ITT DJP plays Dungeons and Dragons for the first time EVER

We are gathered for the first session! The people who made it to this go-round are:

Cleric
Rogue
Barbarian
Paladin
Bard

We are walking along a road, hired by a woman Siobhan "Chevy" Dopplebock, who runs the Dopplebock Trading and Mail. It's usually just deliveries but this one is more personal. Her family's house is haunted/cursed or something and one of her fathers disappeared, so rest of the family left; her father wants to move back and we need to go check out the house to make sure it's safe. It's about 4-5 days away from our starting point; we're a couple of days out. We get 50 gold each if we clear the house out before she arrives with her father.

what could possibly go worng? 🤔

We investigated a guard tower outside the estate and were swarmed by bats and rats. I saved the paladin's life! We then met a gatekeeper who gave us a key into the manor (after the rogue raided his garden, oops). We kept missing skill rolls around perception and sleight of hand so every other interaction with him ended with a party member slapping him.

We got into the house and I was immediately possessed by a ghost who made me totally apathetic and want to leave, which hilariously matched my character's personality so no one actually noticed for a while

lol

love it

Did the DM slip you a note informing you of the possession and you were required to play-act?

(Also.. can one exorcise oneself?)

(Asking for a friend)

This is all work people so we were in a conference room on our laptops and she started a Slack conversation with me to feed me info

let investors know slack has a moat. it surrounds a castle with a dragon inside.

Other things that happened:

The bard saved everyone's asses from the bat/rat swarm by stunning most of them with his bagpipes
Our barbarian looks and sounds like a buff Ray Romano
We discovered that the ghosts in the house we've seen so far are mostly harmless and really dig the bard's bagpipe playing
The rogue spent the entire time stealing food and stuffing it into her face
The human father (who went missing) was a magician and inventor who created, among other things, analogues for the television and the telephone.
Even though the house has a habit of making people disappear, we found out that the cook still exists! We got him on the house's phone system and he turned on a bunch of lights for us.

hmm how do you know it's really the cook?

We don't!

Although he did say "sometimes I'm here and sometimes I'm not, and whenever I come back into existence it's in a different part of the house" so even if it's not the cook, it's someone that the house is playing games with and probably needs our help.

You need someone with high CHA to ask the “cook” a really complicated question about soufflés. The truth shall emerge!

The other thing is Rudy the Gatekeeper (in between slaps) told us to look for other servants in the house, so we were predisposed to believe the person is who he said he was

were they adobe slaps?

I love this thread! I wanted to play D&D so much aged 12 but didn't know the kids (boys) who played it well enough to join, and never have played

hope you don't mind but here is someone else's twitter thread about a D&D late-starter

My grandmother passed away. Her funerals were today, but here I'd like to talk about the most important thing I couldn't spend too much time on in her eulogy: her love for Dungeons & Dragons. #DnD

— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019

anyway sorry for the intrusion, excited for more updates

That is a lovely story

Jeez that's a great story

I had to miss last week's session due to vacation logistics so I am excited to see what happened while I was away.

lol the invite for this week's session (which will be on Thursday) is "The Return of the Grinz"

RECAP:

When I was last with the group, we were about to climb some stairs to the second floor. The next thing I knew, everything went greyish and indistinct for an unspecified period of time and, when they came back into focus, the party was in a kitchen, the dragonborn bard had vanished, and there was an aasimar with the group who I'd never met before. Apparently I blipped out of existence when we went up the stairs; this is something the house does to people and what we are trying to stop (also it's a genius move on the DM's part to deal with weirdo scheduling issues for a group of 8-9 people with incompatible schedules that will cause them to drop in and out of game sessions). There was a lot of faffing around in the kitchen; we discovered a magic door that would only open for "those who serve" which led to a cupboard full of servants' livery (hmm I wonder how this door works) and also discovered the butler, a woman named M'Lair, out on a patio. The rest of the group seemed to want to lumber around breaking into things and bashing stuff (there was a hilariously failed attempt to kick in a glass door that was unlocked) so, despite my weary disdain, I ended taking point on talking to her to get information. She dropped the name of the wizard's assistant, Kalem, and said if anyone could help us figure out what was going wrong in the house and why it was popping people in and out of existence and attracting weird dancing ghosts, it would be him. She then blinked out of existence.

The party had been regaling me with stories about Branson, the awesome dragonborn cook we had spoken to on the "phone" before I vanished. I got the chance to meet him and he was super energetic, friendly, engaged, and incredibly talkative. Grinz was so relieved when the motormouth blipped back out of existence.

