I ran my first DnD session as a dungeon master couple weeks ago. Everyone had a fun time really. There were 6 players. All of them were playing for the first time. Some of them didn't know what an RPG is even in the digital world. But they did cooperate, participate and had a good time together. Here are some reflection on this.
Player - character bond
We played Dragons of the Stromwreck Isle campaign. Which is a starter campaign that get players through 1 to 3 level. Which comes with ready to play characters, maps and adventures. Since my players are gonna roleplay for the first time I didn't think playing ready to play characters wasn't a good idea. I wanted them to bond with their character better so I let them create their own character. Which resulted better than I tought. Some of them came with a whole backstory about their family their origin. Some of them weren't sure about how should it go so lead the way a bit.
They did not have any trouble calling themselves by their character name. Most of them were able to react to the world exactly like how their character would. Of course I dont have a comparison on how would it be if there were ready play charaters but maybe I will run a one shot with ready to play character and see how will that turn out.
Better Motivations
Well in the original campaign characters were going to the isle for various of reasons. But those reasons were not really convincing to me. I mean "A letter tells there is lost knowledge in the observatory" ?? What is this letter, who sent this, who am I to go there to checkout lost knowledges. So first I let them to describe their characters to me and I come up with a prologue quest for each of them. Which starts at their hometown and leads them to the isle. Downside is I run these prologue quests as one on one sessions and let them meet on the ship that goes to the island. So now everyone has their own unique motivations and they all find it meaningful, but they dont have any purpose as a group. I don't know if this is necessarly a bad thing. Eventually they met eachother by "destiny" and helped eachother to survive zombies that attack them. So there must be a sense of feeling that they cant survive by themselves on that island.
I am really curious about if they will be able to bond as a group. I did some foreshadowing in each of their prologue quest. But clues are not meaningful by themselves they should share the knowledge with eachother and talk to NPCs about it to find the rest of the story.
learning Game mechanics
I spent a couple of weeks learning how Dungeons & Dragons works. As a game designer who has played digital RPGs my entire life, it wasn’t too difficult for me to grasp. However, my players didn’t do any research beforehand, so I explained the mechanics to them during their prologue mission. Despite this, I feel they are still struggling to use their features and spells effectively. I can see that they want to do something cool or meaningful with their spells, but they keep misusing them. I really dislike having to say, “That spell doesn’t work like that.” For our next session, I plan to send them a spell list and ask them to read through their spells. Since they’re beginners, I don’t want to overwhelm them by handing them a massive book and saying, “Learn this.” It feels cruel to expect that from someone who isn’t entirely sure what they’re getting into.
Going oldschool
We decided this as a group. Still if someone wants to bring a DnD Beyond account they are allowed to. But most of us really motivated on playing this pen and paper. I am aware that problems on learning the game mechanics and effectively using spells caused because of this. Well playing pen and paper doesn't directly causes this problem but effectively encourages it. But I have plans on this matter. I also see D&D as a crafting hobby. I really enjoy creating and printing maps, NPCs, and other materials. I’ll admit, another DM could probably prepare this campaign in half the time it’s taken me. But I value the time I spend crafting cards and printing maps just as much as the time we spend in sessions. With that in mind, I’ve decided to print poker-sized spell cards for our next session.
Let’s see how it goes!