My Newbie Game, commentary and thoughts

[Viking Bastard]

I have mentioned in other threads that after seeing the D&D episode of Community, my fiancée and her friends got really into trying D&D. They badgered me until I agreed to DM a game for them. I gamed pretty heavily as a kid and teen, but hadn't touched dice since before the release of 3.5e. Soon, another friend and her boyfriend also wanted to game—both with slight, but limited experience—so we ended up with a party of five.

So I went about researching the current state of things, borrowed a friend's core 4e books (+Dungeon Delve) and started planning the game. After catching myself flirting with a convoluted Charlie's Angels in a outer-planar fantasy setting, I decided to keep it simple near vanilla D&D 4e; not Nentir Vale, but definitely PoL-inspired.

It's set in the capital area of a recently collapsed empire, Thrymreich. The empire had been in decline for centuries, before finally collapsing in on itself via civil war 60 years ago and breaking up into independent town and city-states. The capital city, Thrymgard, got (mostly) razed to the ground by barbarian tribes, but survivors of the siege and random opportunists got together to build a new city on top of the ruins; all of Thrymreich's old trade routes still went through the area—there was money to be made! This city became Morkinstadh, built by merchants and ruled by trade.

The first planned session got cancelled at the last minute because of a babysitter bail and after weeks of scheduling conflicts, we finally sat down to play our first session couple of weeks ago. I was rusty and the players were awkward, but fun was had and some goblins got their teeth kicked in. People seemed positive towards another session after the game.

I'm not sure what exactly I want to achieve by this thread, if anything, other than to gather my thoughts, maybe voice some questions and fish for commentary and advice.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Characters:

The characters would be the Rangers of Morkinstadh, mercenary adventurers that patrol the nearby communities that are willing to pay for it. The Rangers are really just an adventuring guild, but state sanctioned and branded as successors to the old Rangers of Thrymgard—the Jedi Knights of Thrymreich, so to speak. I figured this gave me a way to let them go about their thing if they wanted to, but also a way to direct them towards a goal if needed.

I didn't want to go through the intricacies of character creation for what might just be a one-shot game (and fear of the mechanical complexities being laid bare like that without in-game context would seem daunting), so I decided to use pre-made characters, preferably pregenerated by someone else than me. Finding some turned out to be surprisingly difficult, but I eventually found some vanilla 1st level characters in a thread here on the boards. I looked them over and made some adjustments; wrote them up in what I hoped to be a easy-to-understand format and let them choose their characters.


After they chose their sheets and fleshed out their character concepts, we had:

Little Birnir, a dwarven fighter who's unusually tall for a dwarf.
Thula, elven ranger.
Hel, eladrin wizard.
Brittany, human warlord.
Coco Santana, halfling rogue.

The fighter's, rogue's and ranger's players quickly found their groove with their characters. The rogue's player ran with the classic halfling thief concept, despite not having anything to base it on; she was small and limber and a thief: the world was her's for the pinching! Everybody quickly got annoyed with her kleptomania, but she had a blast.

The ranger's player took the whole thing very seriously; she is the only player with any substantial prior RPG experience and she seemed intent to shine. She was introduced to RPGs by her ex-boyfriend, who is, frankly, a total douche and I get the feeling that she hadn't been allowed to do anything other than play second fiddle to her ex. This time, she was the experienced one.

The fighter's player is the ranger's new boyfriend. We were vary of letting him join, not knowing him very well and having repeatedly been burned by the ranger's poor taste in men. But he turned out great. He got really into his dwarven fighter—a merry drunkard with unhealthy love for his axe and height issues. He was hilarious.

The wizard's and warlord's players had more difficulty. My fiancée chose the warlord, but regretted it—she could easily see everybody else's niche, but her own escaped her. When she asked me to explain the warlord class after the session, I failed utterly at defining it. "Uh... battle leader, but not necessarily actual leader... you have a sword... healing is important." She's considering switching to cleric for future sessions.

