How to Use Individual Intro Sessions to Start a Campaign

It's the first session of your big campaign. Your players are settling into their new characters, and most of the first session ends up being you establishing the setting and the plot while your players figure out how they fit in the world. This doesn't make it a bad session, but it also means that your players are spending more time getting started than really playing. But you can work around this difficulty with one simple action: using individualized intro sessions. By providing each player with a customized session to get them into the world and hooked into the story, you can ensure that your first session is all about the players truly getting started on the story. Read on for a full guide to creating individualized intro sessions. 

Years ago, I deployed individualized intro sessions for the Eastweald campaign, and I addressed some of the benefits of these sessions, but now I would like to expand that and provide instruction as well. But let's start with an expanded look at the benefits of individual intro sessions. I'm going to focus on five ideas, specifically how these sessions allow: the player to roleplay their backstory, the player to test their abilities, the player to express themselves without pressure from the group, both players and GM to introduce story events, and the GM to work directly with players (a rarity in TRPGs). 

So let's start with one of the more obvious ideas: these sessions let your players roleplay their backstory. This in and of itself affords us a collection of benefits. First, there's the direst consequence of the intro session, which is that the player gets to begin the game by simply exploring the gameworld a bit. This means that they can enter the group session with more knowledge and confidence, which is vital. For players interested in roleplaying, these sessions will also grant the inherent benefit of the player enjoying their introduction to your world on their terms. The player also gets the opportunity to figure out some details of who their character is in practice before having to interact with the rest of the party. These ideas are all related to the benefits the player reaps, but there is a massive benefit to the GM as well: you get to learn more about the player's character in a controlled environment, which sets you up to present that character with more individualized attention as the game progresses. When I did intro sessions for the Eastweald campaign, I learned a lot about my players' characters and their motivations, which better prepared me for the challenge of dealing with four players characters at once. So you see that by allowing players to roleplay their backstories, we get a wealth of benefits. 

Then there's the fact that an individualized intro session lets players test their abilities. Remember that in the vast majority of campaigns, all the characters in the game will be new creations, which is to say that the players will be the least prepared to play their character effectively that they can be. I've seen first sessions where players are playing spellcasters for the first time and don't know how to cast them usefully yet, and I've seen players end up quite surprised by how their actual actions play out. You can't get rid of the test period, but you can relegate it to an individual intro session. This leads right into the idea that players also get the benefit of getting to privately test their character away from the eyes of the rest of the party. This also means that you can coach the player in a safe space, away from the potential judgment of other players. And let's not forget that the player character existed in the gameworld before the player developed them, in a sense: when a player makes a 36-year-old character, that character has 36 years of life to account for, and in that time, they would certainly have become familiar with their own abilities. An individualized intro session means that when these characters meet, they will already have a sense of what they are capable of and how to achieve results. This is more gratifying and surprising for the other players as well, who get to see this player character being capable as a first impression. Testing abilities is another feature of individualized intro sessions that provide a variety of benefits to the game. 

Next, let's consider the ways that playing away from the pressure of the group can be a helpful force. I've already touched on a few of the ways this can benefit your game: players enter the true first session more confident and capable, allowing you as GM to both help and challenge them. But it's more than that. Let's think about the mindset of a player figuring out their character for the first time. They're thinking about their character concept and the details they've created, the collection of story ideas, how to fit together with the party, and plenty of other ideas. That's a lot to consider and act on. And the pressure to do well and impress the other players is a real factor. No one wants to show up and seem like the least capable person in the party. But we can take a lot of these things off the player's shoulders. An individualized intro session means that they can think about their character and the gameworld, and that is essentially it. They can integrate themselves into the world in a way that makes sense to them, and without worrying about monopolizing the session. Then, when the first group session begins, the player has already gotten practice roleplaying their character and can worry about the group details. It may sound like a small benefit, but taken with all of these other benefits, it's hard to dismiss. 

Then we have the way that story events can be distributed in an early campaign. This is a delicate time for you as a GM; you're trying to unite the party, unveil your story, and keep the game going towards the endgame. Introducing the main quest at all can be a daunting task; how do you get these player characters, with their varying backgrounds, skills, and interests, to work together in the first place? But the individualized intro session lets you break that work up into smaller parts. Instead of getting an entire group of different people to agree to the same idea, all you have to do is rope one player character in at a time. You can use the intro session to set up the main quest so that when your first group session starts, your characters are already basically united. You can also use these sessions to develop the late game by revealing details that will become important later on. But it's not just you who can introduce story in these sessions. Your player will also add story ideas to the game, whether they mean to or not. When a player in an intro session identifies something as being a considerable part of their character's life, you have a new story idea; just take that idea, develop it a bit, and deploy it in the game. More on that below, but for now, just think about it this way: you get more story developments out of two sessions than one, so these intro sessions will always grant a boost to your game's story. 

