Before you start reading this beast, I should forewarn you that it goes on for a while. I had intended to post this last Friday (5/6/16), but it got a bit away from me. It's a bit all over the place, but I tried to remain consistent with what I was talking about, although it does go back and forth between how we (the PC's and DM) played the game and what happened in the story. I probably could have cut this down into two separate posts, but that would mean additional time editing and rewriting so that it at least looked intentional for everything to have been two posts from the start. I'm not a professional writer, so everything's getting lumped in one big article. Sorry. Maybe.
This last Saturday (May 1st), our Dungeons & Dragons group got together and finished the quest from the 5th Edition Starter Box Set, Lost Mine of Phandelver. First off, I want to say that I fully recommend this product. Included in the set is a starter rule book (think the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide in a very condensed form with just enough information to run this quest), the module (64 pages of a pretty decent story with full color professionally designed maps by Mike Schley, shiny paper that you can write on with wet erase markers without damaging the pages), pre-created character sheets for five characters (Dwarven cleric, Human fighter x 2, Halfling rogue, High Elven Wizard) and a set of dice (1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, & 1d20; although the d8 and d12 are not numbered correctly as each opposing side is supposed to add up to either 9 or 13 respectively and, at least the dice that came in my box were not). Considering that at the time I paid $11.50 for this, is quite a deal and currently it's priced at $13.50, which is still a great price.
So now let's get down buying that horse already. Oh, and there might be story spoilers if you haven't yet played this module.
I bought this product around November/December 2014 and our group started way back in January 2015, back when we were still over on our other site. Our group started out with myself DMing, Conklederp taking on the Dwarven Cleric as Dagnar Ungart, and two fellow MTBC's, Tula Tealeaf as the Halfling rouge, and Lululeevaloolalay as the High Elf wizard. In March (I believe, so the third session), Deep-V joined as Xob, a Half-Elven paladin (who oddly had a Dex build, but worked out great; meaning he was still a pain in the ass to hit from a DM's perspective), and C-Cat as The Notorious C.R.C. who was a Human bard. The following month, Chreekat joined in with Lark, a Forest Gnome ranger. The Lost Mine of Phandelver (hereto after referred to as LMoP) has the quest designed for up to five PC's while we had six, but for the most part I tried to make it all work.
The way I played as DM, I tried to be as "realistic" as possible. If the PCs were making noise (attacking/being attacked) in a room in ruined castle, any monsters within reasonable earshot might go and investigate, thereby joining in in the fight. Rooms were not sound proof. At the same time, I might have a handful hang back and prepare for the PCs. In one instance, I had planted a bugbear as a decoy in the middle of a room with two others standing on either side of the door. The plan worked and Xob took a natural hit with ~20hp worth of damage. I also decided early on that I wasn't going to have all of the monsters fight to the death since it didn't make sense, in my mind, that the monsters would throw their lives away as they too had "lives." My problem was that if the PCs went chasing after them, I hadn't thought about where they were going, just that they went "that way."
The way I played as DM, I tried to be as "realistic" as possible. If the PCs were making noise (attacking/being attacked) in a room in ruined castle, any monsters within reasonable earshot might go and investigate, thereby joining in in the fight. Rooms were not sound proof. At the same time, I might have a handful hang back and prepare for the PCs. In one instance, I had planted a bugbear as a decoy in the middle of a room with two others standing on either side of the door. The plan worked and Xob took a natural hit with ~20hp worth of damage. I also decided early on that I wasn't going to have all of the monsters fight to the death since it didn't make sense, in my mind, that the monsters would throw their lives away as they too had "lives." My problem was that if the PCs went chasing after them, I hadn't thought about where they were going, just that they went "that way."
On average, we played about once a month, with a few times having to skip a month due to scheduling conflicts. During our 15 months playing, we killed off Notorious C.R.C. at the behest of C-Cat as she was leaving for the summer, but killing off a character in 5th Edition is a lot harder for the DM than I thought. Upon death, the PC has to roll a 10 or higher on a d20 three times before they fail three times; or if they are healed by another character casting Cure Wounds or other some such spell. I even killed C.R.C. once before she was dead for good. The second time she stayed dead after being impaled by one of two gricks and whomever was controlling the character failed to make the three death saves.
