This first session ended up being quite short, both in terms of playing-time and content. It took a while to get settled and into the mood for playing D&D.
As a DM, my aim for this campaign is not to railroad the players in the slightest - I have no overarching narrative or main villain that I am expecting the players to play through or conquer. Instead, my goal is to present the players with as many possible story hooks as I can, and allow them to choose which direction to head in, and which quest chains to follow up on.
Because of this, there was no easy way to get started - to introduce the characters to each other. I had vague ideas of the players all being part of some sort of mercenary squad, or bounty hunters, or some other "group" that would require them to work together. However, no one seemed very keen on this idea, and it didn't fall naturally into anyones back-stories.
What ended up happening was a rather awkward twenty minutes in which Malkeith role played too well to want to meet anyone new, Krakon was stuck outside the beer garden for the majority of the introductions, and Lily White had to wander over to the conversation at the bar randomly. The whole thing felt pretty forced, which made me feel like I hadn't set up the situation well enough. Maybe I would have been better off throwing them all in jail for a series of small infractions! That would have forced them to talk to each other!
In order to get things rolling, I threw in an encounter that I had already browsed through - a bar brawl from the Rescue at Rivenroar adventure. The encounter ended up being just as awkward as the meet & greet part of the game. This is partly due to the fact that everyone was still unfamiliar with their abilities and the 4e rules, especially the players who have never played D&D before. This is to be expected, but it does make it hard to keep the action gripping, and the events moving. Hopefully as the campaign progresses this will become smoother. It did lead to a few entertaining moments though, as players tried to come to grips with their abilities. For example, Malkeith was quite excited about the fact that casting Light is a free action to him, and while shouting "LIGHT!" at the top of his lungs, proceeded to cast the spell upon everything around him.
The other reason this encounter was a bit choppy is because I didn't take into account the fact that most of the battle would take place in the doorway to The Hanging Garden. This meant that all of the players were in each others ways when trying to cast spells, or that the hobgoblins were unable to fan out and attack more than just one player.
Still, as far as first sessions go, I suppose it didn't go too badly. I think that in future I will have to try harder to keep everyone on track in order to get through more content in a play session, especially if we continue to play on work nights. Currently, it's just too easy for people to degenerate into random conversations, which personally I think is fine. The problem is when these conversations go for twenty minutes!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Session 1: The Beer Garden Brawl
Vashaar and Mashar enter The Hanging Garden, which they have heard is a great place for new comers to ease themselves into the hustle bustle of Tamalin. At its entrance stands a hulking goliath, working as a bouncer. Inside the beer garden, they see a drunken dragonborn in fine clothes sitting grumpily at the bar, being served by a half-breed shifter, and a few drunken patrons sitting around. A bard sits under a tree strumming away on his lyre, boasting to those closest to him about his racing prowess.
The pair approaches the bar, and learn that the dragonborn is named Malkeith. He is surly and untalkative, interested more in drinking beer than anything else. The bartender, La'al, welcomes the new adventurers to Tamalin, and happily answers their questions about the city. While Vashaar and Mashar attempt to get to know Malkeith, they are joined at the bar by a female shifter, who slinks down from her perch in a tree in the corner of the garden. Lily White, the shifter, is reticent but still willing to meet new people. She informs the newcomers that she is in the city looking for information about her kidnapped daughter.
Suddenly, the goliath bouncer comes crashing through the entrance to the garden. Behind him are a motley crew of hobgoblins. Holding burning torches, they attempt to set the beer garden on fire. Though the many patrons in the garden shy away from the fight, Vashaar, Mashar, Malkeith, Lily White, and the bouncer Krakon all spring into action, fighting off the attacking hobgoblins. The fight moves out of the garden and into the street, where Mashar executes a fantastic flip through the air in order to get behind one of the attackers. Malkeith takes a moment to summon a mage hand to grab himself another tankard of beer from the bar, before throwing himself into the battle.