Finally, let's address the way that these intro sessions allow the GM to work directly with the players. You know the scenario: you're GMing, and even though you don't mean to, a certain player or character ends up being relatively left out of the game for a while. Early in a campaign, this can be a real issue; if the players and their characters aren't hooked, early struggles could unmake a campaign. You can resolve that with these intro sessions--the very first encounter the player has with the game, they're the star. Their everyday life is the plot of the session (again, more below), so it's not about the story; it's about the player character. The first time the player actually plays their character in the group session, they'll be able to join the party already knowing--and more importantly, feeling--that their character is a central part of the campaign. This strategy works especially well if you suspect that some of your players will be more dominant in the game than others; with individualized intro sessions, those more dominant players will come in already partially satisfied by the direct attention they got in the intro session. And if there's something you need to customize for a specific player (granting them a special ability, personalizing a plot hook, addressing complicated backstory, etc.), an intro session lets you give that personalized attention without seeming like you're favoring a specific player. 

This is a pretty dizzying array of benefits. The relatively simple action of providing individualized intro sessions unlocks a variety of advantages, from helping players to helping yourself. And this concept need not be applied exclusively for introductions. Many GMs have encountered a time that a player character necessarily had to go about something alone. If this occasion lasts more than a few minutes, you can opt for an individualized session, which will both relieve other players of watching someone else play and allow you to really go all-out on the individualized time instead of truncating it for the other players' benefit. So it's a useful idea, but how do we implement it? 

Just as individualized intro sessions are a simple idea, implementing them in the game is very simple. My instructions will pertain to specifically introduction sessions, but the same general rules apply if there's a mid-story individual session you need to run. The basic formula exists as three acts: a day in the life for Act I, a complication for Act II, and a link to the campaign for Act III. 

Act I: Day in the Life. You want to depict the player character in an average day. This is partially to characterize them, partially to gather an idea of what the character is really like, and partially to make the complication in Act II more dramatic. Running this is very simple. Tell your character that it is dawn (or early afternoon if your Act III requires nighttime), and ask them to describe how they go about their day. Some players, especially those who are not roleplay-minded, may struggle with this. Encourage them and promise that it doesn't have to be interesting. By granting the player more control over the beginning of the session, we are both letting the player be as creative as they want and setting up an emotional response when the complication arises. Common activities in this act include getting a meal, tending to business needs, meeting with acquaintances, practicing skills, and other fairly inconsequential things. If your player wants the intro session to be more action-packed (perhaps they're pulling off a dangerous job that day), don't bar it entirely, but encourage them to pick something a little simpler; there will be time for that dangerous job later. Let's look at an example of Act I:

Let's say we're planning a campaign about taking down a lich who is slowly taking over small towns across the countryside. We have three players, one of whom is a fairly new TRPG player; we'll call her Greta. Greta has created a ranger-type character, which will be a challenge since she's never played a magic user before. So for Act I of her intro session, we want her to show us what her ranger (Maeve) actually lives like. Greta is a bit tentative at first, but ends up describing doing a bit of hunting for breakfast, tidying up her cottage, and heading into town for supplies, where she runs into a friend, a cleric of Obad-Hai; they share a reverence for nature and a distaste for city life, and so they have bonded. Essentially all of this information should come from Greta. If she's having a hard time imagining the details, ask open-ended questions about Maeve's interests. You want this part of the session to last about one-third of your total time, but you can cut it a bit short if your player is really struggling. (If they are, ask them to develop some more details for roleplaying their character.) Once you have a good idea of Maeve's day-to-day life, it's time to move onto Act II. 

Act II: Complication. Now something interesting happens. It should be directly tied to the campaign's main quest, but remember that you're not even in the first group session, so you don't want to give everything away. The complication shouldn't necessarily be a quest; we're more looking for something that adds some intrigue and which requires some poking around. You can introduce this idea however you want; interrupting one of the mundane tasks in Act I works well, as does having an event unfold in public where the player character can see it, and disrupting the player's actions can make things even more dramatic (imagine that the player character goes to visit an old friend and finds their house boarded up with a menacing note on the door--that will shake things up). The nature of the complication isn't as important as the effect: you want your player to be a bit jarred by the transition from Act I to Act II. You also want to include some information for the player character to investigate, otherwise, this step is just one moment of drama. This act should also take about one-third of your time. 

Let's say we're running our intro session for Greta, who has been having Maeve walk around town doing everyday things. She goes to a common goods shop to buy some rope, but--complication!--the store has no rope. And the shopkeeper says that no other shops in town have rope either, or many other common goods. The problem, they say, is that all the city's rope is imported from two small towns to the East, and both towns were recently sacked. The report is that some powerful villain is capturing small towns, and no one knows why. I would also have the shopkeeper disclose that there is a leader here in town who wants to fight back against the villain, give Maeve a name and location for this leader, and let the shopkeeper encounter end. But Act II isn't over; now it's time for Maeve to investigate the claims the shopkeeper made. Then we can have Maeve search for the leader (stymied initially, but succeeding with persistence) and ask them about the villain. This is how Act II closes. 