Meanwhile, our gnome rogue Malm idly pulled a card out of a magic deck that she had acquired while I was in The Grey (nb, I coined this term when the DM described what my non-existence was like and everyone immediately glommed onto it) which that did something to her; she immediately hid and ran away from us all, avoiding mirrors and windows. We still have no idea what happened to her.

We eventually ran into Kalem, who was a guitar-playing dragonborn who dresses like Prince. His memories were broken up by decades of blipping in and out of The Grey (M'Lair, who looked to be in her mid-30s, told us that she first began working at the manor over 60 years ago) but he thought he could remember some crucial information that would help us crack the mystery of the house. He then blipped out of existence mid-sentence.

Malm, in her quest to run away and hide, blundered into a room full of imps. We happened to be nearby and heard the commotion and rushed to investigate. The session ended right before combat began.

This is so much fun.

(I left out some details, like the magic portal that led back to the labyrinth they explored while I was gone and the revelation that our barbarian was a runaway noble who had gone to barbarian school in defiance of his parents out on his first post-graduation mission)

barbarian school?

Yeah I don't know, I just rolled with it. It's a ridiculous character anyway (he looks and sounds like a buff Ray Romano)

I love the concept of barbarian school, where first week orientation involves learning to eat with your hands and pound the table properly

yeah that's a great twist

Yes, Barbarian school is wonderful. Great update DJP! Sounds like a really fun group. Of course, you’re going to have to circle back to that glass door because there’s definitely treasure hidden behind it

We got through the glass door! Basically, our two heavies bounced off of it and it slowly opened, because it was unlocked. It led out to a patio where M'Lair was all "wtf are you manics doing here" and why I took over talking to the NPCs even though all I really wanted to do was contemplate a dead plant on a table in the corner

Apparently I blipped out of existence when we went up the stairs; this is something the house does to people and what we are trying to stop (also it's a genius move on the DM's part to deal with weirdo scheduling issues for a group of 8-9 people with incompatible schedules that will cause them to drop in and out of game sessions)

This is a very good tactic, well done your DM.

wait you have a gnome rogue named after IKEA’s most successful line of bedroom furniture?

haha yes we do

That player names all of her characters after Ikea furniture

lol

genius

I forgot to update this!

The party, while looking for our missing rogue, wandered into an attack of imps as well as a weird birdman monk named Blane who seems to think he's some type of magician (this was a new character joining the campaign). We beat up the imps and discovered our rogue, after pulling a card from her Deck of Certain Things, had been cursed so that she no longer could wear clothes. Oops.

The fight was taking place next to a pit. Every time something fell into the pit, the imps suddenly took a bunch of damage. The rogue tried to throw another card into the pit but it vanished and instead a giant Winnie the Pooh-analogue appeared in the corner mid-fight offering to sell us potions. We decided we'd get back to him after killing the imps, which took a bit of time but we successfully completed.

Our barbarian, meanwhile, had been possessed by the same type of lethargic ghost that had possessed my cleric earlier and decided to peace out on the fight. As he was going down the stairs, he made a saving throw and shook off the possession, right around the time we finished the fight and were ready to buy some potions. He came charging back up the stairs, saw a giant golden bear in front of him, and chopped the fuck out of him. We did not buy any potions.

The next room we explored had several mirrors on the walls and a painting that obviously had held the imps we just fought. There was also a small cupboard with buzzing noises coming out of it. When the rogue stood in front of one of the mirrors, it began to glow. We started arranging ourselves in front of the others and they started lighting up, but the buzzing was distracting so we decided to check it out.

It turned out to be a floating droid that communicated by repurposing the words you said to it as a cryptic answer. Through several attempts of trial and error, we closed the shutters on the windows and then arranged ourselves in front of all the mirrors. Nothing happened. Grinz decided maybe we needed to break one, so he headed over to the one empty mirror to smash it. This triggered teleportation magic that threw us all into different rooms with suits of armor in them that moved when we turned away from them.

And the adventure stopped there. Until next time...

this sounds like a completely wild campaign

also hueg lol:

He came charging back up the stairs, saw a giant golden bear in front of him, and chopped the fuck out of him. We did not buy any potions.

I forgot to mention that the poor bear's last words were "my life has been a meaningless sham" before he poofed out of existence in a cloud of honey and was replaced by an angry bee, that promptly stung the barbarian in the face.

