As much as I harp on worldbuilding everywhere I post, you’re probably expecting me to say you need everything built out before you start, with your pantheon, world, continent, major arcs, major population centers, central conflict, everything, right?

Nope. For your first session of D&D or any other tabletop game, your needs are actually pretty simple. And you might want to have your first few sessions conceptually detached from a world you want to build, depending on how those sessions go. One shots and starter campaigns don’t have to be part of the lore of your main world unless you want them to. That lets you experiment, try things out, see how they work, without committing to things that may not work for your world, and the messy retcons needed to fix that.

1) Keep it simple. For your first session ever running a TTRPG, use a simple setting. Either use a published one, or the ‘default’ assumptions for your chosen genre. In D&D, you can just use the basic assumptions as truth straight out of the Player’s Handbook and don’t worry about the rest. In sci-fi, just, once again, use the base assumptions of the system you are using. Don’t worry about the big picture.

2) For nearly any setting, regardless of genre, you need a few of the same things ready. They really come down to the following:

2a) Home base: a place to start, or at least to retreat to. A safe space for roleplay, for shopping, however minor, a place to pick up quests or missions. In video games this is referred to as a social hub. It doesn’t have to be big or complicated. In D&D, it’s a tavern and/or inn and the surrounding village with as much or as little resources as you like. In Star Wars, (any system) it could be the PC’s ship…but you’ll still want a starting cantina and planet or space station, just broad strokes. Yes, starting in a tavern works just fine in Star Wars. And Cyberpunk. And….nearly everything. Embrace the tropes.

2b) (or not 2b) A place to adventure. This could be the nearby wilderness with strange monsters loose. It could be the village or town itself, plagued by some monster in the back alleys or the sewer. Sewers are good because of how close they are to the social hub for retreat…a catacomb or crypt actually under the town’s graveyard is also awesome for the same reason, and offers tons of hooks to get PC’s involved, cuz it’s not just a rumour of a dungeon…but an active threat. Monsters are coming to town from the wild/sewers/crypt! A basic idea, 5 or 6 encounters, a simple map…Matt Colville does a great job showing how to build a simple dungeon in his Running the Game series on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTD2RZz6mlo&ab_channel=MatthewColville

2c) Adventurers. If you did the session 0 prep this part is easy. The players have characters, they mesh with each other and the setting, you’re good to go. It should be easy to hook them into your first adventure if they were built with ties to the setting. In this case, tie them to the village or starting hub itself. Make them care about the innkeeper, the village priest, even the town drunk. Have them love, or hate, the captain of the space station (space stations make awesome social hubs for scif).

3) That’s most of what you need. You got dice, you got a system, you got players, you got characters, you got a social hub and a small adventure area. I only put 3 cause I like the number

Go forth and do marvelously! (Relax. It ain’t that hard. Just roll with the punches and you’ll be fine.)