So you've got an adventure and you're ready to play. Let's get the team together! You’ve tracked the Goblin raiders to their hideout, a tomb that sits atop a hill. Within lies a host of monsters and the girl they kidnapped to use in their fell ritual. If you hurry, she may still be alive. That is a great way to start your first adventure just pow! Drop the players off in front of the dungeon describe the entrance and tell them the stakes goblins and treasure inside just find the girl. Just find the girl. Clear motivation, maybe the simplest most straightforward way to get started certainly the most old-school way to get started But is it the best way to get started well? That’s up to you, but it’s certainly not the only way to get started this episode We’re going to talk about maybe the hardest thing to do in dungeons & Dragons and that is Getting started going from having everybody sitting at the table And you have an adventure ready to actually playing. That transition is always a huge pain in the butt for me I get nervous I get anxiety Once we’re playing no problem I can run for hours But getting over that first hump going from just a bunch of people sitting around a table to playing D&D is for me the hardest thing to do. Back in the day the DM often began an adventure by dropping the players in front of the dungeon and describing the Entrance that’s because a lot of adventures began as modules used at conventions in tournament play That’s right competitive D&D which I have done and which is a lot of fun. Also in the 1970s people wanted to play D&D Specifically they want to explore the dungeon. They want to kill monsters and get loot and level up They weren’t really worried about narrative a question like what’s my motivation would have seemed strange to Gary Gygax in 1974. He would have said “To get treasure!” That’s also a result of the fantasy literature that influenced dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax wasn’t a huge fan of Lord of the rings He didn’t assume that you began the adventure with the talisman that you needed to destroy To save the world because it was the right thing to do He assumed you were more like Conan and would happily scale the tower of the elephant because there was treasure inside also because no one Had ever done it before. Nowadays We sort of assume that the players have a clearer motivation for why they’re going on an adventure Sometimes even a personal stake in what’s happening. I say all this to you to give you a historical context a lot of D&D is Tradition passed on from one group of players to the next also Because there isn’t one right way to do it the way They did it back in 1974 still works And is still a lot of fun is arguably the simplest most straightforward way to start But there are other ways to do it. Dusk falls and five travelers come to the Green Dragon Inn for food Warmth and a place to rest Several Villagers are here eating drinking talking about their day. One day is much the same as another in the hamlet of Villane But looking at you something tells these villagers today will be different. Start in a tavern, great beginning I often see players online disparaging well every cliche, including that one, but if you’re new to this game There are no cliches. Plus maybe your players saw the Fellowship of the Ring and remember Aragorn meeting the hobbits at the Inn of the Prancing Pony. That fellow has done nothing but stare at us since we arrived. Excuse me. That man in the corner, who is he? His one of them rangers. Dangerous folk they are, wandering the wilds. What his right name is I’ve never heard but round hear he’s known as Strider. Strider. Great scene. Players, especially new players, enjoy recognizing scenarios from books or comics or movies that they’ve seen they’ve seen the movie, but they haven’t played it This is their opportunity to do the kinds of things they saw in the movies meet the mysterious stranger in the inn Be the mysterious stranger in the inn. Always feel free to rip stuff off This is your campaign put the stuff you like in it Starting in a tavern does two useful things one it gives the players the opportunity to roleplay Their characters meeting each other for the first time players like establishing the relationships in the group I’m not gonna lie to you though this can also be awkward uh Hello. I mean, my I say, my character sa- Gork, Gork says Hello That’s gonna happen. New playersa aren’t used to role-playing and haven’t used those muscles yet So it can be goofy, it can also be frustrating. The mysterious stranger in the corner ignores you Okay, well fine one of the reasons. We do this is because it’s fun to do dramatic stuff like that But if Gork’s player sticks to his guns then he’s not going to go on the adventure One of the things I like to do is go around the table and ask each player to describe their character I mean, we maybe already know that you’re playing Gork the barbarian But what does gork look like? How does he act? How does he seem? If you ask your players, “Okay everybody we’re gonna go around the table and