Act III: A Link to the Campaign. Now for the finale. You've got your player character interested in the hook, but now we need to reel them in. Generally speaking, the easiest way to do Act III is for the whole act to be a big conversation, followed by an event which changes the stakes. In game terms, what you're looking for is a connection between the complication in Act II and your campaign, which shouldn't be too much of a challenge given that we designed Act II to lead into Act III. The gist is this: the person with information about the campaign's quest should communicate some setup ideas. By this, I mean that the NPC in question should explain a bit about what has led to the bad situation that's happening; then they propose a plan to deal with; finally, they reveal that they are constructing a team of people to deal with the bad situation, which the player character will be a part of. The NPC should answer as many player character questions as they can without you giving away anything that needs to wait for the whole group. Think of the first half of Act III as your commercial for your campaign--really try to sell the player character on the idea. Then, in the next half, we see that the stakes are different than we imagined. Something dramatic that makes the bad situation worse should occur. This will impress upon your players that the need for help is strong and hopefully personalize the appeal of the campaign (they might fight to defend a nearby town, but they will certainly fight to defend their own town). Then, to wrap things up, have the NPC who explained the situation indicate that they will be assembling the team soon to deal with these issues. 

Let's say we're still working with Greta and Maeve. They've just heard that nearby towns have been ransacked and sought out the leader they were told about. The leader explains that the situation is looking bad: the villain has captured at least three villages, and while no one has yet to safely report back with intelligence on what's happening in those villages, the fear is that people are being killed or enslaved to further the villain's goals. To personalize this for Maeve, I would have this leader explain that certain sections of the forest have been targeted as well, sections of the forest that are frighteningly close to Maeve's camp. (Now it's personal, hopefully.) Then, after Maeve's questions have been answered and you feel you've sold the threat of this villain, it's time to have the something dramatic happen. We could have the lich attack the town if the whole party were here, but one player against the BBEG before the campaign even starts could fail to go anywhere. Instead, we have someone burst into the room with the leader and Maeve. They are short of breath and struggling to speak. "Another town to the east has fallen. Red Hawk has been captured. The lich is only two days' ride away," they finally manage. This messenger might be bruised and scraped; they may speak of the horrors they witnessed with their own eyes. Once you feel that your player has grasped that this indeed is the main plot of your adventure, it's time to wrap up. The leader will indicate to Maeve that they appreciate her volunteering, and that she will be assigned to a special group of agents to fight the lich. And so ends the individualized intro session with Maeve already hooked into the game pretty completely; now meeting the rest of the party is the biggest concern. I would call that a pretty successful single session. 

Considering all of the benefits I have outlined above, it's easy to see why an individualized intro session can be helpful. If you have a bigger party (6+ people), it may seem daunting to do that many sessions before even starting the campaign. If that's your situation, lump people together in pairs of characters who know each other already and provide fewer intro sessions with many of the same benefits. Personally, though, I recommend an individualized intro session for any campaign that takes storytelling and roleplaying seriously--it will surprise you how much these sessions can improve the beginnings of a campaign. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to spice up generic enemies, things to include in marketplaces, and an argument for why roleplaying is the pinnacle of TRPGs. Until next time, happy gaming!

Back to the homepage (where you can find everything!)

Mystery Campaign Notes Session 1: The Victim and the Suspect

I previously posted the broad notes on a mystery campaign I'm running and am now writing more detailed information about how to keep the mystery going. This post is a chronicle of the first session and how I kept the players moving towards the end goal. As I noted last time, I am keeping some of the long-term goals of the campaign secret so that my players don't find out about what's coming. Let's get into it.

Our three characters are Beor, Ais, and Montana. To begin, I placed each of them in town and tried to drive the three of them into one scene. Beor wanted to buy incense and other spiritual needs, so he headed to a shop called Sigil's, where a half-elf named Sigil Tanner sells various wares including spiritual needs. Meanwhile, Ais walked toward the center of town, where she was accosted by a stranger, who accused her of destroying an entire gnomish compound. This was a case of mistaken identity. This came about as a result of a natural 1 roll on an encounter table, which indicated a case of mistaken identity; I used the encounter to characterize the way that Ais, a tiefling, runs into prejudice even in her hometown. At the same time, Montana asked an old friend, Lazgar Mazoga, about possible private eye jobs--Mazoga mentioned a murder at a dwarven restaurant called Underhar Cuisine. To rope all of the players into one unit, I placed Underhar Cuisine right next to Sigil's and had Ais' encounter happen in the thoroughfare in front of the restaurant. Here, with all three players in the same place, a guard (Portia Rockhammer, who believes in the methods of the guards but acknowledges that there are too many crimes for the guards to address) accosted the three as outsiders. She insisted that they help investigate the murder of the young woman who was found in the alleyway next to Underhar Cuisine. As mentioned before, Portia cast a spell on the party, forcing them to stay within 50 feet of one another or fall immediately unconscious. Now the party is joined in location and purpose, and the mystery can begin. 

I'm sure that some DMs wouldn't like this method of sticking the party together. I did it anyway for a few reasons. (1) The murder mystery format assumes that the party is invested in solving the murder. But I knew from my conversations with my players that each character is highly individualistic. Just dropping a crime on them would result in no momentum going forward. Especially for characters like Beor, the tragedies of city life are sad, but not the kind of thing that would inspire him to stay in a city surrounded by people he doesn't feel compelled to help. (2) These players are incredibly driven to role-play, but having run games for them before, I knew that cooperation was not the strongest of skills. Forcing them to work together prevents lengthy solo experiences, focusing instead on the mystery. (This doesn't mean I don't allow them to have individual goals, but it does mean that I want to incentivize them to work together.) And (3) I have included a mechanism by which each player must keep a secret from the rest of the party. Keeping the players in close quarters means that they will have to work harder to keep their secrets safe. 

