The Hero, the Mage, and the Knight

Today was the first day of my D&D campaign and as far as I could tell everyone had a pretty good time. Only about half of my expected players actually showed up and I think I’ll lower my expectations of people moving forward but as long as we have at least 3 to play I’m a happy DM.

Like I said in my introduction I’m taking my players through the Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign from the D&D 5e Starter Kit as we only really have one experienced player and I’m still new to this whole DM thing. Our characters today were Bruce AKA “The Bumblebee”: the Halfling Monk with a superhero-esque alter-ego, Harry: the Tiefling Sorcerer with wild magic and a stingy attitude, and Donaldo the Great: the Human Paladin thirsting for blood.  I went with a variation on the Meet Me in Phandalin story hook that they suggest within the campaign book. Essentially, Bruce got a message from his long-time friend Gundren Rockseeker saying in fairly vague terms that he had “big business” to discuss. When they met up Gundren explained that he and his brother had found “something big” near the settlement of Phandalin and that they both had a pretty good chance to be rich if he wanted in. The first step in Gundren’s plan was to help deliver a wagon of supplies to a shop in the town where they would meet up again. Gundren wanted to go on ahead to take care of some business before the heroes arrived. Obviously Bruce, a simple guild artisan, can’t guard a wagon on his own so Gundren had put posters up advertising the job for adventurers looking for work that had instructed them to meet in the local tavern, where they would be interviewed and hand picked by Bruce. I felt this would be a good way of introducing the party members to each other without them needing to have any pre-established rapport, as well as provide a good RP opportunity for our two newer players to get comfortable playing their characters.

Maybe I’m just a shy person who assumes everyone else is shy, but they actually took to it pretty well. Donaldo immediately made himself comfortable with one of the bar maids, which is always a fun time, and brushed off Bruce at first but obviously went back to discuss business after finishing what (or maybe I should say who) he was doing. Harry on the other hand played it cool and stuck to the corner. He and Bruce closed the deal fairly quickly and by the time the night was done they were both on-board for the job. The next day the pair of new hires headed out from the city of Neverwinter with Bruce informing them that his friend (his alter-ego) would join them on the road. Shortly after being joined by The Bumblebee the wagon comes across a pair of dead horses on the road to Phandalin, upon inspecting the horses the party is ambushed by Goblins! Our first combat begins…

We took a moment as The Bumblebee’s player explained the initiative system as well as the types of actions players can take during a given turn. The goblins were dispatched fairly quickly, however Harry the Sorcerer did end up needing to make a few death saves after he decided to get into melee with one of the goblins using his dagger. After dispatching 3 of the goblins and knocking the last one unconscious to be interrogated later, the party arrived at Phandalin. I was a little surprised that they decided to finish the delivery before questioning their captive but at least they had him to lead them to the goblin cave as they were meant to and I didn’t have to reach too far to point them in that direction.

After delivering their goods, the party learns that the goblins had been a persistent problem for the settlement and that Gundren had not arrived on schedule. The party was surprised to learn that the settlement didn’t really have any proper guardsmen to deal with problems like this and went to the Townmaster, Harbin Wester, to offer their services. They worked out a deal for the goblins, found a side-quest involving bandits to be completed later, and returned to their captive to begin the questioning. The goblin, Gank, was fairly uncooperative until Donaldo decided to start moving into torture territory, stabbing Gank in the leg with his javelin. This actually opened up a pretty cool opportunity for The Bumblebee to play good cop against Donaldo’s bad cop and they got the information they needed pretty quickly after that. The goblins had a hideout not far from where the party was originally ambushed. With this information they decided it would be better to head out in the morning when they’re refreshed so they head to the tavern for a good night’s rest. Before going to bed Harry also sends a letter out to his nearest criminal contact to get information on the Redbrand bandits involved in the above mentioned side-quest, and after the first combat went the way it did he also wanted to see if they have anyone able to teach him about armouring himself.

They set out the next morning and with the help of Gank, Who The Bumblebee had taken to calling “Big G”, they find the goblin hideout and make their approach. I’ll spare you most of the details as far as the dungeon crawl is concerned and focus more on what I learned as a DM about my players throughout the experience. For starters, Harry seems to really favour his light crossbow over his actual spells. Being first level he obviously didn’t have too many but he did have the firebolt cantrip and he used it all of one time, falling back to the crossbow for most of the dungeon. I didn’t think of it until sitting down to write this but that might actually be a part of his roleplay. Harry was previously small time thief before being taken in by an experienced mage and turning his life around and it could be that during the time before he learned to control his innate magical abilities he was simply more comfortable with physical weapons. We’ll see if this changes as the character grows, assuming the player stays on. I also learned that his player likes to take the Skyrim approach to dungeons, which is to say he looted just about every goblin in the place for their shitty weapons and armour in hopes of selling them to one of the merchants in Phandalin. The next thing I learned is that it’s important to adjust encounters on the fly. While I’m perfectly ok with my players having a challenge I think I would’ve reduced the number of goblins in a couple of the rooms not to make it easier, but simply to save time. Donaldo was surprisingly bloodthirsty for a paladin, he’s chosen not to follow a god so I may work with the player on some sort of fallen from grace backstory for the character. Donaldo’s player wasn’t too interested in D&D before our first session and was really just there for our company but he seemed to really enjoy himself and I’m hoping he gets more into it as the game goes on. I feel like I didn’t learn too much about The Bumblebee’s player but maybe it’s because I play in another game with him and feel like I know his play style fairly well already, either way the character is definitely a lot of fun to watch and I look very forward to working with him.

The heroes arrived back in Phandalin with an empty goblin cave, some coin in their pocket, a shiny jade frog statue, and some goods stolen on the road by the goblins from one of the supply shops in town. This is where Harry learned that rusty goblin scimitars, cracked shortbows, and ratty leather armour isn’t really worth much. I tried to play out Barthen going over the things he was trying to sell in hopes of encouraging him to jump into the role play and try to convince the shopkeep that the stuff was worth more than it was but he acted rather impatient instead, asking me to just “skip all the talking” and tell him how much he could get. We’ll see if he takes to the idea of trying to get a better deal through dice and roleplay as he progresses as a player. The Bumblebee also went to do some business with Barthen’s Provisions and managed to work out a pretty good deal for himself to get some herbs and a poison recipe, hopefully showing Harry’s player the value in playing off NPCs to get what you want.

The next session is coming up fast and I need to start preparing so I think this is where I’ll have to end it for this week. All-in-all I think the very first session went pretty well and I hope subsequent sessions go even better. I think the biggest challenge I’m facing right now is introducing the other players who weren’t able to show up for the last session, I think I have an idea of what I could do but if you have any suggestions, or you just want to ask a question, feel free to leave them in the comments below or email me at anothernewdmblog@gmail.com.

Thank you all very much for reading the misadventures of Another New DM.