everybody introduce your character tell us what you’re playing and what your character looks like and how he Behaves.” That might be the first time the player has ever really thought about that. Plus we always form impressions about people before they even open their mouths just by looking at them. It also acts as a safe halfway point between their character being a bunch of stats on a page and actually role-playing them. So while it can be goofy and awkward starting in a tavern is also fun plus It gives the players the opportunity to roleplay their characters and answer the question, “Wait, how do we know each other?” Also number two, they want to know why are we on this adventure? You can just tell them goblins kidnapped a girl and you’ve tracked them to their hideout. That’s fine but some players want to experience that they don’t just want to be told it, Which do you think would be more fun? In the tavern we have some NPCs to talk to, the innkeep and her husband, their daughter the serving girl, a merchant carter from another town. Some may be friendly some may challenge the players but the goal here is to break the ice. Get your players into character by giving them NPCs to talk to and interact with since they may feel awkward talking to each other. Classically the easy way to start is to have the serving girl, and it could be a serving boy, we’ll talk about stereotypes in another episode yes we will, come up and just ask the character what they want to drink, if they’re hungry. Depending on what’s happened before this may be the first time the player has ever been asked a direct question by another character and they’re going to have to come up with an answer. Maybe a stupid answer it may be silly it may be dramatic, but in that moment they are role-playing and now you’re all playing D&D. But what is there to order? we’re in a tavern so we need a menu. Wow! we need people to talk to, and a menu to order from, and all of a sudden you’re starting to understand why back in the day people said “Screw it, let’s just start in front of the tomb.” You can make all that stuff up or I can do it for you Which I just did. There are tools online for all this stuff including random NPCs, random Taverns, random menus, you are not the first person to need solutions to these problems. People have been doing this for 40 years and they put all their answers up online to save you a lot of work. At some point, after the innkeep has served food and drinks and the players have gotten to know each other and the NPCs, something has to happen. A large man wearing a black leather apron over linen shirt and woolen pants bursts in the door He smells of sulfur and carries a heavy hammer “The got Bes,” He says, “they got my girl.” Goblins have kidnapped the blacksmith’s daughter Well now we’ve got an adventure your players aren’t dumb they sat down at the table wanting an adventure And you just put one in front of them if it occurs to them the players may just ask the blacksmith What happened give them the opportunity to do that literally ask them okay? What do you do? I think about 50% of the DM’s job is just describing what happens and then asking the players of what they do the other 50% is, it’s complex but there’s pizza in there somewhere. Now not all players are motivated by a sense of justice and duty in fact I think you’re just starting out most players are motivated by Let’s call it a enlightened self-interest which is to say greed. In our lives we’re expected to do the right thing there are tons of social pressures on us every day. We have show up on time We have to be polite We have to be respectful One of the reasons people enjoy playing D&D is it gives them an opportunity to throw all that out and say “Hey? Why should I help that guy? What’s in it for me?” And there are lots of examples of classic cool characters saying exactly that. “When they come to get me Rick, I hope you’ll be more of a help.” “I stick my neck out for nobody” “I’m not going anywhere.” “They’re gonna execute her. Look a few minutes ago you said you didn’t want to just wait here to be captured now All you want to do is stay?” “Marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.” “But they’re gonna kill her!” “Better her than me.” Look your players aren’t dumb They know when the blacksmith walked in the door and saying Goblins kidnapped my daughter that that was the adventure showing up, and they might go whoohoo Let’s go or they might want a little more motivation, a little bit more convincing. Okay so here you go. Yeah! A wanted poster. The Invincible Overlord, really it’s the local Baron the Invincible Overlord doesn’t care about a bunch of goblins, is trying to clean up the area you can literally print this out and put it in front of your players to read. A prop like this does a great job of motivating the players one silver piece per Goblin and giving them some sense of the politics of the wider world who is the Baron who is the Invincible Overlord and making the world Beyond the tavern seem exotic and dangerous Ogres, Giants, snake men! If all else fails you