Poll of the Day > Going to DM my first D&D game. Please rate my played story arch

(+) Yeah! (+)

ALL the players are fresh and never played a game before, much less a table top RPG.

It will be my bestfriend and his three oldest kids, plus maybe is wife and his father.

I plan on starting out within a small town with the plot of a necromancer(they don't know who or what they are doing) controlling goblins to kidnap people for rituals.

So they open to a tavern and meet there in the means of their own travels, going around the table introducing their characters(and getting used to talking in their character and sharing who they are) and when they are done, they will be interrupted by someone in the town(haven't decided who yet, maybe blacksmith for weapons as a reward) comes in and stats his daughter was dragged off by goblins.

They then interact with the guy, find out the direction they took her that way they can get used to tracking or investigating, going through the woods with a random encounter or two.

They will find an old forgotten temple that the goblins have taken over and inside there will be a couple traps(good way to learn about traps and checking for them) there will be a riddle to get a bonus item towards the end.

There will be a boss battle but the hooded figure(necromancer) will leave and leave someone else to fill the role of the boss battle.

If they lose the battle, the girl will be turned into a reanimated servant for the necromancer, if they win, the girl will tell them about the plot she over heard.

The next interaction will dependent of if she lives or dies.

If she lives, they will reunite with the father in a town square and they blacksmith pays the reward in a weapon or two and a few gold pieces that glow(more on this in a bit)

If she dies, the group will go to the tavern where the father is waiting, they tell them they could not save his daughter and he breaks down. Someone in the tavern yells out something among the lines of "if her father was a man, it would never have happened" to which he will attack the person and the person will cut time down. At that time, the tavern will grow cold and quiet. A woman enters the tavern and everyone is frozen by a spell. She walks to the tavern keep and says " as per our arrangement, one gold piece for a body" and drops a gold piece that glows. In comes the daughter with her throat slit and picks up her dead father and her and the necromancer walk out the door and disappear.

The necromancer needs bodies for a ritual and so she is having gold pieces spread that alerts her to a murder near by thus she can teleport and collect the body.

So what are your thoughts?

Also, if you would like to provide puzzles or riddles(with the answers) I would be greatly appreciative
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Seems heavy, are the kids old enough for it?
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14,15, and 16 respectfully.
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Please rate my played story arch

On the off-chance that it wasn't an autocorrect, I just want to note that it's "arc" not "arch."

hypnox posted...

I plan on starting out within a small town with the plot of a necromancer(they don't know who or what they are doing) controlling goblins to kidnap people for rituals.

If it's a necromancer, wouldn't it make more sense to have him control undead creatures? Or is he just paying goblins to do his dirty work? You could even work that into a plot point, since a mercenary would be willing to talk whereas an enchanted creature of some kind (especially a zombie) would not.

Plus what are the rituals being performed? If he's killing people and sending them back as zombies to abduct more people, you have an interesting added conflict since the living are confronted by their dead relatives and friends.

hypnox posted...

If she dies, the group will go to the tavern where the father is waiting, they tell them they could not save his daughter and he breaks down. Someone in the tavern yells out something among the lines of "if her father was a man, it would never have happened" to which he will attack the person and the person will cut time down. At that time, the tavern will grow cold and quiet. A woman enters the tavern and everyone is frozen by a spell. She walks to the tavern keep and says " as per our arrangement, one gold piece for a body" and drops a gold piece that glows. In comes the daughter with her throat slit and picks up her dead father and her and the necromancer walk out the door and disappear.

The necromancer needs bodies for a ritual and so she is having gold pieces spread that alerts her to a murder near by thus she can teleport and collect the body.

Seems pointlessly contrived. For starters, a minion who can teleport is far more useful for kidnapping people or just grabbing bodies. Plus taking the body and paying off the tavern owner in plain sight of everybody would just be sloppy (after all, they can wait five minutes for the body to be moved *then* steal it). If they need a clue about the necromancer, there are easier ways to leave breadcrumbs.
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I'm... not that much if a fan, sorry man. I'm also pretty picky when it comes to this stuff.

1. They should have more decisions than just what happens in combat, at least something else.

2. Have multiple combats, there are a lot of mechanics that allow people to do stuff between encounters that they will just ignore. Maybe bandits on the road they can choose to talk their way out of, or ignore, whatever way doesn't matter as long as they get through.

3. There's no reason for them to care about the girl. Requiring emotions from the players fan always be a bit hard.

4. You might want to not bring in the older people, unless they know what they're doing. It will be weird for them to also be struggling with the mechanics, or just be worse than everyone else. Also younger people have more of the need to straight kill shit and older people tend to want to solve combat encounters without combat. It will be weird.

5. The ending scene is waaaay too contrived and nobody will like it. Nobody wants to be frozen while you sit there describing stuff, teleporting bosses are dumb, and then immediately negating the only choice they had is a pretty shitty thing to do.