Genius Hour 2.2

Dungeons and Dragons: * spoilers, Allie and Hannah do not read

Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I'll be planning my introductory session and a pre-quest of sorts to introduce my players to the basic mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons. At first glance, the premise of this Genius Hour may seem a bit silly, but this project more about teaching myself how to teach others effectively. Due to this, my first session will include most of the main tenants of the game and I'll see what my players enjoy the most. From this input I'll be able to better tailor the world and story to my players' wants.

Now for the story:

All of the players will be running into each other in the town of Port Swordbreak, each having a different reason for being in town. Nyssaadi is in town looking for one of her father's old military friends, Muhrren. Muhrren is the owner of an adventurer's tavern, The Sour Pig, where individuals of the surrounding community put of job contracts for wandering adventurers. A job with a vague description but a large reward requiring a group of three adventurers at the least catches Nyssaadi's eye. Nyssaadi can either ask Muhrren for advice of who to recruit at this point, or can find the other players herself.

Xanaphia happens to be in the tavern at the time, and due to her Folk Hero status among the town folk, whispers of her reputation eventually will reach Nyssaadi's attention. As for Snargog, even though he has only been in town for a few days, he has also made a reputation for himself as being a powerful wizard that's always up for an adventure.

Muhrren will then reveal that he put out the vague quest, and insist that the group of adventurers do a small task for him to prove that they can work well together as a party. He offers a seemingly simple quest for the adventurers to escort a caravan of his through a dangerous mountain pass to the town of Graycott. He also says that he will provide his son, Ivan Shermov, as a guide through the mountains.

Up to this point, what I have planned is relatively simple worldbuilding and practice with interacting in towns with NPCs. After this, the story could take many directions as the adventurers travel on their four day journey through the Clear View Point pass. This will be where I introduce combat mechanics to my players, and what they will fight will be determined by their perception skills.

Between all the wild encounters, Ivan will have time to do some exposition. The players will at first expect there to be a fort at the halfway point of the pass to rest at, but Ivan will reveal that this area has been overtaken by bandits. The players will the decide if they want to fight the bandits and clear the fort, or if they want to take any other course of action. It's probably most likely that they will want to attempt to clear out the fort, and in that case I have a map of the fort, bandit locations, and potential loot already set up.

As I really do not want my players to die on their first session, I made Ivan a fairly powerful ranger that I will be controlling alongside the bandits. If things start looking too rough for any of my players, Ivan will be able to step in. However, I won't be doing this unless it's absolutely necessary.

The adventurers will eventually reach Graycott, where Ivan will give them part of their reward and a bonus as an apology for Muhrren's lie by exclusion about the nature of the quest. The players will have a little bit of downtime to shop around for upgrades before heading back to Port Swordbreak.

Normally, campaigns are not this structured and more is left up to the players. However, most resources I looked at said that first-time players need more structure so they know what all they can do in the game. As I continue on I will most likely be giving the players more liberty to shape the adventure as they please. Although, that is not to say that it's impossible for players to do the unexpected in this session. If the players want to take some creative approaches to problems, I'm all for it. I'll just need to work on thinking quick to fit their actions into the greater narrative of the campaign.