Hello DMs! I'm actually not 100% sure if this is allowed or not, but I wanted to take a moment to not only chronicle my live playthrough of Lost Mine of Phandelver with my players, but also to take the opportunity to show ya'll what I changed, how it worked, and to get input from other DMs on what they would do with some situations. I'm sure a lot of you will have some input, but I want to also make sure everyone knows I can't take every single piece of advice that gets handed to me, so while I appreciate all the feedback I'm going to get, just keep in mind I can't use all of it, so I'm not trying to be rude.
Also, I really, really hope this helps someone else!
With that said, I'll recap Sessions 0, 1, and 2 here so you can see how things are going!
So there is A LOT of information below, but I wanted to include as much as I could, especially with Session 0 in case it helps any of you guys get your own Session 0 off the ground.
General Information
Player 0- Dungeon Master: I have been playing DnD for roughly 7 years, and have had some DM/GM experience prior to that with other RPGs. This is actually my first live playthrough as a DM for DnD. I have plenty of live experience as a player, as well as online games and pBp.
Player 1- Crimblor (Half Orc Barbarian): 7 years of play (and actually my first DM!) but definitely at a much more casual rate than myself. This is roughly his fourth campaign as either a DM or PC.
Player 2- Olleet (Half Elf Blood Hunter): 7 years of play, though in those 7 years she's had roughly 3 campaigns, all at low levels, all as a PC.
Player 3- Danki (Half Orc Rogue): First game ever! Has 0 prior TTRPG experience.
Player 4- Sgaeyl (Half Elf Ranger): First game ever! Has 0 prior TTRPG experience.
Player 5- Allak-Nor (Warforged Pact of the Fiend Warlock): First game ever! Has a little prior nerd/TTRPG experience but not much.
Player 6- Ara (Kalashtar Grave Domain Cleric): First game ever! A little nerd experience, but that's it! Missed Session 0 and Session 1, first night was Session 2.
There are roughly a dozen of us that rotate through a bi-weekly game night at my house anyway, though usually we play Cards Against Humanity, Pandemic, King of Tokyo, Jackbox, something like that. DnD is very hit and miss usually, but some folks really wanted to try it out recently and during one game night a group solidified that wanted to give it a go. It came down between Crimblor and I to DM, so I took the wheel. Crimblor has DMed for me in the past, and I wanted to make sure that he got some time to be a PC too.
Plus, I had ideas...
I had previously purchased Lost Mine of Phandelver but we had never gotten to play it as a group, but I did my homework and saw it was a pretty good learning adventure for new players, so I dug in deep to learn the content and away we went!
Session 0
I had run a few Session 0s before, but, I'm not going to lie, I really like some of the suggestions I saw the Dungeons Dudes present, so I used most of their format.
Before I launched Session 0, I set up a Discord server dedicated specifically to my group. It had all the basics. A General Chat, a Dice Channel, a Polling Channel (for votes), World Maps (just the big stuff, like Phandalin and the Sword Coast), a Voice Chat, and then a channel for each individual player that only myself, the player, Avrae, and the Remind Bot had access to.
Oh, on that note, the bots! Obviously I invited Avrae, as well as VoteBot (for letting the team vote on topics) and RemindBot (because sometimes I need to set reminders for myself, and the bot will @ me to look at certain things I set previously).
We did Session 0 in two hours one Saturday evening about two weeks before Session 1. I had Crimblor, Olleet, Sgaeyl, Danki, and Allak-Nor for this initial session. Something to be prepared for with new players; it's hard for them to know how to write a backstory. That is okay. Some will know what to do and will get creative, and some won't. I think the absolute most important aspect of having new players is to focus on letting them play a character and get their feet wet; it is okay to let them figure out who their character is along the way.
We covered the following topics. I posted this to the Discord in a channel labeled Session 0 and then we talked through everything.
What does everyone want out of the game? - For those that have played DnD before, what's something that you want to do that you've never gotten to do before? - For those who haven't played DnD before, is there something you wish you could have done during a similar game? Maybe a video game or other board game that lacked the mechanics DnD has?
Setting the schedule for the next game. - Do we want this to be a solely in person, or would we like to alternate between doing it on Discord and meeting in person? How frequently do we want to play? - Setting the schedule for the next game will be one of the first things we do at the start of every session.
Agreements- First, a few things from me- - It's okay to use substances for game night as usual (alcohol or gummies) but don't get so messed up you can't play. - Rule of Cool: I will typically rule in favor of the players getting to do fun, cool things. I will try to stick as close to the rules as possible but in those gray areas where it's not clear what to do, we'll figure it out the fun way. What are rules we are setting for ourselves for game? - One I suggest is no distractions; it's okay to use electronics at the table, but let's not be surfing the internet or texting constantly or whatever. It makes it harder to play the game and it distracts everyone at the table, not just you. - Snacks... (Yeah everyone agreed to bring snacks lol)
About the Campaign- - We are playing Lost Mines of Phandelver as a starting campaign, starting at Level 1 with basic characters so everyone can see how to play without all the added bells and whistles of uncommon items, feats, etc. - Are we going to play this campaign to the end or not? Do we want to run a couple of sessions of the simple stuff or move on to something else sooner or...? - You don't need an answer to this right now, but in the future we'll come up with some options for our next campaign and cote on it together. See what everyone wants to play together.
