For the longest time, I’ve been a big gamer. It started with video games and I soon adopted tabletop games. Whenever I find interest in something, I like to find the root of that given thing.
RPGs have been one of my favorite genres, but I’ve never fallen into playing tabletop RPGs. No one around me has ever played, and I could never find a group of people equally as interested. I’ve tried constantly to form a group of friends, but I guess everyone was embarrassed of being seen playing, or they weren’t down to use their imagination. I could easily find a group on the internet, but I’d prefer to jump in with a group of friends.
Only until recently, I finally found a group of people to play with, my coworkers! Working in a video equipment lab, I’m surrounded by individuals who are into movies and pop culture, so it was a natural thing for them to get into. This could even be a chance for them to practice their writing and improv skills.
After several weeks of individually rolling individual characters, we were finally ready to sit down for our first session. Aside from my supervisor, who’s played back in the 80’s, none of us have ever played. In addition to helping everyone roll characters and understand them, I did my best to read and outline the first part of the Starter Kit’s adventure. When the game started, my preparation didn’t account for what can happen in a game.
I had everything that was written in mind, but I wasn’t completely ready for my player’s decisions. They wanted to try to do so many things, but still being a brand new DM, I was still trying to remember all of the rules. When they decided to sneak around before the first combat encounter, I sort of panicked and engaged combat without any compensation for their sneaking. When people did perception checks, I didn’t think about everything that they can be inspecting. I tried to make up things on the spot, but it felt sort of unfulfilling to the players. Combat even seemed to take a long time for five guys against a couple of goblins. After reading through the rules again after the session, I may have missed some rules on combat that could have sped things up.
After the first two fights, it seems that we already killed three hours and it was time to catch the train. I definitely have a lot to learn about DMing. I still want to play a character myself, but DMing is still fun. I hopefully want to attend an Adventure League session to learn more. Experience will help evolve my skills in the craft.