First Time DM Campaign Diary

[Totally Guy]

I thought it would be fun and good to post up a campaign diary of my first time DMing. On this first session the party created characters, we decided to skip over pesonality descriptions at this stage, as in "show us don't tell us". This is our first experience with 4th edition and I first became aquained with 3.5 and RPG generally about 1 year ago.

Characters:
Hermocrates – Dragonborn Paladin of Kord
Kayou – Elven Ranger with a touch of Rogue
Allara – Eladrin Warlord and a dab of Paladin of Kord
Justice – Tiefling Infernal Warlock

Session 1: Kidnap at the Black Tower

The session began in Medias Res (to avoid the oh so worrying stigma of starting in the tavern) in the great city of Whitestone. Kayou and Justice were chasing down a Halfling thief with a skill challenge. This challenge quickly became a combat encounter when the party wanted to know more about the positions of the characters. The two Kord followers turned a corner and apprehended the criminal. With a few quick powers the Halfling was beaten.

A mysterious man in a doorway applauded the party for their victory and invited them into his house for tea. The man claimed to be a prophet called the Farseer. He said he’d foreseen a goblin invasion of the nearby city of Mansworth beyond the Godogre Pass.

The party did not trust this man but he said he did not need to be trusted as he could summon the Hand of Fate to signal truth to three questions.

The first asked was as such “Is the Farseer a real prophet?”
The hand signalled no.
The Farseer explained that he used the guise of a prophet for the greater good as he did have a vision of the goblin invasion and the hand would confirm it.

“Is there going to be a goblin invasion in Mansworth?”
Yes, signalled the hand.

“Will we be able to help?”
Yes, signalled the hand once again.

The Farseer asked all the adventurers if they had a family nearby as he’d feel bad if they left their loved ones.
The adventurers all had no immediate family.

The adventurers headed into Godogre pass. Here there were steep mountainous walls either side of a narrow path.

“Halt!” called out a goblin. “I demand a toll for warchief Frukas!”
This encounter introduced the “fire beetle box” which is a fireproof box that holds a fire beetle for the goblins to unleash into the battle.
After a small amount of dialogue the battle commenced which was won by the adventurers.

A little later the party heard the distressing sound of a bird being chased by wolves. The encounter was won and the peacock appeared to be friendly. The party had just acquired an Artefact, the mana bird. An artefact that helps diplomacy and allows the use of wizard cantrips once the concordance gets high enough. The concordance goes up when the players act as a team or acknowledge the mana bird exists.

On leaving the pass successfully the party headed toward Mansworth over some pleasant grassy planes.

Partway through the journey they saw a black tower that seemed to be attempting to look threatening on a low budget. The tower flashed a light at the party from the spire as if aiming a spotlight.

The party investigated this and as they got closer they found a man in robes running out of the tower.
With his hands in the air and sandals upon his feet he approached with gratitude. “Thank you, thank you, for coming towards my signal. My name is Alain and I’m a wizard.”

The party asked him why he was trying to signal them.

“I’m in a bit of a pickle,” said Alain, “My children have been kidnapped by goblins!” he went onto explain that they were kidnapped for a ransom for the sale of his magic table. The goblins did in fact pay him a sum of money for this however it was beneath the market value. Despite selling the table his children were not returned.

The wizard showed the party the top floor of his tower. It was the Camera Obscura room, a device in the ceiling which projected the image of the surrounding area onto the floor, aided by a cranks pulleys and a mirror this could be directed making it a potent spying device. Alain showed the party a ridge which he claimed the goblins were hiding behind.

The party went in the direction they had been shown to find a party of confused goblins. At the first sign of aggression they surrendered and stated that they too had a problem. They were looking after the kids in fire beetle boxes in a cave when they managed to awaken a swarm of undead bees. The goblins were unable to pacify the swarm and had been unable to uphold their side of the bargain.

To make things worse they stated there had been two teams and that their only orders were to look after and eventually release the children and aside from knowing it had gone smoothly they had no knowledge of the actual transaction. They did tell the party that the orders were from a goblin called Zanzibar who was their leader and also an enemy of warchief Frukas.

The adventurers saved the day fighting swarms of undead bees (which were reflavoured needlefang drake swarms with a vulnerability to radiant damage). They got the fire beetle boxes containing the children out of the hive and burned what they could using the undead wax in the cave.

