Last Saturday pre-pre- game game or....

Have DM Manual will travel reads the card of a man....

The big game this weekend was the Super Bowl, however leading up to it involved RPG stuff both Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday the local library was running an intro to D&D 5^th edition. I thought it would be a great idea to take my lady’s boy. Sure we have played a few times, but it would not hurt to get him in a group of similar aged kids and a different DM.

There was a descent turn out like thirteen people and I figured no more than like four so good job community for showing up to learn. The ages were 10- adult. Even better! Adults playing with/for their kids.

We had a short chat with the guy running it, Neal, and it was mentioned that me and my lady had played before. She also mentioned that I run have run 5^th edition games at home. Well of course that throws me into the position to potentially run a group. I was given a quick overview of the game, the pre-made characters and introduced to the people as Ian the other DM. I was given an older group of players sans one 10-12 year old. 

The next three hours was me trying to keep some control over one kid who was everywhere and trying to get two high school kids to actually speak and get more involved in the game. I succeeded in the second role, but could never really reign in the kid who was wanting to do all manner of crazy shit.

The pre-made game went out the window really quick as well. See it was a murder mystery that was more of a role playing adventure and weigh less combat adventure. That is especially bad when the group you have seems to enjoy the combat more. So….thankfully the first mini encounter with some bandits gave me and the group an idea. They wanted to find these bandits that were outside of the town. The town where the murder mystery was taking place.

 

Easy enough. You all want to fight bandits! You got it! The party went to town, found out where these bandits might be coming from. They even had two party members infiltrate the group. It eventually became a crazy melee between the five players and twelve bandits. They made it through and even were ambushed on the way back to town by a band of orcs (we had time left and they were thirsty for more blood). Experience was given. A level was gained and gold was made! However, the whole ready made game was never dealt with in any way.

I broke down the combat to just rolling strength bonuses/dex bonuses to hit instead of covering proficiency bonuses as  well. It made it faster and we only had a limited amount of time. The same  for ability checks and skill checks. The character descriptions, stats and ability coverage at the beginning took longer than I thought, but these guys all needed it. I did tell them that this was a very rough take on the game, but with limited time it had to be.

I guess everyone had a good time, as they told me nothing different. The sure acted like they were having fun battling a group of scummy banditos. I actually got the high school guys to drive the group half way through the game and that was good and my plan. The off track kid I let run around doing stuff and rolling dice for it. It kept him engaged just enough until combat would start. If anything I just hope that I didn’t drive potential gamers away from any form of tabletop role playing. My lady sat out until one party member had to leave and then she jumped in to finish the game in that spot.

My special lady’s son had a good time playing with kids his own age. That was the main goal for the afternoon.

Now I  have been put on watch to potentially help again if this were to happen again.  I guess I’m a DM on call now?

It did feel good to just make some crap up for the group to do and see them actually succeed and have fun doing it.