To refresh: You are finding yourself in a small stone block room. The south entrance is open and leads to a forest, the other walls each have a door. Again, here's how you got here: " You vaguely remember . . . the night before in the town's tavern someone had given you a map. Unfortunately you were to drunk to remember the mission, or maybe you did not even ask; adventures you are, you nonetheless took off - in hopes of finding a treasure maybe, of something...." Then stuff happened....
Incedible opportunity and challenge and here's why: This is proving to be something of great potential, an opportunity of learning how to move and act with some grace in a completely new and unknown environment. Communication skills will have to be sharpened up really fast it looks like. In fact, given this set up, it's a real challenge to work in, both the newness of the game for most peoeple, the characters AND the online chat and listening to the clues and info from the dungeon master as well as the relaying from screen to the DMs. How good can it get for learning? Remember, you are in an alternate universe...earthly rules and conventions might not apply in that world. It seemed too that the quality of the party's actions and communications may be reflected back on it in equal measure.
Timeliness of decision and making some sense can be important factors too and might greatly influence the course of events. Here is an opportunity of a group of thrown together travelers to coalesce and be able to voyage with some kind of fluidity, purpose and union..really cool. To train the ability to observe and learn and navigate in strange and unusual places where the rules might/will change and shift and what is expected of you will be different - a tall order. Here you can practice to adapt and learn in the context, learn how to be in THAT space.
I recommend to listen carefully to what is being said and the clues that ARE given. My impression was that a lot got missed, understandibly so, given the newness of it all, but missed nonetheless.
A word on the back story: it can be somewhat fluid, but you want to have a bit of a back story so you know what the characters are gonna do. It's your character that will be acting, not YOU. So who is your character? YOU need to know about that. Some clue you get from race and class. For example a thief, druid or cleric just are not gonna come up with the same answers to a situation. But then there is the more personal story of your character which you make up and some of your actions will be based on that too. The rest of the party and the dungeon masters will find out as the game develops, if at all.
Regarding your inventory: well, it's got to make sense and be somewhat realistic what's it like to carry that much stuff. Carrying 4 or 5 big weapons is probably not reasonable. Stuff you carry would be class/profession dependent. For example, clerics do not carry a wand, but they have their cleric stuff, assorted things for prayers, invocations and spells. There also is not a "bag of everything when I need it", if you get the drift. Every character probably always carries some knife of sorts, and then more class specific weapons and "stuff".
Example: At some point the party was looking for a pebble to throw into a warp at a door....well you don't just carry pebbles in your pouch..so looking in your pouch for a pebble is not gonna work. However, the clues were: the cleric has a pebble he has been carrying from the beach (and is willing to use it), or, other clue: you just came in through the south door from the forest, hint: forest with dirt and rocks and trees and such . . . maybe a good place to look for a pebble.
Where they are at now: The party managed, in the end, to open the north door and they are peering into a small corridor and into another room, very dimly lit from the light through the open south door in the front room. They never did find out what was up with the warped door they threw the big block of wood into, resulting in fire and a lightning bolt....