dreaded_beast
First Post
For those of you who have been helping and giving advice on helping me create my very first adventure, and those of you who are just interested in how a newbie DM is running his first adventure, I have had final started the "campaign" last nite.
You can find the plot for the adventure here: http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76782
The dungeon map key is here:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76863
I made a few minor changes to the above, but very minor, so the above is roughly 95% true. I discovered the difficulty of creating my own world, so I chose to place the setting in the Forgotten Realms which I know pretty well, since almost all the campaigns I have played were in the Realms.
We started at around 9:00 PM and finished around 1:00 AM, which was hard because she had work the next day and so do I, hehe. Anyway, I thought the adventure would be done in 1 session, but maybe due to a combination of me trying to teach her the basics and myself always looking up rules in the books, it took a bit longer than I expected. Plus, I didn't expect some of the encounters to take so long,
Anyway, I gave her brief synopsis of where she is in the area and how much she knows about the area, which is very little. I haven't gone into the history of the Realms or anything like that at the moment. I have made the "campaign/adventuring" area around 2.5 miles wide and around 1.75 miles long. According to the 3.5 rules, I didn't realize she could walk from one end of the campaign area to another in roughly under an hour, hehe. This resulted in a lot of the buildings/areas being roughly 15 to 30 minutes away from each other by foot and by walking.
The beginning part pretty much went as planned. I explained she was training near the area she was discovered a few years ago, a ruined "dimensional gate". She asked good questions, like the details of how the monks found here, etc. From there I had here encounter an Abyssal Dire Rat, which I had speak to her, hinting at her past and future. While she decided whether or not to attack it, I had it run away before she could.
Things continued to go along smoothly, although I missed a few things from my notes, but I was able to cover-up quickly enough and I don't think my player noticed, hehe. As we played, I found new ideas, not covered in my notes, popping into my head. Anyways, she went along with most of my prepared "encounters", not really encounters but areas on the map to explore to gain more information.
When she and the NPC cleric finally got the "dungeon", things got a bit hairy, mainly for her. I had a captured wold that was tied up and tried to give hints that if it was to be fed, it would let her pass. Well, all I said was the wolf's ribs were showing, which could be a little vague, hehe. Anyways, she decides to "knock-it-out". She is a monk, so no problem. However, there are some bad rolls, and the wolf brings her down to 3 HP. She finally knocks the wolf out and ties it up.
They enter the dungeon and explore and encounter creatures as I had planned until this point. However, the NPC cleric had been brought down to 1 cure spell from previous healings. The NPC cleric was also a little worse for wear. The NPC cleric told my player this to keep my player aware. My player then decided that maybe they should leave the dungeon and inform their respective masters what they had found. Now I should have expected this as an experienced player, but I totally forgot about it while planning for the adventure. I started having to think on the fly.
They left the dungeon and returned to NPC cleric's master, who gave them advice and 1 cure light potion. At this point, which I find amusing, my player said that maybe they should her master because he might have some "cool stuff" to give her too, hehe. Anyway, I'm glad that I was able to come up with reasons for their "masters" to stay at that moment, because I was really afraid my player would ask them to go with them: the masters would stay behind to guard the place and wait for the missing monks to return or the "bad guys" to make an appearance.
Well, at this point, it was getting late and I wanted to end the adventure so I decided to have the BBEG attempt to escape the area and have my player discover him on the way back to the dungeon. They would either fight or the BBEG would get away. The BBEG was disguised, using a Disguise Self spell, so I was expecting him to get away, but my player rolled a 20 on her Spot check and saw that it was a disguise. After some words, my player "captures" the BBEG, by grappling him. I didn't understand the grapple rules too well and was taking too long reading the rules, since I never do it as a player, so I just had her roll based on what I understood from the book and my experience as a player.
To make things short, she made her rolls, captured the BBEG, questioned him, took him to her master, and now is forcing him to take her to the dungeon and show her around. The BBEG said that he knew about some traps and could disarm them for her, which he lied about and about a lot of other stuff which I had hoped would result in letting him go, but she decided to keep the BBEG with her as a prisoner. She made a bunch of rolls during this time, like Sense Motive oppossed by his Bluff, which she made so I kept telling her she noticed that he was not telling the entire truth, which resulted in her keeping the BBEG.
