If we’re less than 3 players, she’ll play as an NPC as well. A lot of the times when it’s just us, we’ll either do a super balls to the walls session 0 character creation, or we’ll basically play test some of her campaign ideas as 2 players. Most of the time it ends up being much less structured, so more wiggle room to poke holes in plans, so it ends up being great practice for both of us.
Had a great session on Saturday! My partner is a DM so we play mini oneshots together quite often. This time, we invited 2 friends who’d never ever played, so she cooked up a quick 2 hour game to basically teach them the absolute basics of how to play. It included some cool character building, a scary but secretly nonlethal encounter against a cockatrice (aka demon chicken), and a great resolution with a bit of a cliffhanger ending. Of course they did all the heavy lifting while my nat 1s meant I hurt myself more than the enemy…
I think they actually really enjoyed it, and now we’re talking about setting up a semi regular time in order to turn it into more of a campaign!
Crobat! I always add it to the party if it’s possible.