So with the players joined and focused on solving the murder, it was time to investigate. Montana, a private eye in his own right, began by asking me if there were any plants in the alleyway where the victim was found. Forgetting that Montana could speak with plants, I answered that there was a large dandelion in the alleyway. Montana questioned this dandelion, who I named Derek, and Derek revealed that a figure with a black cloak and a purple turban had stabbed the young woman repeatedly and fled the alleyway. (I realized in session two that my description of the murderer matched Professor Quirrell from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This was unintentional. But D&D is about running with things, so the main suspect just happens to look like that.) The party also investigated the rooves nearby the alleyway, finding a monogrammed coinpurse with the initials "AB" stitched on it. (I meant this coinpurse to be evidence that the cat burglar who was one of the main witnesses had been there and likely seen the murder, but the party took it as evidence that AB had been at the crime scene themselves. This is one way that a mystery campaign can go off the rails: make all of your clues orient the party in the right directions or you'll accidentally send them into a red herring, and red herrings break mystery campaigns. In session three, we were still dealing with the party suspecting whoever AB is, so be careful. 

When the players searched the murder victim's body, they found a steel plate in her pocket which explained that her name was Hildy Analeth and that she was mute; the steel plate was intended to be a communicator that she could not communicate via speech to anyone. The plate also had Hildy's home address, which the party went to. There, they found her whole family in mourning, just informed of Hildy's death by a night guard named Darla Oakfort who claimed to have known Hildy well. Hildy's father, Davil, explained to the party that Hildy was a gentle, kind person and that she worked for a family in the Above. (The campaign setting is a city called Yamseth; in Yamseth, chaos storms strike randomly, forcing arbitrary magical effects on anyone they strike. The rich in Yamseth build towers that rise above the chaos storms--the towers are called "the Above"--but the poor in the Below are victims to the storms.) Hildy served the Turnbuckle family without issue for years. Seeing the misery and destitution of the family, Beor donated a few gold to the Analeths via Darla, who said the party might find something out at the tavern The Unicorn's Advice, where Hildy often got free food for her family.

The party headed to The Unicorn's Advice and questioned bartender Baldwin Weams. Weams claimed to know nothing of the murder but professed affection for Hildy. (Below, I've posted my original notes for this session, and you'll notice that Baldwin Weams is listed as one witness who saw the murder. But our session had been relatively short at this point, and I intended to make this first clue last one session. So I shifted Weams' role in the session. Rather than have him give the confirmation of Derek the dandelion's account, I decided to use Baldwin to direct the party to a more compelling witness. The notes also detail that the cat burglar who saw everything could be witnessed breaking into/out of a house and questioned, but I adapted that. Now, the cat burglar was in the bar, and Weams told the party that if anyone was likely to have seen something, it would be her. So Weams directed the party to the cat burglar, whose testimony would be its own puzzle.) Weams suggested that the party speak with the cat burglar, and Ais, herself an outsider more than Beor or Montana, delicately probed the cat burglar for information. 

After having run the cat burglar encounter, I strongly recommend making access to clues dependent on how well your players can talk people into sharing them. Ais was cautious and polite, but the cat burglar nevertheless was reticent to share everything right away. Over ten or so minutes, Ais eventually convinced her to attest to having seen the turbanned figure slash the throat of Hildy in the small hours of the morning, then stab her multiple times, leave her in the alley, and then flee over the rooftops. The cat burglar mentioned that she had been so surprised by the scene that she had dropped a coinpurse she had stolen (the mysterious AB coinpurse, which Weams had guessed belonged to Above citizen Aaron Brown, one of the richest men in town). Gradually and with resistance, the cat burglar added details of what she had seen and eventually asked for the AB coinpurse back as a reward for her cooperation. Satisfied that they had two confirmed reports of the suspect's description, the party kept the coinpurse and left the tavern. Montana offered to play a live music show at The Unicorn's Advice as a favor for Weams helping them with information. 

The party returned to Portia at the guard headquarters to report their findings. On the way, they encountered Dirk St. Patrick, a private eye who bragged of solving the murders in Underhar Cuisine that Montana had heard about. He soliloquized a bit like a good noir detective and left the party with the threat of investigating them. (More pressure on player secrets.) The opening scenes of the adventure had occurred in the late morning, and the time was now mid-afternoon. The guard headquarters is a large building, complete with offices, sleeping quarters, a jail, an armory, and other ancillary guard needs; inside, Portia listened patiently to their discoveries. She protested that a dandelion and a cat burglar were not ideal witnesses but accepted their report. And so ended the first session. The goal had been to unite the party, introduce them to the mystery, and get the first bit of information required to pursue that mystery. It was a success on all counts. 

