After having a hearty breakfast our ” heroes” were escorted by the City Watch to their newly acquired ship. Waiting for them onboard was Hoondarrh’s tribute, complete with two knights guarding it.

Before setting sail the party were informed Valdor had been kidnapped, and that the Tyrant was in the process of finding out by whom and where he had been taken.

Our party set sail, and after a slight detour during the night, the ship was attacked by sahuagin.

The battle was long and bloody. Eventually our “heroes” won through.

The sahuagins “boat” was searched to no avail. So it was set on fire!

And that is where our “heroes” were left about to continue the delivery of the tribute.

Post-mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

I’ve had a week to brood on last Sunday’s session. To contemplate what happened during the session. I even got a chance to briefly check in with a player for their thoughts.

Let’s start with my notes for the session.

As you can see three pages. One to track the use of the patches on the robe of useful items. I think it’s important that I also track its use along with the player. Not because I distrust the player. But more things get forgotten or lost. So that if one of those two situations occurs the player can still use the patches.

The first page is a list of major NPCs the players will encounter during the session, along with how the sea travel will work. Finally page two is notes on the two major encounters of the session.

The notes were just about right for me. I need to probably improve the NPC notes a little with a description or film character of the NPCs character. For instance posh, snooty, or Obelix.

The mini large card sized whiteboards are proving really useful. Especially when running combat. They allow me to easily track current health of the monsters and group them. Which I did in this session. With the appropriate monster card out in front to refer to, and the use of my session notes to track spell usage. I great combo for me while running a combat.

The actual combat was dipping into the deadly side of things. So the most challenging one yet for the players. Especially after what was a rather easy combat the previous session. It was interesting that the player I spoke to considered this the first real combat that they had had. Which was an interesting point of view. He also thought their tactics and how they handled the situation was not brilliant.

At the end of the session I got the impression from one player that they had at minimum been frustrated with the combat, and at most had not entirely enjoyed it. Maybe because their character got knocked unconscious twice during the combat. Their comment at the end of the session when I asked for feedback was to remember the action economy. I can see that point of view. However with better tactics from the party. Plus I don’t think that the monsters had a very big advantage on the actions front.

Each player had at least one healing potion, plus the potions on the robe of useful items, and healing spells. So even with the encounter being deadly I felt the players had enough between them to not die.

The combat went on for the majority of the session. Which did surprise me. I was expecting it to go for about half the session.

I was happy with the way I ran the sahuagin. They were split into two groups. And each group had it’s own initiative. I still like rolling once for the attack of the monsters when it is a group. I also used the average static HP of damage from the stat block instead of rolling for damage. It does speed things up.

When the players were first introduced to the two knights on their boat I made it clear that their orders were to guard the tribute. There was a knight placed outside the cabin with the tribute in, and one placed inside. With them swapping over at regular intervals. They were described as being like the Queens Guard at Bucks Palace. So when the sahuagin attacked it wasn’t until the sahuagin baron boarded the ship and went and attacked the knight that they got involved. I handed the control of that knight over to the players.

The player with the deck of illusions had bought their own deck of cards to use as a prop during play. I had taken my own. But happy for them to use their own. However when they used the deck they created a golem illusion placed in front of the cabin door. And it was left standing there. I felt it wasn’t used to its best effect during the combat.

Finally after reminding the player that they had the luck stone the curse was triggered. They clicked then why I had been reminding them about it. I think the curse or an aspect of it could be used to their benefit. Yes it also has a downside. But with a bit of creativity. The players have already been taught that they need to be more careful when negotiating a dungeon of some description. This was a not all that glitters is gold lesson. That suspicion is a healthy thing to have.

The Tomb of Annihilation overland travel kinda worked. The lost mechanic kind of failed when the ranger ships captain was navigating. They had an ability that meant they couldn’t get lost. I need to think about this a bit more. We have a lot of sea travel in the future. Might try the group challenge next. After that I’ll take feedback from the players to which one they prefer.

