[@Ermine], I do not mind either form of experience tracking. While I do think individually tracking the experience is for the best, for the sake of simplicity rather than being at a table, you tracking it and just telling us when we do level up would be easiest. I am not fond of milestone type experience, because it often plays explicitly into "dramatic convenience" from my personal encounters with it, so there is no point in exploring or fighting monsters other than the essential ones.

On another note, I do think the best "world" in mind is one that has a healthy balance of low fantasy up to sword and sorcery, avoiding the extremes of high magic and epic fantasy where the world tends to be pretty inexplicable and eclipse anyone who lacks access to those resources. A scenario where magic is still arcane, mysterious, novel but to some extent accepted as a factor of life, with peoples' opinions of it varying and there not being a great number of druids, clerics, wizards and so on; a town might rely on a lone wizard they know several days away for their magical insights, but he is still there, rather than in hiding.

To transition again, I think it would be wise everyone announces what class they would [i]like[/i] to play, just so those of our group new to the game have their chance to lay claim to something they [i]want[/i] to learn and the rest of us can then find something we know we like and work with it from there. The reason I say this is because this is a Beginner's Game - it is even in the title now - and I personally would want new players to fill the role they feel most interested in to help them better learn it. Not that we cannot have two clerics, two defensive fighters or two rogues, but so that at least for myself I know what I should play to assist the group.

This go around I would like to play a Battle Master or Champion fighter, a Hexblade warlock or a Circle of the Moon druid, but I am not expressly dedicated to them; I can and will give or take on them. I just would like to know what the rest of the party thinks.

And yes, it will be feline themed. Either as a Tabaxi or a refluffed half orc.

There's just no avoiding that.