Advice for my wife's first adventure?

[Avatar_V]

I have an interesting situation and would appreciate any advice people can offer My (newly-wed) wife has never role played, I don't know if she had even heard of D&D until she met me, but recently she's seemed especially interested in it and I thought it would be great if I could introduce her to the hobby. However I have a couple of questions:

First, we're out of town right now and will be for another month, so if we rolled her a character up now, it would be a two person D&D game. I'd DM and she'd be the only player (probably with an NPC to help sort of make a party). Do you guys think this would work or should I wait until we can get together with other gamers?

Secondly, I'm not used to writing adventures for completely inexperienced gamers. Especially one like her. I asked her what sort of class she would like. She informed me 'princess'. I laughed and explained that I'd have to make some sort of home-brew class for that and that it was really more of a position. So, she changed it to Princess Sorceress. So, I guess my question is what sort of adventure can I write to appeal to a person who loves fantasy novels but has never gamed and wants to play a princess sorceress?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

[EricNoah]

Sounds like she's itching to rescue the handsome prince from something ...

 

[Paka]

Avatar V,

I have a similiar situation with my girlfriend. She loves fantasy novels, having devoured most of the major works in her youth and still reading Martin and Potter's more current fantasy stuff.

She had one bad experience with D&D and is hesitant to give it another try...but it seems like she's intrigued and would play in the right situation.

One on one games can be a little intimidating, even for experienced gamers. Maybe you could ask her who she would want to game with and she could help you put together one or two extra people to help take her out of the glaring spotlight.

Let us know how it works out.

 

[Tessarael]

The easy part: Princess or Princess Sorceress is quite easy to formulate with the rules. She can take levels in Sorceress and Aristocrat. Aristocrat is an okay NPC class, d8 HD, average attack BAB, good skills, simple and martial weapons, all armor and shields. Her primary attributes are probably Dex and Cha, as she won't be wearing much armor.

I guess I'd recommend either level 6 Sorcerer, or level 4 Sorcerer/level 2 Aristocrat. In either case, she should take the Leadership feat, and you get to roleplay her sidekick cohort. The sidekick is important: it gives you a helpful NPC to steer her through some potential newbie mistakes. A 4th level Paladin, Fighter, or Rogue might be appropriate as her cohort. The rest of the followers: maids-in-waiting, butler, etc., get left at the castle (besides she won't have many of them).

For the adventure, I'd concentrate on the roleplaying, rather than hack-and-slash. What troubles her kingdom? Is she sent as ambassador somewhere? Are there suitors lined up to marry her? Is there pressure from her parents to marry? Is she one of the last in a long line of daughters to the crown, and rather unimportant ... now is her chance to seize the spotlight! Is the princess pining for some low-class squire? Is there a knight who will be her champion, but his friendship is doomed to always be chaste. Maybe she gets kidnapped, a band of ruffians want to ransom her, she escapes, then needs to make it back home while hiding her identity (for fear of discrediting her parents).

Ideally, set it in a setting that both your wife and you are familiar with. That way, she knows some of the background mythology.

Get your wife to write down goals for her character, as you roleplay. That's very helpful in building the game world to interact well with the character and give useful plot hooks that the character will be interested in.

Just some thoughts ...

 

[Joshua Randall]

Hmm, a princess/sorceress is an intriguing combination. I was reminded of one of the WotC free original adventures, Manifesting: A Tale. (This adventure involves psionics, but you can easily swap them out for roughly equivalent sorceress spells.) From the blurb: "Mystery surrounds the fortress of Melinas -- Lord Prisius' daughter has vanished. To find her, the PCs must navigate a fortress full of ghostly manifestations and strange NPCs."

Change things around so that your wife's character = Lord Prisius' daughter. Maybe there is some hunky adventurer in the castle looking to rescue her, but she has to make contact with him and in the mean time, fend for herself.

Another princess-themed WotC adventure is Vessel of Stars: "the player characters find themselves escorting a child queen to a mysterious location in an area stalked by extraplanar horrors, their goal blocked by alien assassins and secret forces. Will the queen escape and return home to rule?"

