The first rule of being a Dungeon Master.

wall of text alert. You have been warned.

Last week we finally managed to get a Dungeons and Dragons group together (what, you didn't know that was something we have been trying to do for .... a year?) and the first foray was, without a doubt, hilarious. I have no idea how accurate our gameplay was, and I'm sure our newly established houserules would shock more experienced players (hey, I'm a new DM, my answer to almost everything was: "Sure! Of course you can do ___!").

First, for those of you who may be mildly interested (or at least feigning interest), let me introduce the cast of characters.

The DM (me!)
Piers Ravenwood, the human wizard (and my RL husband!!)
Raylana, the elven cleric (one of my coworkers. Ugh, day job)
Kegslow, the dwarven paladin (and Raylana's RL boyfriend)
Amata, the shardmind avenger (Raylana's RL brother)
Also two bystanders, who had never before witenssed D&D, and did nothing but laugh the whole time at our antics :)

Now that I look at it, the cast of characters sort of centers around Raylana. /shrug. Oh well.

Our adventure of choice (or rather, my choice), was to be The Slaying Stone, a prepublished adventure set for characters of the first level. On my first reading, it didn't seem too difficult, and I felt it could be something I, as a totally virgin DM, could handle.

First rule of DMing: the players will always do something unexpected, usually more than once.

We started out, did the first encounter with the wolves without too much hassle ( I say this figuratively, as most of us were still getting a feel for each other and how to actually play the game, as more than one of us was a total newbie and one or two of us were veterans. I'm not saying who), and then was thrown for my first loop when the players started to ask questions about the old woman, Treona, who was giving them their quest to fetch a mysterious stone with dark arcane powers. They were sensing doubt in this woman. Something shifty. Something not along the lines of lawful good. So after questioning her, and me giving her a shiftier side just to satisfy their seemingly insatiable curiosity (she really was fine in the book, THEY MADE HER EVIL), Amata, the avenger, decides he wants to attack her. Why? Who knows. Because he can. While I was frantically looking for random stats to assign this woman since she now had to fight them, Kegslow began to intercede and attempt to calm our randomly aggressive shardmind down. It's a good thing he succeeded with that Diplomacy check too, because I was about ready to throw a level 15 Hag on their level 1 tails.

That should have been my first clue. I have said it before (and if I haven't, I should have) and I will say it again, I do not always catch the obvious the first go-around.


The heroes started out on their journey, and came upon the forlorn ruins of Kiris Dahn, torn apart by goblins. I present them with a map of the city and show them their options for entering. 1, the front gate, but it is heavily guarded and they are attempting stealth as the goblins vastly outnumber them. 2, across the river to the north, but it is very wide. 3, the forest to the south.

Kegslow: "Why can't we go this way?" points to the eastern edge of the map
DM: "Because there is a lake there."
Amata: "How many goblins are at the gate?"
I really didn't want them to go that way, so I sort of railroaded them. "Fifty. Bad idea."
Amata: "How wide is the river?"
Kegslow: "You want to swim?"
Amata: "Well, I don't breathe, I'm made of crystal, so technically I can't suffocate. I say the river."
Kegslow: "Easy for you to say. Fine, how wide is the river?"
DM: "200 feet." It originally was only about fifty feet, but my realization that his class made it easy for him to get across, I decided to spice it up and keep it mildly difficult.

At this point ensued a hilarious round of watching them try to figure out how to get across the river, whether to carry each other across in the manner of that old children's puzzle, or to try and make a raft, or to .... then suddenly Raylana remembered she had 50 feet of rope in her backpack. Surprise, Piers did too. Did Kegslow and Amata? Sure, why not? So I made them roll strength checks for the knots, then athletics checks to see if they could manage to hold on for the entire 200 feet. Kegslow almost drowned, but they all made it in the end.

Then followed a hilarious episode where our heroes managed to sneak up on a lone kobold who was... attending to nature... and convince the kobold leader to create a diversion with the goblins so our heroes would be more free to search for the stone.

They then stole off through the library, where Amata, or Crystalboy as we had come to call him, managed to one shot the miniboss for this particular encounter. As I was still new to DMing, I didn't have the sense to send a horde of goblins down the stairs in retaliation, so I just sat there numbly while the goblin fell to the floor and then the rest of the party finished off the minions.

Next came the shrine of the moon, where they met a lone npc, who at first seemed non-threatening, if at least distant and mostly unresponsive. So when a horde of goblins burst through the doors, surprising our heroes, and the npc retreated to the corner to shake like a leaf, it is small wonder that the heroes ignored him.

It was not my plan for Piers to one shot the minions  in one end of the room, leaving all the other players to run to the other side and deal with the other goblins and their evil boss. It was not plan for Piers to get left alone on that side of the room with the cowardly npc.

It was, however, my plan for that npc to be a wererat, so when he changed over into his more menancing form, and when he bit my husband's poor wizard in the rear, and when my husband contracted Filth Fever, and when he couldn't save out of it, I couldn't help but laugh. Until Piers started to make a very pitiful face at me because he thought he was going to die, and then I started to cry inside because I was killing my husband. I had the power to save him, but that would be cheating, so I let him fight that wererat alone, while we both waited desperately for the rest of the party to decide he was worth helping.

Eventually, and only after a very long and what was becoming desperate fight, they managed to kill the wererat and the goblins, and are now, for the sake of the story, sleeping peacefully in the now empty shrine.

Next time I won't go so easy on them. I will be bolder, and they will tremble at the sound of my dice.