You are going to run D&D, tonight, for free, with an adventure that you made. -Well, we made -Ok, I made. The principle is the same. What do you need to get started? You need three things: you need some friends, you need the rules, and you need an adventure. Friends: I recommend between 3 and 4, you can run for more, I've run for as many as 9, 10, I think 11 I did once, it was a nightmare, I do not recommend it. You need the rules: you may be tempted to get the three core rulebooks, the Player's Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master's Guide, but that's a lot of money to spend for your first time out And you'll feel like "I have to read all 3 of these books in order to know what's going on." That is not true. Wizards of the Coast put the basic rules online for free, the contain everything you need and a simple explanation for how everything works. I put a link to the free rules in the blah-blah down below. There's also a link down there to a whole bunch of pre-generated characters, which will make you life a lot easier. They're also official, they're from Wizards of the Coast, you print out a whole bunch of them and you put them in front of your friends and let them pick they characters they want to play. Later on, when your friends are hooked and they love playing, you can let them make their own characters, they'll have a lot of fun doing it. But making characters in D&D is- -it's something that's fun to do if you already know how to do it, it is not fun to learn, and it's kind of a pain in the butt. We'll go over how to make characters later on, especially from the DM's point of view in another episode. So you need some friends (I said between 3 and 4), you need some rules (you can download those for free online), you're also going to get some pre-generated characters for free (that's also in the blah-blah down there), and you need an adventure. We're going to do that right now. Back in the 1970s, when the game first came out, the guys who created the game had their own adventures, but they did not include them in the game, because they thought part of the fun was you making your own, so that's what we're gonna do. You can download lots of adventures for free online, and in fact, there are some great classics you can get at dndclassics.com that're still playable. You can go out and get the D&D Starter Set, which I think is twenty or thirty bucks and includes this thing, The Lost Mine of Flapdoodle (Flapdoodle? Phandelver. Whatever.) Not the best name in the world, but this adventure is like fifty pages long, and it would take you about 3, 4, maybe 6 weeks to finish this. I think for your first time, it's best to run something that you can finish in one night and that means 3 or 4 hours of play. I think in general, players only get through about 5 encounters in one evening, so our adventure is going to have five encounters. Alright, so, what's an encounter? An encounter is anything that stops the player's forward progress and challenges them. The classic encounter is: a battle. You open the door, and see 5 goblins, roll initiative. That's an encounter. But traps are also an encounter, remember Indiana Jones and the Golden Idol? Or the holy grail? - kneal! Those are both traps. Puzzles are encounters. Remember Gandalf at the gates of Moria? Frodo: What's the elvish word for "Friend?" Gandalf: Mellon That's a classic puzzle. Since the classic encounter is a battle, and you're players are going to be first level, we're going to start with goblins. Goblins are easy to run, and they're pretty flexible, meaning: if your players end up walking through it, and it's too easy, you can always just throw more goblins in, and adding one or two more goblins to an encounter is not the end of the world. So our encounters will be fighting some goblins, fighting some more goblins, fighting the boss of the goblins, there'll be a trap in there, and there'll be a puzzle in there, that's five encounters, that's about one evening's worth of adventure, 3 to 4 hours. Since it's in the name of the game, our adventure is gonna be a dungeon, and therefore, we're gonna need a map of the dungeon. Later on you'll have lots of maps. You'll have maps of the world, you'll have maps of the local area, you'll have maps of the town, you'll have maps of the tavern in the town, But for right now, we just need a map of the dungeon. And the easiest way to draw a map is usually just with a pencil and an eraser (you can tell I'm hardcore because I have this cool art eraser), And some graph paper, but since watching me draw something on graph paper is not exactly the most exciting thing in the world, we're going to use a program that is free, you can use online, called Dungeonographer. There is a payed version of Dungeonographer, and I recommend you get it if you like it, if you find it easy and fun to do. There is a link to Dungeonographer down in the blah-blah, so if you want, you can try yourself, you can make your own dungeon. I've also included my Dungeonographer file so you can load it in and you can move things around if you want. Remember, this is your dungeon, customize it, make it yours. Woah, transition! Ok, this is Dungeonographer, we're going to create a map of our first adventure, and for our first dungeon we don't necessarily