9/1/2025
I’m been away serving with the US Military for a while and I’ve been introducing new people to TTRPGs. I quickly realized that if I wanted to convince soldiers to stop day drinking at Ojos Locos and start playing Aketon, I would need to change my normal tempo for TTRPGs.
I made sure the first session runs like a pilot episode, and shows the all of what they’re going to be doing from the get-go.
A Complete Story in One Session
It needs to take them from the beginning of the proposed gameplay loop all the way through the end and reset in an entire session. This is the promise you are making to the players: if you come back you will do this again, it might take longer to get to the end next time, but this is roughly how it will play out.
Assuming your game is a dungeon crawler, your players need to get in and out of a dungeon in the first session. They need to fight a monster, avoid an encounter, disarm a trap, solve a puzzle, whatever you determine are the sticking points of this upcoming campaign.
If your campaign is extremely lethal, this is your chance to showcase that. Make the first session a deathtrap, run a funnel, let them know ahead of time so they’re tracking.
If you campaign is about backstabbing politics, this is your chance to showcase that. Maybe their led to the dungeon by a guide who betrays them as soon as they get the treasure.
If your campaign is about avoiding fights, SHOWCASE IS IT NOW. Have all of the possible encounters:
A) Be semi-easily avoidable, and
B) Be impossible to win.
Why Not Start Slow?
Because this first session is going to set the promises and setting of the rest of the campaign.
The Promise of a campaign is just “what is it about?” It can be as simple as “you are all adventurers in search of gold” or as complicated as “you are a band of dwarves travelling across Middle Earth to reclaim your ancestral kingdom from a red dragon.” Telling your players what the campaign is going to be about is one thing, but showing them exactly what they’ll be doing and that they’ll have fun doing it, is much more important.
The Setting of a campaign is entirely relayed through this first session. They only get a glimpse of the world this game takes place in four hours a week, or less. This is probably their first taste of it. It needs to be spot on, with minimal if-any aberrations from the norm. Find a way to reinforce that.
If the setting is extremely magical, include magic items in your first session, or a battle with a wizard. If they never battle another wizard or if the world is actually one that is incredibly low-magic, you will have given them the wrong promises for your players and it can cause narrative dissonance later on.
One of the reasons starting in a tavern is so classic is because it helps establish the setting very well for most games. You’re a rag-tag band of mercenaries, looking for quests and adventure, and enjoy drinking, bar games, drunken flirting, and bar fights. If you’re game is not about that, don’t start in a tavern, it will give the wrong impression.
Live or Die by the Pilot
When they go home after the game and think about what they just played, they’ll be considering if the promises and setting you’ve shown them are worth coming back next week. Yes, we’re all friends here, but adults are busy people, and even good friends might fail to prioritize the game if it wasn’t to their liking.
That’s okay too. One of the reasons have a complete gameplay-loop/pilot session is a good idea is because it gives the players the opportunity, free of waiting, to see if this game is for them.
They might just trust you enough to slog through a mega-dungeon for sessions two through ten if the one-page dungeon on session one was fun enough.
Thank you for reading!
Until we meet again,
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR ADVENTURES
Ward Against Evil 
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