Below I've copied my notes on how I prepared this session. You'll see it's fairly barebones. I start with the information I want the party to find, create a few paths to finding that information, and strategically offer those paths to the party. There's a certain philosophy of gaming I have which guides me to leave these pieces of information free-floating and add them to the campaign as fits the moment rather than have a set presentation in mind--this helps with keeping the story organic and the players able to direct things themselves with only suggestions from me as the DM. If you trust yourself to do this, the rewards for your players are great. Next time, I'll provide my philosophy of gaming and how it affects standard DM tasks, followed by session two of this mystery campaign. But for now, the outline for session one:

Secret to discover: A commoner from the Below witnessed someone from the Above wearing a purple turban do something suspicious and the person from the Above killed the commoner. 

Setup: The dead body of a commoner is discovered in an alleyway. The guards automatically suspect any newcomers and nearby Belows. To minimize the damage they can do, the guard calls for the chief of police, who uses magic to join the party--50 feet apart, and they all go unconscious but one randomly selected character. The chief only agrees to this on the condition that the party investigate the murder for him. Any information found in investigating must be confirmed before continuing the investigation. 

Characters: 

First Guard - Portia Rockhammer, 160 dwarf, fighter

Chief of Police - Horace Barnes, 54 human, rogue/sorcerer

Murdered Commoner - Hildy Analeth, 38 half-elf, commoner

Clues: 

Tavern keeper (Baldwin Weams, 29 human) testifies that a purple turban-wearing figure fled the

alleyway this morning. He saw on the way to work. 

Night watch (Darla Oakfort, 67 halfling) saw a purple turban-wearing figure run from the direction

of the alley with blood on their hands.

Cat burglar (Maeve Bobbin Torat Wekall, 122 gnome) was on top of building by alley and saw the

entire attack: the turban-wearing figure (Maeve is colorblind) pulled out a dagger and stabbed

Hildy to death. Maeve knew Hildy and is sad that she has passed. Maeve can be noticed about

to break into someone’s second story. 

Bonus for keeping personal secret this session: +1 Investigation checks

As you can see, this is basic information without much in the way of grounding. But I promise it works, and next time, I'll explain how. 

Back to the homepage (where you can find everything!)

Meet the Characters, Plus Intro Sessions

Last time, I shared the custom classes for three characters in the campaign. Since then, we have added a fourth player and held our first group session. I think that makes this the perfect time to give a description of the five sessions that have already happened, which should also provide a look at the characters and who they are.

But first, I want to (somewhat) briefly address what I mean when I talk about an intro session. Before any of the characters meet in-game, I think it's valuable to hold one-on-one sessions with each player. This accomplishes three important things. First, it gives me as the DM and the player a chance to get to know the character before they encounter the party. That means recognizing and ironing out mechanics issues that may have arisen during the custom class creation. It also gives the player a chance to try out the character build so that they have a decent grip on how to use the character before the whole group convenes. Second, a solo intro session allows the character to connect with their past. The intro session gives the character a chance to meet with their long-time friends, family, and other fixtures in their daily life. It prevents awkward moments when the player needs clarification on something basic in their own backstory when the whole player group is present, and it truly helps the players role-play more effectively. Third, it gives the player a chance to get comfortable with my style as a DM, and me a chance to gauge how they play the game. This allows us to establish a bit of a back-and-forth that makes the first group session a bit more comfortable (and easier for me to prepare for). I highly recommend solo intro sessions. While they can be a little draining and intense, the benefits are extremely worth it. Below are notes on the intro sessions, but also consider how you can use these sessions in your own games. 

So now, let's meet the characters. Let's start with the character whose intro session happened first.

Elleryn Celduinya

Elleryn, or simply "Ell," is a 29-year-old half-elf. She is the group's rogue-wizard (which I first described in this post, along with the custom classes for the next two characters). Ell is an anarchist assassin with lofty political goals and a willingness to do almost anything to achieve them. How big of a target are we talking about? Ell wants to assassinate the leader of the largest organized religion in the world. Until it comes time to execute that massive plan, though, she's making a living by taking contracts where she can get them, so long as she knows they're from reliable contacts. Ell has a troubled past which I don't intend to get into here quite yet, though I will say that her vendetta against the massive, corrupt Church of Pelor is a little personal.

When Ell's player, Alex, and I sat down for our intro session, I had nothing planned. That is the goal with this campaign, after all: no pre-conceived storylines, just improvised reactions to the players' decisions. So we began in the early morning when Ell arose, read a bit, and enjoyed a light breakfast. She stopped by a bookstore, met with an old friend, and learned about some anarchist happenings in a city to the north. You can see so far that Ell is a character who lives much as many people in real life do, taking care of basic needs and small tasks. This is something I enjoy being able to DM. It characterizes who someone is without huge story-driven events derailing their life (again, a big plus for the intro session model). Things didn't stay simple for long, of course.

Ell quickly noticed that she kept seeing the same orc everywhere she went in town. At first, she altered her plans, avoiding the more criminal parts of her day until she could be confident that she'd shaken her tail. Once the orc had fallen behind, Ell went to a favorite tavern where political dissidents meet to discuss local and global strategies for changing politics. She met a new addition to the group, a dwarf with yellow eyes and no beard. He introduced himself as Fiskar, and he walked with her to a nearby inn where Ell was expecting to meet someone to discuss a potential contract.