need the sexiest dungeon in the world, instead we want to make something that's actually pretty simple and straightforward so it doesn't seem intimidating, and seems like it would be easy to run, I assure you, you and your players will still have fun running it. So, I'm imagining this is a tomb of an order of knights, and that the goblins have broken in and taken it over. So we're going to start with an entrance, uh, the entrance to the tomb, we'll put a doorway there in a little while. And, uh, we imagine that there'll be a couple of goblin guards at the top of the entrance, uh, so the players have somebody to interact with, uh, and maybe the players will ambush them. And we'll put some stairs down here, you can tell they're stairs down because the wide lines are at the top and the tiny narrow lines are at the bottom. Now we want to put something interesting down here for the players to interact with. So, we drop a trap down there. That's that litte square with a T on it. And the idea here is that it's a pressure-plate trap The players have just maybe fought the goblin guards, they're sneaking into the dungeon. and if they're not paying attention, they'll step on the trap and trigger a scythe that comes out of the ceiling. A giant blade that will slice them up. Like the trap from the Indiana Jones movie, why not? And now we move on to our next room. And here, this is a larger room, this is probably where the goblins are sleeping, or hanging out, or making their goblin nest. And we're going to put in this room kind of the history of the order of knights on the walls. There'll be carvings on the walls showing the knights fighting Chaos or Evil. You know, maybe even goblins. And we'll put a little brazier there, a little copper bowl, that people in times past have, when they come to the tomb of knights to kind of, like you know, put flowers on their grave, they would make an offering in the copper bowl. But this is where the goblins will be hanging out. Now we need a room for our boss monster fight and the players will be encouraged to think that this is the last room of the dungeon. The room will be dominated by a giant stone statue of the leader of the order of knights, whose tomb this is. So, the players should be impressed by how awesome this guy was in life. So, we grab a statue icon, that's the little five-pointed star there. We'll drop it in and we'll put him on a dais. A little raised off the top of the ground, on a stone platform. And we'll drop the platform in. And now, the way dungeonographer works, I'll have to click on that platform. Since I put it in there second it's on top and if I click the "send to back" icon it will cause the, uh, statue icon to pop forward. So, we're going to put a bugbear boss in here, leading the goblins, and he'll have a couple of goblin buddies. And there'll be a cool fight in here, and the players may think "That's it!" But that's not going to be it, we're going to have something secret in here. Remember we like the idea that there's something hidden. And we'll put another room in here where the knights are actually buried. And the players should be wondering, like, "Hey, if this is a tomb, where are the knights' sarcophagi?" Well, there in here. And we'll drop, like, a large sarcophagus up at the top for the leader of the order of knights. And then we'll put a few smaller ones in here. So, these are the other knights of the order. And because this room is meant to be hidden and something the players have to look for to find, we're going to put a little secret door there, which is the S symbol. And now we've got a pretty cool little dungeon. Who are the players going to fight if they come in here? Well, if the start interfering with the tomb, with the sarcophagi, uh, some undead guys will pop out. So, it's not going to be just goblins, we'll throw some cool undead in there. So this is our map, and we're gonna export it and we'll do a cool little non-repro blue, uh, printout so it looks like the old classic - I happen to like the old, the look of the old classic adventures, and now we'll start labelling our map, we have our entranceway which will have our goblin, uh, lookouts, we have our trap, and we'll make it so that that trap, uh, the pressure plate trap is something that if you're light enough, if you're a goblin, for instance, or a halfling, you don't trip the trap, and that's how the goblins are able to get in and out, without getting 'scythed' to death. And we mark everything else, we mark our ending there, And we start writing our notes directly on the map - why not, I'll often do this in pencil - So we have our goblin lookouts, at the front, we have our pressure plate trap, where if you're light enough you don't trigger it, and often, the thief in the party is a halfling, so he may be able to pass and he has no idea there's a trap there. We have our offering room, with a brazier, which allows uh, normal people to come and make sacrifices and this will be our goblin bivouac, where the goblins live and sleep and have their collective being, And on the walls, are carvings of the knights fighting, so the players are reminded this is a tomb of an order of knights. And we're also going to have, written on the wall opposite the knights, the oath that the knights took in order to