Chronicles of a DM - Session 2

Hello, friends!

For those who have not kept up on this series, it's about the trials and tribulations of being a DM in a group of 5, as we are playing D&D 5th edition. If you haven't read the first session, I suggest you take a gander so you are caught up on where the PCs are now.

In session 1 we introduced the world at large, characters, and explored the PCs motivations and goals.

My plan for session 2

• PCs are to gather information from the lord in the city of Emerald Bay
• Find out about the catacombs of an old magic school where scavengers continue to enter the catacombs and never return
• In exchange for the PCs help in rooting out these catacombs, the lord promises he will grant the PCs an audience to the Elder Council for help with the slaver Queen, as well as a monetary reward
• The PCs will enter the catacombs and discover mimics who can speak Common, skeletons, and other animated objects
• They will discover there is someone behind the oddities in this old school

Pretty standard stuff. They provide a service to this city's lord in exchange for an audience with the Elder Council. I wanted them to get their feet wet in a traditional style of dungeon - skeletons, mimics, gelatinous cube, and other classic D&D monsters. I also wanted to throw some puzzles at them to see how they figured things out as a group.

What actually occurred in session 2

• One PC spoke with the lord of Emerald Bay, trying to get information about the slaver Queen
• The rest of the PCs were off in the inn, doing their own various things
• They gathered some supplies and went into the catacombs after unlocking the hatch in the floor by re-lighting some burnt out sconces which triggered the door open
• They encountered a few monsters including a rust monster and a mimic posing as a treasure chest
• They did discover this mimic had sentience and the mimic told them about the person behind the catacombs - in exchange for some food. Our Half-Orc Bard was happy to share some horse meat she had for some reason...
  

• They then encountered a puzzle room! It was fairly big that had panels on the ground. There were four rows of panels that all surrounded this raised up alter that had a switch on it. Symbols on the walls directed them, with a high enough Perception and Insight/History roll, to identify the markings and see if they could read them
• Sure enough, one person could read Dwarfish, and determined that 4 of them needed to stand on a separate panel each, then the fifth person was to hit the switch to unlock the door
• Once they solved it and the door opened, they saw cultists were performing some kind of chant; they also had 3 skelly friends clattering about
• After defeating them, they discover the name of the person responsible for the catacombs and that they are working for the slaver Queen! 

This was a pretty good session overall. As a DM, I was trying to keep this much more open ended than session 1 and that meant thinking on my feet a bit more. Both the puzzles and creatures they interacted with were all improvised. I felt like I wasn't as prepared as session 1, but that might be due to the fact I was improvising more this session. I know where I wanted to go with it, but I perhaps should've prepared a bit more so I wasn't stumbling around during parts of the dungeon (mainly the puzzle section).

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

1. Get party into a more classic dungeon setting and allow PCs to explore combat, story, and exploration all at once.
2. Get them more invested in who they are fighting; the 'end boss' so to speak
3. Get party to level 2 quickly so we can get them experiencing that part of the game

I felt like those were accomplished this session, although as I said, I could've perhaps been a little more prepared with any puzzles I wanted to do. The party appeared to 'get it' really fast, which was good. I didn't want to make them get turned off to puzzle rooms. In fact, I wanted the party to really enjoy it, so we could slowly move away from just murder-hoboing everything in sight.

I think in the future, I will create the puzzles ahead of time. Improvisation is great, and any good DM needs to do this well, but some things may be better with some extra prep.

HELPFUL NOTE: For those of you who are keen to learn about DMing and want to get into it yourself, here's a great resource to get you started.

Thanks for reading.