Again, change this around so that your wife's character = the child queen, and she is not the helpless damsel in distress of the published adventure. Make her an active participant in a safe escape from the assassins and so forth - this would give your wife's character a chance to boss around a bunch of NPC retainers and men-at-arms. Could be satisfying, for her.

Yet another WotC free adventure which seems to have strong role-playing possibilities, although not as heavily princessy, is The Ettin's Riddle: "An ettin has begun terrorizing the hamlet of Newkeep, stealing cattle and smashing homes -- and flattening anyone who tries to stop him. Meanwhile, a mysterious riddle has appeared on the walls of the local shrine -- a riddle which may hold the key to vanquishing the ettin."

The nice thing about this adventure is that it can be solved completely non-violently. (Again, you'll need to modify it a bit.) Depeding upon how your wife builds her character, a non-violent solution might be highly advisable, given that princess/sorceresses are not well known for their prowess in battle.

Finally, and this is kind of random, have you read the story Daughter of Regals by Stephen R. Donaldson? It's a bit out there, but could give you some good ideas for princess-based roleplaying.

Hmm. Princess-based roleplaying. I like that sound of that. So, which d20 company wants to step into the fray and start churning out supplements?

 

[Voadam]

Kidnapped!

If she is a magical elven princess a band of goblin rogues can sneak into the palace use tag team sap sneak attacks and knock out her attendants and her.

She is then taken to the grungy goblin camp to be held for ransom. The only thing the goblins did not take into consideration was that she was a magical princess with powers that allow her to do all sorts of things.

If she gets chased, they attempt to take her down with subdual attacks only as they need her alive for the ransom. A few might shoot arrows overzealously though, and hten be smacked down by their superiors for risking the prize.

 

[Rel]

I can relate somewhat to your situation, Avatar V. I am currently running a solo campaign for my wife who has gamed before but is still a relative beginner compared to the gang I normally game with. She is playing a Wizard so I've had to deal with similar issues to what you're looking at.

My first advice is to start small. With due respect to Tessarael, I would avoid starting her higher than 1st level. A 1st level character has a relatively small set of abilities to juggle and it is instructive and fun to see a character grow from the ground up.

I think the Aristocrat/Sorcerer route sounds like a great idea and would try and combine them via the 1st level multiclass idea from the DMG. That will give her good hit points, good skill points, a few spells and so forth. A well rounded starting character that is going to give her lots of room for roleplaying, which is what many women seem to like from the experience.

It can be tough to come up with challenges for a 1st level character that aren't deadly so a focus on roleplaying and overcoming low-combat or non-combat encounters works well. For my wife's wizard character, her first adventure was the series of tests that her mentor put her through before she could end her apperenticship and strike out on her own. I think a similar type of adventure could work in your situation.

How about something like this:

The Princess is one of the most beloved people in the royal family (she's got a high Charisma). As she has gotten older, she has already become one of the more accomplished diplomats in the family and she is perceived as one of the most eligible women in the kingdom. Doubtlessly a political marriage is in her future.

But she doesn't want that. She wants to determine her own destiny instead of being a trophy to some other royal (her high Charisma again, manifesting itself in a strong personality). But she'll likely only be able to pull this off if she establishes herself as more than "profitably marriagable material". She needs to become important to the royal household in some other capacity.

So she has badgered the palace Vizier (a Wizard) into trying to teach her some magic. But the musty piles of tomes and drudgery of constant study served mostly to frustrate her. Knowing that she must prove herself and do it soon if she wants to avoid a political marriage, she becomes increasingly angry until that anger boils over and manifests itself in the form of her sorcerous powers.

She is suddenly afraid of what her family members will think of having a Sorcerer in the family. If the legends about Dragon Blood or pacts with Demons are true, it could reflect on the whole royal family. So she decides to keep it a secret.

Except for one thing. One of the palace guards, a man of few scruples, saw her do her magic. Seeing an opportunity for monetary gain, he attempts to blackmail her to keep her secret. Panicked, she pays him off at first, but his demands for money or jewels become more frequent and more ambitious.

