Olierien's Newbie Campaign

Thought I'd be the first to use this section and write a current summary of my campaign. The campaign is set using DnD 3.5e. To make this more easily understood, I'll give a brief description of the players I have. The names I'm using are the names of their characters.

Note: All of my players are completely new to tabletop except for one, who played in 3 previous campaigns with another DM. This made me decide to make the campaign a training campaign. I started the characters at level 1, so they could get used to understanding the leveling system. I also incorporated many weakened low level creatures on the outskirts of the town, so they could still survive the initial fumbling during the learning process.

David Winthorn: This guy is the roommate of Gannon. Both him and Gannon are pretty big fans of the Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid series. They also used to play Rune Factory and Harvest Moon.

Gannon Winthorn: Is roommates with David. Decided to play a druid after knowing that the group needed a healer. He's a pretty good team player.

Clive Owleyes: He is the roommate of Jacob. He decided to roll up a ranger, since he is pretty big on FPSers. I honestly didn't think this guy was going to make it this far, since he has never really played any RPGs.

Lucy: My gf. She decided to join in, whenever I was talking about setting up the game at my apartment. She has no real experience with video games or RPGs. The last game she played was Spyro. I had a lot of trouble with her in the beginning, because she wanted to roll up a dragon. It took a while for me to realize that she just wanted to play as a baby dragon, like Spyro. After some tinkering and stat adjustments, I ended up creating a psuedo-dragon for her.

Jacob Patterson: The only experienced guy in my group. He decided to roll up a level 1 fallen paladin. I suppose he did not want me to immediately start thinking of ways to make him fall. I met him whenever I was playing Torment, while waiting for the bus to arrive.

I forgot to mention that the character were all human, except for Lucy.

Session 1:

The first session began with all of us meeting up at my apartment. I supplied the snacks and drinks and we all chatted for an hour before moving to the table to start. I told everyone to go ahead and look through the classes and find out what they wanted to play. Jacob had already created his character and background beforehand, so he helped me in teaching the others how the basics of character creation worked. After an hour had passed, everyone had their character picked out except for Lucy. This is when she brought up that she wanted to play a dragon. Jacob went ahead and made a character for her to play but she wanted to make her own. After a bit of discussion, she decided to go ahead and not try out the campaign (she did not realize that the game would be as complex as it is). The party was down to 4 players. I decided to have them make their background stories later, so that we could go ahead and get them used to rolling dice and other mechanics.

At this time, I had made 4 maps for the players and 4 'quests'. The main map was the town of Rumfold that they all began in. Since this was a training campaign, I wanted to have them start in a place that weak creatures would naturally be around. I described the town to be a two week ride from a prosperous city named Pharod. However, the bridge connecting the city and town was currently broken. I had a map of the bridge created, in case they decided to try to figure out the problem. The other 2 maps were for some other quests I had created. I also told them that they had all met at Rumfold, while trying to reach Pharod. At this point, Jacob basically took over as the leader of the party. None of the other people complained from still a bit squeamish about role playing. Also to mention, Jacob's character was described as being a smooth talker with a high charisma rating to boot. Jacob ended up finding a group of workers complaining about the bridge reconstruction. The workers told him that there had been a small kobold group grabbing supplies from the workers at night. Jacob negotiated a reward (I enjoyed this a lot, since I get annoyed at making static rewards for quests) and they set off to fight. Every player quickly figured out the dice system and that their player's placement on the field was quite important. Nothing special really happened though. The players were pretty happy with the game, although Clive did not like rolling for damage and had to be grudgingly coaxed into doing it. They came back to the town and they got a reward of some silver and the ability to sleep safely inside of a workers tent, whenever they wanted.

The session wrapped up here. Nothing too spectacular but this was a session for learning the mechanics.

It seems like you're doing well so far, with a bunch of new players to boot. The only problem I have, is that though I enjoy 3.5, it is nowhere near the best system to introduce people to RPGs with. I would go with Basic RPG for that purpose. But it seems like your players have already grasped 3.5 D&D. With Lucy playing a Dragon, you could throw her in the party in the middle of the woodlands for her introductory setting. Overall I am pleased with group composition, players making classes that work well together always works well. And about the Paladin, would he like to do a redemption storyline?

Hehe, sorry about the delay in my postings. Christmas is keeping me from reaching my laptop. I'm trying to making my campaign up to date and wanted to include the past sessions for reference. 9 sessions total so far and Lucy ends up back in the group at session 2.

I agree that I wish that I could have picked a more basic system at first but it is the only system that I am comfortable with DMing. Lucy and David were still having mechanics problems up to session 6 because of it though.

I still don't know what Jacob is exactly planning. This campaign was only suppose to last for 4-5 sessions, then re-roll characters for another campaign. This is why I did not care if they had a background story. If this experience has enforced anything, it would be characters must have a background story.