Stormonu
NeoGrognard
...Has the players begging to do more.
My new group, consisting of my (71-year-old) father & mother, my wife and kids, was a complete success. We're using the PHB but I'm running the Mines of Phandelver from the Starter Set. We played for about 6 hours tonight (not including character creation). My parents have never played D&D before (though my dad has tried a few video games such as Fable & Skyrim). When we stopped the game, my father was trying to encourage everyone to continue playing for a few more hours, and everyone else is very eager to play again.
The characters:
Dalla Luck - Halfling Rogue (Criminal) (premade), played by my mother.
Not'sa Good - Human Fighter (Archer - Folk Hero) (premade), played by father.
Nyssa - Half Elf Cleric (Acolyte of Lathander), played by my wife
T'gree - Dragonborn Ranger (Underdark Sailor), played by my eldest son [as a side note, T'gree favors the longbow, but also fights well with belaying pin and knife)
Nog - Goblin Wizard (Summoner), played by my youngest son (Nog is a gnome reskinned as a goblin)
Spoiler on the Adventure:
Nog deserves some special explanation -
[sblock]My youngest son is borderline autistic and at first didn't want to play - but he wanted to be in the room playing with my Lego airplane, and within earshot of what was going on. After about an hour of watching and listening to everyone else, as the group came into the town of Phandalin and settled in the inn, he came to me and said he wanted to be a goblin that was in town and selling "pets". So, I ran with it - a little goblin, dressed in raggedy cloth on which were pinned numerous little metal strips (he'd pull one off and tie it to the pet he was selling, as a "dog tag"). On his back was a large wooden cage filled with centipedes, a frog with warts, a sparrow with clipped wings, a grasshopper as long as a finger, a dung beetle as large as his fist and an assortment of other creepy crawlies he'd obviously caught around town. Sitting on his shoulder was a small trained rat, which was his "pet".
It was silly and only intended to be a scene lasting a few minutes to give my younger son a way of feeling like he was participating in what was going on. However, after the scene ended he took a seat at the table and told me he was following the party when they set out in the morning! So...he became a part of the group and I had to quickly put together a character of sorts in my mind so he could play along. Luckily, I'd already been working on the spell Summon Monster, as I thought he'd want to run some sort of summoner, so I figured I'd use that (and grabbed the playtest wizard to work with). When the first fight occurred, and I described him whipping out one of his creatures from the cage and siccing it on an enemy (i.e., casting Summon Monster), the players thought it was awesome (until then, they thought he had no skill and his so-called "ferocious monsters" he was selling was just silly exaggerating).
This was simply something I might never had thought or allowed to occur in a game just a few years ago. And everyone ('specially my youngest son) thought the character was a great addition to our game.[/sblock]
So, needless to say, I'm quite happy with how 5E seems to be turning out (I need to reread some rules, but so far, so good). Tell me about how your 5E game(s) have been going.
My new group, consisting of my (71-year-old) father & mother, my wife and kids, was a complete success. We're using the PHB but I'm running the Mines of Phandelver from the Starter Set. We played for about 6 hours tonight (not including character creation). My parents have never played D&D before (though my dad has tried a few video games such as Fable & Skyrim). When we stopped the game, my father was trying to encourage everyone to continue playing for a few more hours, and everyone else is very eager to play again.
The characters:
Dalla Luck - Halfling Rogue (Criminal) (premade), played by my mother.
Not'sa Good - Human Fighter (Archer - Folk Hero) (premade), played by father.
Nyssa - Half Elf Cleric (Acolyte of Lathander), played by my wife
T'gree - Dragonborn Ranger (Underdark Sailor), played by my eldest son [as a side note, T'gree favors the longbow, but also fights well with belaying pin and knife)
Nog - Goblin Wizard (Summoner), played by my youngest son (Nog is a gnome reskinned as a goblin)
Spoiler on the Adventure:
In the first encounter, the rogue, Dalla, was sent ahead to inspect the dead horses, while the rest of the group watched nearby with ranged weapons at the ready. The goblins rolled a 20 for their stealth, and rogue was dropped to 0 hp by the goblin archers in the ambush attack. Since it was exactly 0 hp, I had her being disabled; she decided to "play dead". With the rogue down, the two melee goblins rushed at the rest of the party, but couldn't quite reach. Not'sa sallied forward on horseback and slew one goblin, T'gree had trouble hitting the two archer goblins using the dead horses as cover. The cleric helped clear the other melee goblin with her mace, and at that time Dalla was able to sneak attack one of the goblin archers, killing him. The other ran off.
