rules,” she intoned, holding up a finger. “No rules lawyering unless it’s funny. No hiding snacks in the mini dice bags. If you get pizza grease on my dry-erase mat, you lose a level. If you need to pee, say so. If you want to seduce the evil necromancer, roll for initiative first.”

Norah snorted, but took notes.

Sam requested descriptions, calling out each name in turn like a carnival barker. “Skull-Cruncher Ironfist, you are up.”

Norah grabbed her sheet and, with a flourish, held it above her head. “Nine dwarven feet of ****, rage, and culturally insensitive dwarven stereotypes. I will crush all obstacles, and then probably build a spreadsheet to optimize the loot drop.”

Claire, perched at Andy’s left like an attentive familiar, twitched her ears and wrote: That is not a real dwarf name. Also, dwarves average 4’10”. Norah ignored that.

With the party assembled, Sam cracked her knuckles again. “Let’s start with a classic,” she said. “You’re all on the same road, headed to the capital for the annual Festival of the Unseen Moon. You don’t know each other—yet. But fate, or possibly a very lazy plot hook, has thrown you together on this fine spring morning.”

She looked around. “Who wants to make the first move?”

Norah, without waiting, banged the table. “I challenge the two tallest of them to an arm wrestling contest.”

Erin, immediately, nodded as if she had expected it. “Accepted.”

Andy and Liesa tried to opt out, but Norah was having none of it. “Roll for biceps,” she decreed.

“It’s Strength,” Andy grumbled, and Erin affectionately rubbed his shoulder.

“Aw, you’re already channeling your grumpy old man voice.” She said with a laugh that startled the others.

Liesa acquiesced to Norah’s arm-wrestling contest, but rolled a 2. “My arm is made of spaghetti,” she said, deadpan. The table exploded into laughter.

Andy got a respectable 14, but Erin’s 18 outmuscled even Norah’s own 15.

“I win,” Erin declared. “I am the leader.”

Norah shrugged, oddly gracious in defeat. “Fair.”

Claire scribbled: This is not starting well.

Sam smiled, soaking it in. “As you’re mid-contest, a bandit jumps out with a crossbow. ‘Stand and deliver!’ he says, then immediately realizes there’s nine of you. He looks terrified.”

“Can I shoot him in the hand?” asked Dawn.

“Yes,” Sam said.

Dawn rolled, missed by five miles.

Liesa whispered, “Let him go. It’s not worth it.”

Chloe’s bard nervously strummed the air and sang a quivering ballad about mercy. The bandit, panicked by the sheer volume of people and the chaos, bolted into the undergrowth.

Erin frowned. “I wanted to interrogate him.”

“You still can,” said Sam, but Norah was already on it. “I tackle him and sit on his face.”

This brought the table to a dead stop. Dawn snorted orange juice out her nose. Andy had to look away to keep from laughing. Even Marissa broke composure.

Norah blinked, totally innocent. “What? I said what I said.”

Sam rolled a die, compared it to Norah's roll and nodded. “You succeed. The bandit is immobilized. He begs for his life and also for oxygen.”

Claire wrote: I am looting the bandit while the others argue.

Andy, in his best wizard voice: “We may learn more by letting him speak. After Silvertail Quill is done with his pockets.”

Liesa raised her hand. “I want to pickpocket Claire while she pickpockets the bandit.”

Erin rolled her eyes. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Sam let the chaos ride. They spent the next thirty minutes getting through two more random encounters, each one more absurd than the last.

Andy found himself oddly relaxed, leaning into the improvisation. At one point he caught Erin’s eye, and she grinned, triumphant, as her character took down a dire wolf with a move she’d invented on the fly. Next to him, Claire’s ears twitched in a pattern Andy recognized as genuine happiness—she was in her element, all analysis and sly planning, a tactical engine humming at full speed.

Even Chloe, who barely spoke above a whisper in real life, was lost in her character’s story, her hands miming lute chords as she described each spell and song. Marissa sat back, the faintest smirk on her lips, as she wove subtle psychic manipulations into every dialogue.

The game, so far, was a disaster. A perfect, beautiful disaster.

Sam raised her hands. “Is the party ready to die in obscurity?”

A ragged cheer went up.

She opened: “It’s festival season in Larragonia, the air thick with the scent of mulled cider and people **** to forget their problems. The party has traveled two days to reach the crossroads, where you join the camp of a traveling merchant. He mentions rumors of an unknown threat that stalks travelers by night.”

