The D&D Experience

 

A while back, our neighbor expressed an interest in trying Dungeons & Dragons, because she is a fan of The Big Bang Theory.  Personally, I’ve only randomly seen a handful of the shows, generally when someone else was watching them, but I dug in a bit to see what sort of experience she was expecting.

After some consultation on various roleplaying game Discords, I came to the conclusion that the key elements were likely to be rolling some d20s (and other polyhedral dice), doing a bit of roleplaying (i.e. light improv with character voices), anf fighting a battle on a battle mat or some sort, and that we’d probably be good as long as it said D&D on the box. I also concluded that the whole thing would flow more smoothly if I didn’t have to stop and look up the rules, so I went retro and ran with original Dungeons & Dragons plus some of the rules from the Greyhawk supplement and abandoned any thought of trying to play 4th or 5th editions, both of which were used on the show.  I don’t like to risk using my original books at the table, but I have the 2014 40th anniversary reprint to use as a table copy. (I was appalled at what a 2014 set went for the in Gen Con auction last year, but I need to use something…)

We recruited one of the neighbor’s friends, a recent college graduate with some 5th edition experience, and my wife to round out an adventuring party.  They agreed that pregenerated characters would be acceptable, so explaining character generation was one more thing off my plate.  

Heritage Dungeon Dwellers, from sets 1206, 1207, and 1208

For my own amusement I decided that I’d staff the game with vintage miniatures since I was using vintage rules, so our player characters, a fighter, a magic user, and a cleric, were chosen from Heritage Dungeon Dwellers from around 1980. 

Miniatures loaded for transport

The opposition was provided by some Minifigs ME  “man-orcs” and “true orcs”and it doesn’t get more vintages than that, as they were the first range of fantasy figures. I also turned out to need a baby dragon, so I dug into my (mostly organized) boxes of my vintage “pile of potential” and came up with one from Heritage, a #1005 from their Dragons range, released just before they went out of business.  Drawing on

my somewhat rusty speed painting skills, I got him ready in about an hour and a half all told.  It’s the first figure I’ve painted in months, so I am hoping this will help break the painting block.

I kept with my vintage theme in setting up an adventure, and started the characters in Stoneharrow, the main town of my first D&D campaign.  Rumors reached them of a nearby village troubled by goblin raids, and of a reward for driving off the goblins.  I wouldn’t ordinarily set things on rails to this extent, but I wanted to get in a few set-pieces that would provide that “D&D experience”.  So I wanted the scenes to be “visit the village”, “fight with the goblin lookouts”, “explore the cellar”, and “the arrival of the dragon”.

Notes for the adventure, kept to two A5 pages

I set the pregenerated characters to be 3rd level to give them some survivability and each of the players chose the class that seemed interesting to them.  I also threw in a 2nd level fighter henchman so that the magic user might be able to avoid getting into a hand-to-hand fight with the goblins.

We finally gathered this past Saturday. After some final preliminary work to pick some spells, our brave adventurers crossed the Great River on a ferry, arriving in the little village of Barl’s Landing.

They roleplayed their way through an encounter with the village leader and the innkeeper, and collected some information about the goblin threat, including a rumor that an ogre was also about, and that a dragon had been seen flying over the area.  When they eventually headed for the ruined tower that the goblins were using as their lair, I pulled out a Dungeons Pop piece from my toy collection.  This came from a Kickstarter which did eventually deliver after many delays, and I was glad to put one of the pieces to use.

Scene reconstructed later

They found the tower, with a few goblin pickets visible, and quickly came up with a plan to distract them on one side while the rest of the team snuck up on the other.  That’s when they discovered that the guards also included an ogre.  So, the magic user put the ogre to sleep and a quick fight left them in possession of the upper works, although a dying goblin fell through an open trap door to alert those still below.  They hastily blocked the trap door with the ogre’s body, and debated their next course of action, and whether it was likely that there was another exit from the underground works.

We removed the tower for convenience; goblin counterattack in the lower right

As it turned out there was, so the goblins attempted to charge up the hill and clear our brave adventurers back out.  Everyone looks deep in thought above as they decide what to do.

The adventurers decided to pull together a hasty defense, and meet the goblins.  This turned out well for them, as they killed several goblins immediately.  I decided I’d check morale for the goblins, who broke and ran, leaving our heroes in possession of the field.  Since we were running short on time, we skipped forward to the part where they acquired the baby dragon from its cell and brought it to the surface, and we wrapped the evening up with the encounter with the mother dragon, who agreed that she now owed them a debt they could collect at some future time.

Our players and their miniature adventurers

If we ever decide that this isn’t a one-shot and that we’re continuing on, we have several threads we can follow up, such as the dragon debt, and a map of other goblin hideouts in the area which could be of use to the local authorities.  

Everyone had a good time and stayed engaged, and our neighbor noted that she now understood how one of these sessions could go on all day.  I was pleased that they were creatively problem solving by the time we were done, and that they noted and discussed several incidents in which the non-combat utility spells they hadn’t chosen would have been perfect, so they were also creatively engaging with the rules.  (I didn’t set that up, by the way.)

One postscript on my choice of the original rules:  I showed my wife a 4 page character sheet I’d been using in my most recent 5th edition game, and she agreed that that would have been overwhelming.  I don’t know what the Wizards of the Coast D&D start sets look like these days, but I hope they are considerably simpler than the base game.