The party then pressed ahead to Phandalin and discovered that their dwarf employer hadn't arrived (even though they knew about his dead horse from the ambush, they found nothing at the ambush sight to indicate he'd been killed and they thought he might have made it to town). With the late hour, the party slept in town, picked up Nog the goblin pet merchant and returned the next day to the ambush scene. The dragonborn had some difficulty finding the goblin's trail, but with Nog's help they found the goblin's lair.
After quickly dispensing with the goblins who weren't paying attention at the entrance, the group moved inside. The dragonborn successfully calmed the wolves just inside the entrance, and after failing to climb the chimney to the storeroom, proceeded up the corridor. As the party passed under a bridge overhead, they heard a strange noise and then what sounded like someone hammering on stone. They rounded the corner just in time to see a goblin looming over the last support on the flood trap. Only the cleric and the dragonborn didn't get washed out of the front door. While the dragonborn and cleric took on the goblin sapper, the rest of the party had to rush back in.
Unfortunately, another goblin (from the bridge) arrived to fight and the dragonborn thought he might circle around the little fiend by running up the stairs in a nearby passage - right into the storeroom with the 2 goblins, ripper the wolf and a bugbear! After a harrowing fight where most of the party was down to 3 hp and out of any sort of healing, Not'so dropped the bugbear with a critical hit from his greatsword, killing the last combatant. As the group proceeded to loot the room, we stopped the game for the evening.
The party then pressed ahead to Phandalin and discovered that their dwarf employer hadn't arrived (even though they knew about his dead horse from the ambush, they found nothing at the ambush sight to indicate he'd been killed and they thought he might have made it to town). With the late hour, the party slept in town, picked up Nog the goblin pet merchant and returned the next day to the ambush scene. The dragonborn had some difficulty finding the goblin's trail, but with Nog's help they found the goblin's lair.
After quickly dispensing with the goblins who weren't paying attention at the entrance, the group moved inside. The dragonborn successfully calmed the wolves just inside the entrance, and after failing to climb the chimney to the storeroom, proceeded up the corridor. As the party passed under a bridge overhead, they heard a strange noise and then what sounded like someone hammering on stone. They rounded the corner just in time to see a goblin looming over the last support on the flood trap. Only the cleric and the dragonborn didn't get washed out of the front door. While the dragonborn and cleric took on the goblin sapper, the rest of the party had to rush back in.
Unfortunately, another goblin (from the bridge) arrived to fight and the dragonborn thought he might circle around the little fiend by running up the stairs in a nearby passage - right into the storeroom with the 2 goblins, ripper the wolf and a bugbear! After a harrowing fight where most of the party was down to 3 hp and out of any sort of healing, Not'so dropped the bugbear with a critical hit from his greatsword, killing the last combatant. As the group proceeded to loot the room, we stopped the game for the evening.
Nog deserves some special explanation -
[sblock]My youngest son is borderline autistic and at first didn't want to play - but he wanted to be in the room playing with my Lego airplane, and within earshot of what was going on. After about an hour of watching and listening to everyone else, as the group came into the town of Phandalin and settled in the inn, he came to me and said he wanted to be a goblin that was in town and selling "pets". So, I ran with it - a little goblin, dressed in raggedy cloth on which were pinned numerous little metal strips (he'd pull one off and tie it to the pet he was selling, as a "dog tag"). On his back was a large wooden cage filled with centipedes, a frog with warts, a sparrow with clipped wings, a grasshopper as long as a finger, a dung beetle as large as his fist and an assortment of other creepy crawlies he'd obviously caught around town. Sitting on his shoulder was a small trained rat, which was his "pet".
It was silly and only intended to be a scene lasting a few minutes to give my younger son a way of feeling like he was participating in what was going on. However, after the scene ended he took a seat at the table and told me he was following the party when they set out in the morning! So...he became a part of the group and I had to quickly put together a character of sorts in my mind so he could play along. Luckily, I'd already been working on the spell Summon Monster, as I thought he'd want to run some sort of summoner, so I figured I'd use that (and grabbed the playtest wizard to work with). When the first fight occurred, and I described him whipping out one of his creatures from the cage and siccing it on an enemy (i.e., casting Summon Monster), the players thought it was awesome (until then, they thought he had no skill and his so-called "ferocious monsters" he was selling was just silly exaggerating).
This was simply something I might never had thought or allowed to occur in a game just a few years ago. And everyone ('specially my youngest son) thought the character was a great addition to our game.[/sblock]
So, needless to say, I'm quite happy with how 5E seems to be turning out (I need to reread some rules, but so far, so good). Tell me about how your 5E game(s) have been going.