Character Creation- - You need to go ahead and get into your account at DnD Beyond. (w/ Link...) - First thing we need to do is roll some dice! Go to the dice-rolls and we're all going to roll a D20 to create a list of who knows who starting off! - Who Knows Who List - Don't play a character you're not excited about! Don't feel like you need to create a character that fits a certain roll in the party! Be happy with your character so you feel like playing! - Stay loose; don't try to figure out too much on your own in hard detail. We can all work on things together. - Start working through character sheets. Keep in mind, on first page; turn off Homebrew!
A few more things from me- - This is not a game of ME vs. YOU. I am a player too! I just have to play a different side of the game. - I will ignore HP rules where it makes sense to. If you run into a room to save someone and there's a knife to their throat and that NPC gets their throat cut, I won't be rolling damage, they'll just be dead. - I won't be shying away from violence and dark themes unless ya'll want me to. There won't be any sexual situations in any of my games though. - Player vs. Player: Sometimes there will be situations where characters will have to roll against each other. Remember we're all friends here and we'll work through these things together. - Metagaming: Remember your character doesn't know everything that you know. If you read the book of Lost Mines of Phandelver, your character still wouldn't know what's happening because they're there and it's happening to them. If you learn what an AC or DC is or whatever, your character doesn't know that. - Flanking: We WILL be using Flanking rules. Please help me remember if its applicable in your combat situation if I seem to have forgotten. - Critical Hit / Fumble: I will be using Critical Hit and Fumble/Miss rules. However, while a Nat 1 or Nat 20 may mean instant fail or success in some situations, in special circumstances it may not cause a Critical reaction. So, for example, if you decide to do a backflip over the moon, and you roll a Nat 20, you're still not going to make it. I will also be utilizing a Critical Hit / Fumble / Miss mechanic for appropriate situations to see what happens. This could do crazy stuff like sending an enemies head flying or cause you to drop your sword. If you land a critical hit, it automatically does MAX DAMAGE + a roll of your damage dice! I'll walk you through this when it happens...but remember that what you can do...the bad guys can do... - Healing: Healing potions / healing spells ALWAYS do max healing!
This is a lot for new players, and I understand that. BUT, I've had those campaigns where rules crept up out of nowhere and were an unpleasant surprise, so I made sure I fleshed all of this out in writing and then explained it. I posted it up on the Discord server under the Session 0 notes so everyone would have access to it and could see it after we covered it.
I won't cover all of the responses I got as we went through this information, but there are a few I wanted to include for context or informational purposes.
1) What does everyone want out of the game?
Olleet: Be creative and go to some cool places, get to know the party members, some realism / imaginative / world building, humor Crimblor:Humor / dumb bullshit / shit is weird, interesting NPCs, good main quest Sgaeyl: Puzzles and strategy / stuff that makes you think Danki: Here to love nerdiness Allak-Nor: Still thinking about it
3) What are rules we are setting for ourselves for game?
- No distractions (specifically don't be texting or whatever when using the devices; they're for gameplay only while we're at the table) - We like snacks (listen fam, these folks weren't playing. We have had soooo many snacks. It has been amazing...)
One thing I really wish I had done was to create their connections to Gundren Rockseeker when I had them figuring out which characters knew which during starting. That was a big mistake on my behalf, though I will say I don't think it was anything catastrophic, just a minor inconvenience to me as the DM. If you're here looking for suggestions, I cannot emphasize enough how important I think this is, especially considering I messed it up! Completely slipped my mind, so my suggestion to you is not to forget!
Session 1
We had Crimblor, Sgaeyl, Danki, Allak-Nor, and Olleet show up with bells and whistles ready to go. It was a very exciting night. Everyone brought snacks. Like...we coordinated for nachos and I swear we had so much food it was ridiculous. I still don't know how that happened.
Everyone was seated and ready to go on time. We opened with-
1) What do we think is going to happen tonight? (Answer: They were clueless and said so. Even Crimblor and Olleet didn't know what to expect...)
2) Introduction: They all went around the table and introduced their characters to one another for really the first time. I had them give up some simple back story information but a lot of folks were still struggling to create even enough foundation for me to help them. That's okay! We're still getting there as everyone figures out how the story aspect works.
3) Before we even started, we set the next game night date, time, and location, so everyone knew.
One thing I've been doing to make folks want to show up early or on time is to set out a box of dice and miniatures. Showing up first means you get to go through the minis first, as well as pick the dice you want for the night, and where you want to sit. Definitely going to keep this trend up, and as you'll see in Session 2...the incentives just keep going...
After that, why jumped in both-boots first. I started them off in an unnamed tavern in Neverwinter where Gundren Rockseeker and Sildar Hallwinter were holding what amounts to a job fair. Gundren focused in on the PCs because they seemed to be the closest thing to an 'organized unit' in comparison to anyone else in the room, so he offered them the job of picking up a wagonload of supplies and escorting them out to Barthens Provisions in Phandalin, where he would meet them and provide them with their next duties. Obviously he agreed to pay them, and so the fact that he was effectively their new boss became what anchored the PCs to him. I WISH I HAD CREATED A STRONGER CONNECTION! But at least later when things went sideways the PCs could look at each other and say "look, if we don't save this guy, we don't get paid", which they did several times.