In another encounter, I almost managed to kill off Lu(luleevaloolalay) in a glorious fashion! An assassin (with ridiculously good dex/stealth while sneaking through tall grass) snuck up behind Lu, I rolled a natural 20 on my first attack, which drove a shortsword through his chest with the second attack (the assassin was able to attack twice in one turn) was slicing the back on Lu's knee which forced him into a prone position. I think Lu was down to ~3hp, but it didn't make sense for the assassin to stick around having pretty much incapacitated the wizard, so I had him move on to his next target.
As for the story in LMoP, I found it to be a pretty good mix of combat and "diplomacy." I say "diplomacy" because I am still not great at DMing encounters where the PCs are supposed to find out information from someone who might not want to give that information up for fear of their own life from their employer who is supposed to be more intimidating than the PCs at that point in the story. That is something that I know I am going to have to work on as a DM so I cannot fault the players for more often than not, going into an encounter with blades flashing and magic missiles a'flyin'. Additionally, the PC's would end up killing someone with some information in combat before they could talk their way to relative safety; in one instance, a monster was set on fire (burning hands I believe was the spell) and a document that he was holding went up in flames with him.
Which brings me to propsl I did make a couple of props (the ones to the right) for the PCs to find, thereby giving the players something physical and tangible to hold and look through/at, something to keep things intriguing. The problem though as the DM, is that for certain bits of information to make sense, they can be only found in one location (why would a partially written letter from one character to the main boss be found out in the middle of a forest? I'll tell you how! It was supposed to be delivered and was torn during a skirmish. . .I'll remember that for next time. . .ah well). None of the information found in the props though was integral to the completion of the quest though, but it added some background to the story/world and sprinkled it all with some flavor.
I did make a bounty letter for Dagnar that was discovered, as it made sense that the main villain would be after her, having already captured three of her uncles, which brings me to one of the issues that I had with the quest, although it could very well have been the way that I interpreted the story and how I played it all out the PCs. I felt that the main villain played more of a Sauron-esque-type roll than a big bad guy who kept showing up. His name was mentioned a few times in the first two "acts," but it wasn't until the PCs had travelled from Neverwinter, down to the mining town of Phandalin, back up to Thundertree and back down to Phandalin that I realized that I had not name dropped anything about the main bad guy. At that point I was worried that PCs would think that after taking care of a local gang, that that would seem like the end of the quest.
There was a minor villain, a mini-boss if you will, that Tula's character had a connection to who was also the leader of the aforementioned gang, and thereby the other PCs had a vested interest in with taking that character down. For a good portion of the quest, or at least the first quarter of the story which took up a lot of our playing time, that mini-boss was more of a main villain than the main villain. The character even went so far as kidnapping Tula's aunt, her nephew and another character that the PCs had rescued earlier in the quest, who was also a direct link to Dagnar's uncles. I modified the encounter too as I felt that the enemy that the quest had down in a ravine-type-area didn't make a whole lot of sense and I knew that the encounter, as written, would be difficult to play out, knowing how our group played. Ultimately I felt that the creature in the ravine had too much backstory (of what a bit there was), so I decided to just have a Gelatinous Cube, which in my own version of the story, acted as a sort of garbage disposal unit for the gang when they wanted to dispose of bodies and other nuisances to their operation. That encounter went very well in that it ended up killing an NPC that, I don't think was supposed to die, but it upped the ante for the PCs in the "Oh shit's gettin' real" department.
