A dwarven paladin named Brottor arrived in the humble village of Opal Town, located in the southeastern region of Iounin. He was looking for information, but very tight-lipped about the nature of that information. He met an enthusiastic dwarf bard named Benhum who kept him company while servers conversed with a tortle, Shelby, who was in town for the locally famous apple festival, and a mysterious, hooded man, whose face no one could quite focus on.

Shump, a half-orc barbarian, who had arrived in town a week ago and has ingratiated himself to the locals for the most part, was challenged to an arm wrestling contest by Uther. Shump lost, but to everyone’s surprise, the tortle revealed a bit of her true strength by challenging and almost immediately trouncing the large man.

After the clamor over the arm-wrestling upset calmed, Benhum began to perform a song for the patrons, but was interrupted when a flaming crossbow bolt crashed through the window, hitting the bar, and setting the tavern ablaze. Four goblins burst through the windows and began cutting down patrons. Brottor, Shelby, Shump, and the mysterious hooded figure leaped into action, managing to defeat the invaders with the aid of Benhum and Uther, allowing most of the patrons to escape with their lives. In the battle, the hooded stranger was revealed to be a kenku–a flightless crow person from the mountain wastes of the far west–named Shadyboi.

The group didn’t have time to rest for long. As soon as they exited the bar, they were attacked by three more goblins riding warhorses. They were able to defeat these goblins as well, with the kenku using his necrotic magic to zap the life force from two of their assailants.

The night ended with the adventuring party tapped out, exhausted, and barely on their feet. In the distance, more goblin troops approach…

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This was our first night playing, and my first night ever as a DM. The crew at this time was made up of:

Brottor Frostbeard – a dwarf paladin of the church of Pelor. He’s played by my friend from work, Oscar, who has never played D&D before.

Shadyboi Ca’caw – a kenku shadow sorcerer who’s on the quest to recover something stolen from him. He’s played by another friend from work, Justin, who played D&D 3.5 back in college, but no D&D at all since.

Shump the Wanderer – a half-orc barbarian who is simply traveling from place to place trying to do good. He’s massive, standing at around 7 feet tall. He’s played by my brother, Brandon, who has essentially never played D&D before, except for 2 sessions of 4th edition four or five years ago.

Shelby Shellstrop – a tortle monk who is currently traveling and studying human culture to rid herself of cultural prejudices. My wife has the most experience out of everyone here, but that’s not saying much. We started playing a series of mini-adventures and one-shots back in May, and that’s the most she’s played except for the aforementioned 2 sessions of 4e from several years ago. But still, having 3 months under belt, she knew the most to expect going in.

A lot of my DM techniques for this first session in particular were taken from Matthew Mercer and Critical Role. I had a record player I got for my birthday that I synced with bluetooth, and I created some playlists on Spotify so we had some mood music.

My strategy for setting up this first session was to give everyone some sort of custom encounter that would ease them into roleplaying and get them used that silly feeling you have when you first start playing with a new group. Brottor was the easiest in point, so I started with him interacting with Benhum–having them bond over being dwarves in a mostly human village–and then shifted over to Shelby.

My wife, as I said, had the most experience, so this was more to help her find her character’s voice and personality a little easier. I had a waitress serve her food and drink and they discussed why she was in town. She revealed it was for the local apple festival. My wife actually sprang that on me when I’d pressed her on backstory roughly 2 days before, so I worked that into the local town lore.

After her, I switched over to Justin’s character Shadyboi. His is an interesting character because kenku can’t talk. They’ve been cursed by some god or some previous cataclysm that robbed them of their ability to fly and their speech. Instead, they’re perfect mimics. He’s able to get around that fairly easily because he has the Message spell, so he can just send people messages in their heads, which is what he did to the waitress. He also used to be a thief, and he’s been trying to steal gold and things from the establishment, but has been so far unsuccessful.

And finally, we got to my brother’s character.

My brother’s experience with D&D previously wasn’t great. I’d really wanted to play D&D, but the friends I’d normally play with recently had a kid and weren’t playing much of anything. None of them had time to DM, so I tried to get my wife and my brother to play. The whole thing just fizzled after a couple of sessions, and it left my brother really reluctant to join this new game. I was desperate for people, so I made him a bargain: play for 2 games, and if he didn’t like it, he could quit–no harm, no foul.

In order to create more buy-in for him, I gave him the skill contest arm-wrestling match. He loved that, even though he lost, and it was so much fun that Steph decided she wanted to play, too.

The rules were this: they rolled athletics checks, and the best 3 out of 5 won–natural 20s counted as 2 wins, and natural 1s counted as 2 losses.

Steph trounced Uther by rolling a natural 20, which was hilarious and appropriately humbled Uther, who I’d been playing as very braggadocious and cocksure.

The first goblin attack went well. It was a shock to them, gave them a push to jump into action, and gave them a taste of how combat in 5e worked. Since everyone started a level 1, they didn’t have a lot of flashy moves to choose from so they could get used to the jist of things.

The second goblin attack went okay, too–I forgot how strong warhorses were compared to regular horses and even with 2 NPCs helping, it was a tough fight for them. However, I also accidentally left my brother out of the initiative order for the 2nd fight. I’d been mad at him because he’d just been on his phone for the 2nd half of the night…and then I realized why later. I felt like such an asshole and apologized profusely.

We’ll be playing at Justin’s place next time since we were pretty cramped in our teeny apartment, so I’ll keep you posted on things.

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