When the enemy hobgoblins are defeated, the five adventurers are approached by a severely wounded member of the guard. He questions them as to what has happened, mentioning that there have been outbreaks of goblin activity at the main Eastern Bridge leading into the city, and that he was injured in a battle close by. Before the adventurers can rally in order to heal the soldier, he dies at their feet.
Meanwhile, the other patrons of the bar have sprung into action, and are ineffectually attempting to put out the fires that the hobgoblins have lit at the edges of The Hanging Garden.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The Hanging Garden
Because it feels like every single D&D campaign seems to start with the PC's meeting a tavern, I decided to do something different. Something unique.
That's right, I decided to begin this campaign in a beer garden. Talk about originality!
The Hanging Garden is located on the fringe of Tamalin, and is known to be friendly to newcomers to the city. Compared to the dirty, crowded and bustling merchant filled streets outside its gates, The Hanging Garden is a calm oasis. Large trees grow freely, with tables clustered between them. Smaller plants hang in pots from sturdy branches, making The Hanging Garden feel like an eden of greenery at the outskirts of the city.
The proprietor and main barkeep is La'al, half Human half Shifter. He was born in the city, and left as a teenager to try and reconnect with his Shifter heritage. Finding their settlement too rural for his tastes, he returned to Tamalin and established The Hanging Garden. He is still trying to find the balance between the beauty of the untamed wild, and the civilization of the city.
Here is a (very) rough floor plan, drawn up in paint. In the future I will try to scan in my sketches, but I hilariously misplaced this one.
That's right, I decided to begin this campaign in a beer garden. Talk about originality!
The Hanging Garden is located on the fringe of Tamalin, and is known to be friendly to newcomers to the city. Compared to the dirty, crowded and bustling merchant filled streets outside its gates, The Hanging Garden is a calm oasis. Large trees grow freely, with tables clustered between them. Smaller plants hang in pots from sturdy branches, making The Hanging Garden feel like an eden of greenery at the outskirts of the city.
The proprietor and main barkeep is La'al, half Human half Shifter. He was born in the city, and left as a teenager to try and reconnect with his Shifter heritage. Finding their settlement too rural for his tastes, he returned to Tamalin and established The Hanging Garden. He is still trying to find the balance between the beauty of the untamed wild, and the civilization of the city.
Here is a (very) rough floor plan, drawn up in paint. In the future I will try to scan in my sketches, but I hilariously misplaced this one.
The beer garden is located close to the main entrance to the city. I've circled it on the map below:
I absolutely love the idea of having trees that grow freely "inside" a building. Obviously that isn't quite the case here, because the trees are growing in an open area that is merely walled off from the rest of the city. Still, I can't help thinking of the fish shop that I went to with my grandmother in Salzburg, Austria, which has two massive trees growing straight through the roof!
Tamalin
I decided to start the players out in Tamalin, a bustling port trade city located on the eastern shores of the Dragon Sea. The city is actually based on Tarmalune, a setting published by Wizards, but I changed the name to one that rolls off my tongue more easily. I kept most of the details the same though - Tamalin is fiercely independent, governed by a council, and is dedicated to commerce. All races are welcome here, as long as they have coin to spend, goods to trade, or services to render. I view it as a sort of D&D-ised Ankh-Morpork.
This melting pot idea is particularly important to the players of my campaign as they are all non-human races. In fact, not a single one of them is even one of the more "mundane" races, like elves or dwarves. So by setting up a city which simply want as much commerce as possible from its citizens, I set up a city where the players would be welcome with open arms. I thought this would be an easier beginning to a campaign than throwing my poor inexperienced players into a city where they are reviled by all for their otherness and unable to find help or information simply.
I don't have a specific "world" that I'm setting this campaign in, like Faerun or Eberron. Instead, I'm just setting it in a generic D&D world. I toyed with using an established setting, as I could give the players a map and allow them to go anywhere their hearts desired, and have some sort of area information no matter their choice. Ultimately, however, I decided I preferred the flexibility that creating my own world allows. This way I can pick and choose bits from all types of published adventures, and modify them only slightly to make them fit my campaign. Also, while I have told the players that Tamalin is located on the eastern seaboard of the Dragon Sea, I haven't given them much information yet about what else there is around, giving myself more flexibility in the future.