can always just have the blacksmith ask the players directly Will you help find my daughter or another trick I’ve used is to have somebody who is obviously Unqualified like an old man or a young girl volunteer this often helps motivate the players. So we met in a tavern, we talked to each other, we talked to the locals, we looked at the wanted poster, and then a Blacksmith’s showed up and gave us our motivation. Time to head to the tomb. So where is this place and how do you get there? players like maps. Fact of life, and a lot of DMs like making maps it’s part of the fun of the game and There are lots of tools for making all sorts of different maps, and we’re going to talk about all of them in upcoming episodes but for now I’m gonna quote Alfred Korzybski the guy who invented Semantics and say “The map is not the territory.” I use maps all the time, but not only do you not need a map I’m gonna argue that there are good reasons not to use a map We live in a time where it’s trivially easy for people to whip their phone out and get directions from anywhere to anywhere You have a basic understanding of the shape of the earth and the country that you live in and the local area But that was not true for most of human history if you were a medieval peasant it was very easy to live your entire life Without ever going more than a few miles outside of town. Maybe you’d visited one or two towns nearby, maybe you’d seen a map of the world in church, or in one of the few books you had ever seen, but that was unusual. It can therefore be more immersive for you to say 2 miles to the North lies the Boar forest and beyond that the tomb on the hill. That is how people thought in the middle ages and not only does it save you work It makes the world feel more dangerous and more mysterious. Show the players a map and they feel like they understand something. Describe it using language and landmarks, and it feels like the world is a large mysterious place which it should. So without a map showing us how to get there, How do we find the tomb? Easy the goblins left tracks. It may occur to the players to go to the Smith’s house and look for tracks if they do that they get to feel like detectives and that’s part of the fun. If they never think of that have an NPC suggest it. That’s what NPCs are for. The goblins left tracks that are easy to follow they go north to the boar wood. It may occur to the players to ask the locals, “Hey, what’s in the forest?” The locals will say “Nothing, boars. It’s in the name of the forest we hunt there all the time There’s no goblins.” So the goblins must be somewhere beyond the forest however big the forest is it’s not something the players can get through in one day They’re gonna have to spend the night there we put the forest between the tomb and the tavern because we want the players to have To spend the night we want the players to have to take watch in the middle of the forest and be wary Wondering if something’s going to attack them in the middle of the night why because it makes the world feel more mysterious And it makes the players feel like they’re on an adventure like anything might happen any Time the players stop and rest outside of town. I have them roll for a random encounter. We’ll do a whole episode later maybe more than one on random encounters, but the goal here is to make the world feel dangerous. If the players feel like they can stop and rest any time they’re wounded or low on spells then they will do so and that will grind everything to a halt. Players naturally want to avoid risk your job is to make everything outside of town seem Risky the world is a dangerous place But for this episode. I’m gonna roll some dice behind the screen and tell the players the evening passes uneventful. I mean you can do what you want. You can throw an ogre at them or maybe a pack of dire boars It is after all in the name of the forest but our goal here is for the players to finish something tonight. And that means we want to get him to the tomb as quickly as possible. Once outside the forest after an hour two of travel the players will see the tomb on top of a hill I like to use old roman ruins for things like this because it communicates to the players this belongs to an ancient civilization. At this point the players may want to hang back and watch the tomb for a while, See if there’s any Goblin activity, that’s a good idea let them do that. Remember we put a goblin patrol around the tomb on purpose in case they did that so the players started in a tavern, they met each other, they met the local NPCs, they met the Blacksmith, they found out his daughter had been kidnapped by Goblins, they followed the Goblin tracks through the forest, they spent the night and the next morning they showed up at the tomb. Now they’re sitting and watching waiting to see what happens. We’ll talk about running the tomb about how many goblins to use and about what kinds of things are going to happen inside the dungeon Next week. Peace out. https://t.co/YC5lPVRWke

— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) February 22, 2016