Alright, smooth as silk so far. Here comes the part that really impressed me; the Goblin Arrows encounter. One of the Goblins rolled abysmally low on its Stealth check, so the PCs spotted it a mile away. They pulled up and dismounted like SEAL Team 6. It was ridiculous. I was so proud as my brand new baby players fanned out into the bushes and made Stealth checks! I of course offered my guidance to roll Perception to the Rogue, who stealthed forward (with a very high Stealth roll might I add...) and located *all* three of the hidden Goblins before Stealthing back. The PCs created a plan, and executed brilliantly. It was wild. The Goblins got SLAUGHTERED, and it was so great! No PCs were harmed in the creation of this encounter, and they had done so well working as a team that I gave them all Inspiration...which was nice, because it gave me an excuse to introduce what that is and why it's nice to have.
Immediately they knew something had gone down, and spotted all the footprints leading away without issue. They made the Survival checks to follow the path through the woods, and then proceeded on toward Cragmaw Hideout. I used the following map for the hideout-
What I like about this map in particular is that it gives a fair bit of area BEFORE you get into the cave that constitutes the hideout. I placed the snare and pit traps on this trail and hid them, but the PCs were on high alert and spotted them pretty quick, which was another big win for them. They also spotted the Goblins in the bushes near the entrance and the Rogue got the drop on them before the Ranger and Blood Hunter mopped up behind him. No muss, no fuss, two Goblins were dust as the Danki stealthed into the cave and spotted the wolves.
Now. I know what you're thinking. "JF, pets are the worst." I agree.
But.
Listen.
My players were so excited about these wolves. They *really* wanted to make friends, so I gave them the opportunity, and Sgaeyl, Ranger Extraordinaire, rolled some ridiculously high animal handling check, so I let them have the wolves. Do the wolves make encounters a bit of a pain? Sure do. But do my players love the wolves? Yes. So worth it. They can have the dang wolves.
Almost forgot- Once they players entered the hideout, I kicked on some ambient music! The players loved the following track, which is what played during the sweep of the Cragmaw Hideout.
Danki and Olleet scramble up the trash shoot with 0 issue, Stealth around to spot Klarg the Bugbear and his Goblin friends, and come back to report to the other PCs.
Here is where the Player Channels I set up in Discord came in handy.
I like giving Players information that other players don't have. I like seeing what they do with it. So once Danki and Olleet got in the 'secret' tunnel, I communicated everything to them in their Player Channels on Discord. Then when the characters came back, I let them tell the others what they found, based on what I dropped in the Discord player channels. The whole party loved this.
Crimblor, for whatever reason, went alone out into the hall, got spotted by the Goblin on the bridge, and had to pass an Athletics check not to get washed out of the cavern. When that didn't get him, the Goblin did a rinse and repeat (literally), and Crimblor held on again. A bell was rung, 2 Goblins showed up to reinforce the bridge, and the party ran out into the hallway. A fight commenced.
Before anything of significance could happen, Sgaeyl rolls a critical hit to attack the bridge itself with a flaming arrow. Why was the arrow on fire? She wanted it to be. Anyway. I totally played up the flaming arrow hitting the crappy ropes holding the bridge together and the Goblins going down in a pile of tumbling logs that were slowly catching fire. The Goblins were all killed by the fall. Everyone cheered and Sgaeyl felt like a badass. I loved it. She loved it. The party loved it. No regerts.
The sweep of the hideout continued with the party finding the room where Yeemik has Sildar hostage. This fight was bloody chaos and marks the first time anyone in the party took significant damage. Sildar was hurt when he was thrown off the ledge he was dangled over, but Allak-Nor prevented him from dying by diving under him and breaking his fall. Once Sildar was rescued, the party prepared to go find Klarg, and we wrapped the game for the night. They even had one of the wolves attack, and subsequently named it Bitey after it took out a Goblin.
So, up to this point, my big highlight is to create a link between the party and Gundren Rockseeker that is more than them wanting to get paid! Yes, that works if it's all you have! But I imagine that a better link would be more satisfying for me and the players too.
Now, Session 2 is where things really get interesting, but we'll cover that in my next post...
I hope this helps someone with their playthrough! If anyone has questions, comments, or suggestions, let me know! Also, I'm looking for me good dungeon synth style tracks for my players, so if you've got something like that, or even ambience, that you want to share, let me know!
And now it's time to talk about what came next....
Session 2
Prep Time!
Between Sessions 1 and 2, I did some serious prep, and I wanted to share some of what I did.
First of all, I picked out some semi-random Feats for my party. They had done so well in the first Session that I thought it would be nice to give them a boost, something to be excited about at the beginning of Session 2. I picked 3 Feats I thought could fit each of them, and then rolled to see what stuck.
Crimblor received the Charger feat (which he loves, btw, and I feel it is really underrated) Sgaeyl got Elven Accuracy Olleet got Sharpshooter (gooooood lord what have I done...) Allak-Nor got Eldritch Adept, and picked out Devil's Sight since he was the only member of the party without some level of Dark Vision (well, until Ara made her debut...) Danki got Skill Expert And introducing Ara, who I didn't know what she would be until kick off so I made a quick decision and, upon seeing she was bringing a mace, gave her Crusher
I didn't reveal this until game night, so we'll talk about this later.
I had already included background music during Session 1, so I had the players vote on some different ideas for ambience. Overhead lighting, oil lamps, candles, that sort of thing. I didn't vote. The players voted unanimously for a more ambient setting, and wanted to use oil lamps for lighting. Thus...the following set up was born...
But there was one more thing I wanted to do...
You see, years ago when I first started playing DnD, and Crimblor and I got everything together from Pinterest posts, free rules online, etc, we made our first DM screen out of a tri-fold board, glued some print outs with different guidance for DC checks all over it, and of course things facing the players that gave some general good ideas players should stick to. The board has a lot of sentimental value, but it was time for something a little more personal to the new group. Plus, the old board was entirely too tall. Like, I could see over it, but it felt like too much of a barrier between the group and I, so I started looking for a new DM screen. But I also wanted something the group could customize... And then it came to me.
