Hi everyone! No question this time. I just wanted to share that I'm beginning my first campaign tonight (Lost Mines of Phandelver), and you guys have all been instrumental in helping me be prepared. I'm sure I'll have some flubs, and there will be moments that my group will cause that I will have not even begun to think of, but these forums have really gotten me to a point where I feel like I'm as prepared as a first-timer can be. The butterflies are real, and I am super-excited to introduce this game to some family members.
I'm sure I'll be right back on here tomorrow to figure out how to handle the issues that arise tonight, but I know that this community will be around to offer help.
Ugh. Gamus Interruptus. Scheduling issues and bad communications sank our session last night. A couple party members bailed, so we're postponed until next week. I guess this gives me more time to prepare!
One of my groups is wrapping up LMoP and it's been a lot of fun - I hope you have that too. DM to DM advice - don't let one missed session stop you. It takes one person to say "This is happening" as the DM and another to say "Damn straight!" as a player and suddenly there's a game. Yeah, it's best to get four people when and where you can, but don't let that stop you if every planned session turns into a scheduling circus.
By making sure it happens, regardless of who can't make it, you actually create momentum and desire to be involved on the part of others. They go from "Well he's talked about it." to "Damn, I missed a session and it sounds like it was fun. I need to BE there!"
One of my groups is wrapping up LMoP and it's been a lot of fun - I hope you have that too. DM to DM advice - don't let one missed session stop you. It takes one person to say "This is happening" as the DM and another to say "Damn straight!" as a player and suddenly there's a game. Yeah, it's best to get four people when and where you can, but don't let that stop you if every planned session turns into a scheduling circus.
By making sure it happens, regardless of who can't make it, you actually create momentum and desire to be involved on the part of others. They go from "Well he's talked about it." to "Damn, I missed a session and it sounds like it was fun. I need to BE there!"
Happy DM'ing!
Yes, part of my prep for next week is to send out some reminders ahead of time with concrete details, "be at the table at 6:30" kind of thing. This is a group of brand-new players. It grew from two to four to possibly 5, with a lot of hesitation and "I think that sounds fun" from the newer recruits. I need to coax them over the "I'll give it a try" hump. I'm trying to be very casual and laid-back about it, encouraging them that we can finish their characters as part of this first session, and go over questions and whatnot.
I do have a scheduling conflict with one of my players who definitely won't be able to join the until after the next session. However, it seems the hub-like structure of LMoP allows for the introduction of a new member to the party pretty easily once they reach Phandlin.
I do have a scheduling conflict with one of my players who definitely won't be able to join the until after the next session. However, it seems the hub-like structure of LMoP allows for the introduction of a new member to the party pretty easily once they reach Phandlin.
It absolutely does. It's not all that likely that a party will stop in town, grab all the quest prompts, and then do a lap around the area without returning to rest, etc. I've had a few people miss a session here or there and used Phandalin as the excuse and locale for them. Last night for instance. One of the characters is a dwarf and the player missed two sessions due to travel. I had his character stay in town and we used the downtime activities for him to find work as a blacksmith and make a little side cash (DMG has rules for this). Easy as pie, gave the character something to do with lost time, and a small reward. No big deal.
Phandalin has just enough for that sort of basic activities. No shop full of magical potions, but all the basics, absolutely. Anyone with a trade can easily spend downtime there working.
That's tough. I'm running mine on roll20, bunch of strangers, 2 being brand new, 2 somewhat new only played a few sessions, and 2 that are pretty decently experienced. Plus then myself, who has played a few sessions, but completely new to being a DM. I purposely created a 6-person group though, with the idea that if one or 2 drop or miss a session, we are still able to run without issue.
Everyone has been really active to this point chatting it up in discord and on the forum, so I'm confident we'll all be there tonight. I cannot wait!
Our first session went great. We played for about 3 1/2 hours and they are almost through the hideout.