I started in session 5 to use Pathfinder Cards: Wrath of the Righteous Face Cards Deck to represent the NPCs. Or the main ones they are interacting with. And continued to use them in this session. I think it helps having their card clipped to the DM screen so they players can have an image of what the NPC looks like. It helps bring them to life. It also means I don’t have to find a suitable mini but can get away with using tokens.

Overall I think the majority had a good time. I think the combat was challenging. Now to start planning the next session.

In this session our party took part in a historical recreation of an infamous halfling battle at the Mintarn arena as party of a celebration organised by the Tyrant of Mintarn. Which was gatecrashed by the red dragon Hoondarrh, demanding that their tribute is delivered early. Afterwards the Tyrant recruits our party to deliver the tribute to Hoondarrh.

Post-mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

This was a slightly shorter session than usual. Our sweet spot is around the two hour mark. But the way things worked out, this session ended up being an hour and a half roughly. However this still counted as two experience check points. Which meant that three players at the end of the session were able to level up to level three. The others had been able to do that at the end of the previous session.

One bit of business I had to do to the start of the session was some house keeping with the groups dwarf sorcerer. This basically entailed checking the equipment they had, and then informing them that the find familiar spell had been used incorrectly in the previous session. I then had to break the bad news to them about not being above to cast it until the casting requirements were met.

One thing that hadn’t occurred naturally during the previous sessions was providing the opportunities for the groups druid to see animals for them to transform into (once they were able to do so). The Mintarn Arena presented the ideal opportunity for this. Historically gladiator arenas were known to use animals of various types as part of the “entertainment” that they provided. So as the party were wandering around the arena behind the scenes they came across various caged animals, such as wolves, bears, boars, tigers and panthers.

At the end of the day after the days happenings at the Arena the party had a chance to go shopping at the market. I had the market closing up for the day. I wanted a way to restrict what the characters could buy. I don’t want the players getting used to the idea of they can just buy everything they need all the time. I want scarcity. Making the players make decisions during the rest of the session about how they use their equipment and spells.

Part of the reason the session didn’t last as long as I thought it would, was down to the main encounter of the session at the arena. I had pre-drawn the battle map out on my folding white board. Sadly this was the reason why the encounter was quicker than anticipated. The folding white board wasn’t wide enough. So the gap between the outer towers and the middle tower was less than it should have been. It had become jumpable! And yes that was the first thing the players attempted. Luckily the halfling druid had entangle in it’s spell list.

“I didn’t know you could do that.” Was the comment made when I had the halflings on their turn rile up the crowd. It was the reason I did it. So I think showing instead of telling worked in that instance.

Because the main goal of this arena encounter had been achieved quicker than planned. I had to stretch it out, and have the encounter continue. This was explained by the Tyrant and the arena owner not wanting an entertaining recreation to end. So decided to let it continue. This had the players thinking that the Tyrant had other reasons for doing so. A bit of doubt over the motives of the Tyrant seemed a good thing.

I’m also glad I didn’t spend much of my scarce monetary resources creating a 3D version of the battle map. If I already had the stuff that would have been a different matter. Having raised battle tiles is something I will invest in at a future point in time when funds are more plentiful.

I’d always planned to have Hoondarrh gate crash the encounter. Once again I used the WOIN countdown mechanic to determine when this would happen. I do like this mechanic a lot for determining when certain events happen. It removes the having to decide when it will happen. Although you still have the option of triggering the event if the moment seems appropriate.

Dropping Hoondarrh in was a surprise for the players. They were not expecting that. It also presented a comedic moment. But it also highlighted how little the party remember from previous sessions. Is this due to poor note taking, the gaps between sessions, or me not putting enough emphasis on certain facts and story plot points? This is something I’m going to have to monitor closely.

I liked giving the players one less magic item than there were players. It meant they had to negotiate between themselves who had what.

Overall despite it being a short session, everyone had a good time I think.

