I Wanted To Try DnD and Now Im The DM... shit

A chronicle of my foray into DnD

[myfirstclassisdm]

The Highlights of Game Day

1) I forgot that Princess' schedule got shifted back an hour so that we can met up at 10pm rather than 11pm, so I get a text at 1030 asking where I'm at.

2) Carol says she has to leave at midnight because she has training in the morning

3) Brady changed his name of his cape from "The Strange Cape" to "The Rape Cape". He said it's because it gives forceful hugs. He also brought a Mario to be his mini.

4) Geoff introduces his class as basic white guy.

5) Princess started off strong as a bard with a joke.

"What the different between a rooster and a sock? one will cock a doodle do and for one any cock will do!"

6) The first natural one of the night was for Brady to play his bag pipes. They ended up bursting.

7) Carol realizes that she can track a person with her bear and successfully does so.

8) Brady also rolled the first natural 20 (21 total) on a perception check and spotted the Vine Blight hanging out in the woods. Carol totaled out at 23 and instead of telling their party what they saw. The monk immediately told the ranger not to say anything to the rest of the party and they started arguing about it until the Blight attacked.

9) Brady kills the Blight by bashing its face in with a mace and proceeds to tea bag it.

10) Geoff crawls into a tent to avoid seeing Brady's victory humiliation and finds the first treasure of the game. Everyone proceeds to try and find more.

11) Geoff is excited and thinks that there is something in the burnt out fire pit. He rolls a natural 20 to check and finds squat. Proceeds to pout

12) Carol gives her axe to Brady to chip a tree down and cross a river.

13) When they come to a fork in the road, they freakin split the party. Not even evenly!! Princess goes by herself and she picks the one that isn't booby trapped. The other party trips a dead fall and Carol and her bear take a log to the face.

14) Final fight happens. With Princesses opening move to be casting an illusion of a naked woman from where she is hiding unbeknownst to her party.The only person that doesn't think it's real is the female bandit. This includes her party. Hilariously at this time, Carol's nose starts bleeding and Princess' solution is to shove a tampon up there to keep playing. Pictures are taken and memes are made about the violence of DnD.

15) Geoff finally gets to participate in combat and his first attack hits and he divine smites the shit out of the bandit leader nearly killing him.

16) Brady unleashes the rape cape for full stranger danger effect. And gets an arrow to the arm for it.

17) Carol arrows someone in the eye and is psyched.

18) ALL OF MY FUCKING BANDITS MISS THEIR ATTACKS THE NEXT ROUND!!!

19) Geoff finish's off the bandit leader by cutting his dick off and performing an intimidating yell. This intimidates all the remaining bandits.

20) Princess wants to finish off the bandits and Nat 1s her dagger throw into her foot bringing her health to 2 points

21) Carol wants to shoot the bandits that are running away at this point and shoots at them. She Nat 1s and shoots Brady in the ass. He is not at 1 point and is stink eyeing her like crazy.

We realize it's now 0130 and everyone is bummed to bail, but they take pictures of the map to remember what was going on for the next play through.

Highlight for me was after everyone left, Princess came up and said that she actually really liked playing and she can't wait to play again.

Overall I think it was super successful and really fun! Lots of jokes were made, beers were drank, and cheese dip was eaten. Now to see if it takes another month and a half to get together and try again!

[myfirstclassisdm]

Preparing Again to Sooth my Anxiety

Now I had a month and a half to wait. If you were to met me in person, you would quickly find that I'm not not to sit around and do nothing. It literally drives me up a wall.

So I set out to try and make some things to make the fights more fun. I had some air dry clay that I've had for years and haven't finished using yet, so I think to myself "maybe I can build some terrain stuff?

Next thing I know, I've sculpted out some logs, rock, chest, bags, and rope to leave around the battlefield. I find some fabric from an old project and make a makeshift tent with it, and now I'm feeling pretty satisfied with the environmental decorations.

I now wanted to make something for my enemies. I use some hot glue and some wire to make a make shift Vine Blight and some tentacles for the first fight. Then I made some tokens for the bandits in the last fight.

The last thing I did was doodle some character designs and make some more tokens for them. I let everyone know that they could bring a small toy to act as their miniature if they wanted, but at the time I didn't foresee them wanting to.

I ended up finishing all of this stuff a week before the game. Luckily this ended up working since I had to fly to another state for a week to visit family, so I didn't go stir crazy.

[myfirstclassisdm]

Scheduling and Location

Scheduling five people in job fields that are prone to massive amount of Overtime, sudden schedule changes, and surprise training was a feat and a half. Not only did we have to contend with that, we also had to deal with trying to finagle different days off and different shift times.

We ended up shooting for a Tuesday a month and a half away. If we did it after 11 pm, the Princess and Geoff would be finished with their shifts (pending nothing happening last minute). Brady, Carol, and I all share Tuesday off so we figured we would probably be fine, pending no major incidents or injuries.

