Despite being a full on nerd for most of my life I have always circled the sphere of geekery that is D&D but not had the chance to take the plunge. I've been involved in Vampire the Masquerade, Edge of the Empire, Streets and the likes but never the grand daddy of them all Dungeons and Dragons. In high school I was invited to join a campaign but couldn't get a ride or it conflicted with sports. I even borrowed a Monster Compendium (2nd edition) and read it cover to cover. As an adult I've had a few opportunities but again it didn't work with my schedule so when my friend Bethany offered for us to join in a new campaign I jumped at the chance.
We had a session zero where Ana and I made new characters with minimal guidance from our Dungeon Master Gil (Bethany's husband). When there was info it came mostly from Chad an experienced player and the father of one of Bridget's girl scout troop buddies. In addition to the 3 of us we had Bethany and Patrick both of which were relatively new with the experience of just one other on going campaign.
I had always said that if I got to play D&D I would play a fighting type class to learn the mechanics but my love of Ready Player One and recent thematic choices lead me to choose a Wizard. As for a race I decided on a Halfling since I wanted to play something different than my normal style. Usually when I play games I am a tank or brute (sometimes a healer), this time I wanted to be the small guy that uses his intellect and magic. I rolled up my stats and cumbersomely stumbled my way through the character sheet.
Ana choose to be a Druid Half Elf, Patrick a Barbarian Dragonborn, Chad a Human Monk and Bethany a Halfling Bard. After a short fight to introduce Ana's character we called it for a few weeks. I shared my character sheet with Dave only to have him tell me all the mistakes I made. I know he was trying to help but as an experienced DM he couldn't help but deconstruct things. I think the idea being that making the decisions, right or wrong is part of the learning process.
When we met back up I was super excited and came with my recently purchased Players Handbook and Monster Manual plus a few handy apps and ~10lbs of dice. I created minis via Hero Forge (above) but am still waiting on the 3d printed models to arrive for me to paint. After a quick review Gil welcomed us back into the world. We navigated down the Kings Road to a nearby garrison encountering traders and not a lot else. We all held our breath expecting there to be a fight eventually discovering it on the lower level of the abandoned armory. At this point Gil began to draw out the map as we inched through it trying to survive arrows being fired from hidden crossbows.
I found a few opportunities to cast spells and teaming up with Patrick we lead the party most of the way. We finally got to the stairwell to go down and took a short rest before calling it for the night. I know to a seasoned player it probably was a pretty mild session but it gave Ana and I an opportunity to role play and learn game mechanics and I left that evening hungry for more.
9/7/2021