She eyed Norah, daring her to derail the intro. Norah smiled, then said, “I’m sleeping with my axe.”

Sam blinked, then powered through. “You’re awakened at dawn by screams and the clatter of hooves. Bandits are raiding the merchant camp! Roll initiative.”

Dice thundered down the table.

“Nat twenty!” Norah barked, triumphant.

“Me too!” Erin yelped.

Sam squinted. “Liar.”

Erin slid her die over, displaying a genuine 20. “I would never cheat,” she said, the words rendered meaningless by her history of college beer pong.

Emi rolled an 18, but immediately declared, “Duck rolled a 19, I have to go after Duck.”

Sam grinned. “Fine. Norah, you’re up.”

Norah leaned in, eyes predatory. “Skull-Cruncher leaps from her bedroll, in nothing but underpants and beard, grabs the nearest bandit, and pile-drives him into the fire.”

“Roll to hit and for damage,” Sam said, deadpan.

Norah rolled, then double-checked. “Twenty-one to hit, twelve bludgeoning. His hair is on fire.”

Sam narrated: “You pancake the bandit into the fire pit. His screams alert the others, but he is out of the fight.”

Norah held up both fists. “ONE DOWN.”

Dawn, next, said, “Lyria fires a warning arrow, not to hurt, just to scare the bandits into leaving us alone.”

Sam said, “Roll to hit.”

Dawn rolled. “One?”

Sam nodded sagely. “You shoot yourself in the foot. Take one point of damage.”

Dawn shrugged. “Lyria is sad, but still believes in peace.”

The table howled.

Erin grinned. “I dual-wield the axes, targeting two bandits at once, then use my ‘suppressive shout’ to distract anyone else from attacking the merchant.”

Andy looked dubious. “Isn’t your ‘suppressive shout’ just you yelling really loudly?” Erin smirked and blew him a kiss.

Sam nodded. “Fine, roll both attacks.”

Erin rolled a 17 and 16. “Eleven damage and eight damage. They die!”

Sam laughed. “Fine. Two go down. But their captain is closing fast.”

Chloe’s turn. She readied her dice, then said, “I play… a ballad of… uhm… hope. I roll to, eh, inspire courage in me friends.”

“Roll,” Sam prompted.

Chloe rolled a 5. “I, uh, forget the lyrics,” she said, mortified.

Sam, suppressing a smile: “You hum the opening bars, and everyone feels slightly less bad.”

Next: Andy. “Is there a bandit in the open?”

“Yes,” Sam said.

Andy nodded. “I cast grease on the ground beneath him. DC is 15.”

Sam rolled behind her screen. “He slips, cartoon-style, and lands flat. He’s prone.”

Claire scribbled: Range attacks now, you idiots.

Sam called on Liesa, who grinned and said, “Moonshadow Daggerdance uses one of her actions to steal the bandit’s boots while he is prone. She will never need to buy shoes again.”

Sam: “Roll sleight of hand.”

Liesa: “Twenty-two. I am the shadow.”

Marissa, serene, announced, “Veloria of the Sighs reaches into the bandit captain’s subconscious and makes him remember his childhood pet, inciting unbearable longing and sorrow.”

Sam: “Roll for it.”

Marissa did. “Twenty. He’s emotionally devastated.”

Erin banged the table. “For fuck’s sake, just kill him!”

Sam tried to bring the fight to a close, but the table noise only ramped up. Norah “suplexed” two bandits with a single move, whatever that meant (she explained it meant ‘surprise-axed’). Dawn missed her next two arrows, but on the third, she rolled another nat one.

“Lyria fires… and it ricochets off a wagon, and hits herself again?” she offered, hopeful.

Sam: “No, it hits Andy’s wizard. Roll damage.”

Andy accepted this as his fate. “Meredin takes it stoically.” He glanced at the alarmingly low number of hit points he had left. "Meredin fully expects ****," he amended.

Emi interrupted, voice giddy. “Can Duck possess the bandit captain’s underwear?”

Sam froze. “Uh. Roll for it?”

Emi did, and rolled a nineteen. “Duck becomes the haunted underwear! The captain cannot concentrate on fighting as his underwear twists and turns and uh, squishes. He runs away screaming.” She looked at Sam so hopefully that Sam didn’t have the heart to contradict her.

The table went silent for a moment, then erupted. Even Erin couldn’t keep a straight face.

The fight over, Sam moved to the next beat. “The grateful merchant invites you to the local tavern to celebrate. You arrive at the Blue Jug. The innkeeper greets you.”