Now the session ended with them re-entering the dungeon.
I will post more after the next session.
You can find the plot for the adventure here: http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76782
The dungeon map key is here:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76863
I made a few minor changes to the above, but very minor, so the above is roughly 95% true. I discovered the difficulty of creating my own world, so I chose to place the setting in the Forgotten Realms which I know pretty well, since almost all the campaigns I have played were in the Realms.
We started at around 9:00 PM and finished around 1:00 AM, which was hard because she had work the next day and so do I, hehe. Anyway, I thought the adventure would be done in 1 session, but maybe due to a combination of me trying to teach her the basics and myself always looking up rules in the books, it took a bit longer than I expected. Plus, I didn't expect some of the encounters to take so long,
Anyway, I gave her brief synopsis of where she is in the area and how much she knows about the area, which is very little. I haven't gone into the history of the Realms or anything like that at the moment. I have made the "campaign/adventuring" area around 2.5 miles wide and around 1.75 miles long. According to the 3.5 rules, I didn't realize she could walk from one end of the campaign area to another in roughly under an hour, hehe. This resulted in a lot of the buildings/areas being roughly 15 to 30 minutes away from each other by foot and by walking.
The beginning part pretty much went as planned. I explained she was training near the area she was discovered a few years ago, a ruined "dimensional gate". She asked good questions, like the details of how the monks found here, etc. From there I had here encounter an Abyssal Dire Rat, which I had speak to her, hinting at her past and future. While she decided whether or not to attack it, I had it run away before she could.
Things continued to go along smoothly, although I missed a few things from my notes, but I was able to cover-up quickly enough and I don't think my player noticed, hehe. As we played, I found new ideas, not covered in my notes, popping into my head. Anyways, she went along with most of my prepared "encounters", not really encounters but areas on the map to explore to gain more information.
When she and the NPC cleric finally got the "dungeon", things got a bit hairy, mainly for her. I had a captured wold that was tied up and tried to give hints that if it was to be fed, it would let her pass. Well, all I said was the wolf's ribs were showing, which could be a little vague, hehe. Anyways, she decides to "knock-it-out". She is a monk, so no problem. However, there are some bad rolls, and the wolf brings her down to 3 HP. She finally knocks the wolf out and ties it up.
They enter the dungeon and explore and encounter creatures as I had planned until this point. However, the NPC cleric had been brought down to 1 cure spell from previous healings. The NPC cleric was also a little worse for wear. The NPC cleric told my player this to keep my player aware. My player then decided that maybe they should leave the dungeon and inform their respective masters what they had found. Now I should have expected this as an experienced player, but I totally forgot about it while planning for the adventure. I started having to think on the fly.
They left the dungeon and returned to NPC cleric's master, who gave them advice and 1 cure light potion. At this point, which I find amusing, my player said that maybe they should her master because he might have some "cool stuff" to give her too, hehe. Anyway, I'm glad that I was able to come up with reasons for their "masters" to stay at that moment, because I was really afraid my player would ask them to go with them: the masters would stay behind to guard the place and wait for the missing monks to return or the "bad guys" to make an appearance.
Well, at this point, it was getting late and I wanted to end the adventure so I decided to have the BBEG attempt to escape the area and have my player discover him on the way back to the dungeon. They would either fight or the BBEG would get away. The BBEG was disguised, using a Disguise Self spell, so I was expecting him to get away, but my player rolled a 20 on her Spot check and saw that it was a disguise. After some words, my player "captures" the BBEG, by grappling him. I didn't understand the grapple rules too well and was taking too long reading the rules, since I never do it as a player, so I just had her roll based on what I understood from the book and my experience as a player.
To make things short, she made her rolls, captured the BBEG, questioned him, took him to her master, and now is forcing him to take her to the dungeon and show her around. The BBEG said that he knew about some traps and could disarm them for her, which he lied about and about a lot of other stuff which I had hoped would result in letting him go, but she decided to keep the BBEG with her as a prisoner. She made a bunch of rolls during this time, like Sense Motive oppossed by his Bluff, which she made so I kept telling her she noticed that he was not telling the entire truth, which resulted in her keeping the BBEG.
Now the session ended with them re-entering the dungeon.
I will post more after the next session.
