I didn't want to run a PnP game. I didn't set out to buy Rime of the Frostmaiden. I had played one session of D&D and two or three sessions of 2nd edition AD&D back in 2008.
I had recently set up IWD2 to play it in multiplayer with my wife, after she liked and finished IWD. So, in relation to that, I was googling something about Icewind Dale, when I learned about the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to learn there is a recent adventure released that takes place in Icewind Dale, so I looked it up in the trove to see what it's about and I actually liked it. My wife joked "Why not get it?", and I didn't need much encouragement, so I went out and bought the thing.
We got hyped, started thinking about potential players. Fortunately we have a couple of friends - our bridesmaid and her husband in fact - who we were sure would be interested enough to try out a D&D game, since they enjoy tabletop games.
I think that's really the most healthy way to be playing D&D - live, face to face sessions with people you know and who share your cultural background, age group, and interests. In our case we were 3 programmers and one dentist, with a negligible age difference and similar interests. I had watched a couple of videos by Sly Flourish's campaign and adopted the idea of a one-page summary of the adventure, to advertise it to the players and set the tone. To my satisfaction, they said they would be interested to play.
Although I really wanted to play as a player, obvioulsy I would have to be the DM, and with only 3 players, I came up with the idea of inserting a 4th player controlled by me and rarely if at all taking part in social interactions. I later learned that this is called a "sidekick" in the DMG. Since I'm a fan of adventure stories in the wilderness and in the artic areas, I had the idea of a perfect sidekick NPC - Dersu Uzala himself, from the Akira Kurosawa movie based on the book (https://youtu.be/2EWdAnJsfdc)
With players and an adventure like that, I knew I wouldn't be running some gay shit.
We started our session zero by finishing the half-created player characters. Following Sly Flourish's advice, I had somewhat liberally sent my players to dndbeyond.com to experiment with creating their characters. My intention was to save some time, but in retrospect, maybe I should have walked them through the whole process in person. Instead I ended up with an Aasimar Cleric and a Dragonborn Warlock as two of the player characters, but I figured it wasn't the end of the world.
The other half of the party was my wife's Human Male Rogue (based on Vlad Taltos from Steven Brust's books) and the sidekick Human Male Ranger Dersu Uzala.
I came up with the following start for the adventure. The story begins with the players travelling on the Ten Trails, the main road from the south through the Spine of the World into Icewind Dale. I had a "Guide" NPC who was taking the party through the mountain passes and giving them the background information about the Dale and the onset of the long night. The player characters don't yet know each other, but are merely travelling together for the benefit of safety on the road. They have each been issued a "secret" about their character which they should keep and which will bring some consequences during the adventure. I'm not planning to do anything overly complex though, as they are all first-time D&D players.
At some point, the players notice birds circling in the air some hundred feet away from the road and into the woods. They go to investigate what's there and find a dead frozen man tied to a tree. Four wolves who were about to have the dead guy for breakfast turn and attack the players. They seemed to be taking the fight with less than the amount of seriousness, just when one of the wolves had a successful attack that took half the cleric's HP. I still kept the fight going until they killed three of the four wolves and then had the fourth run away.
Upon returning to the guide they told him about the encounter and he explained to them that this was probably a criminal sent as a sacrifice to appease Auril. The players had disturbed the sacrifice by interrupting and fighting the wolves, and now the goddess would be angered. We stopped session zero there and on the next session they were in Bryn Shander.
I really like how our game is turning out overall. Neither of us is very much into the improv theather crap, and we all relay what characters do in third person, which makes things go both smoother and safe from cringe. I'll make a writeup about the first complete session in a subsequent post. We've already had the session but this one got too long.
I had recently set up IWD2 to play it in multiplayer with my wife, after she liked and finished IWD. So, in relation to that, I was googling something about Icewind Dale, when I learned about the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to learn there is a recent adventure released that takes place in Icewind Dale, so I looked it up in the trove to see what it's about and I actually liked it. My wife joked "Why not get it?", and I didn't need much encouragement, so I went out and bought the thing.
We got hyped, started thinking about potential players. Fortunately we have a couple of friends - our bridesmaid and her husband in fact - who we were sure would be interested enough to try out a D&D game, since they enjoy tabletop games.
I think that's really the most healthy way to be playing D&D - live, face to face sessions with people you know and who share your cultural background, age group, and interests. In our case we were 3 programmers and one dentist, with a negligible age difference and similar interests. I had watched a couple of videos by Sly Flourish's campaign and adopted the idea of a one-page summary of the adventure, to advertise it to the players and set the tone. To my satisfaction, they said they would be interested to play.
Although I really wanted to play as a player, obvioulsy I would have to be the DM, and with only 3 players, I came up with the idea of inserting a 4th player controlled by me and rarely if at all taking part in social interactions. I later learned that this is called a "sidekick" in the DMG. Since I'm a fan of adventure stories in the wilderness and in the artic areas, I had the idea of a perfect sidekick NPC - Dersu Uzala himself, from the Akira Kurosawa movie based on the book (https://youtu.be/2EWdAnJsfdc)
With players and an adventure like that, I knew I wouldn't be running some gay shit.
We started our session zero by finishing the half-created player characters. Following Sly Flourish's advice, I had somewhat liberally sent my players to dndbeyond.com to experiment with creating their characters. My intention was to save some time, but in retrospect, maybe I should have walked them through the whole process in person. Instead I ended up with an Aasimar Cleric and a Dragonborn Warlock as two of the player characters, but I figured it wasn't the end of the world.
The other half of the party was my wife's Human Male Rogue (based on Vlad Taltos from Steven Brust's books) and the sidekick Human Male Ranger Dersu Uzala.
I came up with the following start for the adventure. The story begins with the players travelling on the Ten Trails, the main road from the south through the Spine of the World into Icewind Dale. I had a "Guide" NPC who was taking the party through the mountain passes and giving them the background information about the Dale and the onset of the long night. The player characters don't yet know each other, but are merely travelling together for the benefit of safety on the road. They have each been issued a "secret" about their character which they should keep and which will bring some consequences during the adventure. I'm not planning to do anything overly complex though, as they are all first-time D&D players.
At some point, the players notice birds circling in the air some hundred feet away from the road and into the woods. They go to investigate what's there and find a dead frozen man tied to a tree. Four wolves who were about to have the dead guy for breakfast turn and attack the players. They seemed to be taking the fight with less than the amount of seriousness, just when one of the wolves had a successful attack that took half the cleric's HP. I still kept the fight going until they killed three of the four wolves and then had the fourth run away.
Upon returning to the guide they told him about the encounter and he explained to them that this was probably a criminal sent as a sacrifice to appease Auril. The players had disturbed the sacrifice by interrupting and fighting the wolves, and now the goddess would be angered. We stopped session zero there and on the next session they were in Bryn Shander.
I really like how our game is turning out overall. Neither of us is very much into the improv theather crap, and we all relay what characters do in third person, which makes things go both smoother and safe from cringe. I'll make a writeup about the first complete session in a subsequent post. We've already had the session but this one got too long.