In our fourth session our party of adventures joined up with a ships captain who had fallen on hard times and his dwarf ships wizard to help them gain a new boat. After defeating some pirates, raiding the warehouse, the party and their ‘new friends’ stole the boat. After hiding the boat the party returned to the tavern. Oh the boat belonged to Angrath the minotaur pirate.

Post-mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

We were once again a player down for this session. But we had some warning this time, and had the character in bed at the tavern suffering from a bout of sickness. A case of D&D reflecting real life! Plus it seemed the easiest way to handle the absence.

However we were also welcoming two new players to the group for their first session. So in reality numbers wise we were a player up this session.

I thought the role play of them meeting up at the tavern went fairly well. Once directing the characters to each other it was really out of my control.

The main encounter for the session was the stealing a boat caper.

For this I used the warehouse from the docks mini adventure from the Lazy DM’s Workbook. That was an A3 battle map, that I had stuck to some foamboard, and covered over the various rooms in the warehouse. Which only got removed when the players explored the room.

I used some of the D&D Tiles Reincarnated: City to recreate the jetty, accompanied by a keelboat made up of the 3D boat tiles I had.

As I explained to the new players I generally roll just once for the creatures for attacks and saving rolls to speed things up.

This was a very heavy combat session. For starters at the end of it, if successful they were getting a boat! So I couldn’t just give it to them easily. They had to earn it.

I hadn’t planned on treasure in the warehouse, so I generated that on the fly. I wanted to reward them, but not be over generous. After all they had just got a boat.

When it comes to the killing blow or when a player rolls a natural 1, I am still liking giving control over to the players to describe how the creature dies, or they do that epic fumble.

There was a point that I had to rule that a gnome could not just pick up and tie up a prison with a heavy chain as an action during combat. That 6 second time slice is just not long enough for them to do that.

I think I had the tactics about right for the pirates. Having them raise the alarm as quick as possible. Whether the numbers of pirates encountered was enough that’s another question. I think this was a challenging encounter at best. I don’t think it was even close to deadly.

When it came to the warehouse I didn’t use the notes from the room descriptions. But at that point of the session we were over running and needed to get to a point for stopping. But still the descriptions would not have added anything time wise. I must do better here.

Overall I thought the session went well, everyone had fun.

Now onto session 5 which will hopefully be in 2 weeks time.

In this session our party left Queen’s Cove to escort the town contribution to the islands tribute to the Red Rage. Their journey started off eventfully with Sahuagin attacking just before dawn. They also had to clear the road from a fallen tree. And discovered an abandoned guard tower. At Mintarn they were rewarded handsomely for their efforts, and got a chance to spend their reward in a bustling market.

Post-mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

So session 3 has happened.

If you remember in the past week I wrote about alternate methods to handle travel within D&D (you can read the post here). For this session I went with the method described by The Angry GM. The other link that summarises the method was really handy in prepping.

It allowed me to produce the following notes to refer to during the session.

For the encounters I went with rolling a d4 to chose which members of the party were on watch if/when the encounters happened at night.

Before the start of the session I made the decision that even if there was going to be no encounter during the travel that I’d have the tiles out for camp. Otherwise if I only put tiles out when there was going to be an encounter I’d be sign posting to the players something was going to happen. This way I felt it’d be less obvious when or if an encounter was about to happen.

Instead of rolling a random encounter if need be. I had a page of about four encounters noted down. I knew that the Sahuagin was going to be one, and then I chose three other creatures that could possibly attack. My notes for these encounters were so simple, the name of the monster and the quantity. With the official D&D Monster Cards for each of the monsters at hand I didn’t need to open up the manual, or as previously make note of the stats. All I did was note down the HP on a bit of paper, and tracked the damage received on a bit of paper.

The encounters were not just fights, I also had a hazard that needed dealing with. I used a group challenge to clear the road from a blockage. I took this from The Adventures in Middle Earth journey section. I liked that it was not just a simple pass or fail. But had degrees of passing and failing. Which resulted in getting benefits or some kind of set back.

