Tyranny of Dragons - Session 0

Hi, DM here. We had our first session of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign this week! It’s always fun to kick off a new campaign. The party is looking like 7 players, two of whom are new to TRPGs, with the rest having our last campaign (custom made) under their belts. Also, I’m super pumped because we have four female players and three male players (yeah!), so with me in the picture we’re gender neutral, which is super exciting. This is the third game that I’ve DM’d so we’re all still fairly new, but it’s half the fun to figure everything out and have a good time doing it.

I like to start my session 0 with some boring logistics like which days work best for people and how they want to communicate. I also try to explain my DM’ing style to the players to make sure they understand how the game will progress. For example, I like to use imagination rather than maps and minis where possible, though with a large group, that may prove challenging. I do not play an antagonistic role to the party; I’m always trying to make them heroes, but that does mean I will challenge them.

After all that stuff is out of the way, we dove into character development. I like having the players roll their characters when we’re all together. It let’s them get excited for each other when they roll well, or figure out an ability they overlooked, and lets me supervise on the occasions where I need to. However, we were missing one player for this session, unfortunately. So I had her give me an idea of what she wanted to play: maybe an elf who has been extremely sheltered, but it highly trained. I am basing this off the character Toph from Avatar the Last Air Bender. Pretty sick concept right? I’ll detail her character next week when we finish out the development. Without further ado, the rest of the party:

Luther “Lou” Greenbottle – Lightfoot Halfling Wizard

Serving as a War Wizard of Cormyr nearly 100 years ago, Lou is an elderly hermit, now living on the Sword Coast. He used to be married to a Gnome named Stumbleduck Timbers, but abandoned her with his homeland after serving his time in the army. Lou and his fellow soldiers were given orders to destroy a group of enemies who turned out to be civilians, leaving him with a sour taste for authority and the War Wizards, but he did his duty and saw his service through. Running away to the Sword Coast armed with his trusty lawn chair, Merle, and a thick southern accent, Lou uses his evocation magic to blast his enemies when he has to and to impress his friends when he wants. Lately, Lou has been having apocalyptic nightmares ending with ten evil eyes staring into him. Upon awakening, he is left with a strange compulsion to head to the town of Greenest, feeling like the answer to the riddle might be there.

Stumbleduck “Duckie” Timbers – Forest Gnome Rogue

Duckie, a 333 year old gnome female, has been 333 years old for several years now. Once counted among the nobility in Cormyr, she was disgraced when her husband, Lou, abandoned her. She was forced to leave and made her way, eventually, to Waterdeep. She married a few more times over the years, but recently had her family taken from her by the Cult of the Dragon. She has a hit list of three names: a human cultist named Frulam Mondath, a half-orc named Bog Luck, and a half-dragon named Rezmir. Knowing that Greenest is the next target for the cult, she thinks that’s her best chance of finding her next kills.

Gwen Stonemaester – Shield Dwarf Life Cleric

Born in Mirabar, Gwen gravitated away from her dwarven deities in favor of Lliira, the Lady of Joy. She still holds great respect for her racial pantheon, but Lliira captured her attention and devotion. When she grew old enough, she ventured out as a missionary to other cities and towns on the Sword Coast, spreading the joy of her deity. Shortly after arriving in Waterdeep, Gwen met Moki, a kind tiefling, who was also initially attracted to Lliira’s message of joy. The two bonded and became close friends. Also while in Waterdeep, Gwen met Ontharr Frume, a human warrior and champion of Torm. His boisterous and gregarious nature aligned well with her beliefs and the two also became close. Gwen has grown comfortable in Waterdeep and thus feels the need to move on to continue her missionary work, but will be sad to leave her friends. However, Ontharr has asked her to travel to Greenest in search of rumors of increasing dragon activity. Perhaps she won’t have to say goodbye quite yet?