I got on Amazon and ordered a 2 pack of 'desk dividers', which are basically little corrugated DM screens. I bought some DnD stickers on Amazon, and some more personalized stickers on Etsy, and wabam; we were on our way to having a new DM board.
I wanted to make it a fun, slow evolution, so here's what I did; the first person to roll a Crit each game gets to put a sticker on the board. Allak-Nor had rolled the first Crit in Session 1, and then Sgaeyl got the first Crit in Session 2, so the new DM screen looks like this-
Now, I also did some other minor prep work, but nothing worth sticking a ton of pictures up for. I started making a few props to hand out; I printed a parchment map with a red X they could find for Cragmaw Castle, as the Black Spider's letter to Glasstaff to put in the Redbrand Hideout. I even folded the letter and sealed it with blood colored wax I had laying around (because I'm weird like that...).
I think that gets us to....
Game Time!
We picked back up in the Cragmaw Hideout as the party prepped for their imminent confrontation with Klarg, leader of the Cragmaw HIdeout.
Now, we did a little retconning here...and the party found a Kalashtar in chainmail chained to the back wall where they'd found Sildar, Yeemik, and co, thus introducing us to our 6th PC, Ara, a Grave Domain Cleric. I was very excited to get a Cleric in the game, and once freed, Ara accompanied the party to get herself some much wanted revenge and to get out of the hideout.
The party was very cautious about approaching the area where Klarg was, since they'd seen in Session 1 where he was hiding, and then Yeemik of course wanted them to kill Klarg so he could take over (spoiler alert....Yeemik did not survive to get his just rewards...), so they knew what they were getting into. I bet they went through a good 20 minutes of strategizing about how they wanted to attack Klarg before someone had the bright idea of sending the Barbarian in to parlay.
And somehow it worked.
Crimblor stepped into the room with Klarg and negotiated a peaceful truce. Of course, I had to make a proper mess of this, so Klarg told the party that Ripper (the wolf) was the actual leader of the Cragmaw Hideout, and the Klarg wanted Ripper to be the leader of the Cragmaws, replacing King Grol. The party agreed to make this happen if Klarg would provide to them the location of Cragmaw Castle, and so I had him hand over the parchment map I had previously prepped (so glad I did that early on). I wasn't too worried about this myself, as I figured after this fight and all the lumps bumps and bruises they needed to heal up they'd be heading to Phandalin next, and guess what?
That is exactly what they did.
Anyone familiar with this campaign will tell you that for a small town, Phandalin has a surprising amount of baggage. There are the Redbrands to deal with, basically the local gang, and the myriad issues they present. There is a bounty on some Orcs at Wyvern Tor. There is the young dragon living up at Thundertree. There's the Banshee that has Bowgentle's spellbook. And of course there is the fact that Gundren Rockseeker is missing, which is relavent if you rescue Sildar and get him back to Phandalin and he starts working on that issue.
Yes, my party rescued "Sildar".
Let's explain why that's in quotations.
I spend a lot of time either in my office at work or on the road. And I heard multiple other Dungeon Masters talk about how underutilized the Doppelganger's in Lost Mine of Phandelver are. Now, anyone that knows me will tell you that two of my favorite movies of all time are The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). I love the paranoia, and not knowing who the enemy is, and the divisions it creates between the characters. And I said to myself "self...what opportunity do we have here with these Doppelgangers...and what sort of crazy stuff can we do with them?"
Now Sildar is a Doppelganger. I'm still not sure where the real Sildar is (I'm still working on that but think I have developed a solution), so of course this Doppelganger Sildar is using the fact that the Goblins brought him within a hairs width of death to explain his lapse in memory. The party has not picked up on this at all. Well, not as far as Session 2 goes, anyway. So here is Doppelganger Sildar, listening and observing and reporting up what the party is up to... And we'll revisit how that goes when we get to Session 3....
The party wound up splitting up as they explored Phandalin. Obviously, splitting the party sucks, but I managed. To give the individual members of the party the sense that they were getting truly unique information as they explored the town, I had them put in their Player Channels on Discord what they were doing, and replied there with what they were finding. I also had previously pre-printed guides to the different shops around town and let the players have those as they were shopping. This made my life sooooo easy, and I really recommend anyone running a shop to do something similar.
You'll see the cards here. I printed them out. God bless the creator.
The ONLY item that got bought was a roll-up rope ladder! This might seem trivial but when you see what I did to them in Session 3... It was amazing they had the foresight to do this.
As the session wrapped up, 4 Redbrand Ruffians jumped two of the PCs in the streets near the Stonehill Inn. Obviously I wanted this to signify DON'T SPLIT THE PARTY and also to get the Redbrands even higher on the PCs priority list. The first couple of rounds were Crimblor and Sgaeyl getting a whoopin' in the street...before Sgaeyl was able to roll a Crit Animal Handling to summon the wolves, which of course attracted the rest of the PCs to save them. The fight ended in short order after that, with 3 Redbrands getting killed and the 4th being captured by the party and taken hostage and carted back to the Stonehill Inn....
And that's where we'll pick up next time with Session 3...
