Drache64
2020-01-11, 12:46 PM
I work at a volunteer place where I get to hang out with teens. I started running them through their first real D&D session as they have all dabbled with D&D 5e in the past but have never truly played a campaign.
To make things easy on myself I picked up the D&D Essentials kit and started to run them through Dragon Of Icespire Peak.
Session 0 they all created their characters and I walked them through that process then they started their session 1.
Why I am changing the mission: They all make it to the town and vote on the Gnome quest. Upon getting to the gnome hold, one player casts a bunch of cantrips until he gets the butterfly wings from the wild magic in the area which seemed suspicious to me, it was all too practiced and calculated. He then starts to spearhead the group towards the quest givers and is letting on that he knows too much... the player then finally reveals that he bought the essentials kit and DMed this quest with his buddies.
I told him not to steamroll the other players and let them enjoy the quest but he just couldn't help to continually try to take the lead, so I made some split-second changes. I googles a wild magic table that was a little more diverse and made the players butterfly wings vanish. He uses thaumaturgy to get the attention of all the gnomes, I roll on the new table and he casts magic missile (according to the table) and strikes the gnome immediately in front of him killing the gnome and causing the rest to panic and flee to their homes. The session ends there and we are going to pick it back up tonight.
My changes: Knowing I had to make a few changes I drew up a new story regarding the gnomes...
First the caves are affected by wild magic, why? because it is tainted by the fey wild, this cave happens to overlap the feywild.
Second, the gnomes are actually goblins that discovered the cave, and became addicted to the magic there. These goblins became artificers and sell their magical items to the town nearby, they each wear a hat of disguise to appear to be gnomes.
This host of goblins have forsaken their goblinoid heritage and have adopted the ways of gnomes, this has drawn the ire of an unnamed goblin deity and one of the kings has become a Nilbog, a golbin possessed by the spirit of a goblin trickster deity (Volo's guide to monsters).
Lastly: No more Mimic. The Nilbog started to play pranks on the other goblins, harmless but terrifying. Causing so much Terror in a place affected by the Feywild has caused a Meenlock to emerge, who has started to silently hunt the Goblins.
The players are to root out and destroy the Meenlock, in which case the kings will hand the same magical item to the players that he is supposed to. From here we can play the rest of the campaign as usual as the player in question shouldn't have any more knowledge than the one session he ran.
P.S.
Any tips on running a Nilbog encounter should the players attack him? He is CR 1, has no offensive capabilities but is immune to damage, he actually turns any damage into a d6 of healing for himself... I am assuming the only option is to not fight him and run away.
To make things easy on myself I picked up the D&D Essentials kit and started to run them through Dragon Of Icespire Peak.
Session 0 they all created their characters and I walked them through that process then they started their session 1.
Why I am changing the mission: They all make it to the town and vote on the Gnome quest. Upon getting to the gnome hold, one player casts a bunch of cantrips until he gets the butterfly wings from the wild magic in the area which seemed suspicious to me, it was all too practiced and calculated. He then starts to spearhead the group towards the quest givers and is letting on that he knows too much... the player then finally reveals that he bought the essentials kit and DMed this quest with his buddies.
I told him not to steamroll the other players and let them enjoy the quest but he just couldn't help to continually try to take the lead, so I made some split-second changes. I googles a wild magic table that was a little more diverse and made the players butterfly wings vanish. He uses thaumaturgy to get the attention of all the gnomes, I roll on the new table and he casts magic missile (according to the table) and strikes the gnome immediately in front of him killing the gnome and causing the rest to panic and flee to their homes. The session ends there and we are going to pick it back up tonight.
My changes: Knowing I had to make a few changes I drew up a new story regarding the gnomes...
First the caves are affected by wild magic, why? because it is tainted by the fey wild, this cave happens to overlap the feywild.
Second, the gnomes are actually goblins that discovered the cave, and became addicted to the magic there. These goblins became artificers and sell their magical items to the town nearby, they each wear a hat of disguise to appear to be gnomes.
This host of goblins have forsaken their goblinoid heritage and have adopted the ways of gnomes, this has drawn the ire of an unnamed goblin deity and one of the kings has become a Nilbog, a golbin possessed by the spirit of a goblin trickster deity (Volo's guide to monsters).
Lastly: No more Mimic. The Nilbog started to play pranks on the other goblins, harmless but terrifying. Causing so much Terror in a place affected by the Feywild has caused a Meenlock to emerge, who has started to silently hunt the Goblins.
The players are to root out and destroy the Meenlock, in which case the kings will hand the same magical item to the players that he is supposed to. From here we can play the rest of the campaign as usual as the player in question shouldn't have any more knowledge than the one session he ran.
P.S.
Any tips on running a Nilbog encounter should the players attack him? He is CR 1, has no offensive capabilities but is immune to damage, he actually turns any damage into a d6 of healing for himself... I am assuming the only option is to not fight him and run away.