On Friday we had the very first D&D 4e session of our lives. And I was ill.
On Wednesday I started getting a cough and sore throat. I wasn't going to cancel the session, though, since I had to try and save what little of my voice I could for my oral Latin exam on that very same Friday.
Because this session was right in the middle of some crucial finals, my anxiety was split between those and the game. I spent part of my time preparing for the game - making my own DM screen, getting dungeon tiles together, looking through the adventure, and checking my music playlists.
If there was one thing I would suggest preparing from this short list, it's the DM screen. Even if you're not playing D&D, or a game that might require quite a bit of info at hand, making your own screen (or at least reference sheets) really helps. I typed up all the tables I needed in OpenOffice Writer, and through that got a first good look at all the info I'd be using. I also made one sheet for summaries of the characters in the party - names, race, class, stats, that sort of thing. Now it's always on the right-most panel of my screen, which frees up desk space and helps me remember info on my characters.
Then came Friday, and instead of preparing, I slept for two hours, mostly due to my (then unknown) illness. I still managed to keep what I had set out to do - make a short social contract, get the players to introduce their characters, have them make character backgrounds, and bully them into giving me player wish lists.
However, I really should have looked more closely at the adventure at the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide. When I ran it, it turned out to be one combat after another. I had no idea that combat in 4th edition would take so long, especially when nobody at the table fully understands the rules. That includes me. I was surprised when one player suddenly announced that it was 2 am, and that we should adjourn the session. In the middle of combat. Ah well.
What I took from this session was knowledge about my players. The combat encounters of the intro adventure were designed to present various situations, and the one thing my players did most was stay in the back and fight through attrition. It doesn't make my job of designing combat encounters any easier. But at least I got my campaign notebook underway, I got the D&DI Adventure Tools to work, and I have a map of my world. Scrawled on a piece of paper in less than a minute.
Ain't improv grand?
Qi
On Wednesday I started getting a cough and sore throat. I wasn't going to cancel the session, though, since I had to try and save what little of my voice I could for my oral Latin exam on that very same Friday.
Because this session was right in the middle of some crucial finals, my anxiety was split between those and the game. I spent part of my time preparing for the game - making my own DM screen, getting dungeon tiles together, looking through the adventure, and checking my music playlists.
If there was one thing I would suggest preparing from this short list, it's the DM screen. Even if you're not playing D&D, or a game that might require quite a bit of info at hand, making your own screen (or at least reference sheets) really helps. I typed up all the tables I needed in OpenOffice Writer, and through that got a first good look at all the info I'd be using. I also made one sheet for summaries of the characters in the party - names, race, class, stats, that sort of thing. Now it's always on the right-most panel of my screen, which frees up desk space and helps me remember info on my characters.
Then came Friday, and instead of preparing, I slept for two hours, mostly due to my (then unknown) illness. I still managed to keep what I had set out to do - make a short social contract, get the players to introduce their characters, have them make character backgrounds, and bully them into giving me player wish lists.
However, I really should have looked more closely at the adventure at the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide. When I ran it, it turned out to be one combat after another. I had no idea that combat in 4th edition would take so long, especially when nobody at the table fully understands the rules. That includes me. I was surprised when one player suddenly announced that it was 2 am, and that we should adjourn the session. In the middle of combat. Ah well.
What I took from this session was knowledge about my players. The combat encounters of the intro adventure were designed to present various situations, and the one thing my players did most was stay in the back and fight through attrition. It doesn't make my job of designing combat encounters any easier. But at least I got my campaign notebook underway, I got the D&DI Adventure Tools to work, and I have a map of my world. Scrawled on a piece of paper in less than a minute.
Ain't improv grand?
Qi
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