Adventure Prep: The Newbie group, an Encore

Back in late October I posted an adventure prep article about doing a Demo D&D game for a group mostly made of D&D newbies based on Paizo’s Pathfinder #1 : Burnt Offering.

The game was very entertaining, featuring crazy stupid goblins and some of the worse dice-craft I had ever seen in a game.

A few weeks ago, PM and I were discussing our favorite, geekiest hobbies and were bemoaning the fact that we do not have enough time to partake in them to satiety (that word exists in English? Hurrah for borrowed words!).

PM loves to eat Dim Sum and watch uninitiated people try to navigate the delicate social dimension of that activity(He’s my crowd’s evil mastermind). He also loves Movies and Anime shows and, predictably, watch his buddies’ reactions to what happens on-screen

(Dude, you’re now the Watcher Minion!).

Whereas I, as you may have gathered from this site in the last 6 months, really like RPGs!

So I mentioned that we could do a monthly Dim-Sunday that starts with a Dim Sum meal, then followed by a few hours of Anime/movies and finishing with a RPG game session.

When the idea caught fire, I suggested we could start by re-visiting the Pathfinder game we tried, with all new characters and then, in future months, play Franky’s Monte Cook’s World of Darkness game.

So PM, Franky and his brother Mike agreed to join us this Sunday. We invited Yan to stand in for Vince, the 4th player who won’t join us in our geeky project.

In terms of game preparation, I don’t have a lot to plan for. I’m taking the adventure straight (with minor fixes based on what I’ve read of it).

I will introduce the battlemap and the movement rules because part some encounters feature complex tactical situations that make a map very useful (read ‘monsters with special movement’).

I intend to pick up where the last game ended (at the end of part 2) although with new characters. A ret-con was announced where we assume that all new characters went through the encounters in pretty much the same way the pre-generated ones did in the last session.

As I invited all players to create new characters, I opened-up character generation options as wide as possible. First I wanted to give each player the class they wanted and second, with D&D 3.5 drawing to a close I’m determined to squeeze as much juice from my multi-hundred dollars book collection. So here’s what the players want to play:

• PM will play a Favored Soul (Think Sorcerer-like cleric from Complete Divine) with a nice fluffy twist.
• Yan is going for a Samurai-flavored mercenary Warblade (Book of 9 sword Barbarian-like martial adept)
• Mike will go for the classic Ninja (Complete Adventurer)
• Franky will explore the Totemist ( a self-buffer from Magic of Incarnum).

All 1st levels. The game will see a level-up to 2nd and will teach Mike and PM of the wonders of leveling up!

I’m really am looking forward to that geek fest! ‘ll let you know how the whole day turned out.

Have a nice weekend all.