The last thing to try and shuffle out was where to do it. All of us live in 3 different towns, but are with in a 30 minute drive of each other. But we have to plan for Princess and Brady's young son. With that in mind, we figured we'll do it at their house so that he can sleep for school and they don't have to worry.

Now it was just a waiting game.

[myfirstclassisdm]

Brady and Evan

The last one to get created was Brady. I knew he had only agreed to play because of his wife and because he has a tendency to humor me since he thinks of me as a sibling. With that in mind I didn't expect much out of his character's creation.

It went about as I thought it would. He wanted to be a Goliath because it was one of the biggest races and wanted to be a monk to punch the shit out of stuff in his words. He then went and picked the first options available for all of his languages, proficiencies, and etc. he also dumped most of his points into strength and left everything else low.

The last thing was to ask if he wanted a special item like everyone else. He wanted a cape like Doctor Strange. We ended up creating a cape that could grapple an individual for his action an it will continue to grapple until he says to stop or the grappled person can break out.

While he was not the most enthusiastic with making his character, he put in the effort to meet with me and get shit done when I asked. Which is something I really appreciate.

[myfirstclassisdm]

Geoff and Seth

By the time I tried to get ahold of Geoff to set up his character, he told me he wanted to be a human paladin. He had his alignment picked out and knew what he wanted to do. He even had gotten onto DnDBeyond and had made a character.

The only part of setting up Geoff's stuff that was a pain was getting him to put his points into his character. Because everyone was new to the game I figured we should use the point buy method. It's fewer numbers and most of us have done point buy in video games we have played, so it's more familiar. It took a month and a half to corner him and get him to pick his points.

Now to be fair to Geoff since Carol and Princess got animal companions, I asked if he wanted any special items. And Geoff asked to have a shield like Captain America's. We came up with a shield that won't break the game and the Shield of Swag was made.

The Shield of Swag gives the wielded the opportunity to reflect missed hits back at the attacker. It's not an automatic thing, and he has to roll to try and reflect it, but it was something we made together and gives him some joy to the game

[myfirstclassisdm]

Carol and Hellfyre

Carol was the second person I met up with to try and get her character made. The first thing we did was flip through the Players Guide to see what race she would be interested in.

When Carol saw the Dragonborn art she was stoked. She could be a dragon? Sign her up.

When it came to the class though, she was kinda at a loss. Now I've know Carol for several years, and I know she is a hunter (for food not sport), and she is a country kid through and through. With that in mind I suggested the ranger class. This came with the added benefit of her being able to become a Beastmaster and have an animal partner, like she does for her work life.

Now that catches her attention. Now Carol is invested. I asked her what type of companion she wants and she wants a bear and I asked her where she wanted to gain them. Now she gives me a story of how she found him at an animal fight ring and killed the guys keeping him to rescue him. She decides that his name is Stellen and she is now happy as a clam.

The last thing we do is set her up with a name and she goes with Voloran Hellfyre. She seems to now be more excited about playing than she had been originally, so now I'm more excited.

[myfirstclassisdm]

Princess and the Princess

Since Princess had most of her character created as part of her agreement to play, she was the first one I helped build a character with.

She wanted to be a half-elf but she wanted loved the drow art in the Players Guide. We came to the decision that she could be a half-drow character and we would just treat her like a half-elf. She also wanted to be like a Disney Princess so when I suggested that she could be a bard and sing her spells, she was estatic. To fit the Disney vibe she was looking for, we made it so she has one free use of talks with animals a day.

The more we talked about what her character could be like the more excited she got. So while she was still adamant that she wouldn't actually like playing, she really got into making her character.

Of course I had some concerns with a name like Princess Pancake Fluffybutt. I asked her if she thought that people in the world would not poke fun at the name, and she said that she knew that they would. She claimed that her parents hated her and that's why she had such a ridiculous name.

For the last part of her agreement to play, I told her she could have a pet dragon, so we made a little Psuedo-Dragon be her travel companion.

Overall I think we did pretty well with creating a character that fit her wants and that she can have fun with. Which really is the whole point of this exercise.

[myfirstclassisdm]

They've Agreed Victory Is Mine!

Now that I had a group of friends that has agreed to play, I was bursting with excitement. I then had a thought of "oh no... that means that I have to be the Dungeon Master". Not gonna lie, I went full panic mode. How am I gonna make this super fun so that they might want to do this again?! What all do I need to prepare? Can I over prepare? Do I have to do voices and stuff like that? Are they going to want to do that?

I read a mess of articles about how to set up a good oneshot adventure and how to be a good DM. I listened to podcast and watched YouTube videos. For a week straight I bombarded myself with everything I could think of. And guess what? Everyone does it differently! There is not default good way to DM. There is no set way to play. Even the rules aren't set!

