Meatspace D&D - April Ed.

Among the numerous experiences I took away from PAX East, there was a specific geeky opportunity I planned to follow up on. Around mid afternoon Saturday, while we were killing time between panels, we went to the game check out room and discovered Surface Scapes. They were playing D&D 4e on the table so I started to explain to Crystal what was happening in the encounter. I could see her eyes glazing over as my talk of minors, opportunity attacks and close burst threes, only served in confusing her more.

To my surprise she did not tell me to squash the nerd talk though, but rather asked me to teach her about it when we got back home. If she was only being kind to her geeky husband, she knew not what she did. I saw the door open just enough to let through a faint beam of light and set about swinging it fully ajar. DMing a local game has been a plan of mine for nearly a year. In the absence of experience, willing players and time though I feed my hunger through a virtual tabletop group. That experience has gone better than I thought it would, but it will always lack the tangible presence of the players and their undivided attention.

I started my plan by really testing the waters with Crystal. I set up a 30 minute solo encounter for her, where she began in a town with a mission, participated in a little RP and then some brief combat. If she was humoring me this time her bluff check was a critical hit (lol dice humor). She was sold. I followed that up with the same encounter for my brother who was also a virgin to the tabletop. He was sold. Two of my VTT players actually live in Richmond and were already onboard. When the dust settled we were a group, four players and a DM.

In the weeks leading up to our first game night we prepped by rolling characters, buying dice and picking out minis. I went about creating what I hoped would be an easy to follow, yet interesting world for the game and put it all on it's own OP page. When the night finally came around we ate delicious cookies care of Ethan, had a fun prop care of Mike, Gabriel was slightly late and Crystal did her best to stay up till 11:30pm. Overall it was a great time and the game went really smooth. I played up my NPC role playing as best I could to hopefully set a good foundation for the new players. Finding your players voice is probably the hardest thing to do for the pen and paper neophyte.

My camera was less than 25 feet from me and I forgot to take pictures. Call it first night nerves if you will, but I will capture my geeky wife and friends come hell or high water next time we play.