After Alain got his children back he told the party that Zanzibar mentioned he was working for high society, he was working for a man called Pugh Djinn. Alain had no reward; although he had been paid a good amount of gold for the table he argued that he wanted to hold on to that money in case he could buy back his table later.

Overall I thought this session went well for my very first session ever. There were two interesting names the players could hold onto in their heads, Zanzibar and Pugh Djinn. I’d not yet managed to use a skill challenge but I was sure I could use one when we got into urban adventuring in the next session. I was glad not to be using 3.5 although I had been introduced to pen and paper RPGs with it a year ago I had not adventured outside of core from a character perspective. From the campaign I’d played in I had no knowledge of where the line was drawn for when drama took a backseat and rules took over.

[KillianHawkeye]

Sounds like you've got an interesting story going here. Keep up the good work!

[Charity]

Sounds good Glug, how did you find the party handled those needlefang swarms?
Everywhere else I hear about them, I hear only horror stories, I supose the radiant vulnerability helped out the paladin, but the party seem light on AoE powers.

We played our second session Sunday, cheesy accents abound!

[Totally Guy]

Sounds good Glug, how did you find the party handled those needlefang swarms?
Everywhere else I hear about them, I hear only horror stories, I supose the radiant vulnerability helped out the paladin, but the party seem light on AoE powers.

Pretty much a horror story, I thought the paladin could turn them or at least heal = damage. I ended up ruling lay on hands was an auto hit to swarms and did healing surge + 5 vunerability to radiant. I've already retracted that ruling being used in the future. I also played monsters is this session as being dumb considering the players were also new to the system.

[Vizen]

I agree with Charity. Sounds good, Glug. I'm actually looking forward to reading about what happens next. :smallbiggrin:

[Totally Guy]

Warning, very long post, a lot got acomplished.

Session 2: Pugh Djinn steals the show.

The party camped out for the night and in the early morning they were attacked by a bull which the farmer had accidentally set loose. They managed to kill it and the next encounter was with an upset farmer. He was planning to head into town to sell it. He asked the adventurers for compensation and, as they were travelling to Mansworth they should find an Elf called Robert Gag to tell him they were sorry that they had killed the bull he was meant to buy.

On arriving at the town the party saw a goblin squad drawing chalk summoning circles on the ground outside city wall. They also had a stack of boxes to climb up if they wanted to get over the wall. Justice the Tiefling warlock decided to approach the goblins pretending to be whatever they were trying to summon. The goblins did not believe this deception but they did not attack either, they were just puzzled. When the other party members were in position the combat erupted and the party triumphed over the threat. One goblin escaped over the city wall and was chased by the Kayou the Ranger with a skill challenge.

The party was split. The Elven Ranger arrived at a warehouse where he spied upon a female Elven Ranger commanding the goblins before they left through a portal.

The party on the wall interrogated one of the goblins. It pointed to a tower on the city skyline and said that it was his master’s tower. This was a lie, evident that the goblin the Kayou chased went to a warehouse. This goblin was working for the evil Elf Ranger and was trying to frame the ex-mayor Pugh Djinn by pointing at his tower.

The party went to the pub and met Robert Gag who explained he was to sell the bull to the head of the watch but couldn’t now, but his friend is a man of the law and he would understand. Robert explained that Pugh Djinn was once the mayor of the town but lost power a while back in an election. He’d been holding onto power by his use of the law, but just recently he’d been evicted from the Mitra Vols palace. In 2 days time, he said, the handover of power ceremony would occur and Pugh will have lost all his political power. He also explained why the city is called Mansworth; it being an ex-slave city it defined the worth of a man when it sold one as a slave.

The party marched to the tower the goblin on the wall mentioned then they saw the house next to it, knocked on the door and met my designated antagonist, Pugh Djinn. Except that they didn’t ask his name.

“Go away, I have not the time to be laughed at!” called the BBEG from the inside.
“We have news of a goblin invasion”
“Really? What of it?”
“It was at the wall.”
The door opened to reveal a tired looking bald man with an unkempt beard dressed in green robes. “What does this have to do with me?” he asked.
“Nothing, never mind. What do you think of Pugh Djinn?”
“Lovely fellow.”

The party concluded that the man was suspicious.

The party suspected that the goblin was lying as the one that got away ran the other way away from the tower. But they decided that they might come back to bother the old man later for thoroughness.