Description of events/spoilers below, marking for any who haven't run the adventure and don't want to know what happens:
The ambush was cool and started out hilariously. The Monk was steering the wagon, and when he left the wagon he of course described himself doing a flip over the front of the horses driving it and sprinted toward the goblins. Since he wanted to flip over 2 horses pulling a wagon i made him acrobatics check, which he rolled a nat 1. Thus he got up, jumped and caught his foot in the reigns and fell prone. It was the funniest part of the night, and was amazing. The group ended up accepting a goblin surrender after 1-shotting three of the goblins on the first turn, then eventually befriending that goblin who helped them out in getting to Cragmaw Hideout. The goblin told them of the lookouts so the Rogue was able to quickly dispense of them before they even knew what was going on. They calmed the wolves down by feeding them and some awesome animal handling checks allowed them to set the wolves free. After that the group kind of split up because the bard thought he could be super sneaky. He took out the goblin lookout on the bridge with one attack, So while the entire group went toward the steep chasm and figured out how to get up it to where Sildar is held, the bard went up the path toward the twin pools.
The party had used some great ideas with the barbarian, rogue, and a bunch of rope in getting around the part that collapsed. They had just dealt with all of the goblins around Sildar, so I cut over to the bard before they started speaking with Sildar or looking for anything. The bard ended up noticing a dam about to ready to give way, barely held together (the first flood) and making some noise attracted a goblins curiosity from that room, and started running away. Once the goblin saw him, he turned and saw the goblin, after they stared at each other for a moment, both terrified and unsure what to do, the bard pulled out his horn and blew it as loud as he could to try and gather the attention of his companions, who were just unchaining Sildar. That's exactly where we stopped, the party heard the horn, knowing it was the bard, but not knowing what it meant other than something must have gone wrong. I actually also did a gm roll against a difficult DC to see if the vibrations from the loud horn would have set the dam free, but the roll was just under the DC.
First thing next session will be an initiative roll and the goblin is going to try to release the dam. I assume the other party members are going to try to rush back where they split with the bard, and I have no idea what the bard will do.
Everyone said it was great, and said I did a great job which made me feel pretty good. I only had a few errors, on the bards first few vicious mockery checks I accidentally had the idea backwards, where my save rolled above the 14, and I said it hit, then when it rolled below the 14 i said it missed. Caught that after the 3rd one though, realized i was doing the check backwards (was thinking ok if i roll below a 14 that means a fail, so I told the bard it failed but actually it was the enemy who failed and the ability should have hit). I also didn't have the goblins stat block on hand (completely forgot to prepare that, won't happen again) so was flipping around when doing checks and attacks to check numbers.
All in all, was great and I can't wait until next Friday. I will definitely say reading through the forums here were a huge help in preparation and being ready for things the PC's would do, and how to react to them.
Mehetmet, sounds like it was a great night! I hope my group enjoys themselves as much as yours did. I've basically nailed everyone down and told them we're going no matter what on Wednesday night. We've got 4 for sure, waiting on a 5th, so it looks like everything is all set.
Good catch on the save rolls. I figure I'll make similar rookie mistakes. Aside from that, did you feel like you needed to adjust anything else?
I changed the beginning around a bit -- per the module you basically start right at the ambush. I didn't like that too much, thus my initial hook (before the adventure started ,I sent this to each player) was that each party member had received a letter from Gundren, whom they all had previously met in one way or another, stating something along the lines of "when last we met you stated you wanted to be an adventurer. if you were serious, meet me at the Driftwood Tavern in Neverwinter on this day". and threw in some flavor text for each character.
Thus the first scene was the party had walked in seeing their friend Gundren and sat at his table. He didn't bother with introductions and got right to business, beginning explaining that he needed the shipment guarded on the way down and he and his human friend who wasn't talking very much had to rush on ahead in a hurry to take care of business. After a few questions and some minor back and forth, Gundren then bought them a round of drinks, told them to get to know each other, and left. I made it clear that Gundren wanted to see them within the tenday and that the journey should be about 6 days without any issues coming up, so they best be on their way.
After their initial intro's they spoke to some patrons in the bar about Gundren and about Phandalin. They actually wanted to take a look around Neverwinter, where they encountered a few shops of things they couldn't afford and unfriendly NPC's basically looking down on the ragtag group. After a short while they started the journey.
