Session 1: Waking Up

Wow.

Our first session is done. And it was... something.

It took us about 45 minutes to get everyone on and some technical difficulties worked out (which was to be expected the first time) and we were once person short until the last half hour or so because of the day switch.

The Plot

I had warned everyone not to get too much of a recent backstory because we'd be starting with amnesia for everyone. So I had everyone roll pre-game to see how screwed they were, then we started the session with an initiative roll to see what order the woke up in. They woke each other up in turn except for the Orc who slept through all the initial nonsense and woke up when her player arrived.

And when I say "woke each other up" I mean "made a noise" because absolutely everyone was too cautious to wake anyone up on purpose. Which was hilarious.

My Note Categories for Session 1

So you know how they say your players will always surprise you and don't get too set on anything and so on? I had believed this but still thought I was ready for at least the first hour or two.

And then these fuckers immediately picked a fight. Like - woke up, failed at thievery, and got into a brawl on the floor until interrupted by a nude barbarian. The barbarian rolled a 1 on her wakeup role. These things happen.

Once awake, they proceeded to ransack the room looking for their stuff and in some cases clothes. There was also a dog in the room who was IN LOVE with the halfling. She was the halfling's mount which quickly became apparent. But dog.... well let's just say that dog was last in her class at riding dog school. When everyone decided to sneak out the back the dog immediately ran off chasing a squirrel and the halfling required the help of the other barbarian to get her back.

They then proceeded into "exposition introductions" which were FANTASTIC. "Hi, I'm Hori. I'm a half-elf barbarian." It was great and I loved it.

While they were discussing what to do outside the Orc woke up, ransacked what was left of the room, and opened the window and called down to the group.  We ended with everyone back at the room and I think next session they're going to try going down the main stairs.

DM Notes

Wowza, that was a lot. I was laughing so hard for so long I got a headache. Really, I just gave them like three pieces of info and they proceeded to entertain me like trained monkey for two hours.

Highly recommend.

I was very worried about my DM skills considering I have never done it and haven't even played in nearly a decade. But I'm very much a "sure, you try that" person and rolled with what was happening.

I do need to get better about not putting my own impressions on the characters. For example I made the comment that two characters were brawling and one said "I'm not brawling" and the other said "We're about to." I had jumped the gun rather than letting them get to it. I also mischaracterized some talks and conversations based on what I wanted rather than what was happening. I'm aware of it and it's something I'm going to try to work on. I'm used to paraphrasing and taking out all emotion entirely, but in building the world I want to give those emotions to make everything feel more real.

We had a couple of rolls to take care of which is what I've been most worried about - but they were pretty basic non-combat with a good mix of successes and failures. Hell, someone rolled a natural 20 on waking up!

Right now, in my plan for next week, I'm seeing how to get the party into easy reach of their mounts and weapons. Some are easy to get back, some less so. I don't expect they will necessarily find everything but I want to at least give them hints on everything even if they don't pursue it.

I'm also trying to plant the seeds that every character could be responsible for their amnesia. I've already got three of five planned - one actually already seen "on-screen" - working on the others.

I did realize, very very fast, that in doing everything online I need a second monitor. I need to have the group up somewhere separate from my working screen. I had four windows open and usually in and out of at least one more. That's too many. Hopefully tonight I'm picking one up from a friend.

One thing I'm going to do this weekend is make something for the site that describes all the players. I can see now I need that.

My next post will be about how we're using slack. As you saw from my last post, I ran into a wee bit of trouble there. If you have any ideas of how to make these posts more visually appealing please let me know.