Dungeons & Discourse – Character Creation:Report

So, as you may know, this was the first D&D session that I’ve run (I have played in the past, but never DMed, and had also never played fourth edition prior to this), but I don’t intend it to be the last. I’m going to do these “reports” after each one so I can try and dispense advice to anyone else doing the same and anyone that’s got advice to give, please do so.

Some background first of all. This game was actually the one that’s in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Manual and is 4th Edition, meant to introduce the players and the DM to the game and is called “Kobold Hall”.

I’d drawn some maps on graph paper, had miniatures ready, had snacks, drinks and pizza menu at the ready and sorted out whatever chairs I had for people to sit on.

ArrivalsPeople started arriving around an hour prior to the start of the game. Eventually when everyone was there we had: myself, Ben, Callum, Chris, Keith Tom & Will which made for quite a good campaign. They started off making characters and Will had brought a variety of good information with him.

Character Creation

Ah yes, this is where it started to go askew. I know the old character creation way of roll six lots of six sided dice four times, (known as 4d6 in the game) take away the lowest number from a set of four, add the other three together and that’s a stat. Turns out people were confused and I only had one Player’s Handbook to pass around when people wanted to see abilities and the like. Will & Callum had pre-generated characters whereas everyone else carried on with the misshapen things they had created including a Dragonborn named Tits McGee.

Hook & Adventuring

So I had taken the base adventure of Kobold Hall from the DM’s Guide to get myself used to DMing and the players used to playing. The guide provided a few great hooks, but somehow it was decided (by my players) that the group had gone off on a stag do, and had drunkenly stumbled in to the cave and decided upon genocide of the Kobolds within.

One player got bored and intentionally fell in to the slime pit (later discovered to be Kobold leavings) and was disbanded for the rest of the game. The players triggered a few traps as they eventually sobered up on their travel in to the large hall. A few odd things happened that I wasn’t ready for before the players accomplished the mission.

• A drake killed more than one player due to some natural 20s on my side, but I let it slide for the first game
• The party decided it would be a good idea to capture and interrogate a Kobold, which I was very unprepared for, but managed to fumble through and convince them (in-character) to release him. What a mistake guys…
• A player came up with a novel idea to trap an annoying drake in the newly acquired bag of holding and leave it in there until it died…
• They ran away from the dragon initially, then chose to drag down a Kobold corpse for it to eat…

The dragon was of course, the main boss of this mini-adventure, and though it had some devastating attacks the players knocked it down quickly and then one player gutted it for all it was worth. Tail, heart, teeth, lungs, scales, everything.

The campaign ended there, and next up we have: Nurion’s Treasure.

More than half the year gone, the rest yet to come

So last month I did an “It’s June” post, to signify what was contained within my month, so now we’ll have an “It’s July” one, only with a less spontaneous title. Let’s see what I know July has in store.

More Reviews
I’ve been really enjoying writing my reviews for this blog, and do want to branch out in to movies, books and more things to review.

Writing

I like creative writing, almost as much as the next subject on the list and have put up one example and had a guest post on the subject so far but plan to keep doing more. I write whenever the mood takes me, or am given a good prompt.

D&D

Fine blog readers, I admit it. Ever since I started reading Darths & Droids (a Star Wars/D&D comic) and chatting to @austenw & @DurgisFlak who have been running games in the real world and on forums, I’ve been thinking about “rolling the dice” again, especially with 4th edition being out.

So I’ve picked up and read all through the Player’s Handbook, and will soon buy the Monster Manual, DM’s Guide and a campaign. It may be the geekiest thing that I do, but I don’t care.

If you know me personally, and want to get in on the first game, contact me. It won’t be until August though to give me time to read rules, do tests and so on.

Drawing

Okay, maybe you do not know, but I have a DeviantArt page where any stuff that I’ve drawn gets scanned in. I can see that my drawing has improved from the poor scraps that I did a year or so ago, but I’m still not quite happy with it yet. I’ll get there though.

Guest posts?

I keep pimping this out, to say that if people want to do guest blog posts all they need do is contact me, and it’ll go up on the site. Based on last month, I should get about 300 visits this month, which is nice.

Hopefully I manage to keep blogging too, though I thought it not worth mentioning. Oh look at that. Oh well.

You want to do what?

I’m not sure how any DM ever put up with me. So, same wizard character that I discussed here but this happened before that.

Usual quest thing, going in to an enemy hideout from the top. Meaning we had to take a large amount of make shift stairs down, but we had a large pit in the way, so with my wizard and his gigantic staff, I thought it would be a good idea to pole vault across the gap.

“Can I do that?” I had asked the DM, it being my second game ever.
”What?”
”Pole vault across the gap?”
”So, you want to stick your staff down the hole, then kind of swing across?”
”Sure.”

”Okay” said the DM. “You go to stick your 20 foot staff down the hole to vault across, but the hole is 30 feet deep. You fall and lose half your hit points.”
Crap.
”Ow” (I like to empathize with my characters in D&D)

”’Ow’ indeed.”

The other players eventually helped me up, and I instead chucked the pole to our nimble thief and he put the pole across the gap, and had everyone walk along.

Bags of holding are not nice places

If you’re following me on Twitter you probably saw me make note of this recently.

I’m a big geek, there’s no denying that, and back in my teens I did play some Dungeons & Dragons with a few mates, which was actually Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2.0 I think.

Either way, I had a wizard chap, whose name is lost to me and I’d acquired a bag of holding a few games back, which I was constantly using to store all of the loot we found.

A few games later, when we had all (four – six of us playing) obtained steeds and rode in to a new town for a quest, we were directed to a deep dungeon cave, and told to saddle up our horses.

“Oh! I’ve got an idea. Can I just put my horse in my bag of holding?”
I’m sure I rolled for something, but can’t recall.
”Yes,” replied the DM, “but remember to take it out later.”

So, horse in my backpack along with all other trinkets and so forth and we went plodding about the dungeon taking down enemies. Then our gaming session came to a close as nightfall fell back in the real world.

A few weeks later, we got back in to it, and came across a large lake, wherein we needed to swim underwater and get under a small cavern to retrieve the item we’d been hired to get. We had a quick scrabble of ideas, and then the thought crossed my mind.

“Hey, what about my horse?” (I had named it, but I forget what)
”Fine, check your bag of holding.” spoke the DM with an evil undertone.
”Your horse is dead. After being left in the bag for the week or so you’ve spent in the cave, it starved and is now beginning to have it’s flesh fall off.”
”Oh…” I pondered a moment longer. “Could I use it to swim across, as a kind of floatation device?”
”I suppose you could…”
”No wait. Better idea. If I shove my head in to it’s mouth,and then swim underwater using it’s lungs for air?”
”I…what?”

I drew a crude sketch at this point, demonstrating my ludicrous plan and spoke of it further, while the rest of the group laughed and gave me odd stares.

”Okay,” the DM noted. “You can do it.”
”No rolling?”
”Nope, no rolling.”

So, I swam across and under and got whatever magical thing it was we needed. It triggered a boss fight on land, and my horse’s corpse was incinerated by the boss (I think the DM didn’t want me to reuse it) and I snagged some experience points by using magic missile whilst coming back to land.

That was a fun time. I’m such a big bloody geek. And I love it.