D&D General Actual Play: Heroes of the Borderlands Starter Set

Zardnaar said:

I bought this just after Christmas and theres a store copy.

Might have to run it soon.

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I got it for myself recently too.
I'm thinking of offering open tables at the brewery where my regular table meets (same with Hellfire Club)

I'll be running this for my daughters and their friends on Monday (Auckland Anniversary holiday).

pukunui said:

I'll be running this for my daughters and their friends on Monday (Auckland Anniversary holiday).

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Iirc the rogue and wizard looked ok.

Zardnaar said:

Iirc the rogue and wizard looked ok.

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I don’t know what each of them will pick. I like that the set gives the players a choice of two subclasses at 3rd level (e.g. assassin or thief for the rogue).

It's been quite fun.
Done all the town stuff and wilderness stuff, and levelled to second.

NPC cards are very nice, and the monster cards are very good.

Into the caves, well, on Saturday!

THEMNGMNT said:

Session 5 with my son (age 6) and daughter (age 9). He's playing a dwarf rogue, she's an elf cleric.
They went to the cave with the steam mephits and kuo-toa. Another big, pitched battle. They defeated all the enemies but haven't quite explored all the caves or recovered all the loot. We're continuing to have a lot of fun and the kids are getting better at fighting monsters instead of each other!

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My players have all played too many CRPGs and, once I explained we were doing milestone leveling, and what those milestones were (explore all four quadrants of the wilderness, do X number of keep quests), they've focused on doing those first, which should make the caves a lot easier when the time comes.

Zardnaar said:

Iirc the rogue and wizard looked ok.

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What was wrong with the fighter?

So the Quick-Start Guide suggests that new DMs begin with the Wilderness booklet. That booklet suggests they start with the Trail region. The first bit of read-aloud text indicates that the PCs are traveling on "a well-kept trail east of the Keep on the Borderlands".

There's no attempt to explain how the PCs got there. Did they come from the west and bypass the keep, heading straight into the wilderness? Or did they come from the east and go past the caves on their way to the Keep?

I am going to have the PCs start off the map to the west. They will be friends off to have adventures in the Borderlands. They will be heading for the Keep as the natural jumping-off point for adventures. However, they will come across an abandoned wagon on the way.

In terms of kicking things off: I will start with the abandoned wagon encounter, and I might take a page from @THEMNGMNT and have Mallyn be the driver and then have some goblins (one per player) attack. (Perhaps a larger force looted the wagon and took the horse but a few remained behind in case more travelers came along and stopped to investigate.)

We will then go to the keep, where they can pick up quests so they aren't just randomly wandering around in the wilderness.

If you want to create some urgency, you could even have the goblins kidnap a couple NPCs who were on the wagon. Maybe one of them is a guard from the Keep and the other is a shop owner (weapons or armor, perhaps). Maybe the goblins are holding one for ransom, and gave the other to the Chaos Cultists as an offering. As the players rescue those NPCs, it deepens their connection to the Keep, and dramatizes the threat posed by the Caves.

Yeah, I had my groups start off on the western edge of the map on the road, just south of the keep, having arrived in the Borderlands in the early morning, so they have the freedom to go wherever they want.