At first this scared the shit out of me and I felt that I had bitten off more that I could chew. If there is no set guidelines how can I be good at something I have never experienced first hand even as a player?

Then my brother, having heard from my mom about this experiment, sent me the DM Guide. I poured over it thinking that it would be my salvation. I mean it's the official guide right? It's supposed to guide me. I was starting to feel like I was drowning under all the information that I had absorbed until this point and the book was the same as everything else I read and listen to. And then I got to chapter 8. And there I'm under table rules was three things. Foster respect, avoid distractions, and have snacks.

Have snacks? And it clicked. It's a game. It's fun so long as we have fun playing it. That's it. And just like that, I could breath.

I started thinking about what would be fun for my friends and for me. Brady was easy and would like combat, Geoff would be into being with his friends for once, Carol would like a mystery and probably having a pet, and Princess already said what she wanted. If I added in beer and food, I should have a recipe I for fun.

I came up with a basic story of them meetings in a tavern and a local's daughter being kidnapped. Threw in a mini combat segment so that we can all learn the mechanics, and the final fight to save the kid. Super basic and should work for them.

Then it was onward to getting with everyone to make their characters!

[myfirstclassisdm]

So I have wanted to try DnD for a long time.

So when I was a kid my brother and his friends would get together and play DnD in our basement (which was also his bedroom). Since my brother and them were 10 years older, I was pretty much banned from joining. Instead I would sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the stories they would tell and the fights they would have. It sounded so cool and I wanted to be a part of that.

Now, I'm a really shy person when it comes to my nerdom and I have a hard time asking for things that I want. So I've pretty much sat on that desire to play for quite a few years. Now that I'm in my 20s though, I've come to the realization that it's okay to ask for things and your friends will sometimes be willing to try things that you want to do, just because they know that it will make you happy.

Really I just love my friends so much. I can not sing their praises enough.

So I asked and they were willing to try a game of DnD. I'm gonna describe somethings about my friends so you can get a picture of what they are like.

"Geoff" is a guy in his mid-20s who is a cronic flake. It's not really his fault most of the time, but between his phone being a piece of shit and his wife refusing to let him go out with out her, he is prone to cancelling last minute for a lot of things. He was the one I asked first about wanting to play. See, Geoff is a big ass nerd in a whole bunch of ways so I knew that while he might say no, he would get me wanting to play something as stereotypically "nerdy" as DnD. He was the comfort zone for asking for me to shake of the nerves of asking people and I wasn't really surprise when he said yes he was in.

"Carol" is also in her mid 20s and, while she isn't a flake like Geoff, because of her and her wife's profession, she likes to be home with her when their days off coincide. Carol's wife also has a thing about her not being home late at night without her, so she pretty much has a self imposed curfew. Carol, I figured, would say yes at first because she has a hard time saying no in person, but would back out because her wife's shifts got changed or she needed to schedule some training for her own job. She is also not as "nerdy" and me and Geoff, so she probably wouldn't be super excited to play, but might try it. She was unsurprisingly hesitant to say yes, but when I said that Geoff was in and that drinking is something that she is totally aloud to do, she agreed to try it.

Now came my hard sales. My power couple "Princess" and "Brady". They I knew would be the ones that would be hard to get to agree. I knew though if I could get Princess to agree, then Brady would too just to socialize if for nothing else. They are in their mid-30s and have a young son. Factor in them both having hectic and demanding jobs, scheduling is going to get difficult and the kid factor needs to be taken into account. Adding on to that, Princess is very quick to say fuck that to things she is of the opinion she doesn't like. An example of this is video games.

When we worked together, she would constantly poke at my love of playing video games. In her mind she didn't see what was fun about it. She is and always has been more of a "doer" and is an extrovert in the extreme. She is into sports and going out to bars and socializing. She didn't see the appeal in playing a game by yourself. I was eventually able to bribe her with a 24 pack of beer. I told her that I would buy her beer to try a game and if she didn't like it, I would buy her another 24 pack. She agreed and I had to think hard about her personality and what she would like in a game. Eventually I landed on "The Last of Us" and she now likes video games and plays them on her own.

I figured that DnD would be the same situation as video games were and prepared accordingly. I had multiple imaginary arguments with myself in the shower and thought of talking points ranging from her enjoyment of video games now and to her like of game of thrones.

Not gonna lie, it kinda took the wind out of my sails when all it ended up taking to get her to agree was the promise that she can have a pet dragon and can be a pretty elf named Princess Pancake Fluffybutt. If you know the woman, you get her sense of humor and just let her roll with it.

Brady once his wife agreed, he did too. He just wanted to hit the shit out of stuff. I think it helped to that he also has poked at my nerdom in the past (his was poking at me making my own computer tower to play video games) and now he has done the same thing (seriously he loved building towers now and gaming on them. He is a computer elitist now)

Now that I've got them to agree the next part was getting their characters sorted and coming up with an adventure. I just knew this would be like herding cats.