Other than that I haven't made any changes (other than of course changing around some text/words the NPC's use versus the guide stating "This is what you say here" and "this is what he says when this happens"). I had to give the goblin they befriended a bit of a personality, but I kind of already had one because I was anticipating it happening later in the adventure (with the goblin in the redbrand hideout who passes out when the party encounters him and the bugbears). My plan was to make him super dramatic and flamboyant, but instead I have done that with the goblin they befriended on the ambush.
I like your alteration to the hook. I may do something similar, if you don't mind. I'm thinking it might be fun to actually hand-write these and give them to my players, since we're all in the same place. I also like your deadline of a tenday. I've been wondering about how to make them care about time and how long things take, beyond just short and long rests. You've come up with a really simple and motivating way to do just that. Man, maybe I should just ask you to DM my group ;)
Haha, thanks for the compliments, and go for it, my hook isn't copyrighted :)
Honestly once they started out on the road I jumped from Neverwinter to "You have been traveling about 4 days with no issues. You encountered a few merchants, some townsfolk looking for a new start in Neverwinter, a few wandering clerics trying to convert you, but nothing of note. You camped last night at the cross to the triboar trail and know you only have a day or two remaining on the journey." At that point I made them verify the marching order was still what was set on day 1 one they left, or if they had moved around (a few people were riding in the wagon initially while one was driving, perhaps they wanted to switch it up). I then said it's about mid afternoon and they saw the horses on the trail up ahead.
I encouraged them to rest after the encounter stating it was getting dark and the goblin told them it was 1/2 journey to the hideout, but they were super wary about camping. They made sure to set up a rotating watch throughout the night and everything. Just because of that I wanted to throw another encounter at them, just for being so thorough about setting up a watch which was totally unexpected, but I didn't (but now I likely will down the line while traveling to the other quest areas).
also, if your players are brand new, I found this quick "what you can do during combat" guide PDF online. It's super helpful and I sent it to each player prior to playing and explained it a bit. It basically goes through all of your potential options on waht you can do on your turn in combat. Link is here
With the exception of one player, they are all brand new. My work computer won't let me get to that link (we have super strict web filtering), but is it similar to the Actions in Combat section of the compendium? I was thinking of making a handout of that for them. I would email or share it with them online, but of the six players, there are two teens and two Jr. Highers who won't look at it until we sit down anyway lol.
I should elaborate that my group is my two nephews (the Jr. High kids), their dad (my brother-in-law), my two boys (the teenagers) and a good family friend (the one other experienced one).
We finally got to have our first session last night. We spent more time than I thought we would on session zero type stuff, so we only ended up with about an hour of play time. I probably should have anticipated this, since everyone is so new and we needed to talk about a lot of stuff to get everyone up to speed.
We only got as far as the goblin ambush on the Triboar Trail. We had to stop right as they are getting ready to head out on the trail to the Cragmaw Hideout. We had some fun moments in combat, including the cleric rolling the first nat 20 of the campaign, resulting in a pretty epic goblin-face-smashing. There was much rejoicing.
I'm going to need to work with this group to get the chemistry a little smoother. There was a lot of disagreement, and they mistrust just about every NPC they encounter.
On the plus side, they LOVED playing. Everyone got a chance to do something cool (or funny). The only bummer was that we had to end so soon after beginning the story. The group consists of my two sons (17 and 19) and my two nephews (10 and 12). This morning my 17yo said he didn't want to go to school, he just wanted to play more D&D.
Sounds awesome, glad you got started this week. I feel the same as your 17 year old, I don't want to work, I want to work on this campaign and play.
