Intro & Session 0

Welcome Gamers,

I’m a DM. This is a blog.

In this blog I share thoughts on gaming through summaries of my games. Don’t expect a ton of structure here. I’m gonna be jumping around from topic to topic depending on what happened in that week’s session.

The DM:
I DM D&D every two weeks. I have no time to create my own homebrew so I run D&D published adventures and I use Beadle & Grimm premium edition boxes. It helps me to learn how to improve future editions (hopefully). This blog isn’t about our products, but I may reference them from time to time.

It’s about the game.

I know the rules, but I’m not a rules wizard. Sometimes I lean on my players to remind me of a rule, and sometimes I look it up in the moment if it’s important. You should also know that this group of characters were created before the 2024 rules were published, so some of my observations about player builds are referencing the 2014 rules. 

While I run published adventures, like most DMs I will customize story to match my players’ characters and my sensibilities. I’m currently running Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk.

The Adventure:
My players are coming off two long campaigns that were what I will call ‘less traditional’: Wild Beyond the Witchlight (where the characters were trapped in the Feywild and faced with much less combat than usual) and Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus (where the characters were trapped in Avernus, and had to do a lot of deals/parley with creatures that were more powerful than they were). So a traditional adventure, with plenty of chances to ‘go back to town’ as a home base - shop, roleplay with NPCs, build reputation - is being WHOLEHEARTEDLY embraced. This adventure also has a ton of straight forward goals and combat. There will be more on that later.

The Players:
I love my players.

They’re all experienced. They’re generous. They’re smart. All but 1 are, or have been, actors. And the 1 who isn’t an actor is a blackbelt roleplayer from decades of gaming and running a live action roleplaying game. In this blog I’ll be talking about my players. Sometimes I may even disagree with something they said or did in a moment, so let me repeat:

I love my players. There.

I’ll be talking about each player and their characters as we go along, but here’s a list:

Abraham Benrubi: JahZin, half-elf warlock
Luis Carazo: Drakir, human fighter (/cleric, more on that later)
Rob Ciccolini: Auric, drow sorcerer
Rob Mathes: Vrykas, gith fighter
Luka Lyman-Minogue: Twilly, human druid
Billy Lyman-Minogue: William, human paladin

This is a bit larger of a group then I’m used to. Historically, I’ve run 4 and 5 player groups.

Before Session 1:
When I start a new campaign, I always let my players know well ahead of time what the campaign is going to be so they have time to create compelling characters. Usually, they start by emailing me a concept before they build their characters in D&D Beyond.

I love a player that sends me a strong concept that doesn’t give me specific details.

GOOD: My dwarven fighter is from a family of blacksmiths who value hard work over notoriety. My father is proud and demanding and doesn’t suffer fools - particularly those that would besmirch the family name. My brother disappeared some time back and I’m desperate to locate him. I’ve always dreamed of joining a faction or group of adventurers that share my deep desire to ensure all people remain free of tyranny. I’m slow to trust, but once I do, you have a companion for life. I love precious gems and have studied them all my life.

This concept/background inspires me as DM because of all the opportunities. It also allows me to mold the concept to my existing story very easily.

NOT AS GOOD: My father, Norbert Goldheart, is the King Under the Mountain and I am the rightful heir - we are the richest dwarves in the land. My brother was kidnapped by the notorious mindflayer crimelord Xenzirk who I will someday destroy. I’ve been kicked out of the Harpers for being a bit of a wildcard and I have a grudge against my contact there: a halfling warlock named Indigo who is hunting me down.

While this concept/background sounds cool, it really puts me as the DM in a tough situation because the player is defining an entire storyline with named NPCs, factions, and setting-defining details that may not align with the story I have planned. Heaping this on a DM running a pre-written adventure, and not a homebrew, is particularly onerous.

Help your DMs out here people!

GOOD EXAMPLE:
Billy’s character: William Hawksley (paladin) (noble), is the younger brother of a character Billy ran in a past Waterdeep campaign: Tanner Hawksley (bard) (noble) - determined to do his family name proud and terrified of not living up to his brother’s legacy. His heart is in the right place, despite being a bit arrogant and entitled. He set up a mentor/student relationship with one of the other characters (Vrykas). William did all his training with Vrykas - a student of battle tactics. So he not only built this great dynamic within the party, but had a background that was rife with opportunities for me as DM. With a background like this, I can easily add campaign-specific details.

MIN-MAXING:
Because this adventure has a bunch of straight forward combat, the consequences of min/maxing (players picking class abilities, feats, spells, etc that have particularly nasty [read: effective] combinations) seem to be a bigger factor than in any campaign I’ve run in years. More on that in future posts, but since we’re talking about the paladin, I have to call out that he (AND Vrykas, the battle tactic fighter) chose the fighting style Interception (from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything) at 2nd level. That style is REALLY powerful. Those two warriors often stand side by side at the front of the party and EVERY ROUND they can use their reaction to reduce damage on the other by a d10+ their modifier. In a lengthy battle, they have the potential to reduce the damage monsters are doing by 100+ points. And at low levels!

It has forced me to change the way I approach combat just to ensure they’re challenged. Any feat/ability that forces me to plan for how to get around it... is powerful.

NEXT POST: Session 1.