Tyranny of Dragons - Session 1

We did it. We finally had our first session. I'm still figuring out how I want to voice these blog posts. Should it be a third-party account of the fantastical events or should I try to bring some of my DM perspective into them? I'll try the latter this time and we can see where it goes. Maybe I'll stick to one, or maybe not. So without further ado, here's the session 1 recap.

We met our adventurers traveling down the Uldoon trail. Thus begins our playing of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen module of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign setting. I read the following to the players to set the scene at the beginning of the session, which will be familiar to those of you with the module.

For the past several days, you have been traveling a road that winds lazily across the rolling grasslands of the Greenfields. Sundown is approaching when you top a rise and see the town of Greenest just a few short miles away. But instead of the pleasant, welcoming town you expected, you see columns of black smoke rising from burning buildings, running figures that are little more than dots at this distance, and a dark, winged shape wheeling low over the keep that rises above the center of the town. Greenest is being attacked by a dragon!

My experienced players had exactly the reaction that I wanted, which was a fearful one. They were level one and they knew, even with a party of seven characters, there was no way they could handle a dragon. The new players followed along and trusted that assessment. Immediately the players wanted to hide and wait out the attack, which presented me with a problem as the DM.

Compared to the last campaign I ran for many players of this group, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is much more reliant on infiltration, subterfuge, and deception. The players are not expected to kill every monster they encounter, but rather they are challenged to avoid the combat that they can and be much more strategic about the encounters they have. I decided that I should tell the players all of that outright so that they would have the right expectations and that everyone would have fun. It wasn't going to be like my last game and they needed to try out different strategies to progress here than they would have otherwise.

The problem was not with a choice the characters were making. As a DM, the worst thing I could do is take away a player's agency and choice. They could very well have sat out the attack. But that choice would have prevented them from learning how to play in this new setting as opposed to my previous one. The players in my campaign are still relatively new and I'm a new DM, so I may have taken away their choice with that action, but I figured it would be much more fun for the characters to see that they can go into the danger, but still come out of it with some epic stories.

Even with that primer for the players, they were still uncomfortable and unsure until I decided I needed to give them a "sign from god" that they could go into the town without dying. So I had the dragon fly away, making Greenest more approachable.

Without warning, five humans dash out from between two buildings on your left. A limping man and three young children race across the street into more shadows, and a woman carrying a round shield and a broken spear turns and faces back in the direction from which they came. Fourteen kobolds stream out of the alley on the family's heels and fan out around the woman, who looks determined to delay the creatures for as long as possible.

Those of you familiar with the adventure will notice an increased number of kobolds in the first encounter. That's intended as the party is seven characters and they have some magic items at first level. At first, fourteen kobolds seemed like a lot, but the never-daunted Duckie ran to protect the alley that the children ran down. The woman ran over to help close the chokepoint, but was felled by the charging kobolds. Duckie took some hits as well, but managed to retain consciousness. Then Lou entered the fray and cast burning hands, killing ten of the kobolds. Suddenly the terrifying mob was little more than an annoyance that the party quickly mopped up.

I think the increased number of kobolds worked out very well; the fight challenged the characters and they needed to use some healing, but none were knocked unconscious. However, the choice to defend a chokepoint and a timely AoE spell from the wizard definitely helped so it may not work for all party compositions.

The party, convinced by the rescued family, made their way to the keep, picking up eight more townsfolk on the way, avoiding some raiders and fighting through one depleted group of kobolds and cultists.

You make it into the keep just as some guards close the gate and bar it shut. A collective sigh of relief is heard from the townsfolk that you rescued. You're safe for now as the lingering twilight fades into the night. Guards can be seen patrolling the tops of the walls. You and the townsfolk are ushered into the tower of the keep, into a large room filled with villagers.

And that's where we ended the session. We'll see what the players do this week. Now that summer vacations are winding down, we'll try to have a more regular cadence for sessions.