The discovery I had planned was an abandoned guard tower. Which if they checked it out would mean that as the notes show slow them down, but additionally not noted I had them rewarded for checking it once they reached Mintarn.

Overall from my point of view I think the travel went well. I think it was more interesting than the two suggested methods in the DMG. I’d certainly use it again. However I think that the next two bits of travel (depending on the hook selected) are better suited to one of the other alternatives.

Let’s look at the only combat encounter of the session, which was the Sahuagin attack. Mistakes were made. I forgot about the NPC characters with the party. They didn’t actually get involved. This was picked up by a player near the end of the combat. But I explained they wouldn’t get involved, especially the driver who was just a commoner, not a fighter. And that the fighting was what they were getting paid for.

Before the session I had seen that Sly Flourish in his YouTube video about prepping for the Lost Mines of Phandelver first chapter had talked about having an npc somehow cast Aid on the party to help give the level 1 characters a better chance against the threats they would encounter. I thought this was an interesting idea, and made the NPC guard a paladin who knew the spell. Just incase.

Kobold Fight Club had the Sahuagin encounter of three attacking Sahuagin as hard. Four would be deadly according to that. So I erred on the side of caution and had three attack the party. I think this was too easy for the party. It should have been at least four I think. I should have thrown in an extra Sahuagin during the combat.

The players had been warned at the start that there had been reports of the Sahuagin attacks happening along the coastal road. So I was happy I had sign posted the threat enough. Luckily the dice allowed the raid to happen.

If you remember I was using the Sahuagin attack as a hit and run. So I wanted the attack to end randomly with the Sahuagin making a run for it. The encounter would not be playing to it’s natural conclusion. I used the dice countdown as used in the WOIN system. So at the start of each round I rolled the dice pool of 4d6. Because this was a short fast countdown a four or above would result in the die being removed. Naturally the players were unaware of this going on. And I thought it worked really well. Definitely something I’ll use again.

I messed up the attack of opportunity rule! ‘Nuff said about that I think.

There was something new I tried. I picked this up from the Dungeon Dudes from one of their YouTube videos. Not sure which one. And it wasn’t even planned before hand. It was just something that I did out of nowhere. When a character killed a monster I asked them to describe their killing blow. I’m not sure it entirely worked. I’ll give it another few tries to see if it feels better.

Jonathan printed off an A4 sized colour map of the Mintarn archipelago for me to give to the players. Plus he kindly did an A3 sized colour map of Mintarn. I think the island map helped a lot with the players to see where they were in the world. Plus it will allow planning by the party when they get adventure hooks. The town map was very handy for the players I thought for showing where they were within the town. I used coloured cubes to represent the characters on the map, and show their individual locations. The draw back was that players got distracted by features in the map they hadn’t come across. But it did allow me to point out points of interest as they were taken through the town.

I am trying to encourage the players to make the maps their own, write notes on them, etc. We will see how this plays out.

I’m really not too happy with how Mintarn played out. Especially the market section. I think it was too open, and the players were almost at a loss what to do. My prep could have been better also. I hadn’t thought about the deities the temples worship. And I was asked that question! I didn’t handle this that well. Could have been a lot lot better, especially with the improve and roleplay.

The session started off with a big foobar, which I realised near the end. I forgot to explain absence of character! Oops.

My descriptions still need a lot of work, the index cards helped. But this is an on going work in progress.

It was interesting when the players searched the abandoned guard tower. Well more looked inside and went up on the battlements. No one searched the room itself. I had a small magic item and some copper coins for them to find as a “reward”. I did drop hints at the end of the session that they should have searched the room. Failing an investigation check is different to not even looking. And those that went in their passive perception isn’t great, so I didn’t feel they would catch the glint of something.

I thought handing out post it notes with hooks on worked well. Although the party has come up with their own adventure hook. They got fixated on the gladiator arena within Mintarn. I will have to work that into the planning.

I did give Jonathan a players cheat sheet. Which summarises what actions can be made, why and what falls under certain ability checks. I’m waiting to get some feedback on how he got on with that.

