New DM Tips for Storm Wreck Isle

So, I've recently had a "Session 0" with my players and I'm not really sure where to go from there.{I played a few games but i was the player so i don't have any experience dming} I am planning to play StormWreck Isle with them but I don't know how to walk them through the campaign nor how to start it because I kinda want to start it in a one-shot bar just to get them used to how to play. Any tips?

Stormwreck Isle was my first DM experience as well about two years ago. What I did was that to begin with, I had them make a roll that didn't necessarily affect anything, but got everyone in the right mood. The campaign starts off by the characters getting to Stormwreck Isle. I told my players that they've paid for their journey somehow with either money or labour. If they said they've paid it with money, I asked them what do they do during the journey (talk to the crew, read books, play cards, whatever) and then just have everyone make a roll accordingly just to see how well they performed and then me describing it. This lightweight roleplay forced me to also improvise a bit, since I didn't know what my players were going to say, the players had to pause for a moment to actually think what their character would do, and they were happy to immediately roll some dice. (Just don't say the roll doesn't matter).

The Stormwreck Isle book has quite clear instructions on how to handle combat and there's nothing really tricky about low level combat encounters. Just read the encounter outline, play the monster and you'll be fine. Remember that the first encounter is against zombies who probably don't coordinate their actions too heavily, so having them immediately focus fire the back line isn't fun or realistic.

There's quite a few NPCs inside the cloister, most of them would be kobolds. However, you only probably need just one or two, so it's enough to just say there's more, but focus on the two important ones. My party didn't even consider talking to anyone else except the "shopkeeper".

If you're planning on running it as a one-shot, just ignore all travel related encounters and just ask the party how they will travel (by land or by boat), tell the party how long it takes them to reach their destination, and what happens at the destination. For a one-shot it's OK to railroad them into a specific direction and give them the quests in sequence rather than all at once and having them choose the order.

You will make some mistakes and that's okay. You can't be expected to be the greatest DM of all time if you've never tried it before. Keep that in mind and have fun!

If your players are new, I would start with a fight. First thing you do is roll initiative. 

Why? because new players (and new DMs) are usually most nervous about the roleplay aspects of the game, so start with something mechanical. 

So start with initiative - you can provide the details of the surroundings, the monsters, etc... as you are setting up the miniatures and/or figuring out the turn order. "You're on the beach... the temple must be that way... oh look, zombies!"

That way, after the fight, everyone has a little bit of an idea who each is character is, and what they do, when the get to the roleplaying part. Don't force it. It will come. have fun, roll dice, tell a story... repeat. You'll get there.

 Mike Shea Sly Flourish's article with tips on running Dragons of Stormwreck Isle could help 

Running Dragons of Stormwreck Isle – The 2022 D&D Starter Set Adventure: SlyFlourish.com