I'm a first time DM, inexperienced in D&D, I'm now seven sessions into the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign with my group of four players. Two of my group were new to D&D, the other two had played 2-3 sessions at level 1-2 so they're quite new. I wanted their first encounter in my campaign to be memorable. They started at level 3, a sorcerer, fighter, cleric and monk. I decided on a random encounter with three Orcs and an Ogrillon. I set it up so they came across an over-turned cart on a narrow track in a forest, heavy foliage/trees on either side. The cart laying on it's side partially in the bushes. The orcs had their backs turned to the party and were looting corpses and boxes from the cart in the middle of the road, meanwhile the Ogrillin was hidden in the trees behind the cart eating one of the caravan guards legs. The party all snuck beside the cart on the road, using it as cover exactly as I hoped they would. Then the sorcerer initiated by launched a fireball at one of the orcs. At this point I had the orcs turn and call for battle, drawing weapons etc. I had the party make Dex saving throws immediately (10+) and then I sprung the Ogrillon trap. The cart the party was standing beside exploded into splinters as the Ogrillon charged through it swinging his club. :badgrin: Two of the party were knocked prone by the debris thrown from the cart, another critically failed his save and took 1D4 damage from a cart wheel to the face. They proceeded to crap their pants and roll for initiative. All in all it was a fun encounter and hopefully memorable. Would appreciate any opinions on that, perhaps for my next campaign or future encounters. And please share your first encounters, I'm sure there's plenty of fun stories. Cheers. :eusa_danc
Looks like you did a great job! I'm not a great DM, but, on the few times i played as DM, i noticed that the main difficulty is to present a challenge that is hard enough to be memorable and fun without killing the party (intentionally). That is especially hard since you cannot save your players by changing the way things work too much. For example, if a wizard is almost dying, and he is trying to cast a spell, a orc in front of him wouldn't have any good reason to charge at the warrior of the group without killing him first. The DM can cheat here and there to make things interesting, but try not to overdo it, otherwise, the players will feel overpowered. In resume: Some things they want to do need to work, but not everything. Also, depending on the group you have, it may be interesting to remember that, while combat is fun, it is only part of the game. Talking with NPCs, solving puzzles, reading clues... the game has many possibilites: Explore them, and don't be afraid to innovate!
Thanks for replying. Since that first encounter my group has come across some close calls. I've had to fudge some rolls behind my DM screen once or twice. For instance I rolled a critical hit on the sorceror one time and would have out right killed him, I called it out as a miss and just ran with it from there. Didn't feel like the right time to be knocking off players lol. We've also ran two sessions that were almost 100% roleplaying with little to no combat, involving trade and my party wanted to set up their own brothel (who am I to say no?). So we did all that and they had fun. I like to keep a balance and let them run with their ideas.
Sounds like a hell of a time in your group! I'm in two groups, and I'm soon going to try my hand at being a DM for one of them. It will be the first time I'm ever going to be committed to a DM position, and I'm trying my hardest to make it open world. I've still got a lot of things to work on myself, but I'm pretty confident that we'll have a good time. I love sessions that have a lot of roleplaying. Honestly, roleplaying is one of my favorite parts of D&D. It keeps me engaged and it gets me thinking about my characters more, and some of my recent characters have turned out to be pretty great because of that. I've grown really fond of them. You seem like a pretty strong DM, more power to you, my man!
I've played twice with my new group of friends- I'm a total newbie, so it's going to sound weird, but I do love it a lot! You seem like a great DM!
5e is what my groups run on. It's pretty nice. Except that dexterity classes (with the exception of ranger, I think) are super broken. Kinda makes a tanky strength fighter that does like 4d6s for an attack look like nothing compared to an assassin rogue who rolls like 18 different dice just to do a stealth attack.
Excellent stuff. I have only played as a PC up to level 3, so the group I DM (all level 5 now) have actually got more experience playing the game than me :lol: I'm running the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign in a sandbox style, the way the reviews suggested. And as a first time DM the task was pretty daunting at first. Just looking at the content in the book, I mean it's a level 1-15 campaign so it's HUGE. Thankfully (this is important) my group has goals and desires outwith the main story. I've managed to create the world well enough that my group feels comfortable just doing things, like opening the brothel they wanted. Or stealing a river boat from a group of bandits only to wind up trading it for an Ox and cart, not realising the boat was worth a fortune :lol: The most important thing I've realised from running an open sandbox style campaign is try to never say no to your players. No matter how stupid and crazy their request is, you should at the very least let them TRY to do. This is why we have D20's after all :icon_bigg Just remember the four magic words, "You can certainly try."
I always wanted to play D&D because I love RPG games and I feel I could be something I can get into, but the only problem I have no one to play with.