While seeking a way out of this mess, she uncovers the fact that this guardsman is also involved in a scheme by which criminals sentenced to minor punishments are being smuggled out of the royal prison and sold into slavery to a nearby kingdom where such things are allowed.

So, the Princess decides that she must battle against this conspiracy by sneaking into the palace dungeon, confronting the slave smugglers and ultimately the crooked guardsman. If she can do this, she will have done her father's kingdom a great service and will have proved herself an asset that should not be quickly married off for the greatest political gain.

That's a very off-the-cuff sort of idea, but it abounds with roleplaying potential while having the opportunity for some small battles (fights with the slavers, maybe some vermin in the dungeon, a climactic showdown with the guardsman). You have a fairly small pool of NPC's to develop and can focus on fleshing them out well. She should be able to gain a level or two during the process and be ready for greater adventures beyond this (while retaining the roleplaying opportunities that will arise from a Princess of the royal family being a Sorceress and getting involved in "adventures").

Above all, this solo experience will yield some benefits from the one-on-one nature of the sessions. You will be able to explain the rules as you go without other players around who might be bored by it. She won't be self-conscious about "acting" in front of other people or doing something wrong. And if you fudge things in her favor or give her magic items along the way, you don't need to worry about keeping her balanced with other party members.

I think it is nearly the perfect environment to teach someone to play in.

 

[Voadam]

Murder Mystery!

The royal court travels from palace to palace throughout the year and the princess travels with the court.

Either as they are staying at an inn or a noble's estate on the way to the summer palace there is a night of festivities with different nobles and personages, and there is a murder in the night, everyone scrambles to try to piece together what happened and who dunnit.

Use an actual murder mystery game or novel for the specific plot if you want.

 

[Avatar_V]

These are good ideas! I like the kidnapped by goblins one, that works very well with the princess theme. My only concern is that such an adventure might not leave as much room for roleplaying as others. I really like the murder mystery idea too, though. She likes stuff like that and it could be great for roleplaying and for her using her hefty charisma for something other then casting spells. The only problem with that is that I think the goblin kidnapping adventure would be a whole lot easier for me to make! LoL. In any case, these are all great ideas. Thanks a lot and keep 'em coming!

 

[takyris]

Honestly, I'd either have her be a Bard or a straight Sorceress and just have the Princess thing be flavor text -- swap out some skills in favor of others on the Sorcery thing if necessary (Diplomacy instead of Intimidate, frex). I'd worry that multiclassing would be too complex for a first-timer.

When I tried to get my wife to play, I thought that a bard would be too complicated, so I gave her a sorceress. She didn't enjoy it -- but had a better time later on, when she played a bard, as she'd originally wanted.

The big thing that I'd suggest would be to allow your wife to determine the adventure. Don't force her into a plot. Let her talk to people. If she says, "Hmm, someone was murdered. I'll go talk to the servants," then let that WORK, even if you originally planned to force her to talk to the victim's political enemy.

Other stuff depends on your wife's personality. Roleplaying always seems like a good idea for female gamers, but that's a stereotype, just like any other. Some women want to kill things relax, too. If she's new to D&D, my advice would be to play up the fantasy -- we all know that unicorns have a fairly limited and fairly dull set of abilities, but if she wants to play a princess, you can be darned sure she'd be happy to see a unicorn make an appearance in the game. You can do a lot of things with flavor text, with colorful descriptions that give a sense of wonder, rather than just "It's a unicorn. What do you do?"

For a general game idea, I'd have her father the king ask her to help make peace in a town that's having trouble. The town could be under attack by monsters, and the nobles in the town are disagreeing about what to do. She can:

- go kill the monsters
- talk to the nobles and convince them to work together
- go talk to the monsters and find out that they're only attacking because some OTHER monster is holding their children hostage, and then find THAT monster and kill it and find a note on it that indicates that it was being paid by one of the nobles in the town, who wanted to use the monster attacks to generate enough anger to get his political rival out of the picture and cement his own power