The party visited the temple of Kord so that they might pay pilgrimage to their deity. The minister Father Farai told the party that he suspected the temple of Melora had been funding anti-Kord propaganda in the form of a play. He had instructed his assembly not to watch it and also avoided it himself. The party donned disguises and went to see the play, they found that there had been a misunderstanding as although there was a cleric of Kord as the antagonist, the overall message was very much positive of Kord and the villain was redeemed. The party informed Father Farai of the misunderstanding and he said he would watch tomorrow night’s show to be certain. I think that whole sidequest was devoid of any dice rolling.

That night the players went back to the inn except for the Ranger Kayou who went back to Pugh’s house.

First he investigated the house in which he found the old man attempting to sleep without much success. He decided to stop investigating the house before he was spotted and turned his attention to the tower. He picked the lock with a take 20. The tower was old, previously it had been a chimney but a wooden structure had been erected within to give it floors. Up the first ladder was a room full of sleeping goblins.

Not wanting to risk waking them up Kayou retreated back to the tavern for reinforcements in the form of the rest of the party. But on the way back Robert Gag and his watchman friend blocked the way. He reinforced the points he had made earlier and revealed that the man in the house was the one and only Pugh Djinn. The goblins in the tower were not actually illegal and to harass them now would jeopardise the power handover ceremony.

The players retired for the night and the next day volunteered their services as bodyguards for the handover. They learnt that the handover used Pugh’s Orb of Imposition as a symbol for the city’s power. He himself used it as a casting implement but the new mayor was not even a spell caster. The party met Beth organising the ceremony and introduced them to her husband Gomez who was due to accept the new mayor position. Actually Beth would have equivalent title-less powers as the co-owned the election winning party.

The adventuring party set up beacons around the courtyard so that if anyone was to shoot a bow from a building the party could communicate to everyone which building housed the assassin.

The day of the ceromony the Paladin and Warlord stood at the front to guard the occupants of the stage, the Ranger patrolled the rooftops with his bow whilst trying his best not to look like a baddie. The Warlock stood in the middle of the crowd surveying whether anybody looked suspicious.

Sure enough, just as Pugh was about to hand over the orb, somebody shot a crossbow bolt from a window. We treated the players as having readied actions as they had set things up beforehand and were on high alert against a threat they had accurately predicted. The Paladin jumped in front of Gomez and Beth. The Warlord was too far away but remembered his fey step and jumped in front of Pugh Djinn. *Dink!* A bolt hit the Warlord’s shield, Pugh had been the target. The ranger lit the beacon and the Warlock parted the crowd with intimidation.

The Warlord stayed with Pugh to make sure he did not cause any trouble. The others arrived in the assassin’s room to find a party of goblins. After the battle they found out the goblins worked for Zanzibar and they were supposed to shoot Gomez but the sniper had an ulterior motive, he wasn’t happy with Zanzibar working for a human, and he had already been killed for this deception.

The handover recommenced and Pugh gave Gomez the orb without any further incident.

The players then latched on to watching Pugh Djinn, they were sure he was still up to something. He went to the pub and had a couple of drinks; he even bought the adventurers a few as they had saved his life.

Kayou the ranger left to visit Pugh’s home whilst he was away. In Pugh’s dirty, untidy house he found papers regarding the laws of demanding election recounts and papers detailing the use and construction of a camera obscura, like the one Alain had.

In the tower, at the very top, he found Alain’s missing table and the secret camera obscura. Operating it he found it overlooked a house in a seedy area of town.

Upon returning to the pub, Pugh sang a little song about his dreams being crushed (completely improvised by myself! God I’m good!) entertaining the party. He also explained that he’d have never lost the election if the two separate parties that Beth and Gomez belonged to hadn’t merged along with their marriage. The key issue was abolishing slavery which Pugh was certain the population wanted to keep. Then Kayou showed up and questioned Pugh about the address of the house he’d seen.

Pugh then slipped back into villain mode and in sinister fashion invited the party to his tower where he’d show them something amazing. The party initially said “No, it’s a trap”, only for Pugh to state he knew he’d be followed anyway and he’d prefer them to be honest about it. The party realised that if he started doing evil they could just attack him and he’d not got an implement to boost his spells.

At the top of the tower Pugh stalled for a little while, saying he had to wait for something before he would do his trick.