When I first started playing D&D myself, I was similar in not trusting any NPC. I wanted to "sense motive" (Pathfinder skill I believe, probably 3.5 too) to everyone we encountered (who is lying to me dammit!). I'm going to guess that's from the video-game culture first -- Always wanting to get the edge and know everything as fast as possible and exploit whatever you can. I have a tendency to just want to get any edge I can, and took that into tabletop RPG when I started -- which isn't the point at all. Once I realized that, I stopped worrying about things like power-gaming, making sure I had ideal statistics/abilities/feats etc. Tabletop RPG is more fun (to me) without that "burden" of optimizing. Put me in front of a video game though, and it's right back to it.
yeah, this group is all about optimizing. I think you're right, it's kind of natural to come in and do that, if you don't know anything else. You're just like, "hey, being a wizard sounds cool, I guess I'll just be whatever race makes me the best wizard... High Elf? Done." Hopefully as they play more and get to see how things work, they'll relax a bit and enjoy the game. When they all sat down with Gundren to hear the job offer, several were immediately suspicious, especially since he wouldn't say what he was up to. I kept being like "No, guys... this is a good friend of yours, he wouldn't shaft you like that."
I'll have to reiterate the fact that I'm not trying to trick them, and that we're trying to tell a story together. Leaving in the first scene because the guy won't give you more gold is kind of the opposite of what we're doing.
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Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
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Hi everyone! No question this time. I just wanted to share that I'm beginning my first campaign tonight (Lost Mines of Phandelver), and you guys have all been instrumental in helping me be prepared. I'm sure I'll have some flubs, and there will be moments that my group will cause that I will have not even begun to think of, but these forums have really gotten me to a point where I feel like I'm as prepared as a first-timer can be. The butterflies are real, and I am super-excited to introduce this game to some family members.
I'm sure I'll be right back on here tomorrow to figure out how to handle the issues that arise tonight, but I know that this community will be around to offer help.
Cheers to you guys!
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Cheers, have fun!
good luck! my first session is Friday, also doing LMoP, can't wait!
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Ugh. Gamus Interruptus. Scheduling issues and bad communications sank our session last night. A couple party members bailed, so we're postponed until next week. I guess this gives me more time to prepare!
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Good response regarding preparation!
One of my groups is wrapping up LMoP and it's been a lot of fun - I hope you have that too. DM to DM advice - don't let one missed session stop you. It takes one person to say "This is happening" as the DM and another to say "Damn straight!" as a player and suddenly there's a game. Yeah, it's best to get four people when and where you can, but don't let that stop you if every planned session turns into a scheduling circus.
By making sure it happens, regardless of who can't make it, you actually create momentum and desire to be involved on the part of others. They go from "Well he's talked about it." to "Damn, I missed a session and it sounds like it was fun. I need to BE there!"
Happy DM'ing!
View my StartPlaying.Games profile to see my games!
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
View my StartPlaying.Games profile to see my games!
That's tough. I'm running mine on roll20, bunch of strangers, 2 being brand new, 2 somewhat new only played a few sessions, and 2 that are pretty decently experienced. Plus then myself, who has played a few sessions, but completely new to being a DM. I purposely created a 6-person group though, with the idea that if one or 2 drop or miss a session, we are still able to run without issue.
Everyone has been really active to this point chatting it up in discord and on the forum, so I'm confident we'll all be there tonight. I cannot wait!
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
Our first session went great. We played for about 3 1/2 hours and they are almost through the hideout.
Description of events/spoilers below, marking for any who haven't run the adventure and don't want to know what happens:
The ambush was cool and started out hilariously. The Monk was steering the wagon, and when he left the wagon he of course described himself doing a flip over the front of the horses driving it and sprinted toward the goblins. Since he wanted to flip over 2 horses pulling a wagon i made him acrobatics check, which he rolled a nat 1. Thus he got up, jumped and caught his foot in the reigns and fell prone. It was the funniest part of the night, and was amazing. The group ended up accepting a goblin surrender after 1-shotting three of the goblins on the first turn, then eventually befriending that goblin who helped them out in getting to Cragmaw Hideout. The goblin told them of the lookouts so the Rogue was able to quickly dispense of them before they even knew what was going on. They calmed the wolves down by feeding them and some awesome animal handling checks allowed them to set the wolves free. After that the group kind of split up because the bard thought he could be super sneaky. He took out the goblin lookout on the bridge with one attack, So while the entire group went toward the steep chasm and figured out how to get up it to where Sildar is held, the bard went up the path toward the twin pools.
