I've been playing 5E with a few hardcore gaming friends for the past few months and we've been buying everything we could. That includes the Start Set with The Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure. We were disappointed that it didn't come with tokens or other things we could use in our existing game because our current DM didn't want to run a pre-written adventure. Still, I bought it so I decided to give it a read and really liked what I saw.
I decided that I would finally try my hand at DMing and gathered a few friends together who had never played D&D before. I'm trying to capture my thoughts on the whole new DM process here.
With my first post about here.
I'm trying to document the adventure in two parallel paths: one as a dramatic retelling and one as my thought process. I thought some might enjoy impressions on the adventure from a novice DM and novice players and will try to post updates daily. Right now we're made all the way through Act 2, so I have a lot of material.
And oh man, people weren't kidding when they balked at the toughness of Part 1.
I finally finished my posts on the first session I played with my friends who have never played D&D. We got to the end of Act 2 and will probably try to get our second session in during the first week of October.
Here is a link to all the D&D Home Game posts, including a Session recap that I will be sending to my players.
http://velvetsojourn.com/blog/category/dungeons-dragons/dd-home-game/
It's a realy good read in your blog! Lot of thanks! =)
Thanks for sharing your blog (love the title 'Velvet Sojourn').
I too have been DMing the Lost Mine at my FLGS and have attracted 2 new players who have never played D&D before. In fact, a few friends of mine who have never table-topped have asked me to run the starter module for them. Guess word is getting around of how awesome and approachable D&D 5 is.
The only snag so far has been with my spell casters, who initially struggled with figuring out how many spells they can cast, but we have sorted it out.
Grahmir wrote:
I am going to start up The Lost Mines of Phandelver for my hardcore gaming group. My pre-write up is here:
http://velvetsojourn.com/blog/the-lost-mine-of-phandelver-hardcore-game-dm-debrief-part-0/
My problem, is that unlike with my home game, all the players came up with non-vague backstories independently. They didn't leave me with a lot to tie together, like my home group did. Right now the only thing I came up with is a Drow invasion. Does anyone have some ideas or advice?
CapNBritain wrote:
That blog is realy cool!
spelley wrote:
I'm going to start running the adventure for my hardcore D&D group tonight. I'm hoping to set up the game in a way that will seamlessly introduce the adventure hooks and also keep them on their toes.
http://velvetsojourn.com/blog/the-lost-mine-of-phandelver-hardcore-game-dm-debrief-part-0-5/
I think the most difficult part will be making sure that they don't play in cruise control mode because of their experience in otehr games. D&D 5E at 1st level, especially in this adventure, is no joke.I also want to make sure that their characters all have sufficient background motivations for proceeding through the adventure, but I figure that the players will progress either way.
Excellent blog! Great read - thanks! 