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Thursday, February 9, 2012

Hoping the Newbs Find Their Own Carrots

Newbie group is tonight.  Everyone is coming.  The guy who plays the thief saw me this morning and said he'd been thinking about what he wanted to do for over a week.  I gave the players the assignment this time around to think of names of their character like I mentioned in an earlier post.  This time around I don't want to call them dwarf, mage, thief. 

Last time around it was minimal role playing.  A little in the beginning and then into the dungeon crawl.  This time around it will be more of an urban session.  This is where they will get to exercise their rping chops.  When they return from the dungeon they will learn about the town they are in and selling, haggling, resupplying, finding information about the next great adventure and I am sure what it means to break the law. 

I haven't developed a structure for this adventure.  Maybe a lose flow chart of things that will happen.

  1. Return to town.
  2. Collect Reward and get healed.
  3. Sell of loot and probably resupply.
  4. Have a few vague rumors to tickle their ears.
  5. Have them interact with certain group, such as an encounter with the thieves guild, mage guild, merchant guild.  Just to give them the sense there is a depth to this place.  
  6. Then I will have a certain merchant ask them to assist him.  His wagons were taken by some bad people and he would like his wagons back.  
This is just a general flow of the night.  It might completely change on a whim.  I am going to have the players drive this session.  I want to see what they want to do and explore.  I have carrots if they need them to get them started, but I hope they find the carrots on their own. 

6 comments:

  1. This adventure sounds kind of like Keep on the Borderlands. Which is a compliment, as I always considered that one "Basic training" for new D&D players. Hope it continues to be a great game!

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  2. This sounds cool. It seems to have a nice amount of structure for new players without taking the reins out of their hands.

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  3. This reminds me of a half-formed observation I've had for sometime. It seems like role-playing doesn't come naturally to most folks when their introduced to it as adults. Maybe they feel self-conscious or something about it? I dunno. I'm sure there are acceptions, of course, but most novices I've played with have a hard time with: "What do I say?" being responded to with: "Whatever you want."

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  4. I agree with Trey.. Its definitely harder to get into character as you get older. My son and daughter play in my Pathfinder group and I find they are both really getting into the spirit of playing a role where I still have a hard time finding the voice of my character.

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  5. Tom - Thanks you. Yeah it is sorta hex crawl keep on the borderlands thing.

    Bard - Sometimes they are just unsure what to do, what they can do and that its okay to try things. Just in case they have trouble finding a thread to get a hold of I have over 30 years of rope ready to use if need be.

    Trey - They have done fairly well so far, but tonight will really test them. I'm very interested to see how it plays out.

    The Dave - ha, that would be a fun experiment. I don't think I have ever GMed kids, teen-agers, but not young'ns. Sometimes it okay to twirl around in the yard for absolutely no reason.

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  6. Tim.. both mine are teenagers but have been playing for a few years already. I started them off on Microlite20, then when a friend was getting a 4e game together he invited them as well.. We've recently canned the 4e campaign in favor of Pathfinder.

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