The players finally got some home made print outs for the magic items they picked up in session 1 in the pirates lair. Which I was happy to be able to do, and I think the players found this useful.

From time to time I’m going to pin to the player facing side of the DM screen reminders of the Matt Colville advice, and this was one of those times. Written on two dry erase index cards were the two quotes “Death is always a possibility…” and “Anytime you are out numbered…”. I think these are useful things to remind players of on a regular basis.

I had a lot less stuff with me this time. Here is a photo of the stuff I took with me, minus my DM folder. Which I did take, and I’ll cover in another post.

1. Sand timers in various time increments.

2. D&D Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated – for this session there were tiles from both the dungeon and wilderness sets. But only the ones I needed.

3. Mechanical pencils for players that needed them.

4. Post-it notes

5. My dice

6. Blank notepads for players if they have nothing to write notes in.

7. Index card box (will a brief describe contents below)

8. Meeples and wooden disks and cubes to represent npcs/monsters, etc.

9. Scatter terrain to populate maps.

10. Folding dice tray and area effect template.

11. Pens, dry markers, clips, ruler, dry marker erazer.

12. Minis of creatures

13. Players Handbook

14. Dungeon Masters Guide

15. Big book of Battle Maps

16. Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Screen Reincarnated

Ok this post is getting long. Luckily it’s not print with limited space.

So what is in the index box?

I have the initiative and combat reminder cards from the D&D Essentials kit in there. Along with a handful of dry erase index cards, a selection of D&D Monster stat cards, plus other useful stuff. But I feel this will need a post of it’s own to do it justice, possibly with the my DM folder.

In this session our party left the pirates lair. Found a row boat. Made their way to a neighbouring island. Got a lift to Mintarn and the town Queens Cove. Restocked some equipment, and accepted a job.

Post-mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

There was one oversight in the planning of the session. We hadn’t shared the location! We were back at The Luxe, and not the school. Once that little detail was corrected, we were ready to start playing.

Our session started with a person down. Apparently something had come up, and they couldn’t make it. Only letting the group know at the last possible moment, ie as we were all sitting at the table ready to start.

These things happen, it’s life. But a bit more notice would have been nice.

Before playing those of us present had a discussion lead by Jonathan about his announcement that this was likely going to be his last session (you can read his reasons explained eloquently here). I felt everyone was understanding and supportive, and could see Jonathan’s point of view.

So the actual second session started with a recap of the previous session. I started it off with the Matt Colville words that also give this post its name, “when last we left our heroes…” I then invited the players to recap the previous session. Which I felt was a bit spotty, missed one or two beats. But this was the first time, and I think it will “improve” over time as the group get more comfortable recapping this way.

I also told the players about their magic items. See below about this.

This session from my point of view once out of the pirates lair had a different focus. Where as the first session was more a dungeon crawl, once outside it was more “roleplay”.

As I said in the past more than once, I’m not that Matt Mercer, voices/acting type of DM. It’s not me.

But there was a lot of improv for me to do as the players explored the new locations. Which I felt started off shaky, especially with the jarl. But I felt more comfortable and happier with the Queens Cove interactions.

I managed to seed three adventure hooks, two in Mintarn. Setup a potential two more, although one of those had a warning. A warning that if the party attempted to rob the dragon they would most likely die.

The Angrath storyline was developed, the myth building up, and a rival pirate Vraska was introduced.

The group challenge for rowing the row boat I think worked well, despite the group failing. Blaming the failure not just on strong currents, but having a gnome controlling the rudder and not being able to see which direction they were going.

How did we handle being a player down? Ok! I let the players control the character when it came to combat, or for the group challenge roll for him. I think one of the most damning comments was at the end, when one of the players said (I’m paraphrasing here) that the session felt better without them there.