The wizard's player was mostly just feeling inadequate; she was felt more frail than the rest of them, positive that her character was the crappiest one and afraid of doing anything that would be considered silly or stupid. She has self-esteem problems IRL and seems to have the same difficulties in her character's skin as her own.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Session #1:

While I had spent a lot of time studying the rules, reminiscing about the old days and trying to reignite the feel for play by listening to recording of games and browsing EN World, I found how rusty I had become soon as we sat down to play. I improvised badly, easily got confused and had a hard time getting the session off the ground.

I set up a distress call from a nearby mining community, Hruni. The PCs responded and travelled to the town. Once there, they went to a tavern, where they each went and did their own thing: The fighter picked fights with locals and got drunk; the rogue pickpocketed all those she could and stole an axe; the wizard sulked and the warlord gave commentary. The ranger tried to investigate the distress call and to reign the other characters in, but with little success. She looked to me to help her, but I was having problems with keeping up with the other players, who each demanded my attention at all times.

Their hijinks at the tavern took a long while, an hour and a half or so, and I felt like I had lost all control over the session. The players were also starting to get bored of their aimlessness (especially the ranger), but salvation arrived in the form of pizza; when it arrived, we took a break and talked about the session so far and we decided to get on with things.

The ranger had already located the man who sent the distress call, a mining director who had lost contact with a mining expedition to an abandoned mine he wanted to restart. He did not have the manpower to send another expedition after them (especially since he couldn't know if they would return), so he called the Rangers for help. He gave them a map of the area and some details of the abandoned mines.

They spent the night at the tavern and went out at dawn. They traveled deeper into the mountains and on their way there the ranger decided to roll a perception check and noticed something higher up in the mountains—something large, but nimble, seemed to be following them, but always keeping a steady distance between them and the PCs.

They kept on and at midday they were at the mine. Once they got close, they sneaked up to it and spied that the mine opening was guarded by a few goblins. After some discussion about how to deal with the situation, the ranger decided to try to talk to them to let us in peacefully. She failed a diplomacy check and the goblins grabbed their weapons and demanded that the PCs leave; that this was their territory and they were trespassing. Tensions were high, as the PCs were in a standoff with the goblins with weapons drawn; until one of the goblins started inching towards the mine opening and the fighter attacked. A fight ensued in which the PCs came out victorious without a scratch, although the goblin escaped into the mine.

Then it was time to break it up and head home. Although we all agreed that the game needed some polishing, everybody seemed to have had a good time and agreed that they'd like to do it again.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Dealing with the rules #1

I did everything I could to keep the rules as simple and straightforward as I could. I printed out the characters in what I hoped was a simple format that only listed the final calculations, rather than all the bonuses (I had a printout of every PC's bonuses myself, in case I had to consider them, but it didn't come into play). I also printed out some power cards (which I really like).

But they were, on the whole, pretty quick to grasp it: Roll a d20, add modifier, smile at DM. Conditional specifics may apply.

They had no difficulty grasping the different skills and how they might be used and they liked the power cards, although none got used. It really helped that the ranger was familiar with all the basics. They actually had the most difficulty grasping the damage rolls and HP, which surprised me, with them all having experiences with the concepts in video games.

 

[Quickleaf]

Welcome back to D&D

I've always thought Jean of Arc would make an interesting archetype for a warlord - she can swing a sword and hurt someone but she's really not a warrior, it's the effect she has on everyone around her.

You mean that teenage girl is charging the orcish horde?? That's it, we *all* charge!

 

[TornadoCreator]

Interesting, sounds like you're getting into the swing of things.

My suggestion if you're ever able to run a campaign... use Forgotten Realms and make everyone from the Swords Coast. Why? Firstly, you can play Forgotten Realms without any background knowledge at all, after all, the average pig farmer in Faerun doesn't know which city/God/spell/monster is which so why would your first level character? Second, you have a truck-load of stuff to use to make it feel like a living breathing world. Thirdly, you will slowly get them involved in a world that can be made more real for them and expanded with additional countries, enemies, factions etc. without you needing to write everything (and more important remember everything) yourself. Fourthly, if there's a setting they're familiar with, it'll be the setting they used for Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights, all popular video games... but they're all 3rd Edition, thus almost a century ago and therefore all the NPC's they know are dead. It'll make it familiar enough that they'll think "oooh, I know that" but not so much so that you actually need to remember who the halfling rogue in Neverwinter Nights is.