Moki – Tiefling Sorcerer

Born to a lower human noble family of Waterdeep, Moki’s origins are a bit shady. Her parents’ greed led them to make a deal with a devil of the Nine Hells. Little did they know, their child would be born a tiefling. Despite her appearance, Moki was raised very normally. Her parent’s noble status meant that she was integrated into normal society as much as possible. She still was the butt end of jokes and always drew uncertain or fearful glances from other people, but her family always showed her love. As a result, she remains loyal and attached to her parents. Moki has a kind and gregarious facade that masks a stubborn, conniving, and suspicious nature resulting from her childhood torment by other children and adults alike. Because of the strange origins of her birth, she has an innate ability for magic but manages to control it very well. Recently, her father has been quite ill and passed away. He made a dying confession to her that he did work for the Cult of the Dragon, using his network to smuggle goods around the Sword Coast. He implored his daughter to investigate in the town of Greenest and help right his wrongs.

(Emperor!) Adolphus Frug – Rock Gnome War Cleric

You wouldn’t say Adolphus has delusions of grandeur so much as you’d think he was crazy. Occasionally, he has outbursts such as, “How dare you chop down that tree on MY land?” or “Begone, foul things, or my armies will fall upon you with ferocity never before seen!” The rest of the time though, Adolphus is a reserved individual, preferring to let others offer the opinions. Not really sure of his origins, Adolphus only knows that he must serve Bahamut, a strange deity for a halfling, but then again, Adolphus is rather strange. He was wandering the High Forest before being found by Thamior. The fast friends set off for points south together, hoping to find answers.

Thamior Windwillow – Wood Elf Monk

Spending much of his childhood around the Grandfather Tree in the High Forest, Thamior was trained in the martial arts by his tribe, dedicated to protecting the tree and the surrounding forest. When he was old enough, Thamior was charged with protecting a particular Elm tree, some distance from the Grandfather Tree, a task which he readily accepted. Recently, Thamior received word from a fellow monk and friend, Leosin Erlanthar, who once saved his life. Leosin called upon Thamior to join him in the town of Greenest far to the south. He was on his way when he encountered Adolphus, the poor, strange rock gnome. Thamior’s stoicism allowing him to overlook the halfling’s occasional outbursts, the two quickly became friends. Thamior decided the best course of action would be to make a detour to Waterdeep, hoping they could gather information about the gnome’s origins.

DM Notes

Note that the character outlines above are subject to change. I’d like to expand upon the backstories in a separate post for each character as well, but the players have to do some more fleshing out first.

As another note, I like my players to keep secrets about their characters (or about each other) that they can reveal or not over the course of the game. Because I am encouraging my players to read this blog, I won’t be posting any of the secrets here, so you, my lucky readers, will have to get the secrets as the players do.

Now, I like to start the campaigns with a reason why the characters are all together so that we don’t have awkward roleplaying time in the first session figuring out how everyone interacts. So I’m going with Gwen’s reason for heading to Greenest (Ontharr’s request for an investigation) as the main reason why the party chose to group up. They all have an interest in going to Greenest on their own, justifying the long travel distance and lack of upfront payment. The characters also have closer ties to some others, strengthening the bond of the group and giving the character someone to fall back on as a reason for staying in the party instead of deciding to leave now that they got the money, for example.

I’ll give the players a chance to come up with any fun encounters in their road to Greenest before the campaign starts to give them some flavor as well. I like to let the players have complete freedom over this part as I think it provides more cohesion than the DM telling them how they’ve interacted with each other.

For example, they’ve already decided that while passing through a small village, Lou, who is a bit of a hick, decides to cut down a tree for a cooking fire. Adolphus calls out, in a fit of insanity, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing chopping down my tree! This is my empire, how dare you take what is mine?” The tree turns out to be in a villager’s yard and had his father buried beneath it, which, as you can imagine, doesn’t sit well with the close-nit town. Lou probably would have gotten away with the act (at least temporarily) had Adolphus not drawn the town’s attention. The town was so outraged that Lou was set to be executed right then and there for his disrespect, but the party was able to convince the town to spare his life if they moved on immediately.

Again, these are just fun little stories that can add tremendous flavor to the roleplaying in the game.

That’s all for now, but we’ll be back next week with the last character’s outline and maybe even some stats for them as they start rolling the characters. Next time I’m hoping I won’t write so much.