Behind the Screen #1 - Tales from a first time DM

Hello everyone! I haven’t been writing all that much here as I have been writing quite a bit for DFAT and have busy with life and such. As fall comes rolling in and tons of new content is coming with music/games/tv and more you can certainly expect more to come over here at “Harmonious Geek”.

Which brings me to a new idea on writing about my first experience as a DM. 

After years of playing JRPG and other great adventuring exposure. I played D&D for the first time in college with some of my Fraternity Brothers and I was hooked. I have been playing off and on now for the past 7 years. I have played 3.5, 4th, and now 5th edition D&D as well as several other gaming systems as well. What I have found in my time playing these games is that while the rules are all well and good and important to make sure games don’t get out of hand, what really makes a great gaming session is the people you are playing with.

With the upcoming fifth edition coming for Dungeons and Dragons, I figured now was the time to start working on creating my own campaign and to start working on developing some skills as a Dungeon Master. I have had the pleasure of playing games with some really great Dungeon Masters and each one of them have a very unique way of running campaigns. I have some goals for my first campaign and I want to list them here just for you to see:

• Create compelling NPC’s (Especially Villains) that will help drive the story and plot. 
• Work with the party to create interesting tie-ins to their characters and to help them develop their characters throughout the campaign.
• To have mastery of 5th edition rules 
• To appropriately scale the campaign with the characters development. 

And now for a bit of a teaser of the plot, the campaign is entitled Pantheon Panic:

What do you do when you don’t know who to believe? The party is thrown in the middle of a conflict between powerful foes who both believe they are right. With the world in the balance the party will be forced to make difficult decisions and ally with with some unlikely people in order to decide the ultimate fate of the world. 

This past week I had my first adventure where I was able to introduce the party to some of the cast of characters that will help set up the ultimate plot. Their reaction to some of these characters was expected, and others were not. I’m loving the aspect of world building that is already taking place and I think that as the characters are placed in more situations I’m really looking forward to seeing how they react. 

I hope to provide some regular posts involving the trials that I have to work through in running my first adventure. I already noticed that despite the party fighting I did not consider possible loot on any of their enemies. I actually improvised one reward that ironically turned into a potential plot point. That’s the beauty of the game right?

The continuation of the party’s first adventure is next Sunday, and they will be meeting their newest party member. Looking forward to it.