If however this is just going to be a few sessions, just to see how it goes... well good luck with it and I hope you have fun, you seem to be doing well enough.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Interesting, sounds like you're getting into the swing of things.

My suggestion if you're ever able to run a campaign... use Forgotten Realms and make everyone from the Swords Coast. Why? Firstly, you can play Forgotten Realms without any background knowledge at all, after all, the average pig farmer in Faerun doesn't know which city/God/spell/monster is which so why would your first level character? Second, you have a truck-load of stuff to use to make it feel like a living breathing world. Thirdly, you will slowly get them involved in a world that can be made more real for them and expanded with additional countries, enemies, factions etc. without you needing to write everything (and more important remember everything) yourself. Fourthly, if there's a setting they're familiar with, it'll be the setting they used for Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights, all popular video games... but they're all 3rd Edition, thus almost a century ago and therefore all the NPC's they know are dead. It'll make it familiar enough that they'll think "oooh, I know that" but not so much so that you actually need to remember who the halfling rogue in Neverwinter Nights is.

If however this is just going to be a few sessions, just to see how it goes... well good luck with it and I hope you have fun, you seem to be doing well enough.

I actually think it's better that he's homebrewing it. It's personalized, less generic, yet things from other "worlds" can still be dropped in.

I have a lot of respect and appreciation for homebrew. Kudos to you, VikingBastard.

Also, I know this seems an odd question, but when you game, do you game in English (I assume the material is not available in your tongue)?

 

[TornadoCreator]

I actually think it's better that he's homebrewing it. It's personalized, less generic, yet things from other "worlds" can still be dropped in.

I have a lot of respect and appreciation for homebrew. Kudos to you, VikingBastard.

Also, I know this seems an odd question, but when you game, do you game in English (I assume the material is not available in your tongue)?

Oh, sure, there's nothing wrong with Homebrew and you're right to hold it with such high regard, after all it's very difficult to do well. The thing is, it's very difficult to do well and with a group consisting mainly of new players I think a pre-written setting is a good thing (becides, Forgotten Realms is REALLY well written plus my other reasons I mentioned in my last post). That said, if you do Homebrew it's truly your story in every way, and that can make it much more special.

As for the language question... Why the hell would I play D&D in Welsh, I mean seriously. We'd drown from the amount of phlegm alone and all the fantasy words that don't have Welsh equivalents would just get -yo added to the end, like Exhaustyo (that is the actual Welsh word for Exhaust, I'm not joking, that's actually what they do if there isn't a real Welsh word for it), and am I letting anyone play a Paladinyo or a Wizardyo. So yes we use.......... wait, it's just occured to me, you may have been talking to the guy from Iceland who has an ACTUAL language barrier. Silly me and our tongue twister novelty language. So.... Yeah.....

Oh look, Szass Tam is standing right behind you... *runs*

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

As for the language question... Why the hell would I play D&D in Welsh, I mean seriously. We'd drown from the amount of phlegm alone and all the fantasy words that don't have Welsh equivalents would just get -yo added to the end, like Exhaustyo (that is the actual Welsh word for Exhaust, I'm not joking, that's actually what they do if there isn't a real Welsh word for it), and am I letting anyone play a Paladinyo or a Wizardyo. So yes we use.......... wait, it's just occured to me, you may have been talking to the guy from Iceland who has an ACTUAL language barrier. Silly me and our tongue twister novelty language. So.... Yeah.....

Oh look, Szass Tam is standing right behind you... *runs*

Yes, I was asking Viking Bastard, but thank you for the amusing and interesting commentary!

I learned something about the Welsh language today that I did not know (I knew about the phlegm part ).

 

[Viking Bastard]

Interesting, sounds like you're getting into the swing of things.

Thanks.

My suggestion if you're ever able to run a campaign... use Forgotten Realms and make everyone from the Swords Coast.

Nah, I like homebrewing. I've always felt it to be much more work to use an established setting and I never liked FR.

If I were to use an established 4e setting, I'd probably go for Eberron. Because it's cool.

But I wanted to keep it generic to begin with.