The contact was a quiet, frightened half-elf who offered a sizable amount for the death of a man he said was threatening him. Ell agreed to meet him in a city called Feirmor to talk details and carry out the contract. Before they could part, however, the orc who had been following her all day burst into the inn. Ell fought the orc, and Fiskar joined the battle, coming to Ell's aid. Once they had dispatched the orc, Fiskar helped deal with the body in a legal way. Ell called it a night after agreeing to travel to Feirmor with Fiskar the following day.

A brief second intro session also occurred with Ell in which she and Fiskar journeyed through the dense forests of the region en route to Feirmor. They dealt with an ambush from bandits and traveled quickly along the road. They approached and passed a traveling circus just outside of the city, arriving just before the circus arrived at the gates.

Ell illustrated during every part of her sessions that she is a careful, quiet individual. She is slow to trust strangers and asks more questions than she answers (though she doesn't ask all too many questions in the first place). Ell strikes me as a very practiced assassin, someone who observes and thinks much more than they speak or act. While Ell's sessions were much slower-paced and quieter than the other intro sessions, they did something very important: they established who she is as an individual and how she chooses to operate when all of the choices are her own. These are details which can easily get lost in group sessions, and I hope that I am able to provide Ell opportunities to strike out on her own or to take charge of the group so that we can see where her quiet preparedness benefits her and the group. And now, something completely different . . .

Gerald

Gerald is a goliath whose age is unknown. He was once a human, but was kidnapped by some magical entity as a boy and imprisoned in a cave. He subsisted in that cave entirely on mushrooms with mysterious magical properties for at least a decade, and likely more. At some point during his imprisonment, he transformed into a goliath, a massive humanoid with stony skin. Gerald is our group's barbarian-sorcerer, a class which we very carefully constructed to be as chaotic as possible.

When Gerald's player, Ian, and I met for his intro session, we chose to pick up from the last moment of Gerald's imprisonment. He found himself before his strange magical captor, whom he immediately killed before bursting out of the side of a hollowed-out tree where the daemon/faerie/other fickle thing had been. Gerald looked around and sighted a stag in the middle distance. He called out to the stag, which began to glow green and speak to him. At Gerald's request, the stag directed him to "where the people are," which happened to be a nearby bandit camp. As the bandits began to rain arrows on Gerald and send armed men from their fort, Gerald received a strange vision of other goliaths, who spoke to him. This sent Gerald into his first rage. When Gerald rages, he takes on aspects of a porcupine, growing long, sharp quills from his skin. Gerald immediately lifted a boulder, threw it at the approaching bandits, and slew or frightened away two-thirds of them.

In the following battle, things became very chaotic (as is the expectation when Gerald is involved). Part of the custom class we developed for Gerald involves a custom expanded version of the Wild Surge table (which I have linked to here). To briefly explain, any time Gerald goes into rage or uses a spell, he rolls a d20, and a 1 or a 20 mean he rolls for an effect on the Wild Surge table. That's exactly what happened more or less right away. He rolled a wild surge, became instantly drunk, killed all but one of the remaining bandits, got another wild surge, grew to twice his size, and menaced the entire fort filled with bandits, who gave him a horse blanket to cover himself with, as Gerald had been naked the entire time.

Following the fearful bandits' directions, Gerald wandered to the small town of Splitaxe. There, he met a well-dressed orc who introduced himself as Tenk. Tenk offered to pay Gerald to safely transport him to a nearby city, as well as pay for Gerald to have some clothing and a weapon made in an appropriate size for him. Gerald described his encounter with the bandit fort to the townspeople, who cheered him as a hero. After a night of drinking and re-telling his story, Gerald fell asleep in a stable.

The following morning, Gerald donned his new clothing and picked up his new weapon, a massive pole with a double ax head on one end and a sharpened point on the other. (In the first group session, this weapon would be dubbed "Cleave 'n' Poke.") Gerald and Tenk made their way to Feirmor, where Tenk had business, and Gerald tried to figured out what to make of his apparent ability to use magic, his porcupine transformation, and his general place in a world he knew very little about. They arrived in Feirmor just ahead of the circus.

Gerald's first session may have been the most important to have done individually. Gerald's backstory is very unique, and everything about his character is influenced by his past. As of the first group session, Gerald had only spent a total of two full days out of his former prison. He had discovered that he is completely unlike practically everyone in many ways. He is very much a troubled child in many senses, but he grapples with problems that would bewilder any well-adjusted adult. By holding a solo session for Gerald, we were able to guide him from his old life into the new world, as well as establish how he would begin making his way in that world. I see Gerald as someone whose innate chaos is an expression of how little control he has had over his own life; he is unwilling or unable to control much of his personality because he has never had a chance to control much of anything. That will change as the campaign moves forward, and I look forward to seeing how that happens.