Hello DMs! I'm actually not 100% sure if this is allowed or not, but I wanted to take a moment to not only chronicle my live playthrough of Lost Mine of Phandelver with my players, but also to take the opportunity to show ya'll what I changed, how it worked, and to get input from other DMs on what they would do with some situations. I'm sure a lot of you will have some input, but I want to also make sure everyone knows I can't take every single piece of advice that gets handed to me, so while I appreciate all the feedback I'm going to get, just keep in mind I can't use all of it, so I'm not trying to be rude.
Also, I really, really hope this helps someone else!
With that said, I'll recap Sessions 0, 1, and 2 here so you can see how things are going!
So there is A LOT of information below, but I wanted to include as much as I could, especially with Session 0 in case it helps any of you guys get your own Session 0 off the ground.
General Information
Player 0- Dungeon Master: I have been playing DnD for roughly 7 years, and have had some DM/GM experience prior to that with other RPGs. This is actually my first live playthrough as a DM for DnD. I have plenty of live experience as a player, as well as online games and pBp.
Player 1- Crimblor (Half Orc Barbarian): 7 years of play (and actually my first DM!) but definitely at a much more casual rate than myself. This is roughly his fourth campaign as either a DM or PC.
Player 2- Olleet (Half Elf Blood Hunter): 7 years of play, though in those 7 years she's had roughly 3 campaigns, all at low levels, all as a PC.
Player 3- Danki (Half Orc Rogue): First game ever! Has 0 prior TTRPG experience.
Player 4- Sgaeyl (Half Elf Ranger): First game ever! Has 0 prior TTRPG experience.
Player 5- Allak-Nor (Warforged Pact of the Fiend Warlock): First game ever! Has a little prior nerd/TTRPG experience but not much.
Player 6- Ara (Kalashtar Grave Domain Cleric): First game ever! A little nerd experience, but that's it! Missed Session 0 and Session 1, first night was Session 2.
There are roughly a dozen of us that rotate through a bi-weekly game night at my house anyway, though usually we play Cards Against Humanity, Pandemic, King of Tokyo, Jackbox, something like that. DnD is very hit and miss usually, but some folks really wanted to try it out recently and during one game night a group solidified that wanted to give it a go. It came down between Crimblor and I to DM, so I took the wheel. Crimblor has DMed for me in the past, and I wanted to make sure that he got some time to be a PC too.
Plus, I had ideas...
I had previously purchased Lost Mine of Phandelver but we had never gotten to play it as a group, but I did my homework and saw it was a pretty good learning adventure for new players, so I dug in deep to learn the content and away we went!
Session 0
I had run a few Session 0s before, but, I'm not going to lie, I really like some of the suggestions I saw the Dungeons Dudes present, so I used most of their format.
Dungeon Dudes Session 0 Video
Before I launched Session 0, I set up a Discord server dedicated specifically to my group. It had all the basics. A General Chat, a Dice Channel, a Polling Channel (for votes), World Maps (just the big stuff, like Phandalin and the Sword Coast), a Voice Chat, and then a channel for each individual player that only myself, the player, Avrae, and the Remind Bot had access to.
Oh, on that note, the bots! Obviously I invited Avrae, as well as VoteBot (for letting the team vote on topics) and RemindBot (because sometimes I need to set reminders for myself, and the bot will @ me to look at certain things I set previously).
We did Session 0 in two hours one Saturday evening about two weeks before Session 1. I had Crimblor, Olleet, Sgaeyl, Danki, and Allak-Nor for this initial session. Something to be prepared for with new players; it's hard for them to know how to write a backstory. That is okay. Some will know what to do and will get creative, and some won't. I think the absolute most important aspect of having new players is to focus on letting them play a character and get their feet wet; it is okay to let them figure out who their character is along the way.
We covered the following topics. I posted this to the Discord in a channel labeled Session 0 and then we talked through everything.
- For those that have played DnD before, what's something that you want to do that you've never gotten to do before?
- For those who haven't played DnD before, is there something you wish you could have done during a similar game? Maybe a video game or other board game that lacked the mechanics DnD has?
- Do we want this to be a solely in person, or would we like to alternate between doing it on Discord and meeting in person? How frequently do we want to play?
- Setting the schedule for the next game will be one of the first things we do at the start of every session.
First, a few things from me-
- It's okay to use substances for game night as usual (alcohol or gummies) but don't get so messed up you can't play.
- Rule of Cool: I will typically rule in favor of the players getting to do fun, cool things. I will try to stick as close to the rules as possible but in those gray areas where it's not clear what to do, we'll figure it out the fun way.
What are rules we are setting for ourselves for game?
- One I suggest is no distractions; it's okay to use electronics at the table, but let's not be surfing the internet or texting constantly or whatever. It makes it harder to play the game and it distracts everyone at the table, not just you.
- Snacks... (Yeah everyone agreed to bring snacks lol)
- We are playing Lost Mines of Phandelver as a starting campaign, starting at Level 1 with basic characters so everyone can see how to play without all the added bells and whistles of uncommon items, feats, etc.
- Are we going to play this campaign to the end or not? Do we want to run a couple of sessions of the simple stuff or move on to something else sooner or...?
- You don't need an answer to this right now, but in the future we'll come up with some options for our next campaign and cote on it together. See what everyone wants to play together.
- You need to go ahead and get into your account at DnD Beyond. (w/ Link...)
- First thing we need to do is roll some dice! Go to the dice-rolls and we're all going to roll a D20 to create a list of who knows who starting off!
- Who Knows Who List
- Don't play a character you're not excited about! Don't feel like you need to create a character that fits a certain roll in the party! Be happy with your character so you feel like playing!