This melting pot idea is particularly important to the players of my campaign as they are all non-human races. In fact, not a single one of them is even one of the more "mundane" races, like elves or dwarves. So by setting up a city which simply want as much commerce as possible from its citizens, I set up a city where the players would be welcome with open arms. I thought this would be an easier beginning to a campaign than throwing my poor inexperienced players into a city where they are reviled by all for their otherness and unable to find help or information simply.
I don't have a specific "world" that I'm setting this campaign in, like Faerun or Eberron. Instead, I'm just setting it in a generic D&D world. I toyed with using an established setting, as I could give the players a map and allow them to go anywhere their hearts desired, and have some sort of area information no matter their choice. Ultimately, however, I decided I preferred the flexibility that creating my own world allows. This way I can pick and choose bits from all types of published adventures, and modify them only slightly to make them fit my campaign. Also, while I have told the players that Tamalin is located on the eastern seaboard of the Dragon Sea, I haven't given them much information yet about what else there is around, giving myself more flexibility in the future.
Some Background Information
So let me give you a bit of background, before we get into the gritty events of the current campaign.
Two years ago I attempted to DM my first ever campaign. I came up with a world for the PC's to explore, an overarching quest and mystery for them to solve, encouraged unique and elaborate back stories, and attempted to cater to the whims of each player.
The game failed spectacularly. Partly because my father got sick and I just didn't have time to coordinate a game, partly because there were too many players with conflicting timetables, but mainly because I just didn't have a good enough grasp on the rules of D&D. It took me much too long to prepare each encounter from scratch, trying as I was to fit monsters into my own kooky world, and I found myself dreading each session and the preparation work that would accompany it.
Things have stabilized in my life a bit, and I found myself wanting to have another crack at being a DM. I decided to make it easier on myself this time, and rely on material from published adventures. I signed up to D&D Insider, which has given me access to all the back issues of the Wizards magazines, and gone through and picked out a couple of encounters that I think my players might be interested in. I've also used these back issues as a database of information, printing out issues that pertain to the classes or races that have been chosen. For instance, one of my players has decided to play a Shadar'Kai, of whom not a lot of is written about in the Players Handbooks. Luckily there is an issue which deals almost exclusively with the Shadow Realm and its denizens.
I also found the character building software to be immensely helpful! It does all the calculations FOR you, which is great when you're starting a game with players who have never played D&D and when you yourself are a bit fuzzy on all the individual modifiers. You also get a nicely organised couple of pages with your powers described and calculated for you, which my players found very handy when trying to decide what to do each round.
Two years ago I attempted to DM my first ever campaign. I came up with a world for the PC's to explore, an overarching quest and mystery for them to solve, encouraged unique and elaborate back stories, and attempted to cater to the whims of each player.
The game failed spectacularly. Partly because my father got sick and I just didn't have time to coordinate a game, partly because there were too many players with conflicting timetables, but mainly because I just didn't have a good enough grasp on the rules of D&D. It took me much too long to prepare each encounter from scratch, trying as I was to fit monsters into my own kooky world, and I found myself dreading each session and the preparation work that would accompany it.
Things have stabilized in my life a bit, and I found myself wanting to have another crack at being a DM. I decided to make it easier on myself this time, and rely on material from published adventures. I signed up to D&D Insider, which has given me access to all the back issues of the Wizards magazines, and gone through and picked out a couple of encounters that I think my players might be interested in. I've also used these back issues as a database of information, printing out issues that pertain to the classes or races that have been chosen. For instance, one of my players has decided to play a Shadar'Kai, of whom not a lot of is written about in the Players Handbooks. Luckily there is an issue which deals almost exclusively with the Shadow Realm and its denizens.
I also found the character building software to be immensely helpful! It does all the calculations FOR you, which is great when you're starting a game with players who have never played D&D and when you yourself are a bit fuzzy on all the individual modifiers. You also get a nicely organised couple of pages with your powers described and calculated for you, which my players found very handy when trying to decide what to do each round.
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