The party had used some great ideas with the barbarian, rogue, and a bunch of rope in getting around the part that collapsed. They had just dealt with all of the goblins around Sildar, so I cut over to the bard before they started speaking with Sildar or looking for anything. The bard ended up noticing a dam about to ready to give way, barely held together (the first flood) and making some noise attracted a goblins curiosity from that room, and started running away. Once the goblin saw him, he turned and saw the goblin, after they stared at each other for a moment, both terrified and unsure what to do, the bard pulled out his horn and blew it as loud as he could to try and gather the attention of his companions, who were just unchaining Sildar. That's exactly where we stopped, the party heard the horn, knowing it was the bard, but not knowing what it meant other than something must have gone wrong. I actually also did a gm roll against a difficult DC to see if the vibrations from the loud horn would have set the dam free, but the roll was just under the DC.
First thing next session will be an initiative roll and the goblin is going to try to release the dam. I assume the other party members are going to try to rush back where they split with the bard, and I have no idea what the bard will do.
Everyone said it was great, and said I did a great job which made me feel pretty good. I only had a few errors, on the bards first few vicious mockery checks I accidentally had the idea backwards, where my save rolled above the 14, and I said it hit, then when it rolled below the 14 i said it missed. Caught that after the 3rd one though, realized i was doing the check backwards (was thinking ok if i roll below a 14 that means a fail, so I told the bard it failed but actually it was the enemy who failed and the ability should have hit). I also didn't have the goblins stat block on hand (completely forgot to prepare that, won't happen again) so was flipping around when doing checks and attacks to check numbers.
All in all, was great and I can't wait until next Friday. I will definitely say reading through the forums here were a huge help in preparation and being ready for things the PC's would do, and how to react to them.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
Mehetmet, sounds like it was a great night! I hope my group enjoys themselves as much as yours did. I've basically nailed everyone down and told them we're going no matter what on Wednesday night. We've got 4 for sure, waiting on a 5th, so it looks like everything is all set.
Good catch on the save rolls. I figure I'll make similar rookie mistakes. Aside from that, did you feel like you needed to adjust anything else?
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
I changed the beginning around a bit -- per the module you basically start right at the ambush. I didn't like that too much, thus my initial hook (before the adventure started ,I sent this to each player) was that each party member had received a letter from Gundren, whom they all had previously met in one way or another, stating something along the lines of "when last we met you stated you wanted to be an adventurer. if you were serious, meet me at the Driftwood Tavern in Neverwinter on this day". and threw in some flavor text for each character.
Thus the first scene was the party had walked in seeing their friend Gundren and sat at his table. He didn't bother with introductions and got right to business, beginning explaining that he needed the shipment guarded on the way down and he and his human friend who wasn't talking very much had to rush on ahead in a hurry to take care of business. After a few questions and some minor back and forth, Gundren then bought them a round of drinks, told them to get to know each other, and left. I made it clear that Gundren wanted to see them within the tenday and that the journey should be about 6 days without any issues coming up, so they best be on their way.
After their initial intro's they spoke to some patrons in the bar about Gundren and about Phandalin. They actually wanted to take a look around Neverwinter, where they encountered a few shops of things they couldn't afford and unfriendly NPC's basically looking down on the ragtag group. After a short while they started the journey.
Other than that I haven't made any changes (other than of course changing around some text/words the NPC's use versus the guide stating "This is what you say here" and "this is what he says when this happens"). I had to give the goblin they befriended a bit of a personality, but I kind of already had one because I was anticipating it happening later in the adventure (with the goblin in the redbrand hideout who passes out when the party encounters him and the bugbears). My plan was to make him super dramatic and flamboyant, but instead I have done that with the goblin they befriended on the ambush.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
I like your alteration to the hook. I may do something similar, if you don't mind. I'm thinking it might be fun to actually hand-write these and give them to my players, since we're all in the same place. I also like your deadline of a tenday. I've been wondering about how to make them care about time and how long things take, beyond just short and long rests. You've come up with a really simple and motivating way to do just that. Man, maybe I should just ask you to DM my group ;)
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Haha, thanks for the compliments, and go for it, my hook isn't copyrighted :)
Honestly once they started out on the road I jumped from Neverwinter to "You have been traveling about 4 days with no issues. You encountered a few merchants, some townsfolk looking for a new start in Neverwinter, a few wandering clerics trying to convert you, but nothing of note. You camped last night at the cross to the triboar trail and know you only have a day or two remaining on the journey." At that point I made them verify the marching order was still what was set on day 1 one they left, or if they had moved around (a few people were riding in the wagon initially while one was driving, perhaps they wanted to switch it up). I then said it's about mid afternoon and they saw the horses on the trail up ahead.