Eventually there was a knock at the door and Pugh asked for a volunteer to answer it with him; this was because he knew the party did not trust him. The Dragonborn Paladin, Hermocrates, went with him and found Beth at the door. She had also been invited to see whatever amazing thing Pugh was to show them. He explained to everyone that he had discovered that using the magic table as an arcane focus and together with the camera obscura, he could cast local scrying spells at long range. He also said he would return the table to Alain eventually, within a month.

Spell one: Detect object, the party did not see how this spell could be used for evil so they allowed him to cast it. He found his own Orb of imposition (massive bonus on an object well known to him). It was being carried by a disguised Gomez; he aimed the camera obscura to track his movement through Mansworth.

He arrived at the shady address mentioned earlier. Pugh then suggested Spell two; Wizard’s Sight. Beth allowed Pugh to cast this and the party gazed in awe as they saw Gomez tied to the bed with the orb on the Table. Kinky.

Pugh started boasting about how he had managed to pretty much conquer the city with two rubbish spells. Beth said he had not done as they had not yet seen the woman involved. The female Elven Ranger that Kayou had seen earlier entered the room and took the orb.

Pugh got scared and could not follow this lady with the camera obscura; the way it is adjusted is counterintuitive. So he started with the Detect Object spell again.

Kayou the ranger left at this point to untie Gomez and rearrange the room. The rest of the party tried to convince Beth that the mean old man was using illusions to break up the new rule early.

Kayou untied Gomez and told him to sort out the mess he was in and that he had been spied on by Pugh and Beth. Gomez stopped a while to rearrange the room and redress himself and told Kayou to go ahead and track the lady Ranger.

After 10 minutes of Pugh casting his detect object ritual and Kayou tracking the thief they both found out at the same time that she’s gone to the Mitra Vols palace.

Pugh told the party that it was imperative that the woman was stopped and his orb recovered and commanded everyone to help.

The party did as such and ran to the palace.

Instead of the palace Beth went toward the house of ill repute.

And Pugh, being an older man could not keep up over the distance so he fell behind.

Kayou confronted the Ranger that was now guarding the palace. She said her name was Teos and that they shouldn’t interfere as adventurer’s would consider what she was doing to be a gift.

She toyed with Kayou by wielding her twin hula hoop weapons. But she eventually had to retreat into the castle. Her arrogance had cost her and the rest of the party arrived ready for a fight.

She retreated into the basement where the party found the Farseer opening a portal with his goblins. There was also an old large well in the room. Kayou attacked the Farseer directly only to be grabbed by a pair of goblins. The Farseer escaped through the portal taking his lackeys and Kayou with him. Teos was grabbed by Allara and after a round to escape and a route to avoid other combatants she managed to miss the portal as it closed in front of her. She looked left and saw the party, looked right to see if she could get through the door only to find Pugh Djinn standing menacingly in the archway. She opted to escape to the safety of the well.

Pugh explained that she had used his orb as a key to open the “Mitra Vault” which was a sealed dungeon beneath the city streets.

Wow, that was a mammoth session that went amazingly well. The reason for getting rid of Kayou near the end was that he was going to be moving away and would no longer be attending my campaign. Him being the former DM I hope I will live up to his standard of game. The way I have this planned out is for the Farseer to want to put adventurers into Mansworth so I could potentially bring him back if needed.

[Totally Guy]

Session 3: The three Dooms

After writing out the character of Kayou I was surprised to find he would be joining us again for the last time this session. No problem I said, I’ll do a little mini adventure and railroad you back to the party for the very next day. The Farseer’s plan actually works better when there are adventurers in Mansworth so he has motivation to send him back:smallwink:. Overall this session didn’t go quite so well.

We resume in the entrance to the Mitra Vault, the Party saw the Orb of Imposition behind the well just out of Pugh’s line of sight and the Hermocrates’ pocketed it. Pugh says that he is going to use a mending ritual on the entrance to reseal the vault with Teos trapped inside and that if the party go down he would trap them inside.

The Party elected to go down despite this. The presence of a named enemy, Teos, hooked them down.

Pugh warned them of the Three Dooms of the Mitra Vault. His father told him of them long ago;
Doom 1) Political Economic Doom for Mansworth,
Doom 2) A personal Doom for Pugh Djinn,
Doom 3) A malevolent doom that could endanger the world.

The party entered the dungeon where I started to show the concepts within.

