Viking Bastard
Adventurer
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.
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.