This season of D&D encounters is over now, and looking back I had a fun time. First off it was my first time DMing for more than one or two sessions. All in all I’d say that I did a fairly good job. I think that all of my players had fun. I certainly learned a lot about DMing a campaign. Here are a few tidbits:
- Do your homework before your session. Know what the players are heading in for and be prepared.
- Find a good way of keeping track of initiative. I used Cue Cards, which seemed to work best for me.
- The more you put in, the more you get out. I used D&D minis for my campaign and in one session I needed some Dust Devils. I hacked up a few Boneshard Skeletons and created my own vision of them. It got a lot of complements that night, and the players had more fun.
This was also my first trip to Athas, the world of Dark Sun. I’ll be honest, while I had fun playing, I’m not really sure that Dark Sun is my cup of tea. I’m a little old school in my tastes sometimes. I like my halflings jovial and fun, and not hungry for my flesh (or my player’s as it were). Also it was a little hard to really get the feeling that Athas was a harsh and desolate place. When you only get one extended rest every four or five sessions the whole point of the survival days really gets lost. Don’t get me wrong, there are some bad ass monsters on Athas for the heroes to fight, in fact they got the best of my group twice.
Perhaps I’ll go back and revisit Athas, next time as a player and I’ll get the real feeling of terror and danger of the world of Athas and it’s inhabitatants. In the meantime I’m looking forward to next week and the Keep on the Borderlands, in the core world, where dungeons and dragons actually exist.
P.S. I’m playing as a PC this next set of encounters. I can’t decide: Rogue or Mage? Does anyone have any suggestions?
First!