Sunday, September 7, 2014

D&D 5th Edition and Infrequent DMing

I've run my first game of D&D 5th edition just now. I woke up before the sun did and went in with little prep.
Luckily, the results were good.

So impressions from the DM side about the mechanics that were taken into account, given no combat occurred and barely more than 1 spell used:
  1. The minimization of applicable bonuses and calculation thereof is wondrous. Because there are no branching and overly complex stats, calling a roll for anything has become easy and pleasant.
  2. The game still relies a lot on combat, as far as characterizing the characters. There are RP spells and RP character options, but they are a bit too few.
  3. I'm probably skipping a lot of rules by winging it, since the game felt barren of rolls, but it was fun and interesting. I suspect I might need to give the book a more thorough read.
  4. There are not enough monsters to really run a campaign with right now.
However, I'm also brought to another point: I feel like I'm a fair enough, but below average, DM/GM. Partly, the fault lies in how infrequent I get to do so, but I hope to remedy that. In another part, I think I need to get used to getting usable prep done for games, since by how much I'm winging it, I sucking out potential awesome from the game.

While we're here, let me tell you how it went. Playing were +Alex Perucchini and +Other Tim. +Anthony Fournier was slated to play but didn't show up last minute.

The mission the party got was to find out why the heck these local, nice kobolds were acting up and raiding farmsteads for food and goods, taking livestock and anything else they can conceivably lay their hands on.
They headed out, Alex a Paladin and Tim a Warlock, to the den of the kobolds. The guards outside were forthcoming and called for those in charge once they saw adventurers and feared for their lives. Out came a pair of Dragon Priests, who agreed to discuss the recent events within the den.
The party was taken to the priests' chambers, where the aforementioned refused to disclose details, and eventually the priests led the party to their draconic patron, a massive green dragon. The priests did not actually come with the party, so they did not hear the dragon debunk their story and request that the adventurers resolve this. The party got back, entangled the priests and got out of them that they are paying off a hobgoblin racket. Back to the dragon and then instructed to get this all resolved and kill the hobgoblins.
The party got back to see a small riot happening around the priests in the main chamber of the den and through character abilities found out the location of where the priests were keeping the money they were collecting. Since it was hidden, the party surmised that there wasn't actually a hobgoblin threat. With the recovered money, they paid off the town and gave half the remainder to the kobolds to live off.
0 combats, lots of roleplaying and one very big dragon.

+James Young - in case you were wondering what had happened.

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