Our Campaign Record

Our Session 0

Started by getting to know my wife's (solo player) motivations and goals. Used Session 0 Questions to structure the discussion. Swerved from traditional 5e D&D canon setting to Potterverse immediately as a much more palatable gateway for a diehard HP fan into D&D. Lighter, more whimsical tone became incredibly important.

Started creating Ellen as a player character. She soon began to form into a Magizoologist, like Newt Scamander, given my wife's love of animals both personally and professionally.

Settled on the time period of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, paired with Ilvermorny School of Witches and Wizards as the initial setting.

Our Session 1

We structure our sessions into short 20-minute lighthearted sessions to not get bogged down in dicerolling and rules lawyering.

Session 1 meant rolling up my wife's character, Mitsuko Ellen Takagawa and coming up with her backstory.

Our game is lighthearted in the manner of early Potterverse stories. So, we're flexible with character creation. My wife rolled extremely well using 4d6 keep highest 3, seven times, keeping highest six totals:

Strength: 12, +1
Dexterity: 17, +3
Constitution: 15, +2
Intelligence: 15, +2
Wisdom: 15, +2
Charisma: 13, +1

Our Session 2

Ellen takes a mundane train from her no-maj family home in Blyth, Ontario down to Ilvermorny. Professor Eulalie Hicks walks the young first year students from the mundane train station at North Adams, Massachusetts up Mt. Greylock to Ilvermorny, as is tradition.

Along the way, Professor Hicks explained a little of the history of Ilvermorny, including William the Pukwudgie and Isolt Sayre.

Once at the courtyard of Ilvermorny, Ellen was tapped on the head by the Snakewood Tree and received a branch of snakewood for use in constructing her wand. She and the others received their blue and cranberry robes and proceeded to the House Sorting ceremony.

Ellen was selected by the Thunderbird, Pukwudgie, and Wampus statues during the ceremony and soon chose Thunderbird House, feeling most at home among those misfits and outcasts.

Later, Professor Hicks offered to send off Ellen's snakewood branch to Shikoba Wolfe the Thunderbird wandmaker. Its return would be delayed by a few weeks due to unknown circumstances.

That evening, Ellen and most of the other 150-odd first years ambled to the little nearby wizarding town of Bellows Pipe, nearby on the Greylock ridgeline. A friendly fellow Thunderbird, Cormac O'Brien, was gobsmacked to learn Ellen was born of no-maj parents and had never had butterbeer. He immediately directed her to Sweetonius Paulinus's Tasties and Delectables shoppe.

While waiting in line for Ellen's first-ever butterbeer, she meets two additional Thunderbird students, Jaina Gaunt Snowlight (swathed head-to-toe in a burka-like garment) and Equebus James Henkenius, an affable Montreal kid with a thick Canadian accent.

They enjoy their butterbeers at a booth table while James teaches Ellen her very first charm, Aqua Eructo! They are immediately chastized by Professor Haiduc Grubb (wearing a brown three piece suit and 1920's spectacles) for casting magic in a town shop.

They overhear a newsie just outside the shop hawking the sunset edition of the Wizard's Voice newspaper:

The Dark Wizard's murderous spree across Europe, all seems to have begun near Godric Hollow in England.
An unnamed but renowned magizoologist doing a national speaking tour up the Atlantic coast.
Pan-Pacific Wizarding Tournament to begin. Japanese wizarding school Mahoutokoro Castelobruxo to compete with Ilvermorny this year.
Are Rougarou being hunted to extinction? Experts weigh in.

Our Session 3

Hearing a kerfuffle arise outside Sweetonius's Candy and Butterbeer Shop, Ellen and her new partners in mischief head out onto the dusky main street of Bellows Pipe.

A migrating population of Marmites are crossing the road, causing perhaps a hundred locals, students and Ilvermorny staff to admire the spectacle. A local Crup slips its leash and starts leaping after the gentle, floating marine creatures, much to everyone's chagrin. Ellen and a professor--who soon introduces herself as Chugach Ataciara--work together to protect the peaceful Marmite swarm from the two-tailed beagle.

In the process, Ellen learns that Arresto Momentum can be used as a concentration spell and that Petrificus Totalus doesn't require the same ongoing effort.

Later on the way back to House Thunderbird, she peels off from the group and meets a blustery telepathic longbow named Beauregard after figuring out he's not an invisible classmate playing a prank on her.

Our Session 4

Ellen and her friends go to class!

Flambard Tunnelly teaches his new first year students Mending, Prestidigitation and starts in on the basic elemental charms but is unable to finish them.

As the students crowd about Professor Tunnelly, Cormac O'Brien passes Ellen a mischievous, covert note reading: "Library rear entrance, 10pm tonight! Tell no-one."

Our Session 5