Your First Time

[Bloodstone Press]

In the past, there have been several threads asking about your first time playing DnD. However, I just realized that I've never seen one discussing your first time as a DM.

As there is currently at least two threads here started by people asking for DM tips, I figured it might be fun to share some of our earliest forays behind the screen.

For me, the first time I DMed was a Saturday. I had just played DnD for the first time with my dad and his friends the night before. They had been playing for a few years already and had finally invited me to join in. We stayed up past midnight on Friday and I could hardly sleep when I got home. Visions of flaming arrows and a fortress lost in the jungle filled my mind. When I woke up on Saturday I went over to my friends' house (two brothers, one was a year older than me, the other a year younger). I took the books with me and introduced them to this cool new game. The elder brother had played a few times before in his Gifted and Talented class so it wasn't totally new to him. None of us had DMed before or had any idea how to do it.

The three of us spent the whole day making characters, making dungeons, and adventuring through them. We rotated the DM job. While the DM planned the game and drew the map, the other two players made characters. As soon as that was done, we played through the maze. When we got to the end we switched. Someone else was the DM and had to come up with a game on the spot and draw a map quickly while the other two people made new characters. We probably played at least 9 sessions that one day. I know I had a stack of character sheets and maps with me when I got home that evening.

I was 10 years old... oh the simplicity, energy and excitement of youth...

So how about you? What was it like the first time you ran a game?

 

[Piratecat]

1981. I was a sophomore in high school, and all three of my players walked out on me after 20 minutes.

Sigh.

 

[maransreth]

The very first time I DMed was when we were introduced to Basic D&D. The group of us were all pretty new to roleplaying and had just finished a TMNT adventure that ended horribly wrong.

One of the guys moved into a new rental place and found the Basic Box Set with B2. I volunteered to learn the rules and also try to find a way to convert our TMNT character over to Basic. I somehow found a way to convert the Armour of Palladium to Basic and we were set.

Never mind that they were mutants and that, I let them walk into the fortress and get the lay of the land. Then it was off to the caverns and lots of fighting.

Back then that was all we cared about - hack&slash. I let them use the weapons they had from TMNT - mostly martial art weapons with the damage they dealt. After a couple of days of going through the caverns it was growing stale that the characters were killing the monsters so quickly and easily. So to rectify that we added an extra 0 to the end of the monster's HP, so a creature with 5 hp suddenly had 50 and there was lots more hacking&slashing.

I think everyone enjoyed it, well no-one disputed my calls and I think they cleared all of the caverns, but my recollection is kinda hazy as it was over 16 years ago that this occurred when we were all in first year high school.

 

[masque]

I was in middle school with a group of 4 guys, also in middle school. I ran Ravenloft. They were asked by on eof the Darklords to find their baby that was missing. They followed the clues to an asylum, made an elaborate plan to break in, did so, fought a couple lunatic werewolves, and then found the kid with the administrator, who had been asked by the wife to babysit.

Ugh, horrible. They said they enjoyed it. I had 10 minutes prep and winged the whole thing. This is the reason I'm reluctant to run any games 8 years later, and why I buy my books more for reading than playing or running.

 

[Agemegos]

1981. I was a sophomore in high school, and all three of my players walked out on me after 20 minutes.

Sigh.

It was 1981, or maybe late in 1980. I was in Year 11 or Year 12: what I think Americans call a junior or senior at high school. Ian Grojnowski had run a game before, but it degenerated into a bit of a schmozzle. I tried to do it right.

I sketched a dungeon that consisted of the ruins of a dwarvish mine and underground city, now occupied by monsters. Over the top I put a town, run by four 'name level' evil retired adventurers, who knew that an important piece of treasure (the crown jewels of a fallen dwarvish kingdom) were in the bottom of the dungeon, and who didn't feel themselves up to getting it out. they were running businesses catering to young adventurers who came to cut their teeth on this dungeon, and using the youngsters as unwitting cannon-fodder in their long slow assault in the place. I calculated that a higher-level party had gone through a few hours ahead of the PCs, and got wiped out, but made a huge dent in the monsters, almost killing the BEM inthe basement. I placed their corpses, items, map, and notes appropriately.

Bill Plant, Ian Grojnowski, and Paul Tritter came to my place on Saturday afternoon to play. Bill generated a cleric, Ian a Magic-User, and Paul a fighter (1st level, and we rolled 3d6 for each attribute in order). They paid their entry fees to the concessionaire at the entrance to the dungeon. They agreed to hand over 25% of any loot to the concessionaire when they departed. They went in. They were disconcerted to find that the top two levels have been picked clean. They reluctantly went down to the third level, and easily beat up some badly-wounded monsters. They found the dead thief of the preceding party, his notes, and the map. Using these, they avoided the intact areas of the fourth and fifth levels, went along the path that the earlier party had cleared ahead of them. They nearly freaked when they met the giant acid-spitting snail, but put it down with two arrows. They got the preceding party's items (such as survived). They realised the importance of the dwarvish crown jewels and chose not to pay 25% on those. They smuggled them out of the dungeon.

Back in the town on top, they went to the jeweller's shop (run, unbeknownst to them, but a retired evil master thief) and tried to sell him the sceptre. They soon twigged that something was wrong, and fled the town, hotly pursued by the evil syndics, their militia, and a bunch of monsters they had in their employ. To escape the cavalry they struck off the road into rough country, towards a dwarvish road that was marked on their map.

Now, there happened to be a dwarvish army marching along that road. It would have confiscated the dwarvish national treasures they had, but it would have saved their bacon, and they would have got to keep many of the items of a sixth-level party. I thought the whole thing was rather Fritz Leiber.

But anyway, they weren't to know about the dwarvish army. The players decided that I was being unfair. The characters threw the dwarvish treasures into a river, and then slit their wrists in protest against the unfairness of teh Universe.

:sigh:

 

[Asmo]

Well, lets see..
It was spring 2002, I was 38 years old and had heard lot of positive talk about this module called "Sunless Citadel". Our dm had been going for a long time and needed to take a break so I took the chance to dm.
It was a huge sucess,mainly to the module and great players
After that I´ve run Forge of Fury and planning to run Speaker In Dreams.

Asmo

 

[shilsen]

1981. I was a sophomore in high school, and all three of my players walked out on me after 20 minutes.

Sigh.

Details, please!

 

[Zappo]

It was in the early nineties, between 1990 and 1993. I'm a bit foggy there. It was red box OD&D and noone in a range of several kilometers had ever played any kind of RPG before. The enemy was Bargle (actually, the name in the Italian version was Zanzer Tem for some reason), the place was an extremely nonsensical dungeon, but noone really cared too much about that. We had a blast.

1981. I was a sophomore in high school, and all three of my players walked out on me after 20 minutes.

And now you have more than half a million views on your story hour. Whoa, PC, if there ever was an example of "don't give up"...

 

[Pbartender]

Fall of 1984.
3rd grade.
The example map from the Basic D&D set.
Ghouls ate the party.

 

[drunkmoogle]

Am I the only one to start with 3rd Edition o_0?

Summor of 03', my last true summer vacation before the start of college life. I started reading the webcomic 8-bit Theater (www.nuklearpower.com) and got interested in DnD through the constant references.

So I got the guys together, we pitched in for the books, and I ran a (then) bi-daily (!!!) game. I believe I went through half of WotC's public modules, first running the one with the kobold caves and orc cleric.

Everyone had a blast. IIRC, I did fudge a little to let them live, but it was great nonetheless. Alas, college started all too soon... and I now only run a weekly game (but I railroad much less often ) with college folk. At least I write my own stuff now .