- Stay loose; don't try to figure out too much on your own in hard detail. We can all work on things together.
- Start working through character sheets. Keep in mind, on first page; turn off Homebrew!
A few more things from me-
- This is not a game of ME vs. YOU. I am a player too! I just have to play a different side of the game.
- I will ignore HP rules where it makes sense to. If you run into a room to save someone and there's a knife to their throat and that NPC gets their throat cut, I won't be rolling damage, they'll just be dead.
- I won't be shying away from violence and dark themes unless ya'll want me to. There won't be any sexual situations in any of my games though.
- Player vs. Player: Sometimes there will be situations where characters will have to roll against each other. Remember we're all friends here and we'll work through these things together.
- Metagaming: Remember your character doesn't know everything that you know. If you read the book of Lost Mines of Phandelver, your character still wouldn't know what's happening because they're there and it's happening to them. If you learn what an AC or DC is or whatever, your character doesn't know that.
- Flanking: We WILL be using Flanking rules. Please help me remember if its applicable in your combat situation if I seem to have forgotten.
- Critical Hit / Fumble: I will be using Critical Hit and Fumble/Miss rules. However, while a Nat 1 or Nat 20 may mean instant fail or success in some situations, in special circumstances it may not cause a Critical reaction. So, for example, if you decide to do a backflip over the moon, and you roll a Nat 20, you're still not going to make it. I will also be utilizing a Critical Hit / Fumble / Miss mechanic for appropriate situations to see what happens. This could do crazy stuff like sending an enemies head flying or cause you to drop your sword. If you land a critical hit, it automatically does MAX DAMAGE + a roll of your damage dice! I'll walk you through this when it happens...but remember that what you can do...the bad guys can do...
- Healing: Healing potions / healing spells ALWAYS do max healing!
This is a lot for new players, and I understand that. BUT, I've had those campaigns where rules crept up out of nowhere and were an unpleasant surprise, so I made sure I fleshed all of this out in writing and then explained it. I posted it up on the Discord server under the Session 0 notes so everyone would have access to it and could see it after we covered it.
I won't cover all of the responses I got as we went through this information, but there are a few I wanted to include for context or informational purposes.
1) What does everyone want out of the game?
Olleet: Be creative and go to some cool places, get to know the party members, some realism / imaginative / world building, humor
Crimblor: Humor / dumb bullshit / shit is weird, interesting NPCs, good main quest
Sgaeyl: Puzzles and strategy / stuff that makes you think
Danki: Here to love nerdiness
Allak-Nor: Still thinking about it
3) What are rules we are setting for ourselves for game?
- No distractions (specifically don't be texting or whatever when using the devices; they're for gameplay only while we're at the table)
- We like snacks (listen fam, these folks weren't playing. We have had soooo many snacks. It has been amazing...)
One thing I really wish I had done was to create their connections to Gundren Rockseeker when I had them figuring out which characters knew which during starting. That was a big mistake on my behalf, though I will say I don't think it was anything catastrophic, just a minor inconvenience to me as the DM. If you're here looking for suggestions, I cannot emphasize enough how important I think this is, especially considering I messed it up! Completely slipped my mind, so my suggestion to you is not to forget!
Session 1
We had Crimblor, Sgaeyl, Danki, Allak-Nor, and Olleet show up with bells and whistles ready to go. It was a very exciting night. Everyone brought snacks. Like...we coordinated for nachos and I swear we had so much food it was ridiculous. I still don't know how that happened.
Everyone was seated and ready to go on time. We opened with-
1) What do we think is going to happen tonight? (Answer: They were clueless and said so. Even Crimblor and Olleet didn't know what to expect...)
2) Introduction: They all went around the table and introduced their characters to one another for really the first time. I had them give up some simple back story information but a lot of folks were still struggling to create even enough foundation for me to help them. That's okay! We're still getting there as everyone figures out how the story aspect works.
3) Before we even started, we set the next game night date, time, and location, so everyone knew.
One thing I've been doing to make folks want to show up early or on time is to set out a box of dice and miniatures. Showing up first means you get to go through the minis first, as well as pick the dice you want for the night, and where you want to sit. Definitely going to keep this trend up, and as you'll see in Session 2...the incentives just keep going...
After that, why jumped in both-boots first. I started them off in an unnamed tavern in Neverwinter where Gundren Rockseeker and Sildar Hallwinter were holding what amounts to a job fair. Gundren focused in on the PCs because they seemed to be the closest thing to an 'organized unit' in comparison to anyone else in the room, so he offered them the job of picking up a wagonload of supplies and escorting them out to Barthens Provisions in Phandalin, where he would meet them and provide them with their next duties. Obviously he agreed to pay them, and so the fact that he was effectively their new boss became what anchored the PCs to him. I WISH I HAD CREATED A STRONGER CONNECTION! But at least later when things went sideways the PCs could look at each other and say "look, if we don't save this guy, we don't get paid", which they did several times.
Alright, smooth as silk so far. Here comes the part that really impressed me; the Goblin Arrows encounter. One of the Goblins rolled abysmally low on its Stealth check, so the PCs spotted it a mile away. They pulled up and dismounted like SEAL Team 6. It was ridiculous. I was so proud as my brand new baby players fanned out into the bushes and made Stealth checks! I of course offered my guidance to roll Perception to the Rogue, who stealthed forward (with a very high Stealth roll might I add...) and located *all* three of the hidden Goblins before Stealthing back. The PCs created a plan, and executed brilliantly. It was wild. The Goblins got SLAUGHTERED, and it was so great! No PCs were harmed in the creation of this encounter, and they had done so well working as a team that I gave them all Inspiration...which was nice, because it gave me an excuse to introduce what that is and why it's nice to have.
