Chronicles of a DM - Session 1

As you may or may not be aware, I'm a D&D fan. I love the freedom, the storytelling, and the often hilarious circumstances players will get themselves into. Any budding designer should play at least a few sessions of D&D with a good group, especially by being the Dungeon Master (DM). There is no better tabletop experience that's I've seen that comes close to what D&D and other role playing games offer.

And that sort of leaves me to what this series will be about. My triumphs and struggles of running a D&D campaign!

Two of the players are fairly new to D&D, while the other 3 are pretty experienced. Striking a balance between introducing others to the game as well as making sure the experienced crew is having fun is really important. Everyone should be having fun and that's your job as the DM.

The format will be as follows: I will provide basic plot points of how I wanted the session to run. Then I will compare the actual play session with the points I hoped to cover. Simple right? Well, eh, no. It usually never is.

My plan for session 1

• Introduce the player characters (henceforth known as PCs) to the start of the tale...where they are in a caravan
• The PCs hands and feet are tied and they have bags over their heads...they have been taken as slaves! Yet they do not know how they got there. An NPC is in the caravan with them...also appearing to be taken as a slave
• The caravan gets attacked by bandits!
• In the ensuing chaos, they manage to escape and flee the scene...or they fight in the battle between the bandits and slavers
• If they head north, it will take them into the land of Oshakros; south will take them to the kingdom of Ironora
• If they are smart to ask, much less keep the NPC from the caravan alive, he will reveal some details about the world at large and who is kidnapping people for slaves
• Whichever direction they head, they will have to travel for 4-6 hours the nearest city
• Random encounters along the forest-lined road will test the mettle of the party and allow me to observe how they work together as a team
• When they arrive in town, allow the party to explore and get into character
• Finish the session and hopefully I have piqued their interest

Seems like a fairly good plan, right? Contrary to #2 on my blog post about not sucking as a DM, I think it's important to set up the scene in the first session. Give your players something to care about at the start of the campaign - something that threatens them all. It doesn't have to be world changing; it can be as simple as, 'You are in a tavern and someone starts a brawl with your PCs.' A common enemy is a classic way to start and, unless you are going for a murder-hobo campaign, people will often want to band together. In this case, they were taken as slaves without any memory of it. "Who is kidnapping people to use as slaves? Why us?" Hopefully those are the questions they will ask themselves and each other.

What actually occurred in session 1

• PCs discovered quickly they were bound and being transported
• Before the bandit attack, they discover through the NPC that they have been all taken as slaves, but do not know why or by whom
• After the caravan crashes, they set out to kill the one slaver left taking on 5 bandits
• They manage to defeat the higher level slaver. I used a Veteran with a challenge rating (CR) of 3 (pg. 350 of the 5th edition Monster Manual). CR 3 is very high for a level 1 party, but he was badly injured during the fight and they were able to best him.
  
  My reasoning here to also use a higher level CR was to establish that these slavers were no mere thugs. They were not just there as a plot device, these guys could wipe the floor with them if he was at full. Hopefully I introduced a little bit of uncertainty and vulnerability.
•  They got some information from the Veteran before they mercifully ended his life; they decided to head south...away from the person who would have them as slaves
• During the journey they encountered a couple of Kenkus (pg. 194) masquarading as the sound of human infants
• The Kenkus ambushed the Ranger, who had gone ahead to scout the forest for these sounds
• The party defeated them easily before moving back onto the road
• They had a chance to encounter a Fire Snake (pg. 265) but decided against it
• Party had reached the city of Emerald Bay in Ironora; a huge city of ~25,000 (by D&D standards)
• The PCs explored the town and really bought into their character's motivations like I thought they would; one PC is sort of like an Orc 'Elizabeth Taylor' who thinks she's still this star (naturally she's an Orc Bard), so she goes to what she thinks was an old theatre where she performed years ago...turns out it is now a brothel. Her reaction is just great. Exactly the sort of role playing I wanted the characters to get into.
• Another PC, a warlock, has a lust for knowledge and encountered some catacombs in an old wizard school...other adventurers have never come out of there alive, which whet his appetite for dungeon crawling. His character could barely contain himself. It was really fun to see.

All in all, the first session was a resounding success! They hit all the points I wanted to hit, while still going out of bounds for a short while before I had to reign them in. I tried to be a little more rigid in the first session so I could set up the world and how the players fit into it. Ending in a big city, and allowing the characters to 'come alive' turned out to be a really good choice and everyone seemed to have a great time with the character's personalities and the NPCs that inhabit the city.

From a design standpoint, here's what I wanted to achieve:

1. Establish a setting; world, lore, characters and motivations, etc.
2. Allow the PCs to explore their party and their abilities
3. Allow the PCs to explore their motivations and encourage role playing

I feel like all those were accomplished. The last campaign I was involved in, as a player, went down a very murder-hobo path. It was an apocalypse campaign, so murder-hobo wasn't that off the wall, but I found it got boring just killing everything.

I aim for this to be a much more balanced campaign, with not just combat, but with more story and characters too. It's not D&D without some drinking time at a tavern, in my opinion.

Thanks for reading.