Playing Dungeons & Dragons For the First Time

Improvising the story behind a crumbling Dwarven statue is harder than it seems.

Upon my insistence for more surface area to spread our stuff onto, the four of us in attendance gather around a long, wooden dining table, just a few metres away from the coffee table we sat at last week.

We’ve decided the church-turned-residence that one of our friends lives in will be our usual haunt for Dungeons & Dragons meet-ups, and so that’s where we are again tonight – sitting in a shared kitchen and living room area, surrounded by art-adorned, apricot orange walls.

We’ve taken over half of the dining room table, covering it in hardcover guide books, character sheets, writing utensils, cue cards, dice sets, graph paper, and a map. Over in the corner, an 11-hour video of medieval tavern music plays on the television, and in the kitchen, two pizza boxes lay open, abandoned. I sit at the head of the table again, but this time tucked behind a low, cardboard partition so that the adventurers can’t see my notes or dice rolls.

“Maybe let’s review the town’s description again? It’s been a while.” I suggest.

It’s the first night I’m officially wearing the Dungeon Master hat. And no, it’s not an actual hat – I’m speaking metaphorically. And this review is definitely more for my sake than it is the adventurers’.

The story begins in a town called Phandalin, with three visiting adventurers staring at a job board. One is a towering, lavender-skinned half-orc named Thokk, one is an elegant, blonde high elf named Anael, and one is a smirking, smug half-elf named Vedania.

They don’t know one another, and they don’t even acknowledge one another at first, choosing to stand in awkward silence that may be true to their characters’ nature or, more likely, be the first-time D&D jitters.

Eventually, Vedania speaks first after a bit of narrative prompting, and the three make small-talk. We learn that Thokk speaks in the third-person, only able to string together short, choppy sentences. We learn that Anael has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, accidentally insulting Vedania with some of the very first words past his lips. And we learn that Vedania is quick-witted and perhaps a bit secretive, not revealing her name at first, but taking an immediate liking to Thokk.

After a bit of directional confusion, the three adventurers head off to an inn, hoping to learn where the person who posted the quests lives – despite that location being clearly labelled on the map that is in front of them and in front of me. Thokk and Vedania walk together, and Anael walks a few meters back from them, sulking.

While inside, they talk with the owner – the first NPC I get to roleplay as – and it’s another bumbling encounter, but this time, I’m to blame because I’m trying to read the book at the same time as I’m pretending to be him. At one point, one of the adventurers asks if they can explore all the inn’s rooms, and in my own panic at having to improvise what’s inside six rooms, the inn owner abruptly says no and nudges them on their way.

Bypassing the many other locations they could have explored, the trio then arrives at the quest poster’s house. I inform them that the house is completely shut up, all doors closed and all windows curtained off, but that there’s an audible clattering noise coming from inside. I think my improvised ‘clattering’ might have been too strong of a word because, suddenly, all three adventurers are so scared that they refuse to knock at the front door, and, for some reason, Vedania walks around to the back door. She then yells over to Thokk who is waiting at the front door still, asking if she should knock at the back door.

This gives me a giggle.

In the end, they decide to knock at the back door, which freaks out the shut-in, quest posting man even more than if they’d knocked at the front. This man refuses to leave his house because he’s terrified of the white dragon that’s been terrorizing the Sword Coast recently, so he only communicates with the adventurers through the tightly locked door, giving them three quests to choose from.

After some more arguing between Anael and Vedania, the trio decide on a quest where they need to warn the dwarves at an excavation site that dragon attacks are becoming increasingly frequent. When they arrive there, I give them a flustered, barely accurate narration of what the excavation site looks like, scrambling to read from the story book and also improvise when they ask two dwarves – played by me again – a question that doesn’t have an answer in the book – like who a Dwarven statue was built in honour of.

In exchange for a magical item, the dwarves ask that the adventurers kill all of the monsters lurking further in the excavation site. What the trio doesn’t know is that these ‘ochre jellies’ can do a ridiculously large amount of damage if somebody gets close enough. They also don’t know that these monsters have a confusingly high number of hit points for being a level one quest, which means they’re going to take a long time to kill.

The adventurers learn both of these lessons the hard way.

With Vedania and Anael cowering behind him, Thokk walks directly up to the first ochre jelly and strikes it with his rapier sword. Now provoked, the ochre jelly ‘smacks’ – another improvising word from me – him back, serving Thokk an appalling amount of bludgeoning and acid damage that immediately kills him.

Terrified, Vedania runs off and seemingly leaves Thokk to rot. At this point, I burst out laughing just from how shocking the whole situation is – Thokk being killed at the first combat opportunity, Vedania fleeing the scene, and Anael still hiding around the corner, petrified.

Once we all stop laughing, Anael and Vedania learn they need to stay far back from the ochre jelly while dealing it damage, meaning they should only go with range attacks. They also realize they can grab Thokk and drag him further away from the jelly’s range.

Anael spends his first turn healing Thokk, who makes a miraculous recovery and hauls himself up off the floor. While Vedania shoots at the ochre jelly with an arrow, Thokk, in his very likely concussed state, inspects the walls of the altar room they’re in for the first time. Miraculously, he discovers two secret doors!

About 15 turns later, the trio finally kill the first known ochre jelly, which has been pierced by half a dozen arrows, burned by fireballs, and even yelled at. Deciding to take a break from combat, they explore past the secret door, which leads to a room with three stone bed frames – apparently belonging to Dwarven priests. Instead of continuing to explore, they decide to take a long, 8-hour rest to get their spell slots loaded back up again.

‘We see the beds and we immediately lay down in them!” they tell me, and we all burst into laughter for the 23rd time that night.

We look at the time then, and realize it’s 11 p.m., which means we’ve been sitting at the dining room table for six hours.

How did that happen?

Shocked, we realize that perhaps we, ourselves, are due for a long rest.

It takes another half an hour to get out the church doors because we’re all laughing so hard, reflecting on the night’s events.

There’s a palpable feeling of excitement in the air as we pack up and talk about how much fun we all had.

Compliments are volleyed around, appreciating each other’s improvisation skills, humour, and patience as we navigated what was technically only the beginning of our first quest.

This is only the beginning, but it’s a massive accomplishment. On my partner and I’s drive home, I find myself noting what I’m going to do better next time.

Here’s what I came up with:

• It’s okay if you need a little extra time to read from the story book. The adventurers will roleplay with one another while you do so.
• Remember that you’re the one who is guiding the game, so if you steer a bit away from what the book says, that’s totally fine and even to be expected.
• Next game, hopefully when all six of us are there, remember that the adventurers need to officially introduce themselves! We somehow missed that on the first run.