Thaumaturge
Wandering. Not lost. (He/they)
Players: Three (A, J, and E) sisters and their husbands (H and W) (except me, who was running the game). Three players had played a game or two 15+ years ago. My wife (A) is an experienced player. One player (W) begrudgingly agreed to play, though he expected to hate it. His wife (E) forced the issue, though. To be technically accurate, J and H also played one evening’s worth of the playtest a year ago, which they’d enjoyed.
DM: Me. I love my family. I love D&D. I had high hopes coming into this evening, and I was also worried about how things could play out. I’ve been at tables where people didn’t really want to play, and no one had fun. I’ve run and played since late 1e or early 2e. I’ve run story-driven games, and I’ve run meat-grinders. I went into tonight intentionally elevating player enjoyment over rules exactness or character assassination. I didn’t plan on taking it easy or fudging rolls, but neither did I plan to eke out every tactical advantage in the pursuit of character death. I have run new players through the game numerous times over the years.
Context: This game happened at the end of a long week of visiting and family reunion style activities, and after putting our collective 4 children (ages 3-5) to bed. There was some alcohol, as W refused to play otherwise. This was a beer (and wine and cider) and (gluten-free) pretzels game with close friends.
Set-up: While H finished putting children to bed, I got out my giant dice bag, and the others figured out what dice they wanted. They scrambled for favorite colors, tested out rolls, and asked all of the questions new players ask about polyhedral dice (what’s this one with double digits? how do I read this pyramid one? etc)
Then I offered up the characters. I listed off race/class/background, though I referred to the rogue’s background as “shady” instead of saying criminal. They made their choices.
They read over their sheets. They got excited about their backgrounds and flaws. J at first wanted to play her character from a year ago and then exclaimed “perfect” when I explained the pre-gen character situation. J and H (a married couple) enjoyed the fact that their characters’ personalities were (comic, exaggerated) mirrors of their own.
They started asking questions about how certain abilities worked. I explained a little bit, and then started the game. Explaining rules out of context gets really boring and bogged down quickly.
Play: I took the adventure’s suggestion and started the party out in a tavern in Neverwinter. I had them all introduce their characters. W named his character “Neverwinter Jr.”. Hoo-boy. Well, at least he was buying into the story of the setting.
After introductions, they talked to Gundren. H, playing the dwarf, immediately agreed to help his cousin. The others, for their reasons agreed.
I described the wagon they were to escort. J volunteered to drive the wagon, and (s)he very much wanted the other female characters to sit on the seat beside him. J played the noble as very protective of women, and a bit condescending. Her sisters were very confused. While they dealt with their seating assignments, W asked if he could sit in the back of the wagon. I described the wagon as full of stuff. He asked to make a space he could stand in. After glancing at his wisdom score (13) I decided he could easily make a space he could sit in or stand and fire from. He rearranged the boxes, saw the women were still discussing seating arrangements, and told me he sat down and went to sleep. Not bad, I thought.
Once it was decided that A was joining J in the cart, E and H picked places in the marching order, and we were off.
Goblin Ambush: I described the situation of dead horses in the road. J, patriarch that (s)he was, jumped off the wagon, and went to check on the goblins. The goblins jumped out, and got a surprise round. I rolled like garbage for the first two rounds of combat. The goblins didn’t land anything. H cast guiding bolt, but missed. Goblins started hitting J, but she used his second wind and recovered. W missed his first 3 shots of the night. A threw a magic missile. At some point in the evening, I think here, J took enough damage to require a cure wounds also. After disposing of the goblins, they inspected the area. J was worried about leaving the wagon to follow the goblins. J thought the economic impact of losing the wagon would be a big blow to rebuilding efforts. H thought that was ridiculous and they were going to get his cousin. They played it well enough, I gave them both inspiration.
Goblin Trail: W and E walked in the front rank. W made his perception checks both times. E didn’t, but made Dex saves pretty well.
Cragmaw Hideout (Cave Mouth): They got to the hideout, and W decided to be sneaky. She snuck up to the cave mouth, found the goblins “on watch”, and the wolves just inside. They proceeded to role-play out hand signals. It was pretty funny watching them try to make each other understand what they were doing. The rogue and cleric were the main communicators, and I ruled people with a shady past might have similar, but different, hand signals to those a soldier sees. They had fun with it. They agreed (sort of) that the dwarf would go cause a distraction downstream while the rogue killed goblins. He sneezed, she fired, a goblin died, because I ruled her 14 hit the AC 15 goblin. The adventure describes the goblins as being pretty lax in their duties. I decided they didn’t have their shields on and at the ready. W moved up, fired at the goblin, and the goblin died. So far their sneaking was successful. I was impressed.