An adventure hook was also taken off the table for the time being. I think that Jonathan forgot he had the mysterious symbol on a bit of paper. It was frustrating that I could see the paper in front of him and he didn’t think to ask about it with the NPC’s they were interacting with. While Jonathan’s character was alone in Queens Cove I had a NPC bump into him and steal the scrap of paper off him. If he had given chase and got it back, I was hoping he’d start asking about it. But he didn’t. Although now he’s thinking what was so important about the scrap of paper.

As the players made their way through the Matt Colville designed intro adventure (I’d added this as an Easter egg to the groups taster session) they spent more time here than I anticipated. Especially for a dungeon that had literally zero monsters (apart from some skeletons if they triggered them). Which was interesting. The corridor trap from the actual pirates lair that the group triggered on their way out made them a lot more cautious.

This session was always going to be less combat focused and interaction focused. It also determined based on the player’s decisions what the third session is. The third session will see the players travelling to Mintarn as guards to Queens Cove’s tribute. So it will have a similar flow and feel to this session.

At the end of the session the players had passed a level up point. If you remember from a previous post we are using the Adventure League rules for advancement. So the group will be advancing their character to level 2 before the next session.

At the end of the session Jonathan was happier and found some positives.

The first was the session length. We stuck to a 2 hour duration. Which everyone seemed happy with.

We also spent time explaining to Jonathan why we were rolling for certain stats, and which ones. I’m not sure if he found this helpful.

Plus a good sign Jonathan will come back for session 3.

I failed to get some maps printed off before the session (drawback of not having a printer at home) and I felt guilty asking Jonathan again. So I improvised and used my iPad to display the relevant player friendly town maps and the Mintarn cluster of islands. I need to sort this out for our third session. The printer was an issue because I had also wanted to print out those item cards that I’d created. Which needs to be done for the next session.

I did use the initiative order cards from the Essentials Kit. The players liked those. Although I think I’ll tweak the way I use them to after the first round of combat. That way it remains a mystery about where the monsters are in that order until they actually take their turn.

Overall I think the session went well. Despite initial hiccups, being a person down, and implementing some things that made for a better player experience.

These posts are going to be my post-mortem of the session that was just held. They will look at how I felt things went, and recap what happened in the session story wise.

This first post will be slightly different. As we …

Meet the party

• Jonathan is Valdor Shadowstorm, a Human Rogue.

• Diego is Sinthoras, an Elf Druid

• Nathanial is Bart an Elf Ranger

• Chrissie is Trixie Furpurple a Forest Gnome Bard

• Richard is Varis Galanodell a Half-Elf Warlock

Our Adventure Starts…

“The coastal town of Saltmarsh like other coastal towns on the Sword Coast is very busy this time of year. Anything that floats and is sea worthy is being hired to take travellers to the Festival of the Earthmother on the island of Alaron. People have come from far and distance lands to witness this legendary festival at least once in their life time.

Having secured what is most likely the last spaces anywhere, the adventurers are all waiting on a small wooden jetty ready to board the Dirty Oar. A keelboat owned and sailed by the ships Captain, Chan.”

After boarding the Dirty Oar, they set sail heading out into open waters and towards Alaron.

While at sea within sight of an island the Dirty Oar runs into a storm. Sadly the adventurers and crews efforts to prepare the ship were in vain. The storm battered the Dirty Oar, throwing it on to a reef. Smashing the boat to pieces.

The adventurers ended up unconscious on the beach of the island that had been spotted. When they came round they found the corpses of Captain Chan and Chewy next to them.

The adventurers were blocked from getting off the beach by an impregnable cliff wall that was unscalable. Luckily they discovered a cave that upon investigation had mysterious steps going up at the back of it.

At the top of the stairs was a corridor that had a portcullis at the end of it. About half way along was an alcove and opposite a door way. From nowhere an arrow narrowly missed Valdor, and a warning shouted to leave or die.

Ignoring this threat the adventurers ended up fighting a group of pirates in the corridor. After what seemed a drawn out fight, it was definitely close combat, and anything goes, the pirates were dispatched.

Bart found a lever in the alcove that opened the portcullis. The opened door way led into a large cavern full of crates and barrels. Obviously the spoils of numerous raids. In a far corner was another stairs leading once again up.

