The Adventure Begins...

I've decided, the hell with it. I'm going to regale you with tales of the table top. It'll probably be a mixture of 3rd person narrative, and first person memory recall. I'll mix and match as appropriate. You'll just have to deal with it. As before, the names have been changed to protect the nerdy. I'll just call them by their character names. I tried to be brief...but the result was a "tl:dnr"* worthy post. Ugh, why am I in a field that encourages my tendency to go on and on and on...

We gathered in the house of one of our compatriots, and basically nervously made small talk...it was a heady experience. I was pretty nervous, once begun I can never take it back...I'll forever be marked as having played D&D. I'd spent a good amount of time whipping up a campaign, creating a small portion of a world for my players to inhabit, and was nervous about 1) my ability to entertain 2) remembering more than half the rules and 3) just being the focus of peoples attention...as much as I love telling a good story, when it's expected of me to do something, present/tell a story/whatever my nerves kick in and I freak the fuck out. I know, it's amazing that something could make me nervous about talking and telling a story...but it happens.

But eventually, we began. I explained the town they found themselves in. A little village...or town...it lies somewhere in between, resting in the crook of an oxbow river, called Portage. It rests at the edge of 'civilization' (as far as the inhabitants of this region are concerned) at the edge of a barren plain. It exists solely because of a low point in a river requiring merchant barges to unload and reload downstream of the rocks. The keep and walls are falling apart, remnants of a fortification predating the current occupation. The current residents are essentially squatters, most employed to haul goods, and a few work on the scattered farms on the same side of the river as the town.

I instructed my player that their reasons for being attracted to this town were their own (no one had given me their backstories...so I didn't know either actually) but they were probably disappointed...instead of a bustling, rough and tumble "frontier town" they find a slowly collapsing, boring, empty, filthy village. Think "Dayton, OH." (I was in a bad mood when I conceived the town, and took out my frustration on Dayton, every problem I have with it, every stereotype and shortcoming, I lumped into poor Portage. Why? Because fuck Dayton, that's why.)

They each found a notice calling for any adventurers passing through town nailed to a sign post at one of the two intersections in town, and they made their way to the inn, looking for a contract (and money). I described the inn, the innkeeper, and had them ushered into a meeting room filled with the respondents.

Background given I made a n00b mistake, I said "okay...go."

No one spoke. *crickets* Awkward. Familiar flushing on my neck. It's 5th grade all over again.

I can only assume that lack of familiarity with "how to play," nerves about being "that guy" (you know the one who affects a British accent of sorts, puts on pointy ears, and is just a little too into it), and not really knowing "what to do," all contributed. Anyhow, after enduring the silence, and having my own freakout, I tried to poke and prod responses with little in the way of a result. Avyx half-heartedly started to explain what she was up to, but nervously trailed away to nothingness.

"Enough!" I thought, "I'll cram more exposition down their throats!"

At this point, however, I was just as nervous. How can I weave an engrossing story (because just shoving them into dungeons isn't fun), without crossing the same line. So I kind of brought in the town mayor, gave them a contract, and shoved them out the door "in passing" as my narrative style. All third person, no direct dialogue "he tells you to go in this direction" "he says he doesn't know that" etc. etc. I snuck in a little flavor, but probably could have balanced it a bit better. Oh well, it's a learning experience for all. At this point it was a symbiotic relationship of suck...I sucked at telling the story, they weren't responding, further decreasing my ability to tell the story.

In short...attempts to expand their farmland across the river results in farmsteads being burned by bandits. Attempts to guard it prove ineffective as shortly after the guards return to town the bandits return and once more set the buildings to the torch. There are pirates plaguing the river south of Portage, and things are just terrible. Won't you please take care of it Mr. and Miss powerful action heroes? If we could just get one or two things to go our way this town will improve, pinky swear. They were granted a contract for 10 gold per bandit ear (the bandits conveniently wore distinctive earrings to mark their identity according to eyewitness reports). They were given the location of the hideout, and with that (and a few disparaging remarks) the mayor left.

The group got a little into it during the conversation, trying starting to feel out the ins and outs of what they should be doing. At one point Norge, our only experiened player, did decide to magnanimously buy ale for all, and the group indicated that general drinking related entertainment was occurring in game. Peredu, the zealous paladin, decided he was having none of that and took his character upstairs to sleep (yay! he roleplayed!)

I'd had it set up so that the room was filled with local flavor, peasants and dock workers who thought they were "up to snuff" with the intention of forcing my characters to try to drive them off (persuade them to go away, or whatever). Instead they passively accepted that they had a bunch of cannon fodder with them now (what BASTARDS! they're supposed to be anthropologists, all emotional, and caring about the plight of the poor and stuff! Not cold bloodedly decide that they can shove them in front of their trek to search for traps** with their feet like an African warlord.) I kept my cool, and didn't berate them too much...after all, it was no time to tell them they're losing the game already as well as being terrible anthropologists. So with no introductions to each other, familiarization with complimentary skills (or really knowledge of each others classes and abilities aside from moments of joint character creation) they set out...with 5 peasants in tow. Peter, Paul, Tom, Dick, and Harry I named them. In no way are they disposable characters, why would you suggest that after my amazing naming scheme was revealed?

I was worried about playing a character and DMing. How am I supposed to let John bon Jonne speak without giving away too much, avoid the temptation of forcing narrative and exposition through him, and keep another (more complicated) set of stats straight during combat? So I conveniently had him take a minor contract to explore in another direction, down the river, with a contingent of guardsmen, and removed him from the table.

So there you have it. A poorly acquainted group is setting off across the plains, there's a stone hill 2 days march to the northeast, filled with bandits, and they've got 5 hungry, scared, poorly trained and armed peasants around them. They can see nothing but undulating beige grassland in all directions. It's like Kansas...with swords instead of power rock...err, wheat.

Now that I've crammed exposition down your throats I can begin the telling of the tale, "untitled and the untitled untitled," pretty catchy, huh?


The Cast to date:
Avyx, tiefling (half-demon) warlord (f)
Ember, halfling warlock (f)
John bon Jonne, human, wizard (m) absent
Mairwen, half-elf rouge (f)
Norge, dwarf cleric (m)
Peredu, human paladin (m)

Supporting Cast:
Peter, Paul, Tom, Dick, Harry, human, dirty peasants
Belkin, dwarf, innkeep (m). Massively fat, runs his inn from a wheeling chair (not a wheelchair I might remind you). Warm, open, and nice...even by human standards (so borderline psychotic by Dwarf standards)
Hjeldin Barkavaad, human, reeve or mayor (m). Old, pouchy, incompetent. Running a fail-town not as a reward, but to keep him out of the way of the real bureaucracy.


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*too long: did not read
**This actually was said!