One thing that I realized after a couple of sessions though, was that I needed to somehow streamline combat encounters. Even with only four PCs controlling six characters who were fighting upwards of six monsters, some combat encounters took a while to slog through. In one instance, the PCs went up against a young Green Dragon and that battle took most of the time allotted that day. We're talking about two hours from once the PCs entered the tower, to when the dragon flew off, and that was only one creature. In the final dungeon (sorry guys), I eliminated a couple of encounters, or modified them so there less monsters just so that more exploring could happen. There were also supposed to be a lot more random monster encounters for both the PCs and the bad guy NPCs, which is why they bad guys had been taking so long in finding out the "secrets" of the Lost Mine of Phandelver, but I ended up not using some of those random encounters to cut through and get to the story. After the PCs killed the main villain, there was still some exploring to do as they had left some areas in the final area open, and in each of those areas, there were supposed to have been a number of monsters (10 in one hallway, 6 in one room, and 4 in another), but it didn't seem to make a lot of sense to have them there. Plus, I kind of wanted to finish the quest and get them back to Phandalin.
In the end, I know that there are plenty of things I need to work on as a DM (PCs spending days travelling; keeping the PCs engaged in a town setting; not having battles drag on, but still have them feel accomplished at the end; roleplaying NPCs during conversations. I'm sure there are some other areas that need attention that I am unable to think of at the moment, but at least I can say that I DM well enough to keep a mostly cohesive group of people interested enough to come back time after time for just over a year.
We have not set a date for our next session where we will start a new quest, most likely the one that I wrote last year (after a number of touch ups) and then I have an official quest that I bought that looks to be a lot of fun that I could probably work into the existing storylines.
I know I have a ways to go, but for now it still feels pretty good.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental
P.S. I also have a bunch of miniatures that I need to paint, but that's another post entirely.
In another encounter, I almost managed to kill off Lu(luleevaloolalay) in a glorious fashion! An assassin (with ridiculously good dex/stealth while sneaking through tall grass) snuck up behind Lu, I rolled a natural 20 on my first attack, which drove a shortsword through his chest with the second attack (the assassin was able to attack twice in one turn) was slicing the back on Lu's knee which forced him into a prone position. I think Lu was down to ~3hp, but it didn't make sense for the assassin to stick around having pretty much incapacitated the wizard, so I had him move on to his next target.
As for the story in LMoP, I found it to be a pretty good mix of combat and "diplomacy." I say "diplomacy" because I am still not great at DMing encounters where the PCs are supposed to find out information from someone who might not want to give that information up for fear of their own life from their employer who is supposed to be more intimidating than the PCs at that point in the story. That is something that I know I am going to have to work on as a DM so I cannot fault the players for more often than not, going into an encounter with blades flashing and magic missiles a'flyin'. Additionally, the PC's would end up killing someone with some information in combat before they could talk their way to relative safety; in one instance, a monster was set on fire (burning hands I believe was the spell) and a document that he was holding went up in flames with him.
I did make a bounty letter for Dagnar that was discovered, as it made sense that the main villain would be after her, having already captured three of her uncles, which brings me to one of the issues that I had with the quest, although it could very well have been the way that I interpreted the story and how I played it all out the PCs. I felt that the main villain played more of a Sauron-esque-type roll than a big bad guy who kept showing up. His name was mentioned a few times in the first two "acts," but it wasn't until the PCs had travelled from Neverwinter, down to the mining town of Phandalin, back up to Thundertree and back down to Phandalin that I realized that I had not name dropped anything about the main bad guy. At that point I was worried that PCs would think that after taking care of a local gang, that that would seem like the end of the quest.
In the end, I know that there are plenty of things I need to work on as a DM (PCs spending days travelling; keeping the PCs engaged in a town setting; not having battles drag on, but still have them feel accomplished at the end; roleplaying NPCs during conversations. I'm sure there are some other areas that need attention that I am unable to think of at the moment, but at least I can say that I DM well enough to keep a mostly cohesive group of people interested enough to come back time after time for just over a year.
We have not set a date for our next session where we will start a new quest, most likely the one that I wrote last year (after a number of touch ups) and then I have an official quest that I bought that looks to be a lot of fun that I could probably work into the existing storylines.
I know I have a ways to go, but for now it still feels pretty good.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental
P.S. I also have a bunch of miniatures that I need to paint, but that's another post entirely.
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