That’s one of the first things they teach you about in Barbarian school, they should have blocked that

Last night's session was an epic battle against the suits of armor, who all had a ridiculous AC because, well, they're armor. I was the only person in a room that didn't have a suit of armor in it initially; I did find a large terrarium with a mirror floating in it that I wanted to investigate over the crashing and banging I heard in the rooms around me. The other interesting thing is that all of the suits of armor were linked to each other; when one party member damaged the suit they were fighting, the damage was reflected on the others, plus all of their movements mirrored each other. Meanwhile, various employees of the house (Branson the cook, Kalem the assistant mage, M'Lair the butler) kept popping in and out of existence mid-fight. I did learn from M'Lair that the mirror I found was a gateway to the main mage's study; it was currently closed and she didn't know how to open it. There was also a rug missing from in front of it.

We also had a new party member join; a female dwarf warrior named Miranda who kept missing all of her attack rolls and covered her obviously whiffed swings by pretending to fix the furniture the rampaging suits of armor were breaking in her room. She came through in the end though and crushed the armor menacing her and the warlock, which made the other suits of armor vanish. I joined up with the warlock and fighter; the gnome rogue and our barbarian scholar were in another room down the hall and we hadn't brought the entire party back together yet.

Grinz did get in some good one-liners in the character interactions with the warlock; the best was when the warlock asked "Have you seen Malm (our gnome rogue who is still suffering from a curse that makes clothing disappear off of her body)?" and Grinz replied, "I think we've seen a little too much of Malm."

Time for the next campaign update:

After the armor fight, everyone collapsed in exhaustion in their rooms. Two previous campaigners popped back into existence from The Grey; the dragonborn bard from the original party and the birdman monk we met in one of our fights. The DM gave them the option to level up to 3 with the rest of us in exchange for taking on a curse; the bard declined and the monk accepted. This formed the backbone of how hilarious this session ended up being.

The monk introduced himself to the bard as Steven (note: his name is actually Blane) and he said he'd been in the house for months and was its original architect (uh... waht). As the rest of us began to wake up, we welcomed back our long-lost bard and then got extremely confused when he said "I met Steven" and the monk said "no, my name is David". It quickly became obvious that the monk couldn't tell the truth anymore, and he knew he couldn't tell the truth, which led to him frustratedly saying opposite of whatever he meant in an attempt to communicate.

There was a puzzle around the mirror we found and a missing rug that was the key to unlocking it. Malm, our IKEA rogue, could have found the rug, but she instead found a music-playing crystal and decided to ignore everyone and have a dance party. Bransen blinked back into existence, to the extreme delight of our novice barbarian Bloodrage, who also had gained an animal affinity that gave him the additional strength, language, and characteristics of... a badger. We futzed around with the rug until we realized that the cutoff reflection in the mirror spelled "I AM CLOSED" (or "I AM A LOSER", I don't remember which we settled on. Regardless, the portal opened and we all went through it into a completely empty study. (Bransen also blipped back out of existence while this was happening.)

We noticed that the furniture had all been moved to another room with a blocked door, so we broke it down to investigate. Kalem appeared and asked us what we were doing; we repeated that we were trying to clear the magic so the husband of the house's former master could retire there and Kalem responded with "Why would you do that? This magic is amazing." This led to a conversation about how the master and Kalem created a new school of stasis magic that tries to leave things as unchanged as possible, which is why the food was neverending and why people were getting swapped into a different dimension periodically (it was the house attempting to reset its baseline). We also discovered Kalem is a giant dick who put a couple of our party members to sleep and attacked the rest of us when we tried to open another door out of the study. This led to a great scenario where our monk decided to wake up one of the stricken party members by whipping him and then flying away. Meanwhile, Kalem kept throwing spells at Grinz, who shrugged them all off because really who has time for all that, then charmed our barbarian and had him steamroll through a couple of people. Our new dwarf fighter friend stepped up to Kalem and just pancaked him, reducing him to a purple smear. (Oh btw, Kalem didn't bleed but appeared to be a solid block of sentient purple material shaped like a Prince cosplayer.) We began to celebrate and turned to open the last remaining locked door but the purple smear suddenly moved to the center of the room and turned into a portal, out of which came... a Beholder.

Kalem is a fucking Beholder. He manipulated the master into turning the house into this weird magical prison and now he is trying to stop us from reversing the effects riddling the house. We are 100% fucked.

Also because I'm tired, I keep typing "Beyonder" and then saying "fuck" and editing

i think i have a crush on your DM

We all do, she rules.

I wish you were filming these sessions

This sounds like the most fun

i will suggest this sounds like a good netflix series but you need a wacky neighbor to play

Could totally stream on Twitch

yeah, live DnD is some of the best twitch to be found

Bumping this to note that I’m joining a project where the teams are all named after mythical creatures and I successfully got our team to name itself Gelatinous Cube

Ahaha, that's amazing.

excellent