Desarae Malathor

Desarae, but really just "Dez," is a 22-year-old half-elf. Dez is a rogue-cleric combination, and a follower of the Silver Flame deity. She has very close ties to the royal family of Feirmor, having been more or less adopted by the king after her parents were killed by a plague. Out of gratitude for the king's generosity, Dez began eliminating threats to Feirmor's safety and to competing powers. As an assassin, accomplished a great deal under the guidance of the city's Captain of the Royal Guard. In recent times, after the same plague that killed her parents took the life of the king and spread through the city, Dez began walking the path of the cleric, trying to serve the city as a healer and protector. Dez is almost singularly interested in discovering the source of the plague and saving Feirmor.

When Dez's player, Delaney, and I sat down for her intro session, we began at sunrise. Dez tended to a series of experiments in her laboratory, where she had been trying to infect plant life with diseases to try to recreate the symptoms of the plague. After finishing her notes, Dez ventured forth into the city. She heard the sounds of a conflict and hid in the alleyway where two men argued. As the fight escalated to violence, Dez watched as one of the men killed the other. Turning her attention back to the plague, she magically faked the appearance of symptoms and approached a group of strangers. When they ran from her in fear, she decided to venture out of the city.

Using a tunnel she had built under the city's walls, Dez headed into the nearby woods and gathered various herbs before returning to the city. On her way back to the laboratory, Dez noticed the man who had killed the man in the alleyway. She followed him to a bar and waited outside, watching and listening. A strange half-elven woman clad in dull grey seemed to try to get Dez's attention, but Dez remained to watch the man she had followed. Eventually, the woman sat down next to Dez and made conversation, inviting Dez to follow her to something important. When Dez hesitated, the woman hinted that she had a strong connection to the Silver Flame. Dez followed her to a house not far from Dez's lab.

Inside, the woman illustrated through use of her power that she was herself the Silver Flame. Over the course of a long conversation, the Silver Flame asked Dez to be her champion, granted her pyrokinesis, told her about a cleric in town who was also working to fight the plague, and gave her a charm to contact the deity at any time. They also argued a good deal over what Dez's expectations of her deity was and what the Silver Flame could actually do and say. Of particular note was the fact the the Silver Flame claimed to be only a few days old, but could or would not explain why. Just outside the door to the house, Dez summoned the Silver Flame, spawning a few more playful arguments.

As Dez left, she saw the man from the alleyway yet again, and she set his cape on fire with her newfound abilities. She met with the cleric she had learned about and discussed the plague. The cleric, a gnome named Gilly, shared his belief that the plague was magical in nature and not transmittable. As evening came, Dez cast a spell of "Protection Against Evil" on a young patient afflicted with the plague and then headed home, where she practiced her fire magic and steeped a poison from some of the herbs she had gathered.

Dez's intro session was a very surprising and valuable one. I learned that Dez was very comfortable trying things without being fixated on the results, that she was willing to allow violence to happen without intervening, and that she felt no obligation not to argue with her deity. In my past experience, these are not common traits with characters, and I am excited to be playing with Dez. She is unpredictable and stubbornly independent. (In fact, it took most of the first group session to get her to agree to meet up with the rest of the party.) While Dez shares a bit in terms of experience and philosophy with Ell, I think that there is more that divides the two assassins than unites them. Having a "devil may care" character in the mix will definitely keep me on my toes, and I think it will keep the rest of the characters on their toes as well. Especially . . .

Carric Telethyr

Carric is a 80-year-old drow. He is a ranger-paladin combination (his custom class will appear along with the details of the other three in a future post), and is a disciple of the Order of the Path of Light. He has spent the last twenty years serving that order after being saved from a raid by a faction of drowish merchants from the Underdark had attacked the town of Blackleaf Falls while he was there on a visit. In the attack, he lost his parents and brother. He was saved, however by a pair of paladins from the Order of the Path of Light named Bernard and Flint. Desiring to follow these men and emulate his childhood hero Drizzt, Carric left behind his home beneath the surface and helped rebuild the town of Blackleaf Falls as a base of operations for the Order.

When Carric's player, Ross, and I sat down to play his introduction, Ross had already established a blueprint for Blackleaf Falls and the Order's structure and leaders. We began midmorning as Carric returned from a trip where he had been sent out to restore peace in a nearby town. Carric met with the Order's elders and clerics, who told him that a recent immigrant from Feirmor had arrived in Blackleaf Falls with signs of a deadly plague. Carric searched town looking for other residents who had lived in Feirmor in the past, trying to gather information about the plague. One of the people he found, a falconer named Vincent, was alarmed to hear that a plague had befallen his old home and offered to travel with Carric to Feirmor later that week.

Carric made his way to a favorite tavern for lunch and met the tavern's guest chef, a dwarf with yellow eyes and a thick moustache (but no beard). The chef, Fiskar, served Carric a series of delicious foodstuffs, several of his own design. As they talked over his lunch, Fiskar revealed that he knew about Feirmor, its royal family, and the best routes to the city. Carric then met with fellow paladins Bernard and Flint and spoke about the plague appearing in Blackleaf Falls, a disturbing discovery Flint made of "The Sea of the Dead," and Carric's daughter, Cara's plans to become a paladin herself. Carric met with the elders once more and shared his plan to travel to Feirmor to investigate the plague, which they approved. A priest of the Order had a prophetic vision as Carric passed him in the temple, telling Carric to seek two others who are fighting the plague in Feirmor and to follow the Silver Flame.

