If they stayed in contact, everyone already pretty much knows what each other was up to and they could delve right into their next adventure. The twins, for example, would not spend one whole year without at least checking on each other. In real life this would make a lot of sense for everyone, but they are obviously playing a game, where for the players and the audience it will be much more exciting to experience the new circumstances in the game itself rather than outside of it. It doesn’t exclude an occasional check in, but the majority should be new information in my eyes, which makes the second option more plausible for me.

With that in mind, I see two basic scenarios it could go down: The basic meeting a tavern (or another public place) all at once or the progressive Meet and Greet with introductions one by one. Both have pluses and minuses.

The progressive one could start with Pike and Grog (don’t believe they spend much time apart) where they have some funny moments in the beginning to get into the episode and then they meet Vax and Keyleth (99% for me that they still are together) to catch up for a first time. Then they meet Percy and/or Vex (not so sure they are still together) and the next round begins. Finally the will meet Scanlan or Taryon (I won’t be disappointed either way btw) and from there they will try to solve their new problem… It will be slow and steady and probably take an hour, but won’t be too much information at once, which could happen with them meeting up all at once. They only problem I see is, that the last person that joins won’t know what the first person told the others and  there will be a lot of re-narrating.

Of course there are options in between (for example with all joining up and Sam’s character coming in the end), but I think it will come down to these two basic concepts. I’m already so excited and probably won’t sleep beforehand, which happened to me the last time before the Raishan fight. SO… Is it Thursday yet?