After grabbing some supplies the party headed up the stairs.

This came out onto a corridor that had a door at the end of it, another door half way down it. And at the far end also another corridor.

Valdor checked the door half way down. It was unlocked. He snuck into the room behind it. He had found a sleeping quarters, and there were two pirates fast asleep.

After Valdor tried killing one of the sleeping pirates in their sleep, a fight broke out. But the two pirates put up little fight before they were no more.

After a short rest in the sleeping quarters, the party decided to examine the door at the far end of the corridor. It was locked. After failed attempts to unlock it by Valdor. Bart tried kicking the door down to no avail. Trixie decided to break the lock totally with her knife. Fed up with these poor displays of skill,and wanting to see what was behind the door Sinthoras cast Thunderwave. Smashing open the door, and alerting anything living within 300ft of the groups presence.

Behind the destroyed door was the contents of an armoury scattered over the floor, and a couple of smashed vials.

Half way up the new corridor was another alcove and a portcullis opposite it, and on the same side as the portcullis a bit further down another door. The portcullis lead to another locked door. That Valdor managed to open. It lead into an office, that also had another door in it. Valdor searched the desk and it’s papers finding a scrap of paper with an interesting symbol on it. The symbol was a white four point star over an anvil. The other door lead to a private sleeping quarters. Where nothing of interest was found. Although back in the office another lever was found that opened the portcullis opposite the alcove.

Back in the corridor Valdor decided to check out the open doorway at the end of the corridor.

Waiting for the party in the hall were more pirates. An arrow just missed Valdor when he poked his head round the corner to see what was in the cave. Two berserkers rushed through the door attacking.

A bloody and dirty fight followed. Through out words of encouragement could be heard being shouted at the pirates. As the adventurers fought their way into the hall the leader of the pirates made a dash for some stairs in the opposite far corner. Despite their best efforts to stop him, the pirate escaped.

Varis managed to charm the sole remaining pirate, allowing the party to interrogate their prisoner. Which enabled them to find out about Angrath and what was waiting for them ahead up the stairs. After the questioning had finished Bart sent the prisoner to the after life.

Armed with the new intel, the group went back and broke into the treasury. Where they filled their pockets with gold, found some magic cloaks, a couple of glass vials and a magical helm. And some other trinkets. There was too much treasure to carry.

And that was where we left the group…

Post-mortem

So how did things go from a DM point of view?

The start was rather shaky. But I grew into things. For me it didn’t flow, or seem right. Especially the descriptions dealing with leaving port, being at sea and leading into the storm.

I’m not entirely sure that the skill challenges worked. I didn’t announce them as such, nor explain what one was. Maybe having one so early into our first session was a mistake.

With the group failing the skill challenge for the storm itself the boat was wrecked, and the group unconscious on the beach I decided for dramatic purposes to kill off the boats crew. I also had to decide on the fly with the players what equipment they were likely to have survived with. I allowed weapons, but stuff like food, camping equipment, etc was lost because it would naturally have been stowed away. This situation had gone through my mind before hand. I think I should have thought it through more, and made some notes.

Once in the pirates lair, the first level took a lot longer than expected. The guard post and room seemed to really slow the players down. It almost seemed too hard a problem to solve.

I think the tiles worked. Although I think it made me lazy with my descriptions, and I need to work on that.

The pirate tactics in combat used were believable I think. Having them preferring to die, rather than run away and face Angrath was the right way to play them. It gave the players extra info that although they had no idea who Angrath was, they knew he was some-one to fear. Also having described the clothes in his locker in his quarters as being too big for them, it conveyed to the players the person was large. So the players were getting an image of Angrath dropped as hints.

I was also very tight with what the dead pirates had on them, and in their quarters. Basically if searched all that was found was their weapons. I kinda felt guilty about that. But then again I eased that feeling knowing that there was a very well stocked treasure room for them to get into.