Cragmaw Hideout (Kennel): They snuck up to the kennel, ambushed the wolves, and W climbed up the fissure. She saw Klarg and gang, came down, and reported back.
Cragmaw Hideout (Steep Passage): The goblin didn’t notice the party. They used group stealth checks, and always had 3 or more successes. They were one of the stealthiest parties I’ve ever seen. The ones who could see guided the ones who couldn’t. I didn’t have a problem with this, though I might in a more “serious business” game.
Cragmaw Hideout (Goblin Den): They got the jump on the goblins. The cleric cast light on a stone inside of a pouch, and the wizard had a mage hand carry the pouch to the middle of the den. The mage hand dumped out the stone, and the party jumped a bunch of surprised goblins. They winnowed it down to Yeemik pretty quickly, so he threatened to dump Sildar to the ground. They didn’t take him seriously, so he dropped Sildar, knocking him unconscious. It took me a bit to find the information on the sidebar about where Gundren was. Once I did, they agreed to let Yeemik live if he would guard the unconscious Sildar and give up raiding. He agreed if they would bring him Klarg’s head and not kill any more goblins. There were lots of laughs at Yeemik’s winning grin, which is a bit toothy. But they all agreed.
It was getting late. I hand-waved the lone goblin. They remembered to say they didn’t kill him.
Cragmaw Hideout (Twin Pools Cave): They, again, surprised the goblins and knocked them out before one could warn Klarg.
Cragmaw Hideout (Klarg’s Cave): J rushed in and hit Klarg hard. Klarg hit back. Since I knew the fighter had just enough hit points, I had Klarg do average damage, leaving J at 1.Everyone else focused fire on Klarg, and he died before he could go again. The wolf took J to 0, but then died the next round. Out of healing, they couldn’t return J to consciousness, but they bound her wounds. Then we went through the loot, and I gave them enough XP to level.
Wrap-up: About half-way through the night W shook his head and looked at me with wonder. “I can’t believe I’m having fun.” By the time of Klarg’s demise, he, and everyone else, was high-fiving, and excited to achieve victory. The next morning we all agreed to set up a once a month google hangout game, so we could continue playing. E, W’s wife, has already called and said I need to get the ball rolling on scheduling the next game. Everyone had a blast, and they all want to play again.
Thaumaturge.
DM: Me. I love my family. I love D&D. I had high hopes coming into this evening, and I was also worried about how things could play out. I’ve been at tables where people didn’t really want to play, and no one had fun. I’ve run and played since late 1e or early 2e. I’ve run story-driven games, and I’ve run meat-grinders. I went into tonight intentionally elevating player enjoyment over rules exactness or character assassination. I didn’t plan on taking it easy or fudging rolls, but neither did I plan to eke out every tactical advantage in the pursuit of character death. I have run new players through the game numerous times over the years.
Context: This game happened at the end of a long week of visiting and family reunion style activities, and after putting our collective 4 children (ages 3-5) to bed. There was some alcohol, as W refused to play otherwise. This was a beer (and wine and cider) and (gluten-free) pretzels game with close friends.
Set-up: While H finished putting children to bed, I got out my giant dice bag, and the others figured out what dice they wanted. They scrambled for favorite colors, tested out rolls, and asked all of the questions new players ask about polyhedral dice (what’s this one with double digits? how do I read this pyramid one? etc)
Then I offered up the characters. I listed off race/class/background, though I referred to the rogue’s background as “shady” instead of saying criminal. They made their choices.
- A picked the wizard, so as to take the most mechanically difficult character.
- W picked the Folk Hero, and was excited to see his objective was “slaying the dragon”. When I pointed out he only needed to run the dragon off, he told me he didn’t want to think small.
- E picked the halfling rogue. She was excited about being sneaky.
- J played the fighter noble, and decided she was playing a male character, which led to a lot of confused pronoun usage throughout the night.
- The cleric fell to H, who arrived after everyone else had picked. He was the one who was the most into 2e (of those with previous play experience), so I was glad he got the cleric.
They read over their sheets. They got excited about their backgrounds and flaws. J at first wanted to play her character from a year ago and then exclaimed “perfect” when I explained the pre-gen character situation. J and H (a married couple) enjoyed the fact that their characters’ personalities were (comic, exaggerated) mirrors of their own.
They started asking questions about how certain abilities worked. I explained a little bit, and then started the game. Explaining rules out of context gets really boring and bogged down quickly.
Play: I took the adventure’s suggestion and started the party out in a tavern in Neverwinter. I had them all introduce their characters. W named his character “Neverwinter Jr.”. Hoo-boy. Well, at least he was buying into the story of the setting.