become members of their order - that's gonna be important later, because we also said we wanted a puzzle in here, and that's going to be part of the fun of room number four, not only is there a goblin boss, with his buddies, we have a statue of the leader of the order of knights, and I happen to like the idea that it's an ancient, kind of Roman-esque uh, order, and so his name is Sextus Varnus, and there's uh, a riddle, printed, uh, on the daius, that the players can read, and if they're smart, they will figure out the riddle and that will cause the door to open, but a thief can open it, and find the hidden room with the undead in, are the undead skeletons? Are they ghouls? You know, maybe that's up to you! And, ultimately, we want some cool treasure that the players find, in the sixth room, in the sarcophagus, so they get a cool magic sword. And we want our dungeon to be dynamic, so we create a patrol of goblins, that goes all around the mausoleum and out into the forest about every, let's say four hours, and so if the players stay outside, and watch to see what's going on with this mausoleum, they'll see the guards outside the front door, but eventually they'll see the goblin patrol, if they're impatient and just go right up to the front door they'll miss the goblin patrol, so later, while they're in room three, fighting the goblins in there, the patrol will find them and come up behind them, and now they're fighting on two fronts. and the guys who were in the back of the party who thought they were safe, find themselves in trouble. and that makes it fun, and makes it seem like the goblins are clever and smart, and that's always a good idea. And we said we wanted a puzzle, so we'll create a riddle, that'll be inscribed on the pedestal on the statue in room four, this is something I just made up, "If you are to keep this, you must first give it to me." And the answer is: your word! If you're going to keep your word to somebody you have to first give them your word. "I give you my word." I think an order of knights would really like that. So we're gonna create an oath, that the players, if they speak the oath and give their word to the statue in room four, will unlock the secret door. So, what is that oath? We'll create "The Oath of the Delian Order" that's the name of the order of knights, And it'll be in room three, on the one wall is the, uh, stone carvings of knights fighting bad guys, and on the other side is the oath. "I swear to serve law, battle, chaos, and strive to keep the lore of the Delian Order secret." So the players read this in room three, and wonder what it's about, and if they solve the riddle in room four - even if they don't solve the riddle, they may just speak the oath - and the statue will unlock, uh, the secret door, and that's it, they'll get to fight the bad guys, they'll get the magic sword, and that is our first adventure, with a map and everything! Not bad! Okay, so we just made our first adventure, except... not really. What we have is a pretty good outline, and a lot of nice detail, we have a map, we have an idea of what's gonna happen in each room, But what we're missing for this is the context, we're missing the setup. We wanna know: how did the players find out about this? And why did they go to the tomb in the first place? Also, something else that I realised as I was getting this part of the video ready, is that after I'd done everything else, I'd kinda screwed the map up a little bit - I put a trap before the offering room, and the whole idea of the offering room is that this is where people would come, back in the day where the memory of these knight was still recent, people would come and make an offering to this order of knights, like, you know, "please bless us and look after us." And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, to do that, uh, after you get your head cut off by a scythe trap. Now, this is entirely typical DM stuff, you'll have an adventure ready, you'll even run and you feel like you understand it, it may be one you created it may be one you downloaded but as you're running it your players start to notice stuff that you hadn't thought of and you're like "oh, yeah, that doesn't make any sense, I need to do some fancy footwork here to explain all this." So the next time you run it for the next group of players, you've fixed it, you've tweaked it a little bit, and over time, the adventures that you run - whether they're ones that you've made up yourself or they're ones you downloaded or bought, they get better, you get better running them, you make little notes, you remember stuff from last time. So what I did was, I just went and rearranged two of the rooms, you can see the map here. and you can see that I just moved the offering room up one square and put the trap after. then I rearranged the text so the numbers make sense. And that's exactly the same kind of stuff you're gonna do as a DM. So our next episode and the last of this opening series, we're gonna talk about setting up the adventure, explaining it to the players, getting them hooked, giving them a reason to do all this stuff and getting into a little bit more detail about how to run it what kind of things are going to happen as you run this adventure? That's it for Episode Two. Peace... Out.
