After investigating the guards were suspicious of what was going on the Paladin decided to leave saying he thought they were not handling the situation correctly. On his way out he decided to bump shoulders with one of the guards which got him an arrow in the leg. They then took him to jail (he cooperated) where they confiscated his belongings, and after the group convinced him to apologize they returned everything with the exception of his half-plate armor. As you can imagine he was quite unhappy.

The group at this point had about 3 hours until they were to arrive at the arena. The Paladin decided to go the main office and make a complaint. After an hour and a half of go-betweens and debates he was given a bag which in fact only had leather armor, and told he would have to wait until tomorrow for everything else to be settled as the people in the facility were leaving for the arena.

At this point the Paladin was quite unhappy but then fist bumped me saying, “Pro DMing.” We ended it there since the Druid had left prior and there were other missing people from that night. The group had entered 2 arena fights. The first night was fighting monsters, the second night was fighting other humanoids, and the third night is 1v1 combat. To enter the 1v1 combat competition the character has to have played in one of the other competitions prior and won. The group showed an extreme interest in this and I hope to have them return to play 1v1 once their levels are a bit higher and they understand their powers.

Session 3 saw a large decline in players due to 3 of them not being able to make it. We ended up with a druid, a paladin, a rogue, a scout, and a sorceress. It was a nice balance despite being without a healer. The makeup of 4 girls and one guy didn’t seem to factor into play much, the group worked fairly well together.

It started with the sorceress waking up from an extended nap (she missed the session prior) and meeting back with the group. They had all just finished a delivery to a small town located in the woods of an island state.  The town had approximately 80 people and was self sustaining, unfortunately for them there had been strange sounds coming from the graveyard and the townspeople had no real fighting force.

In the first session the sorceress used a Detect magic spell and saw that there was a faint glow in their cargo. After being paid the rogue and druid searched for this item but had no luck finding it. Everybody else did things like buy minor items and in one case a spear from the town store.

The mayor had invited them to a minor feast and bonfire that night and they kindly accepted. During the night nothing eventful happened, everybody investigate their own things (the paladin spoke with evil people, the rogue questioned about the item and boys, and the druid learned how to make potions from a mountain man).

The next day everybody but the druid decided to help out around town with things like chores and a bit of field work. The druid decided to create potions from plants she had found. She was able to make 2, +1hp pots as well as 1 pot that would make the person who drank it become ill. After this she joined the group until night came, when they had planned to head to the graveyard.

I’ve gotten a (hopefully) working beta of the Pokémon D&D I’ve been working on for a few days. It’s a very simplistic take on it and boarders closer to a board game with a bit of character creation. I’ll be giving other players a chance to look it over tonight in one of the campaigns I play in and hopefully will get some feedback.

To summarize what I’ve got so far, there are 18 Pokémon evolution trees to pick from, all from the original 150. The only exceptions are characters which are part of an evolutionary tract that did not appear in the first series of games but was later filled in. There are 13 levels and at each new level you gain a new ability. Abilities include physical attacks, elemental attacks, buffs, and debuffs.

The way combat works is you prepare the order of your party ahead of time, as does the opponent (prior to players deciding or at random). After the order is chosen the players are laid out against their opponents. Each player fights one npc, and combat goes down the row like in D&D. Players can use buffs on themselves and allies, use their turn to switch spots with a willing ally, or attack the enemy directly across from them.

Abilities are used for the following:

STR: Physical Attacks

DEX: Some physical attacks and movement skills.

CON: Health related skills.

INT: Determining how many times a player can use a skill in a single session of combat.

WIS: Casting skills.

CHA: Performance skills.

Combat works like D&D. Attack rolls are against an AC and spell castings are against either CON (Fortitude) or DEX (reflex). The difference is that successful reflexes save means taking no damage. Another difference is the inclusion of element types. Fire does double damage to plant, but only half to water. This goes for all the elemental types.

I have the Player Cards and Class Cards all made up and if everything goes well I might get some more feedback. If anyone is interested in receiving the rules or the cards in digital format just send me a message.

Session 1: the single day where my players and I get to indulge in our highly anticipated nerdery. As stated before all players had little or no experience with D&D so rolling out characters took a big chunk of time. Over 2 hours to be exact. This did include people arriving, introductions, a bit of mindless chat, then helping them on an individual basis with most of the character building. With the exception of being short on Players Handbooks (PH) and a few people being a tad too chatty things went smoothly. I suggested to the players to pick from the PH for races and classes. I then described a few classes outside of the PH that would be simple enough for them to use. In the end they built their characters 90% with only minor suggestions from me.

Then I began the game. I had the characters start as new hires for a delivery and escort service. They were all coming into the city to meet with a man who then directed them to a bar (where all great adventures begin). The group was all over the place. Two people played pretty close to home, two chose to be prostitutes including one character that was underage, and one decided to be the short spoken brash type. It was typical, the characters got drunk, one player had her character hit on her boyfriend’s character and when he refused she seemed legitimately unhappy. With a bit of coaxing though the group was introduced to each other and no fights occurred.

Next came the combat. I had them guarding 2 small wagons. I had them rolling a percentage die once per day of travel to see if they had an encounter. On the second to last day of 10 they rolled it. I had them attacked with 8, level 1 gnolls and a level 3 gnoll. The combat went surprisingly smooth with only brief questions about spell casting, I was impressed. They defeated the gnolls with only one player being knocked unconscious despite the challenge rating being well above a 1. Next session thing will have to be ramped up a bit.

So here we go. This is a long time concept taking one more step to becoming a reality. This is a blog that will be about everything pen and paper, and specifically the aspects of being a Dungeon Master. This will also contain tips for players. We will be showcasing ideas that we feel add to a game as well as clever ideas we have found on the web. The components of this blog include players, DMs, and storytellers of every experience level there is. So if you are curious about playing or DMing then follow us, ask questions, and please give us any comments you feel like.

Thank you and remember, all you need are a few books and a story to tell.