I’m currently running two different games of Dungeons & Dragons. The first is for a group of seven teachers who use the game to connect with their coworkers and escape the emotional stress we all feel thanks to our day jobs. The second is for my daughter’s two goodfathers (as an atheist family [kinda], we opted for goodfathers rather than godfathers). One goodfather lives in Maine, the other in Michigan.
The first game — the teacher game — meets face-to-face once a week in the middle of the week for about four to five hours, depending on when we get started. It may sound dorky to some people, but it’s basically our poker night.
It’s a diverse group (for Vermont). At 42, I am not the oldest member of the group; we also have members in their 30s and 20s. Two women grace us with their skills as full-time members of the party, while another plays a tricksy gnome whose character allows her to jump in and out of the game whenever she has the time. Most of our group members have played before, but this is the first time for one of them.
We started with an original story set in an Eastern region of the Forgotten Realms. The story has had three major parts to it so far. The first tested the party’s mettle in battle by challenging to capture a hoard of weapons from a group of goblin bandits. They all survived.
The second part of the story required them to travel to a distant town to recover an unusual magical object. Two members of the party (one of whom was a goblin they’d captured during the first part of the story) were killed on the journey, but new characters joined them once they reached the new town, and they spent several days seeking out the unusual object. During one of those days, two young elvish girls (played by my daughter and the daughter of another party member) requested their help in rescuing their father, who had been kidnapped by mysterious men in red robes. The side quest increased the party’s knowledge (if only slightly) about the story’s main foes.
The third part of the story reminded them that every door can lead to their doom. Their exploration of a seemingly abandoned wizard’s tower cost them the lives of two beloved characters, but they also found three more characters, expanding their numbers while also altering the party dynamic.
The next part of the story is going to come from an official Dungeons & Dragons book. They’re currently traveling down a river to move from one town to another (at our last session, they were attacked by four powerful and aggressive oozes in one of the swampier sections of the river), but when they arrive at the next town, they’ll find a richly developed suite of characters written and presented by the makers of Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve never run a game out of an official book before, so this will be a first. I’m eager to see how it goes.
I built the campaign as I’ve built all my campaigns, using instructions provided by The Dungeon Master’s Guide, coupled with copious use of the Internet. I borrowed ideas from the history of the Forgotten Realms (as determined by the Forgotten Realms Wiki), made notes on interesting and/or influential characters (some original, some borrowed), created a hook to pull the players into the world, blocked their way forward with a series of rich and exciting encounters (some requiring more forethought than others), and voila, we were ready to go.
The game I run with my daughter’s goodfathers is different. First, we don’t play in person, nor do we play simultaneously; instead, we “play by post.” I write some stuff on a forum, they write some stuff in response, and once in a while, I require them to do a dice roll (for which they include a screenshot). After they roll, we deal with the result: I write some stuff, they write some stuff, and the story moves forward.
None of us have played by post before, so we have no idea how it will turn out or whether it’s something we’ll ever want to do again.
The second difference about the goodfather game is that we’re using it to jointly create an original setting we may someday share with the world, a setting solid enough to support any campaign a Dungeon Master might want to drop on it.
Not knowing exactly how to begin such a process, we agreed to a few basic principles and a few basic facts about the world, then decided to run a play-test. They both wanted me to DM, but all of us will build the world together. We’re just getting started, so again, we have no idea how it will turn out, but it’s a way to be creative with two of my best friends, so why not do it?
I’ve been DM-ing games off and on for several years now. I got a late start when it comes to playing Dungeons & Dragons, but now that I’m in it, I’m in it.
As Fluid Imagination moves forward into 2020, I hope to share more about what I’ve learned as a Dungeon Master, including how I’ve used it and/or hope to use it in my capacities as a teacher and administrator. I’ve created a new category on the blog, aptly titled Dungeons & Dragons, where I’ll file what I write, and maybe someday, it’ll be useful to someone else.
Also, one of Fluid Imagination’s most visited links has to do with using Dungeons & Dragons in the classroom, and I recently learned that I was quoted in an article about how Dungeons & Dragons can help kids develop social-emotional learning skills. If so many people are coming to check out Fluid Imagination thanks to Dungeons & Dragons, I’d like to give then a little more to read while they’re here.
Of course…any regular readers know I don’t do well with goals, so I guess we’ll see how it goes.