Norah picked up the die menacingly. “I intimidate him into a free round.” She rolled. “Hah! Nineteen! Luck is with me tonight!”

Sam grinned. At this point, she could see the writing on the wall. “He faints. You have free reign of the bar.”

Liesa gave Sam a sweet smile. “I rob him.”

Chloe, hesitantly, read her sheet, then turned to Sam. “I want to perform, but… can I do it behind the door?”

Sam blinked. “Yes. Roll performance.”

Chloe rolled, calculated the final result, then hesitantly said, “Fourteen?”

Sam nodded sagely. “The audience hears the music and loves it, but has no idea who you are.”

Claire wrote: This campaign is doomed.

Andy, doing his best to remain in character, muttered, “Meredin, after bandaging his thigh due to the half-orc’s arrow injury, quietly sips his ale, and tries to remember why he travels with these maniacs.”

Erin, seizing initiative, and appreciating Andy's attempt at salvaging the story, said, “Thyra slides onto a chair next to Meredin and proposes a toast: to teamwork, and to leadership.”

Norah grunted. “Skull-Cruncher downs the mug, then throws it through a window.”

Marissa, deadpan, looked at Sam. “I make the innkeper lust after the party when he wakes up.”

Erin groaned. “I’m switching tables.”

Dawn, chipper, squealed, “Lyria tries a shot to stop the mug.”

Sam, slightly crestfallen, shrugged. “Roll.”

Dawn beamed, “One!”

Sam looked at Andy, who was fighting to contain his laughter. “You shoot Erin in the back.”

Erin sighed. “Of course.” She took off six hit points after Dawn rolled damage.

Emi, delighted, jumped into the chaos. “Can Duck move into the tavern cat and knock everything off the counter?”

Sam now was holding a hand to her forehead, the very picture of despair. “Yes. Roll for it.”

Emi rolled the die, watching it bounce with the focus of an eagle hunting for rabbits. “Eighteen.”

Sam sighed. “Fine. Duck enters the tavern cat and starts knocking things off the table. A mug flies out of the window, and Dawn’s character accidentally shoots Thyra in the back. The bar descends into chaos. Ale, glasses, bodies everywhere.”

Norah, seizing the moment, grinned proudly. “Skull-Cruncher picks up the bartender and uses him as a weapon.”

Sam nodded. “Of course. Roll to grapple him.”

Norah rolled and grinned. “Twenty.”

Sam sat down, feeling her legs growing weak. “The bartender is KO’d. The crowd flees. The tavern is yours.”

The table was in shambles, drinks spilled, chips scattered, everyone either laughing or mock-weeping at the carnage.

Erin, exhausted, said, “I’m never playing with you lunatics again.” But she was smiling.

Sam tried to reestablish control. "You‘re surprised by the stomping of boots. The tavern door splinters open. A dozen city guards in polished breastplates flood in, crossbows trained on you. Their captain, a woman with a scar bisecting her left eye, spits on the floor. 'By order of the magistrate, you lot are under arrest for arson, ****, and public indecency.' Roll for initiative."

Everyone did. All the dice came up low.

Sam grinned, satisfied. "The guards clap you in irons before you can even reach for your weapons."

"Worth it," Norah declared, arms folded.

Andy looked at Claire, who wrote, This is the best game I’ve ever played.

He agreed. But what happened next could only be described as party suicide by tavern brawl.

Dawn’s Lyria tried to talk everyone down: “Maybe we just serve our time? We did break a lot of stuff.”

Norah grunted. “Weak.”

Erin’s eyes glinted. “Thyra breaks free, then turns Skull-Cruncher in to the constables. Time to thin the party.” She rolled an Athletics check. “Hah! Eighteen!”

Norah bellowed, “COWARD!” and slammed her fist down, making the chips rattle. “I call you out. Final showdown.”

Sam, sensing blood, let them have at it. “The guards decide to have some fun and uncuff Skull-Cruncher. Roll opposed strength checks.”

They did. Erin rolled high, but Norah rolled a 20. The table groaned.

“Skull-Cruncher pile-drives her into the next plane of existence,” Norah said, smirking.

Erin, not to be outdone, said, “I fake being dead, then stab her in the back when she lets her guard down.”

While Sam was resolving Erin’s stabbing attempt, Chloe, fingers flying on invisible strings, started narrating the action in song—her accent wobbling from Scottish to Irish to generic Hobbit at random. She ducked for cover as the table next to her (the imaginary one, but she physically scooted under the real table) was obliterated by a thrown tankard.

