Lessons from the First Adventure

The group didn’t quite get what I was trying to do with the round robin, ‘what is the first story of your character,’ but that’s okay. They wound up creating a single shared ‘how they met’ story for themselves, which is still superior to making me engineer a ‘how the group met’ adventure.

I launched quickly into a skill challenge; I knew this would be tricky since it’s a new mechanic to pretty much everyone at the table. I wanted to introduce the concept because I think it has great potential if we can get better at it. DM’s need to design and execute them well, and players need to problem solve using their characters skills. All in all, I was pleased with the outcome. They missed an opportunity to interact with NPC’s which then made the rest of the challenge kinda boring. I realize now I need to be a little more clear about making their options visible.

I should have read up on the monsters a bit more, and thought their tactics out a little in advance. It worked out fine, but would have been smoother and quicker, with less book flipping if I had done that. I think I will continue using the cards for all quick reference information; at least this keeps everything in one place. It does create flipping through the cards, but my hypothesis is that this is outweighed by the certainty of all info in one place.

I must admit that it’s delicious to frustrate the players a little by making the mobs sneaky and by zapping the player characters with hindering affects. It’s also fun to bloody the PC’s and to knock them down sometimes.