Carric got dinner that evening with Cara, Flint, and Bernard. After dinner, Carric and Cara went to the graveyard to see the grave of Elizabeth, his passed wife and Cara's mother. After they prayed there, sparks began to jump from her grave, and an animated scarecrow attacked them. Cara used fire magic, revealing that she had begun to study magic (she had asked Carric's permission to do so that night at dinner), and the two together destroyed the scarecrow. The following day, Carric traveled with Bernard to the city of Goldshrine to seek the advice of an expert diviner, Herbert Rosebud. After returning home and tending to temple chores for a few days, a courier arrived carrying Rosebud's findings. [This report became the first document which I created for this campaign, and I will share it and the importance of creating documents like it in a future post.] The report said that the spell that animated the scarecrow had come from the Underdark. The courier also bore the skull found inside of the scarecrow, but it had been transformed to bear golden filigree along the fissures in the skull. Carric left Blackleaf Falls with Vincent the falconer, and with no trouble along the roads, arrived at Feirmor's gates just behind the circus.

Carric's intro was a vital solo session. It allowed us to see the town of Blackleaf Falls, as well as how Carric interacts with his compatriots and his daughter. It also provided me an opportunity to see his prioritization when multiple things demand his attention. And looking forward from the intro session itself, I found several opportunities to connect Carric's character to the interests and allies of the other characters, and to his own past. Carric's behavior made it clear that he believes in careful consideration, service to others and his Order, and working ever onward even when loaded up with responsibilities. This showed me that Carric will persist at goals relentlessly, making him a useful part of the engine that will keep the campaign moving.

All Together, Now . . . 

Taken apart, each of the four characters described above are extremely exciting to me. Each presents unique opportunities for storybuilding, roleplaying, and teamwork. The classic D&D party is composed of four complementary roles: tank, healer, striker, and expert. For most parties, that means a fighter, a cleric, a wizard/sorcerer, and a rogue. In this party, it means a ranger-paladin (Carric), a rogue-cleric (Dez), a barbarian-sorcerer (Gerald), and a rogue-wizard (Ell). But that party setup is considered for combat and skill balance.

I think that roleplaying benefits from complementary roles, too. I think that there are four roles that are necessary for well-balanced storytelling and interaction. You need a leader/anchor character who serves as the hub which the party circles. This character keeps the rest of the party focused and united (within reason, as I think divisions in a party are necessary and interesting as well). The counterpoint to the leader/anchor is the loose cannon. This character is needed to keep the party on its toes and draw in a bit of chaos for the rest. The third role is the planner, someone who keeps long-term goals in mind and who makes sure that the party stays prepared for the bigger concerns down the road. Finally, a party needs someone who is so intensely human that the fantasy of the story and the setting stay rooted in what can be felt by the players. For lack of a better term, I call this role the feeler. They're driven by what they feel and what they aspire to, and sometimes they're driven by anger or fear as much as by hope or love. Without a mixture of these roles, a game can become an exercise in hierarchical orders, railroaded storytelling, total randomness, or robotic following of what seems to be a storyline. (Comic relief is necessary too, but that can come from any, and hopefully every, role.)

I don't think that any of our four players fit one-hundred percent into the four roles I've described here. No party will have a character who is completely one of these roles to the exclusion of the others. Here's how I see our four heroes stacking up after the intro sessions and one group session:

• Ell - Planner with some feeler and anchor. Ell is thoughtful and cautious enough to fill the planner role fairly cleanly, but definitely has enough of a sentimental core to be a good feeler and steadfast enough to hold things together when things start to fall apart.
• Gerald - Feeler and loose cannon, almost in equal measure. Gerald is characterized by chaos in terms of class features (his custom class was dubbed "Chaos Caster," for Pete's sake), and he's made it clear that he'll keep things from getting too orderly. But at the character's center is a deeply hurt human who just doesn't understand why the world has treated him the way it does. It's his own emotional struggles that make him a loose cannon in the first place. 
• Dez - Loose cannon and about as much planner. Dez cares deeply about her kingdom, but her actions show that most decisions are made based on what's best for her, and the effects of those decisions don't trouble her much. But as evidenced by the way she confronts the plague and the choices that only have long-term value, she thinks about the future as much as the present. 
• Carric - Leader/anchor, with plenty of feeler mixed in. Carric is someone who has defined himself by his role as a paladin serving justice across the land. As such, he has become comfortable becoming the person people look to for guidance. Of course, his devotion to that role only exists because he cares about helping the helpless on a basic emotional level. He serves because he cares, and his role as a father will only add to that. 

Whether or not these estimates are accurate in any way will have to be seen out over time. As more group sessions happen, we'll begin to see who these characters really are. I've never seen a character stay completely the same from beginning to end in a campaign, so I look forward to being proven wrong about any or all of these assumptions.

There's a lot in the works behind my DM screen at the moment, and I have some catching up to do as far as recording it here. Be on the lookout soon for custom class development pointers, map updates, document examples and pointers, and group session notes. There are many adventures to be had, and I plan to keep you posted on them as they unfold. Thanks for reading!

Back to the homepage (where you can find everything!)