I’d been thinking about how I don’t write enough about one of my favorite hobbies, roleplaying (and, specifically, Dungeons & Dragons), and as such I decided to try to get in the habit of documenting my experiences in running a campaign again. Like many of my website projects, this journal will live or die by how much I periodically update.

A number of years ago, my first D&D DMing experience was, after picking up the 3.0 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting at Gen Con, spontaneously starting a game with no direction following a couple hours of disarray at one of my group’s gaming sessions. It was definitely rocky, for me, and not without stressful times, but I think, ultimately, it was pretty well received, and there are some fond memories that we still speak of. Unfortunately, I fell a bit too in love with the campaign, and it died when I tried to hand it off so that I could be a player.

Since then, I’ve tried to start new games, including rebooting a Realms game at least twice, but they never really took. Maybe it was group-game saturation, or maybe I’d just gotten really lucky the first time, or (most likely) maybe my interests quickly wandered elsewhere, but the attempts faded into obscurity soon after the start. I moved on, to other systems and themes. But, deep within me, I’ve always had an itch to run D&D again.

Similarly, attempts to introduce gaming to a gang of friends on IRC had been well-received but died off with similar whimpers — too much disorganization among all of us, too little time on my plate, and not as much of the social aspect is probably what killed those games. The enthusiasm was there, but not the means to cultivate it. Again, maybe simply, the time was not right.

In one of these bouts of stagnancy trying to get a game of CthulhuTech going with the IRC group, I decided to pull the plug and instead present a more accessible (for all of us, in my opinion) alternative: D&D. I could scratch my itch with 4e and the new Forgotten Realms, and give the easiest path to my players, one with plenty of exciting books and options, and a very strong roleplaying line (incidentally, previous attempts at the Realms with that group, in 3.5, probably did the best of my gaming cultivation efforts).

For now, however, enough history. The decision was made roughly two weeks ago, and we played on Sunday for the first time, after spending around a week making characters.

Things went pretty well. The Character Builder (even the demo) is a great tool, and I think some of the moderate success so far belongs to how presentable the Builder makes character creation. People are thinking about backstories, and their character’s place in the world (the pair of Realms sourcebooks obviously helps that), and overall crafting some interesting characters to play — very cool. As I usually end up doing, we’re taking a liberty or two with the Realms, but mostly adhering to the setting and letting it help fill in the gaps — we’re all busy people, after all, and we can’t be creative all the time.

Unsurprisingly, those of us who were used to d20/True20 are having some issues getting used to the 4e world, or disassociating rules and quirks we’d picked up from previous games. The new 4e elements I think the players are doing pretty good on, but game concepts common to multiple editions (such as opportunity attacks, and what it means to be at negative hit points) catch us up on occasion.

The three combat encounters (and my fumbly skill challenge) have been a bit bumpy, but nothing critical has gone wrong, and we’ve all been learning things. For instance, this is my first time actually building 4e encounters, which is refreshingly simple once acquainted with the concepts and creature classifications. The players have the harder job right now, learning a new system and, for the most part, getting into the roleplaying mentality.

That’s been a bit bumpy too, I think the joking/sarcastic comment ratio is a bit too high for IRC; while those comments are always present at the gaming table, typing on IRC is time-consuming, and a lot of time is spent on chatter and quasi-in-person comments that aren’t acted upon (or meant to be). There is a fair amount of distraction factor as well, but as long as my players keep relatively up to speed (which isn’t always the case :\), it doesn’t bother me as much as it has in the past.

Ultimately, though, combining the above with the normal difficulty of identifying fake hostility and joking quips over the Internet has made a couple moments a bit tense for the players. I think some of it them being stressed — there is a lot to digest, and I need to keep the pace somewhat reasonable, or we’ll never get anywhere.

Nevertheless, I’m very pleased with how things are going. We spent most of Sunday playing, and there was immediately demand for playing again soon, so we snuck in a quick session on Wednesday. Combats are slow, but improving as people get a feel for their characters, their powers, and the system concepts in general. The improvement there is fun to see, but what pleases me the most is the enthusiasm in playing again.

I also hope to get some real experience in enhancing the game via the wiki, encouraging people to write whatever comes to their mind about the PCs and NPCs of the campaign, and even people and places of the official Realms setting, as they pertain to the campaign. I’ve tried one idea in particular with the quest “cards", and I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve that I hope will pan out.

This became much longer than I intended it to. In short (now that I’m done talking anyway), I’m pleased to be scratching my DM/Realms itch again, and I’m doubly pleased that my players are doing well and enjoying what I have offered them so far. If it keeps on going, this could end up being a hell of a lot of fun.