Lost Mines of Phandalin - Session 1

Last Friday I ran a group of 3 forth-graders and 2 sixth-graders on the first session of the LMOP. We made characters and played the campaign hook, ending with goblin ambush on the road to Phandalin.

Making Characters

We started off by having everyone picking a race and class. I think everyone enjoyed this. I went around from player to player, to help them write down the relevant details on their character sheets. Since everyone was dependent on me, some of them grew a bit impatient near the end. The older kids seemed to get way more into customizing their characters, and for a good 45 minutes or so the younger kids went off and played elsewhere. Fortunately, the younger kids all picked classes that didn’t need to choose spells.

By the time we were ready to allocate stats, I felt I needed to hurry things along if I was going to keep the younger kids engaged, so I used fastcharacter.com to generate everyone’s stats. It worked great.

I think had everyone think of how they were connected to Gundren. (To keep it simple, we didn’t consider connections to folks in Phandalin, etc).

The end result was:

Troll Face, the elven ranger. Who also sells meat in Neverwinter from time to time, for which Gundren knows him (we decided Gundren likes a good steak).
Trouble, the gnomish rogue. Who runs a gambling ring in Neverwinter, which Gundren has has been known to visit.
Nefarious the gnomish barbarian. Who Gendren apparently really dislikes, but is coming along at Trouble’s behest.
Varis, the elvish sorcerer. Who is owed money from Gundren, from games played at Trouble’s gabling ring.
Apollo, the elvish cleric. He is a hobbyist puzzle-maker, and Gundren likes his puzzles.

The Adventure Begins

We still had a couple hours left in the night when I introduced the players to Gundren and Sildar in a tavern in Neverwinter. I was expecting that we would cover a lot more ground than we did. We only ended getting to the end of the goblin ambush on the road to Phandalin, capturing and interrogating one of the goblins.

Even though I felt like I prepared over and over for the combat mechanics, I still felt like I was clunky with it. That said, I still that think the kids had a blast.

Highlights of the battle:

A critical failure by one of the goblins, who shot another goblin on accident. The kids found it hilarious. Classic.
The rogue desperately wanted to use a sneak attack, but we were in the middle of battle. The other players rallied behind him to set up the opportunity: the cleric used light to make one of the dead horses glow, while the sorcerer used mage hand to make the goblin’s arm move in front of his face. I’m not sure how well we stuck to the rules here, but the kids loved it.
Once three of the four goblins went down, the gnomish barbarian grappled with the last goblin to constrain him. Once constrained, the goblin was happy to talk, and the players had fun getting information out of him.

TODO for next time

Pre-gen monster names.
Be prepared for all the weapons and spells the characters have.
Have more personalized notes in front of me instead of relying on looking things up.