Hey Guys!
To fill this community with some content, I´ve started a loose journal of my campaign here.
The group has one person extremely familiar with DnD 5 and the rest very new to TTRPG in general, their biggest experience being a 7 game Monster of the Week fewshot i ran them through before this. We play about 70-80% of the time on FVTT/Discord, some rare (special) occasions at my place.
Since we are all adult, I am lentient in campaign attendance. The group consists of 7 theoretical players, but typical sessions are anywhere from 3-5. I think I wouldnt want to play with many more in a session :) that said, for session 1 now we had 6 in attendance.
Pre Session
Between sessions, one player who was missing at s0 approached me to make a character. He originally wanted to make a character that I would have seen as problematic: a fallen angel, kicked out for dabbling in necromancy, then apprentice of the lich King until being kicked out by them too, due to being too powerful.
I managed to turn that way down in the process of making their char with them. They are now an ex-angel, willingly in a mortal shell to walk the world and combat the cult, my main bad guys. They are still a necromancer, but now ask lost souls for one last bout of assistance before sending them off to a good afterlife at their gods side. So the necromancer turned out to be an all around good guy support character with a motivation to follow my main quest baked in- neat, not at all what I expected when I heard fallen angel necromancer! I guess the lesson to myself is, even if I cringe a little at the character concept initially (as I did with both the angel and demon character in my group now) just ride with it:
- player engagement is king. If its their first character, expect some (to you) cringey stuff and let them have it. It will turn out fine!
- The game mechanics will knock any character that feels themselves infallible and perfect down a peg or two.
- You will find story beats in this, 100%
We started the session with some to-do stuff: the cleric had a spell too much, the fighter had chosen a talent for two-weapon fighting but ticked that they had a shield, not all of them had images and tokens yet, one was also missing a name. Lastly I asked them how they would like to keep a journal: in foundry, google docs or via discord. They chose discord, I opened a channel and we got to start playing about half an hour after meeting up.
Actual game session start
I was, of course, anxious by that point. Could I still pull off my strong start to the whole entire campaign after dallying for half an hour?
What I ran with was 5 minutes of exposition of how they had all been on a ship together, part of a small fleet that was secretly smuggling and belonged to the fighter char. For the rest, it was just passage on a safe journey to Shadow Port, a city of extremely questionable repute where some of them hailed from. Since they chose Prince of Shadows as their group patron, who dwells there, I will want them to go there and receive quests.
They were on this short and typically safe passage, observing the night sky and the fiery rune that is visible there since a few weeks. The strong start was, then, how out of nowhere, the rune expanded as if someone kept writing it, adding some lines. This somehow (we will find out the connection later in the story hehe) prompted a gigantic water elemental to rise from the ocean, howl at the rune and the astral ring it is etched into (think rings of Saturn) and rage out – in the middle of their fleet. Their ship got thrown and skipped as a stone on a lake, and they passed out with a cracking sound. Exposition end.
They then woke up close to shore, in the wreckage of the back of their ship, in a small reef closeby to an island they didn’t recognize immeadiately. I then made them aware of a group of goblin-sharks (thanks Midgard bestiary!) and smaller obedient mook sharks picking their stuff and closing in on them – first fight time!
The fight took quite a while, reaching ED 4. I was not necessarily shooting for that level of involvedness on the first fight, it made this part take up a big part of session time, but oh well 😊
The players had a load of fun. Necro and Cleric were, in the beginning, not fighting very effectively, choosing melee attacks over their spells, but I quickly reiterated how stats influence different parts of their interaction with the world and reminded them of how their characters go, and they quickly were more engaged and having fun. It was good I had reviewed their characters and mechanics so that I could help them! Some of the less experienced players chose more complicated classes, but it will be fine in a few sessions, and again, player engagement is king.
I did run the Necros Deathknell wrong here and allow them to finish off individual mooks. The monk got to pull off a lot of cool stuff with their forms- my favourite is “Monkey taps the shoulder” for now. The cleric was smiting my caster goblin-sharks at range, the ranger got some good snipes in, the rogue did an extremely cool maneuver surfing on a passing tortoise and the fighter player was having loads of fun protecting the rest of their precious cargo. They asked to have two flintlock pistols along with their two cutlasses – I said yes, but am not sure what the appropriate damage dice would be and if they can dual wield. They now have d8 and dual wielding bonus. I think that’s ok because all their talents etc are for melee, but will keep my eye on it.
For environment, I had the half-rest of ship they were fighting on slide down off the sandbank and towards the deeper sea at Round 3 or 4. I telegraphed this one round before via sounds and they all jumped off, except one of the necros summons.
After the fight, I described their environment extensively, including an ominous temple on a sister-island some 4km out, conveniently not reachable by swimming. Then I let them short rest (this took up some time again, explaining the mechanic). Then they talked for a while, noticed how necro and rogue (the demon and angel chars) looked extremely similar, got their bearings, looked for some of their stuff (like the rangers familiar) and described their characters. I would have liked to extend the scene, but the fight and pre session talk took up a lot of time in our session.
We finished the session with a 15 minute montage of them scaling the center mountain of the island, while procuring some food and water. They are now on top of the mountain, in front of the other half of their ship (maybe swept here by the giant elemental-wave?).
Next session start will be them exploring that, and maybe fighting some harpies or bats that took up roost there during the day.
Prepwise, I prepped waaay too much and, if the rate is similar, have the next 2-3 sessions prepped basically – great job, past me!
As always happy to hear your comments or tips for next game