Immediately they knew something had gone down, and spotted all the footprints leading away without issue. They made the Survival checks to follow the path through the woods, and then proceeded on toward Cragmaw Hideout. I used the following map for the hideout-
https://pin.it/IyL2MLgYI
What I like about this map in particular is that it gives a fair bit of area BEFORE you get into the cave that constitutes the hideout. I placed the snare and pit traps on this trail and hid them, but the PCs were on high alert and spotted them pretty quick, which was another big win for them. They also spotted the Goblins in the bushes near the entrance and the Rogue got the drop on them before the Ranger and Blood Hunter mopped up behind him. No muss, no fuss, two Goblins were dust as the Danki stealthed into the cave and spotted the wolves.
Now. I know what you're thinking. "JF, pets are the worst." I agree.
But.
Listen.
My players were so excited about these wolves. They *really* wanted to make friends, so I gave them the opportunity, and Sgaeyl, Ranger Extraordinaire, rolled some ridiculously high animal handling check, so I let them have the wolves. Do the wolves make encounters a bit of a pain? Sure do. But do my players love the wolves? Yes. So worth it. They can have the dang wolves.
Almost forgot- Once they players entered the hideout, I kicked on some ambient music! The players loved the following track, which is what played during the sweep of the Cragmaw Hideout.
Goblin War - Cryo Crypt
Danki and Olleet scramble up the trash shoot with 0 issue, Stealth around to spot Klarg the Bugbear and his Goblin friends, and come back to report to the other PCs.
Here is where the Player Channels I set up in Discord came in handy.
I like giving Players information that other players don't have. I like seeing what they do with it. So once Danki and Olleet got in the 'secret' tunnel, I communicated everything to them in their Player Channels on Discord. Then when the characters came back, I let them tell the others what they found, based on what I dropped in the Discord player channels. The whole party loved this.
Crimblor, for whatever reason, went alone out into the hall, got spotted by the Goblin on the bridge, and had to pass an Athletics check not to get washed out of the cavern. When that didn't get him, the Goblin did a rinse and repeat (literally), and Crimblor held on again. A bell was rung, 2 Goblins showed up to reinforce the bridge, and the party ran out into the hallway. A fight commenced.
Before anything of significance could happen, Sgaeyl rolls a critical hit to attack the bridge itself with a flaming arrow. Why was the arrow on fire? She wanted it to be. Anyway. I totally played up the flaming arrow hitting the crappy ropes holding the bridge together and the Goblins going down in a pile of tumbling logs that were slowly catching fire. The Goblins were all killed by the fall. Everyone cheered and Sgaeyl felt like a badass. I loved it. She loved it. The party loved it. No regerts.
The sweep of the hideout continued with the party finding the room where Yeemik has Sildar hostage. This fight was bloody chaos and marks the first time anyone in the party took significant damage. Sildar was hurt when he was thrown off the ledge he was dangled over, but Allak-Nor prevented him from dying by diving under him and breaking his fall. Once Sildar was rescued, the party prepared to go find Klarg, and we wrapped the game for the night. They even had one of the wolves attack, and subsequently named it Bitey after it took out a Goblin.
So, up to this point, my big highlight is to create a link between the party and Gundren Rockseeker that is more than them wanting to get paid! Yes, that works if it's all you have! But I imagine that a better link would be more satisfying for me and the players too.
Now, Session 2 is where things really get interesting, but we'll cover that in my next post...
I hope this helps someone with their playthrough! If anyone has questions, comments, or suggestions, let me know! Also, I'm looking for me good dungeon synth style tracks for my players, so if you've got something like that, or even ambience, that you want to share, let me know!
DM of AURYN: The Measure of Devotion - Escape from New York
And now it's time to talk about what came next....
Session 2
Prep Time!
Between Sessions 1 and 2, I did some serious prep, and I wanted to share some of what I did.
First of all, I picked out some semi-random Feats for my party. They had done so well in the first Session that I thought it would be nice to give them a boost, something to be excited about at the beginning of Session 2. I picked 3 Feats I thought could fit each of them, and then rolled to see what stuck.
Crimblor received the Charger feat (which he loves, btw, and I feel it is really underrated)
Sgaeyl got Elven Accuracy
Olleet got Sharpshooter (gooooood lord what have I done...)
Allak-Nor got Eldritch Adept, and picked out Devil's Sight since he was the only member of the party without some level of Dark Vision (well, until Ara made her debut...)
Danki got Skill Expert
And introducing Ara, who I didn't know what she would be until kick off so I made a quick decision and, upon seeing she was bringing a mace, gave her Crusher
I didn't reveal this until game night, so we'll talk about this later.
I had already included background music during Session 1, so I had the players vote on some different ideas for ambience. Overhead lighting, oil lamps, candles, that sort of thing. I didn't vote. The players voted unanimously for a more ambient setting, and wanted to use oil lamps for lighting. Thus...the following set up was born...
But there was one more thing I wanted to do...
You see, years ago when I first started playing DnD, and Crimblor and I got everything together from Pinterest posts, free rules online, etc, we made our first DM screen out of a tri-fold board, glued some print outs with different guidance for DC checks all over it, and of course things facing the players that gave some general good ideas players should stick to. The board has a lot of sentimental value, but it was time for something a little more personal to the new group. Plus, the old board was entirely too tall. Like, I could see over it, but it felt like too much of a barrier between the group and I, so I started looking for a new DM screen. But I also wanted something the group could customize... And then it came to me.