Marissa, eyes alight with sadistic joy, declared: “Veloria of the Sighs amplifies the emotional feedback loop. Every negative feeling in the room is doubled. The crowd becomes a writhing orgy of rage and despair and, for some reason, lust.”

Sam nodded. “Roll for it.”

Marissa, rolling with a flourish, exclaimed, “twenty-four.”

Sam nodded. “It’s effective. The crowd is overwhelmed by a need for catharsis, and also? They all want to fuck the wizard.”

Andy blinked. “Me?”

Sam grinned. “Every peasant in the bar turns on Meredin, their desire for forbidden magic impossible to resist.”

Andy sighed. “I cast shield and try to escape.”

Emi shrieked with glee. “Duck-possessed-cat leads the riot, knocking over all the oil lamps!”

Dawn, ****, tried to douse the flames. “Lyria shouts for a bucket brigade. Can we form a line?”

Sam shook her head. “Nobody listens. The fire spreads while the crowd chases after poor Meredin.”

Norah glanced at Sam. “Skull-Cruncher is immune to fire, right?”

“Nope. You’re actually highly flammable.”

Norah shrugged. “I rage, then use the bartender’s corpse as a shield.”

The room descended into a blur of dice, shouting, and wild declarations.

Erin, in the thick of it, wrestled Norah’s character, both of them engulfed in flames, until Marissa’s psychic set off a “mass suggestion” to the townsfolk: “You all want to join in the fight. Or the orgy. Whichever is easier.” In the meantime, Andy’s wizard had managed to climb a horse and was galloping away from the lustful crowd when a misplaced arrow from Lyria Featherbow killed the steed, toppling Meredin in front of a frenzied group of peasants who did not waste time grappling him into submission.

Dawn sobbed at the thought of having killed a horse.

The dice clattered. Sam tried to keep up. Chloe sang faster, her real fingers tapping the table like a **** percussionist. Emi’s six arms gestured so wildly she nearly took out Liesa’s water bottle.

When the smoke cleared (figuratively and literally), Sam surveyed the carnage. Norah’s Skull-Cruncher was “reduced to ashes and grudge memories.” Erin’s ranger died valiantly, attempting to save the others. Andy’s wizard was never seen again, “carried off into the night by lust-crazed peasants.”

Dawn’s archer wept for the dead and wrote a poem about it. Liesa’s thief looted the bodies and, as Sam put it, “retired to a life of honest pickpocketing.” Chloe’s bard was left with a haunted, fire-ravaged lute, and a song nobody would ever hear.

Sam, exhausted, put her head in her hands. “That is officially the shortest campaign I have ever run.”

Norah immediately said, “Can I roll to see if I lived anyway?”

Sam groaned. “Fine. DC twenty-five.”

Norah rolled. “One.”

The table howled. Erin, deadpan, grinned. “You combust, twice.”

Sam nodded. “There’s nothing left of you but a smoking crater and maybe a belt buckle.”

Chloe, mournful, said, “I liked Fiona. She had potential.”

Andy, seeing Erin slumped with defeat, reached over and squeezed her hand. “We’ll try again next week. Maybe less fire?”

Erin gave him a look that said, Maybe, but probably not.

Claire, last to speak, held up a page that read: Good riddance.

Sam closed her notebook with a snap and said, “Next week: Session One. For real this time.”

Even as they groaned, everyone at the table grinned.

Andy walked back to his Suite with Claire, the halls quiet except for the distant echoes of laughter from the Banquet Hall. He felt lighter than he had in weeks.

Claire, tail wrapped around his wrist, handed him her notebook. On the page, she scribbled: This was your idea, you know.

He smiled. “I know. And I think it worked.”

She bumped him with her shoulder, then wrote: Next week, we win.

He smiled. “Next week, we win.”

They reached the Suite elevator and stood in the doorway, neither wanting to break the moment.

Andy said, “You know, if I ever had to build a party from scratch—”

Claire interrupted by raising her hand, fingers splayed.

He counted them off. “Erin. Norah. Emi. Liesa. Chloe. Marissa. Dawn. Sam. And you.”

Claire wrote: And you.

He read it, then looked at her. “You’re the best party member, you know.”

She flushed, pale pink, then—uncharacteristically—leaned up and kissed his cheek.

He went inside, feeling like maybe, for once, he’d rolled a nat twenty of his own.