I encouraged them to rest after the encounter stating it was getting dark and the goblin told them it was 1/2 journey to the hideout, but they were super wary about camping. They made sure to set up a rotating watch throughout the night and everything. Just because of that I wanted to throw another encounter at them, just for being so thorough about setting up a watch which was totally unexpected, but I didn't (but now I likely will down the line while traveling to the other quest areas).
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
also, if your players are brand new, I found this quick "what you can do during combat" guide PDF online. It's super helpful and I sent it to each player prior to playing and explained it a bit. It basically goes through all of your potential options on waht you can do on your turn in combat. Link is here
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
With the exception of one player, they are all brand new. My work computer won't let me get to that link (we have super strict web filtering), but is it similar to the Actions in Combat section of the compendium? I was thinking of making a handout of that for them. I would email or share it with them online, but of the six players, there are two teens and two Jr. Highers who won't look at it until we sit down anyway lol.
I should elaborate that my group is my two nephews (the Jr. High kids), their dad (my brother-in-law), my two boys (the teenagers) and a good family friend (the one other experienced one).
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Yeah it contains all of that info, it's a 2-page PDF (a printout would be simply front and back)
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
We finally got to have our first session last night. We spent more time than I thought we would on session zero type stuff, so we only ended up with about an hour of play time. I probably should have anticipated this, since everyone is so new and we needed to talk about a lot of stuff to get everyone up to speed.
We only got as far as the goblin ambush on the Triboar Trail. We had to stop right as they are getting ready to head out on the trail to the Cragmaw Hideout. We had some fun moments in combat, including the cleric rolling the first nat 20 of the campaign, resulting in a pretty epic goblin-face-smashing. There was much rejoicing.
I'm going to need to work with this group to get the chemistry a little smoother. There was a lot of disagreement, and they mistrust just about every NPC they encounter.
On the plus side, they LOVED playing. Everyone got a chance to do something cool (or funny). The only bummer was that we had to end so soon after beginning the story. The group consists of my two sons (17 and 19) and my two nephews (10 and 12). This morning my 17yo said he didn't want to go to school, he just wanted to play more D&D.
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Sounds awesome, glad you got started this week. I feel the same as your 17 year old, I don't want to work, I want to work on this campaign and play.
When I first started playing D&D myself, I was similar in not trusting any NPC. I wanted to "sense motive" (Pathfinder skill I believe, probably 3.5 too) to everyone we encountered (who is lying to me dammit!). I'm going to guess that's from the video-game culture first -- Always wanting to get the edge and know everything as fast as possible and exploit whatever you can. I have a tendency to just want to get any edge I can, and took that into tabletop RPG when I started -- which isn't the point at all. Once I realized that, I stopped worrying about things like power-gaming, making sure I had ideal statistics/abilities/feats etc. Tabletop RPG is more fun (to me) without that "burden" of optimizing. Put me in front of a video game though, and it's right back to it.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
yeah, this group is all about optimizing. I think you're right, it's kind of natural to come in and do that, if you don't know anything else. You're just like, "hey, being a wizard sounds cool, I guess I'll just be whatever race makes me the best wizard... High Elf? Done." Hopefully as they play more and get to see how things work, they'll relax a bit and enjoy the game. When they all sat down with Gundren to hear the job offer, several were immediately suspicious, especially since he wouldn't say what he was up to. I kept being like "No, guys... this is a good friend of yours, he wouldn't shaft you like that."
I'll have to reiterate the fact that I'm not trying to trick them, and that we're trying to tell a story together. Leaving in the first scene because the guy won't give you more gold is kind of the opposite of what we're doing.
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.