Berserkers had too high an hp? I think what helped was the 2 berserkers were blocking the door way and stopping the other pirates from attacking. It kept the party from being overwhelmed and out numbered in actions. But after the first berserker died, I dropped the seconds hp a little.

When the party tried breaking into the armoury Chrissie rolls a natural 20 trying to break the lock with her knife. I had her completely destroy the lock, so the door remained locked. A knife isn’t the best way to pick a lock. It felt right. But thinking about it now seemed a bit too mean.

I decided to have the lair commander run off. Which meant I fudged the rolls so that he would escape. I felt a bit guilty doing this. But it was a spur of the moment decision to have him make a run for it so that he could escape and tell Angrath. A witness that could identify them later on when they eventually bump into the minotaur pirate.

Early on a player asked me I think during our first skill challenge what the DC was. I didn’t give it. That allows metagaming, It’s info the characters wouldn’t know. Also from a DM running things point of view, it means I can’t adjust things on the fly based on how events are going. I don’t tell players if their stealth check has succeeded or not. I describe them being stealthy. They find out how successful that was as events evolve. There is a whole Matt Colville video on this.

I thought this session would be about 3 hours. It ended up being 4. Ok there was a little chat at the start, and about 15 mins clear up. But otherwise the rest was game time. And we still had level 3 and the tomb to navigate.

Overall I think the players enjoyed the experience. Which is the main thing.

So Saturday saw my first session zero as a DM.

The players had before hand been given the one sheet about the campaign, albeit digitally (my post about it is here).

I’d created a cheat sheet for creating a character in D&D 5e. Which I had printed out earlier in the week. Sadly when I was printing out that, I should have also printed out blank character sheets. Something I didn’t think about until I was on my way to the session zero. Luckily Jonathan was able to save the day on that front.

Why did I want to go “old school” instead of using something like D&D Beyond which does all the heavy lifting for you?

I don’t mind tools like that, that make life easier. But before you start using one of them I think you need to at least create one character the traditional way. I think it gives a better understanding of the character sheet and how the various stats, modifiers etc on the character sheet are related to each other.

Also a benefit of doing it this way doesn’t rely on everyone having a laptop,tablet or smart phone to access their character. Or everyone has that stuff, or is comfortable using it. Plus a mobile is not the ideal device to use.

I did have to poo poo a couple of character choices. No goblin characters, and there was something to do with a ranger, that was detailed online (I think the person was looking at D&D Beyond). I had to remind them of the line from the one sheet that pointed to what was valid for our campaign. If it wasn’t in one of the books listed, they couldn’t have it.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Financial overhead for players. I know eventually I’ll pick up Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. And if I listed them as also valid some may feel they would have to purchase them as well. That’s a pressure that I didn’t want the players to have. And this goes double for D&D Beyond. I know there is a free part to it. But access to the majority of stuff costs.

Another reason is simplicity. The Players Guide can seem overwhelming as it is. I know I added in the Swordcoast too for players to use if they wished. But that added a little more to consider. But not a big overhead. Juggling between these two will be bad enough I think for new players, adding in more books would just be too confusing I think.

I really should have looked up advice on running a session zero. I was there giving advice when needed. Early on I tried to get people to talk about their character, so at least they had an idea what others were going for. That might have influenced their decision on what to play. I wasn’t going to say “oh you need a healer, fighter, etc”. If at the end of this they all had decided to play bards then that’s the decision we would have lived with, and I’d adjust the campaign to cater for that. Which makes it sound like I have it all planned out. I don’t. I’m working on the initial dungeon, and that is the extent of the planning so far.

But I feel I could have run the session better.

I think the cheat sheets helped.

I should have supported the usual suspect better in creating his character. I should have noticed earlier that he was struggling. Which is a major failing on my behalf. I did keep checking in during the session, and each time I was told they were fine.

At the end I took photos of the character sheets. So there are copies if things get lost between now and our first session. Plus I can pull off the info I need for my session prep.

So my first session zero I think I’d grade could do better.