ToddPBC wrote:
Since this is my first CK'ing and RPG'ing gig, how do you handle travel? How do you know how long stuff should take? How do you RP walking? Camping? Foraging for food? How do you make "commuting" exciting for the players aside from random encounters?
rule #2- Just wing it. There is information about how much distance per day for various modes of transportation in various old AD&D books. Just taking a wild guess (don't have my books): man with pack 15 miles/day. man with horse on road 30-45 miles per day? Half that through forest or plains, even less for hills and mountains
By the way, on a somewhat related note, if you ever see an old copy of the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide
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for a few bucks in a used bookstore, you would do well to pick it up. It is a treasure trove of interesting information about various aspects of the game.
You don't need to role play every moment. Look at how a novel works. The author just writes up the scenes that have some interest to the story. Otherwise, he writes "the party travelled for three days without incident, and found themselves at the foot of the brooding presence of Mount Doom"
Don't get too hung up on "random" encounters. If you think a certain encounter would be fun, or further the story, just put it in. If an encounter seems lame, or too difficult, change or remove it as you see fit.
And these encounters need not all be combat oriented. They might also find someone's lost dog. Who's is it? Why is it alone in the woods? Or they might come across a friendly hermit who is more than he appears, and so on.
Also, this session (your first) will be a good opportunity for you to inculcate the basics of adventuring into your young charges. They must learn to: post guards at night, maybe have a stealthy character scout ahead for danger, have someone check all found chests for traps, it's better for a healer character to spend a round healing a fallen comrade (bringing another sword back to the fight) than for that cleric to do a melee attack himself (generally), it is a good idea to target enemy magic users first, and so on.
These will come with experience obviously, but it is a good idea for you, in the first number of sessions to either gently hint towards some of these things, or let the players fail at some of it and then _NOT KILL THEM FOR IT_ right away
The first few sessions should be viewed more as practice. Let them get a feel for what they need to do before you wipe them out. If an attack "kills" them, have it knock them out instead. They wake up and their sword and shield have been stolen by the goblins they were fighting.
Be especially careful using enemy magic users against your party early on, as they can wipe them out rather easily (the 1st level spell sleep, for example, could put your entire party to sleep (unless they are elves) and there would be no saving throw.
It might not be a bad idea to give the characters maximum hit points at first level. Furthermore, there is a long tradition in fantasy role playing for parties (especially lower level, under staffed ones, like yours) to hire NPCs (non player characters) as henchmen. You can even allow them to each control one of the henchmen (thereby a bit different than the "Aragorn" type ally mentioned in your message). This will allow you to:
1) flesh out the weak spots of the party, a healer, mage, more fighting up front
2) allow the player's to roleplay the recruitment of the henchmen
3) allow you to hurt the party without wiping out the players right off (by having the henchmen absorb some of the damage)
henchmen usually join for a share of the treasure (and experience points).
Good luck with it. I hope this is a long ride for all of you
_________________
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