I got on Amazon and ordered a 2 pack of 'desk dividers', which are basically little corrugated DM screens. I bought some DnD stickers on Amazon, and some more personalized stickers on Etsy, and wabam; we were on our way to having a new DM board.
I wanted to make it a fun, slow evolution, so here's what I did; the first person to roll a Crit each game gets to put a sticker on the board. Allak-Nor had rolled the first Crit in Session 1, and then Sgaeyl got the first Crit in Session 2, so the new DM screen looks like this-
Now, I also did some other minor prep work, but nothing worth sticking a ton of pictures up for. I started making a few props to hand out; I printed a parchment map with a red X they could find for Cragmaw Castle, as the Black Spider's letter to Glasstaff to put in the Redbrand Hideout. I even folded the letter and sealed it with blood colored wax I had laying around (because I'm weird like that...).
I think that gets us to....
Game Time!
We picked back up in the Cragmaw Hideout as the party prepped for their imminent confrontation with Klarg, leader of the Cragmaw HIdeout.
Now, we did a little retconning here...and the party found a Kalashtar in chainmail chained to the back wall where they'd found Sildar, Yeemik, and co, thus introducing us to our 6th PC, Ara, a Grave Domain Cleric. I was very excited to get a Cleric in the game, and once freed, Ara accompanied the party to get herself some much wanted revenge and to get out of the hideout.
The party was very cautious about approaching the area where Klarg was, since they'd seen in Session 1 where he was hiding, and then Yeemik of course wanted them to kill Klarg so he could take over (spoiler alert....Yeemik did not survive to get his just rewards...), so they knew what they were getting into. I bet they went through a good 20 minutes of strategizing about how they wanted to attack Klarg before someone had the bright idea of sending the Barbarian in to parlay.
And somehow it worked.
Crimblor stepped into the room with Klarg and negotiated a peaceful truce. Of course, I had to make a proper mess of this, so Klarg told the party that Ripper (the wolf) was the actual leader of the Cragmaw Hideout, and the Klarg wanted Ripper to be the leader of the Cragmaws, replacing King Grol. The party agreed to make this happen if Klarg would provide to them the location of Cragmaw Castle, and so I had him hand over the parchment map I had previously prepped (so glad I did that early on). I wasn't too worried about this myself, as I figured after this fight and all the lumps bumps and bruises they needed to heal up they'd be heading to Phandalin next, and guess what?
That is exactly what they did.
Anyone familiar with this campaign will tell you that for a small town, Phandalin has a surprising amount of baggage. There are the Redbrands to deal with, basically the local gang, and the myriad issues they present. There is a bounty on some Orcs at Wyvern Tor. There is the young dragon living up at Thundertree. There's the Banshee that has Bowgentle's spellbook. And of course there is the fact that Gundren Rockseeker is missing, which is relavent if you rescue Sildar and get him back to Phandalin and he starts working on that issue.
Yes, my party rescued "Sildar".
Let's explain why that's in quotations.
I spend a lot of time either in my office at work or on the road. And I heard multiple other Dungeon Masters talk about how underutilized the Doppelganger's in Lost Mine of Phandelver are. Now, anyone that knows me will tell you that two of my favorite movies of all time are The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). I love the paranoia, and not knowing who the enemy is, and the divisions it creates between the characters. And I said to myself "self...what opportunity do we have here with these Doppelgangers...and what sort of crazy stuff can we do with them?"
Now Sildar is a Doppelganger. I'm still not sure where the real Sildar is (I'm still working on that but think I have developed a solution), so of course this Doppelganger Sildar is using the fact that the Goblins brought him within a hairs width of death to explain his lapse in memory. The party has not picked up on this at all. Well, not as far as Session 2 goes, anyway. So here is Doppelganger Sildar, listening and observing and reporting up what the party is up to... And we'll revisit how that goes when we get to Session 3....
The party wound up splitting up as they explored Phandalin. Obviously, splitting the party sucks, but I managed. To give the individual members of the party the sense that they were getting truly unique information as they explored the town, I had them put in their Player Channels on Discord what they were doing, and replied there with what they were finding. I also had previously pre-printed guides to the different shops around town and let the players have those as they were shopping. This made my life sooooo easy, and I really recommend anyone running a shop to do something similar.
https://www.inchoatethoughts.com/phandalin-shop-cards-npc-art-and-tokens
You'll see the cards here. I printed them out. God bless the creator.
The ONLY item that got bought was a roll-up rope ladder! This might seem trivial but when you see what I did to them in Session 3... It was amazing they had the foresight to do this.
As the session wrapped up, 4 Redbrand Ruffians jumped two of the PCs in the streets near the Stonehill Inn. Obviously I wanted this to signify DON'T SPLIT THE PARTY and also to get the Redbrands even higher on the PCs priority list. The first couple of rounds were Crimblor and Sgaeyl getting a whoopin' in the street...before Sgaeyl was able to roll a Crit Animal Handling to summon the wolves, which of course attracted the rest of the PCs to save them. The fight ended in short order after that, with 3 Redbrands getting killed and the 4th being captured by the party and taken hostage and carted back to the Stonehill Inn....
And that's where we'll pick up next time with Session 3...
DM of AURYN: The Measure of Devotion - Escape from New York