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aetherschreiber · 5 years

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Adventures of a GM Noob: Lost Tales of Ixalis - Session Zero

So, I have GMed games before. But honestly, I wasn't any good at it and none of what I did before is worth mentioning. For all intents and purposes, I am a GMing noob. But getting further into table-top RP gaming of late has really sparked my interest in it. It can be a very interesting method of story telling and a great way to exercise creativity in many ways from writing to improv to crafting.

I recently decided to jump in and try my hand at GMing, now that I have a better handle on how it's done. I've been watching how others do it and I've learned a lot about the showmanship of it and ways to bring your players into the moment. And I wanted to see how good I am at using what I've learned.

To that end, I started a game with a group of friends in a home-brew world called Ixalis.

It's not the first time I've engaged in world-building. I had previously made a fictional world - Lathuria - for a short story series I had dreamed up in high school, called Spellweavers. But I never really got around to doing much with it. During college, I recycled those notes into an impromptu game session for one of my failed GMing attempts, using the 2nd edition BESM system, a group called the Fellowship of the Ever-Falling Troll. The problem was that in changing it over to a gaming setting, I was far too ambitious. I defined the world a little too much, with too many pre-determined events and NPCs who were in charge of the world. It was too much for even me to keep track of, let alone my players. It became a frustrating endeavor and eventually the game just petered out due to a lack of interest. I got super gun-shy about GMing after that.

So, when I set out to create Ixalis, I decided to keep it a little more bare-bones. I was also using 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, which sort of has its own mythos surrounding it, so I needed to make sure the world fit the system. To that end, I fiddled around with an online map generator, [here](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/), until I found an interesting landmass and then tweaked it for my purposes. I gave a vague description of the realms therein and a few named landmarks based on what the map generator had spit out. A tweaked listing of player character races and a listing of the world's gods and their relations to one another rounded out the important bits. I had to establish a few events in the timeline, just to have some sort of story to start with. But those events were hundreds of years apart, leaving plenty of space for the players to define their own societies and pasts.

Which brings me to the biggest, overlying philosophy I am taking in my approach to GMing this time around; it's not just my world. I want this world to belong as much to my players as it does to me. So far that seems to have paid off, as my players have already added some unique touches I never would have thought of to the world.

The campaign started this past Saturday with an episode zero, of sorts. They all came with the basics of a character, some with a backstory already detailed and others who fleshed them out in discussions with the group. We ended up with an interesting group of characters. Some of them don't know it yet, but their backstories run into each other based on some of the things we discussed.

First, we have Corwin, a human, shield-based fighter. From the young country of Auricia, he is a retired war hero from its war of independence from the Thesalian Empire. He has been brought back into service, of his own volition, to seek out missing members of the legion he once commanded.

Kiran is a human monk of the order of the goddess Tilthani. However, he has been recently receiving visions and direction from the goddess Freydis, of the Fellheim pantheon. He has spent most of his life traveling alone in the wilderness and is therefore rather socially awkward and naive.

Aekthul is a human warlock with a mysterious patron that he's not entirely comfortable with. He recently stumbled into a chamber in the ancient monument of Stone Reach and acquired a pendant that he cannot seem to get rid of, despite throwing away every day. Recently, his powers have manifested themselves in the form of a sword; one he had originally seen in Stone Reach, but left behind.

Following Aekthul covertly is a firbolg cleric of the graves domain known only The Caretaker. She was until recently one of two members of an ancient order of the goddess Talessi tasked with watching over the ancient Stone Reach. Since Aekthul encountered his patron there, she has been following and monitoring him, worried for the implications his powers mean for the monument in her charge.

Elsie Dracona is a young human rogue with sticky fingers and a penchant for finding trouble. She grew up as a milk-maid on the outskirts of the city of Drolyn. When she fell upon particularly hard times, she turned chicken-thief in order to survive. This angered the lord of the manor and she fled north, without really having a plan.

Finally, there is Tordek, a dwarf cleric of Halvdan Hammerfist. Oddly, he seems to be familiar with all the other members of the group, even though none of them know of him at all. Mysteriously, he has mentioned that the members of the group are meant to come together to do great things and has pushed a few members of the group toward doing so. Tordek is intended to be a recurring guest character who will pop up every now and then to be played by a player who can't be there all that often. We have cooked up a great reason for this, in canon, and I really look forward to collaborating with his player to add a story element that is not often seen in fantasy. More on that as the story develops.

The entire group is not yet together, though they are all heading toward the small town of Bent Bridge for their own reasons.

On the road, a very hungry Elsie encounters Corwin who promptly takes her under his wing. Together, they head to a roadside tavern for a mid-day bite to eat. There, they find Tordek who is in the process of getting into a bar-room brawl with some locals. While Elsie dodges the fight and orders up food and drink from the terrified bar-keep, Corwin jumps in to Tordek's aid. All the while, Tordek acts as though he knows Corwin, making references to past adventures they have had but about which Corwin has no memory. When all is finished and the locals are all unconscious the three of them talk over meals. Tordek insists that Elsie and Corwin are meant to travel together and are meant to meet up with three others, whose descriptions he gives and tells them they will find in Bent Bridge. He then takes his leave and mysteriously vanishes into the woods. Corwin dismisses the whole thing as the delusions of a mad dwarf and he and Elsie continue on to Bent Bridge.

Meanwhile, Aekthul encounters Kiran. Neither one is really sure what to make of the other, but that doesn't matter when a pair of grey ooze attack them on the road. The Caretaker breaks her covert observation of Aekthul and comes to their aid. Afterward, the three of them continue on their communally awkward way to Bent Bridge. There, they come to the Field and Feather Inn, a inn and tavern owned by the halfling couple Marbald and Yandell Gammidge. There, they have a meal and then Kiran and Aekthul get a room together to cut costs and the Caretaker finds a place to camp on the outskirts of the nearby woods.

Tomorrow is the celebration of New Year's day of the year anno draconis metallum 1000, commemorating the 1000th anniversary of the defeat of Tiamat by Bahamut.

All in all, this was a fairly successful session, despite pulling out a couple of adventures on the fly based on what had come to the table. It was perhaps a little slow to get started, while we all worked out how things came together, but that's what a Session Zero is for. I also raised them to level 2, mostly because I hate the instability of characters at level 1, so the encounters were also just a little something to justify that.

There are some things I know I need to work on. Some of my descriptions of the fights, particularly the one with the oozes, got very repetitive. We also did only "theater of the mind" for the encounters rather than miniatures, but I intend to use minis in the future. I'm looking forward to using the collection of minis I have and Corwin's player, @FortiutousBob on Twitter, also has an extensive collection (he GM's the Saturday night game I play in opposite this one).

All in all, I'm pretty pumped about this going forward.

#dnd #dnd 5e #dungeons and dragons #rpg #Ixalis #LostTales #Lost Tales

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