After introductions, they talked to Gundren. H, playing the dwarf, immediately agreed to help his cousin. The others, for their reasons agreed.I described the wagon they were to escort. J volunteered to drive the wagon, and (s)he very much wanted the other female characters to sit on the seat beside him. J played the noble as very protective of women, and a bit condescending. Her sisters were very confused. While they dealt with their seating assignments, W asked if he could sit in the back of the wagon. I described the wagon as full of stuff. He asked to make a space he could stand in. After glancing at his wisdom score (13) I decided he could easily make a space he could sit in or stand and fire from. He rearranged the boxes, saw the women were still discussing seating arrangements, and told me he sat down and went to sleep. Not bad, I thought.
Once it was decided that A was joining J in the cart, E and H picked places in the marching order, and we were off.
Goblin Ambush: I described the situation of dead horses in the road. J, patriarch that (s)he was, jumped off the wagon, and went to check on the goblins. The goblins jumped out, and got a surprise round. I rolled like garbage for the first two rounds of combat. The goblins didn’t land anything. H cast guiding bolt, but missed. Goblins started hitting J, but she used his second wind and recovered. W missed his first 3 shots of the night. A threw a magic missile. At some point in the evening, I think here, J took enough damage to require a cure wounds also. After disposing of the goblins, they inspected the area. J was worried about leaving the wagon to follow the goblins. J thought the economic impact of losing the wagon would be a big blow to rebuilding efforts. H thought that was ridiculous and they were going to get his cousin. They played it well enough, I gave them both inspiration.
Goblin Trail: W and E walked in the front rank. W made his perception checks both times. E didn’t, but made Dex saves pretty well.
Cragmaw Hideout (Cave Mouth): They got to the hideout, and W decided to be sneaky. She snuck up to the cave mouth, found the goblins “on watch”, and the wolves just inside. They proceeded to role-play out hand signals. It was pretty funny watching them try to make each other understand what they were doing. The rogue and cleric were the main communicators, and I ruled people with a shady past might have similar, but different, hand signals to those a soldier sees. They had fun with it. They agreed (sort of) that the dwarf would go cause a distraction downstream while the rogue killed goblins. He sneezed, she fired, a goblin died, because I ruled her 14 hit the AC 15 goblin. The adventure describes the goblins as being pretty lax in their duties. I decided they didn’t have their shields on and at the ready. W moved up, fired at the goblin, and the goblin died. So far their sneaking was successful. I was impressed.
Cragmaw Hideout (Kennel): They snuck up to the kennel, ambushed the wolves, and W climbed up the fissure. She saw Klarg and gang, came down, and reported back.
Cragmaw Hideout (Steep Passage): The goblin didn’t notice the party. They used group stealth checks, and always had 3 or more successes. They were one of the stealthiest parties I’ve ever seen. The ones who could see guided the ones who couldn’t. I didn’t have a problem with this, though I might in a more “serious business” game.
Cragmaw Hideout (Goblin Den): They got the jump on the goblins. The cleric cast light on a stone inside of a pouch, and the wizard had a mage hand carry the pouch to the middle of the den. The mage hand dumped out the stone, and the party jumped a bunch of surprised goblins. They winnowed it down to Yeemik pretty quickly, so he threatened to dump Sildar to the ground. They didn’t take him seriously, so he dropped Sildar, knocking him unconscious. It took me a bit to find the information on the sidebar about where Gundren was. Once I did, they agreed to let Yeemik live if he would guard the unconscious Sildar and give up raiding. He agreed if they would bring him Klarg’s head and not kill any more goblins. There were lots of laughs at Yeemik’s winning grin, which is a bit toothy. But they all agreed.
It was getting late. I hand-waved the lone goblin. They remembered to say they didn’t kill him.
Cragmaw Hideout (Twin Pools Cave): They, again, surprised the goblins and knocked them out before one could warn Klarg.
Cragmaw Hideout (Klarg’s Cave): J rushed in and hit Klarg hard. Klarg hit back. Since I knew the fighter had just enough hit points, I had Klarg do average damage, leaving J at 1.Everyone else focused fire on Klarg, and he died before he could go again. The wolf took J to 0, but then died the next round. Out of healing, they couldn’t return J to consciousness, but they bound her wounds. Then we went through the loot, and I gave them enough XP to level.
Wrap-up: About half-way through the night W shook his head and looked at me with wonder. “I can’t believe I’m having fun.” By the time of Klarg’s demise, he, and everyone else, was high-fiving, and excited to achieve victory. The next morning we all agreed to set up a once a month google hangout game, so we could continue playing. E, W’s wife, has already called and said I need to get the ball rolling on scheduling the next game. Everyone had a blast, and they all want to play again.
Thaumaturge.
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