I'm going to DM my 70-year-old dad's first D&D game

Maybe a dragon named Ogre so your son can announce it again and fool them.

This is awesome. Good for you, Whizbang!

The first thought that came to me was to have a rival tavern be behind the problems in the basement. The PC's could defeat the rats, find the secret tunnel to the lair beneath the competing tavern, go there and fight the BBEG.

Then, when they return to their tavern, they earn free drinks for life.

I like that fungus idea someone had. Myconid minions of an insane, diseased green dragon bent on spreading a fungal plague. Maybe the bar has been losing business because their drinks are making people sick. The owner needs to find a cure before he goes bankrupt...

Excellent thread. As a new RPG'r myself, it's great to read other stories of new players.

I think it's awesome that you and your brother are able to share the fun with your father, and that your wife and children are interested and involved as well. It sounds like a lot of fun, and many great memories to be had.

Happy gaming.

Well, we ran very short on time, with the holidays and other errands, but he and my wife made up new characters, a pair of dwarves, using the Beyond the Walls rules.

http://www.flatlandgames.com/btw/

Informed they were cut off until they paid off the bar tab that was helping to bankrupt their favorite watering hole, they went down into the cellar to take care of the giant rats seen there. Dispatching them, they found a rat-dug tunnel that led them into a larger dungeon complex. Choosing a direction at random, they found a pair of double doors surrounded by a painting of a red devil face. The door had a simple poison needle trap that the dwarves handily survived.

Opening the door, they encountered three kobolds who sought to drive them off. After defeating them, they moved in further to discover an iconic-but-not-to-them statue of a fat horned naked devil (or maybe efreet) seated behind two braziers. Out of time, my dad declared they'd killed the rats they were hired to, and they went back and sealed up the hole and declared their bar tab paid. The rest of the dungeon, which I'll flesh out and detail in the interim, will wait for another day.

Me, my brother and my dad are taking a one-week scuba vacation in June.

Since I want to make up for lost time with my dad, I'm bringing the Castles & Crusades Players Handbook, the Monsters & Treasure book, the screen (if I can rustle up the cash for it in the meantime) and some dice.

I've had my dad make a more advanced character than the simple Beyond the Wall characters. He's picked a rogue with a half-class of bard. (He really wanted to be full bard but I broke the news to him that it would more or less restrict him to social and intrigue games only.)

I'm not sure what my brother will play. (He played a meatshield last summer.) Probably something multi-classed, since I want to make sure healing and melee are covered. (He'd make an interesting paladin.)

I'm thinking of having an Indiana Jones-style adventure, where my dad's character finds out that his lifelong rival -- who signed up hours earlier than he did at the Delvers Guild in Ptolus, wooed the girl he had a crush on, etc. -- has bought another copy of the treasure map he and my brother's character just spent all their cash on.

So they'll be arriving after the rival has gone into a trapped complex within the Dungeon (since I want to give him some stuff to use his rogue skills on). Unbeknownst to anyone, though, the guy who sold both copies of the map is actually planning to ambush the survivor -- shades of the Raiders of the Lost Ark opening -- once these two competing groups have cleared the hazards and recovered the treasure.

I'm planning on drinking up a lot of Indiana Jones inspiration and coming up with a complex of about 10 rooms at most for them to explore.

There should be a chance, a slim one, that the two rival groups find out they are being set up by the third party for an ambush. If that happens they may be able to band together and split the loot peacefully. Or they may decide to raid the dude setting up the ambush. But a chance of learning about the conspiracy creates more options.

NECROMANCY!

My father, now 74, is still playing, playing with my son and wife the first 5E game I've ever DMed in February, and then he and my son played a two person heist, using Here's to Crime from the DMs Guild, in March. My father has purchased the Starters Set and is considering running games with the other retirees in his community.

So you're passing on the D&D tradition to the next generation, and the previous generation too?

Len said:

So you're passing on the D&D tradition to the next generation, and the previous generation too?

Click to expand...

It improves the chances that one of them will DM for me.