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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9827327" data-attributes="member: 6779196">In the words of Brennan Lee Mulligan: “uh, incredible.”First session of a new campaign after a pretty long hiatus from DMing and it feels great to be back in the saddle. It’s also the first session I’ve run in my new home, and I am absolutely loving the setup I’ve got in our game room. It’s decorated to look like a fantasy tavern, where I’m DMing from behind the bar. Except instead of (or, rather, in addition to) glassware and spirits, I have all my DM notes, D&D books, and a jillion sets of dice. Best DM screen ever!We began the session with some light roleplaying, introducing the characters and using elements from their backstories to give them a reason to be working together, as well as feeding them a little worldbuilding by setting the first session concurrently with the real-life time of year. The adventurers met, naturally, in a tavern, on the fifth day of Sunswake - the year’s end festival serving as a stand-in for Christmas and New Years, held as a wake for the ending year. Everyone had the opportunity to share a bit about what from the year past their characters were reflecting on, mourning, or celebrating. But before the low-stakes social interaction wore out its welcome, I brought the party’s attention to the notice board - which I have a physical prop for in the game room, an actual cork board with handwritten job notices that the players could select from. The players selected one that interested them, and we were off.The campaign is a sandbox built of elements from a ton of different published adventures, but the core of the early game is Lost Mines of Phandelver combined with Dragon of Icespire Peak, and for anyone who has read the latter, the mission my players picked up was the Dwarven Excavation Site quest. A very simple adventure - a short 15 mile trip across open grassland to the excavation site at the foot of the mountain, followed by a very small, simple “dungeon” with two ochre jellies as the only real threat, and after clearing them out, the party gets accosted by a handful of orc raiders as they’re leaving the excavation site. Short and sweet, which is exactly what I had hoped for.This is my first time seeing the 2024 rules in action, and the high monster damage output combined with high PC healing capabilities was immediately evident. The party’s wizard, a Goliath with an impressive 18 Constitution (for a total of 10 HP at level one) got brought from full HP to 0 in one hit three times in this session, and each time was restored back to full HP before the end of the next round. Well, one of those times she didn’t actually lose and regain the HP, she just would have been brought to zero but her Stone’s Endurance absorbed the entire hit. Some might see this as a flaw, but I rather liked it. Combat felt really dangerous because it was very clear that any of them could easily get knocked from full to 0 in a single lucky hit, but such a knockout blow was functionally a tax on the party’s healing resources. By the end of the session, the party had expended all of their spell slots, one healing potion the wizard had bought with some of her starting gold, and the aforementioned use of Stone’s Endurance, but only one of the four of them was under full HP, so they could likely have handled a random encounter on the road back if it had come up. Feels really well-tuned, I hope that holds up as the party gains levels.We also got a chance to give my homebrew initiative system (which I’ve written about elsewhere) a try, and it was pretty well-received - the players all agreed it’ll take them some time to get used to it, but they did enjoy the dynamic it brought to the table, and would like to keep using it, so I’m thrilled!</blockquote>

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