Premise 1)
All the doors in this dungeon have inexplicitly been left open.
Premise 2)
Monsters poof into existence at one way summoning points.
Premise 3)
Monsters have gold coins under their shells ands skin. The players thought this was 4th edition being wacky but I had to explicitly state that this was a genuine mystery element and not something to maintain wealth by level.
Premise 4)
There are little eyeballs in the corners of certain rooms which probably act as sentry wards.
Premise 5)
Monsters are non-intelligent beasts or undead.

The dungeon was fairly barren with not a lot of furnishings. Kayou’s player was getting restless and for good reason. I thought they would choose not to go down but to deny them that option would be bad.

After a couple of monster encounters in a couple of rooms there was a crashing sound of blocks falling from above hitting the stone floor. The well that Pugh was trying to reseal collapsed into the dungeon. Much cursing was heard from Pugh up above.

In the next room they saw Teos casting a Linked Portal Ritual which she used to escape while the party was in combat. Allara performed the fey step manoeuvre to bypass the monsters blocking the path and follow the nimble antagonist. The party got beaten badly without their warlord and had to escape back up the enlarged entrance hole over difficult terrain. A botched climb check here could have been fatal.

Allara found herself on a large expanse of plain red rock. There was no features of interest in any direction. Teos was fleeing to the west. Allara gave chase all the way to the horizon, and then she saw that she was atop the Godogre plateau and could see much of the countryside including Alain’s Black Tower.

She climbed down from the plateau to the plains and gave chase. Endurance was the big issue here and although Teos had the greater speed she had to stop after a certain distance. Before Allara had caught up Teos had summoned a horse. But Allara launched her mighty Javelin and struck the horse down leaving Teos at her mercy.

Teos explained that the Farseer had once been a slave to Pugh Djinn and that she only knew of one Doom – that to Pugh Djinn. She went on to say that there was enough money in the vault to make the party and herself very rich and that what he companion the Farseer had done was a good thing. Allara told Teos she was very foolish for putting so much effort into running away when she could have said this in the first place. Allara left Teos, exhausted in the wild.

Back in the dungeon the players had smashed each summoning point and popped each little eyeball. Then they waited with some town guards for some doom to come up. Kayou and Allara rejoined the party. Still there was no doom, it was empty and plain.

The problem I had was another dungeon premise. The dungeon has extra levels open up over time. With new air and the presence of life certain walls would eventually crumble to reveal the next level. The same effect could be seen above ground. The deathly old air was coming up into the palace and crumbling the structure (except the columns which remained 100% solid). This was why the well collapsed incidentally. The reason for this premise was so that the party could pursue other plotlines between dungeon segments.
In this session I had planned:
Zanzibar the goblin breaking off away from Pugh Djinn and raiding the local shops.
A confrontation with Pugh to reclaim Alain’s table.
The ramifications of the hottest day of the year.
Helping Beth and Gomez with their troubled relationship.
Adventurers seizing Inns as their own.

But none of these things happened as the players had latched onto the idea that as soon as their backs were turned the dungeon would start spewing some serious doom. I must have screwed up here.

After several days of waiting the guards grown bored and had left. Beth and Gomez had moved back to their old house on Politician’s Row. The palace walls had crumbled and the hole was the size of the whole room. The dungeon entrance was now visible from outside as only the upstairs was still fully intact. This floor was inaccessible as the stairs themselves had also crumbled.

A group of adventurers led by a Tiefling arrived and asked what was down in the dungeon and if the could help. The party said it was boring and that they should leave.

On a routine check the party found that a wall had started to crumble and so they attacked it. This revealed another level down a long twisting passage. Down this passage there was another circle that monster could appear through and a pile of gold. As they were collecting the money the Tiefling and his gang had followed and saw this, he declared that he was not happy about being fobbed off when they were clearly making money from the vault. The Tiefling declared he would check the other hallway and the party had no right to monopolise the dungeon. What made the PC’s so special?

The party was split on how to treat this. Their role had been questioned by someone that was not explicitly evil, someone who in fact first offered to help.

We ended the session here. Fortunately the players were fascinated by this twist at the end despite it being fairly bland and full of combat that had seemingly little reason.

Overall I was fairly disappointed; I’d failed to provide suitable hooks for other activities when I presented a "doom filled" dungeon which seemed like it should be the priority activity.

Playground brand general advice sought :smallfrown: