Lots of interesting trivia! For example, the setting's original title was "Thrilling Tales of Swords & Sorcery".
Once Thrilling Tales was chosen as the final setting, I went to Seattle and spent weeks working with an amazing team of people at Wizards of the Coast: Bill Slavicsek, Chris Perkins, James Wyatt, and many others. Together we isolated the best parts of Thrilling Tales, as well as identifying the elements that didn’t work and finding ways to improve them. You know what’s more exciting than nomadic halflings? Nomadic halflings riding dinosaurs. We took the idea of dragonmarks and made the Dragonmarked Houses. The Last War, the Undying Court, the Mourning, the Church of the Silver Flame—these are all things that we built together. This was one of the most amazing creative experiences of my professional career, and it was this team that created the world as you know it… and it was Bill Slavicsek who named the world Eberron.
So my current campaign is reaching its climax and the DM and the rest of the group are all talking about our next game, which we've decided is going to be a 5e Dark Sun game. While brainstorming character ideas, I realized that I've never played a character that was a coward. It seems like it might be interesting to try, and potentially a boon for survival in Dark Sun since my DM has made it clear he won't be taking it easy on us. I'm a bit concerned that cowardice as a character flaw might be a problem, though. I have often played by the rule that a character's flaws/actions/whatever should never be a hindrance to the rest of the party. So for example, if I wanted to play a bumbling Wizard who got his spells all mixed up, I'd have him say he was going to cast a less than ideal spell while "accidentally" casting a spell that would actually be helpful to the party. And why, if I'm playing an assassin, he always has good reasons why he would never try to kill anyone in the party (or even any of the PC's allies, barring some climactic reveal).
Is a cowardly character, one who might be tempted to abandon his party in a time of crisis, a problematic archetype? Should I look elsewhere for an interesting character flaw? At least in Dark Sun, traveling alone is a likely death sentence so it's not as though he'd be abandoning the group at the drop of a hat. And certainly I could still have a character who cowers away from the more dangerous threats and instead focuses on the weaker ones, or opts to buff his allies instead of hurting his enemies. Has anyone here RPed a coward before that has some advice?
0
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
A cowardly character may find that surrounding themselves with strong teammates is useful for their own survival, and (carefully!) support them out of mutual self interest.
The best cowardly character who was actually useful that I ever saw was played as a pompous, arrogant fop who walked around wearing gaudy ceremonial armor and carried a bejeweled walking cane instead of any real weapon. Whenever combat occurred he would sequester himself behind cover and/or the rest of the party and shout at the party to protect him, and would curse the fates for cursing him to have to travel through these dangerous lands escorted by such a motley crew of hired protectors.
Mechanically speaking, he was a "Pacifist Warlord," which meant that rather than have any attacks of his own, literally every one of his abilities granted an ally an attack instead, usually with some sort of extra bonus even!
The rest of the players hated the character's constant negging, but he was undeniably useful mechanically speaking, granting the heavy-hitters extra attacks every single round.
I've seen an idea for a Goblin Ancestral Guardian Barbarian that would work as a coward.
He think's he's haunted. When the spirits show up, he screams in terror, bonus action disengaged, and runs away. Spirits halve the damage to anyone but you, so it still protects the party.
Half the reason to play this character is to roleplay rage as screaming terror.
The ship rules themselves haven't changed that much from the Unearthed Arcana but Ghosts of Saltmarsh also includes rules for ship upgrades, random encounters at sea, various hazards (Whirlpools, haunted fogs etc) and tables for generating random Mysterious Islands. Looks pretty good. I'm currently playing in a naval campaign, so expect the DM to start slotting in the new Saltmarsh stuff- looking forward to it.
Has anyone got their mitts on Ghosts of Saltmarsh yet?
I am particularly interested the ship section and combat rules, if one is so inclined to share.
One of my players brought it to game last night. I only got a rough look at it as i'm letting my new co DM have first crack at adapting its content later this year. I may try out some ship based combat stuff in a couple of weeks.
We decided after flipping through saltmarsh that it now contains more information on boats than all of the 7th sea books combined.
Also our ravnica campaign finally started. While at a ravnican parade and festival there was a gruul attack that forced one of the orzhova to step in and save us and now they own our souls and we're apparently currently their murderhobo squad to pay off this debt. As we mulled this over my izzet guildmage goblin tinkerer, scientist, and sorcerer was hastily scrawling a secondary contract to claim IP to any scientific discovery made during this forced arrangement. Our party is myself, a Goliath barbarian who just dreams of being a mast chef, their half sibling, a tortle law cleric and general clerical worker of orzhov, and a monk who grew up in seclusion with his master in the rubblebelt being told never to go into the city or the guilds would try to own him, then the first time he goes into the 10th district in search of his missing master this happens. It's pretty wild so far. That first attack literally opened with me hitting a chaos bolt jump to two extra targets AND a wild magic surge that did necrotic damage to everything around me. there's just actually nowhere to go but down in my combat performance. We murderhobo'd so well that the GM gave his boss monster a heal just to make it last long enough to wear us down for the scripted save. He promises that was the only fight we we're supposed to lose, but also I think he took that as a sign to up the general monster levels we'll be facing
I was trying to find the joke to lament the cancellation of this weekends ToA extravaganza but I couldn't find the gag. The reason being that one of my friends/players/hosts' Mother's big C has taken a mighty turn for the worse and she's going into palliative care this weekend. She is a lovely lady, who's fought the good fight for a long time now.
The cookies she would occasionally bake and drive over to deliver to her grown ass son and his idiot friends, among many other things about her, will be sorely missed. Her cookies tasted of love.... and that love tasted like butter.
So after taking a couple month break to play other things we continued our 5E game this week. It was kind of a 0 session, we wrapped up what our characters did before we left Barovia and then exited through the mists. The characters expected to return to Faerun but instead found themselves in yet another land they didn't recognize. My DM is running us through a modified versions of the Dragonlord setting that just launched.
It felt so great to slip back into character. We were attacked by three flying manticores at one point and I hit them with Hypnotic Pattern and two of them managed to pass the save by rolling 19s. I was sure I was going to send all three plummeting to the ground. The last role of the night was a performance roll with my bard and I ended up rolling a nat 20. We decided at 30+ performance was a great way to wrap up the session for the night.
The reason being that one of my friends/players/hosts' Mother's big C has taken a mighty turn for the worse and she's going into palliative care this weekend. She is a lovely lady, who's fought the good fight for a long time now.
As is tradtion for myself, I'm going to try and do something that's a real challenge for next season (the upcoming Avernus campaign): I'm going to try and play an aasimar redemption paladin.
In hell.
This is gonna be way up there, but the opportunities to be both the conscience of the party and Raw RP that will come from asking Zariel whether anything she's doing actually matters is really tempting.
So here's a little diverson for the thread: what the fuck is Tiamat's deal?
First off, is she or is she not the same entity as Takhisis from the Dragonlance setting? The authors of Dragonlance insist she is a different being, but from what I can tell more modern publications say that Takhisis is just what people in the Dragonlance setting call Tiamat (modern sources also say that the planes of Magic: The Gathering are somehow part of the Great Wheel and that Eberron and its entire cosmology are also within the Great Wheel, so whatever).
Second, what exactly is her alignment? Tiamat is initially listed as Lawful Evil in the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, Chaotic Evil in The Rise of Tiamat, and is referred to in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes as "a force of Chaos bound to a place of Law."
So here's a little diverson for the thread: what the fuck is Tiamat's deal?
First off, is she or is she not the same entity as Takhisis from the Dragonlance setting? The authors of Dragonlance insist she is a different being, but from what I can tell more modern publications say that Takhisis is just what people in the Dragonlance setting call Tiamat (modern sources also say that the planes of Magic: The Gathering are somehow part of the Great Wheel and that Eberron and its entire cosmology are also within the Great Wheel, so whatever).
Second, what exactly is her alignment? Tiamat is initially listed as Lawful Evil in the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, Chaotic Evil in The Rise of Tiamat, and is referred to in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes as "a force of Chaos bound to a place of Law."
I think these days she's just shilling for Renault in Brazil.
I just paid attention to the Winter Eladrin statblock in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and, uhhh, don't let these guys use their weapons.
The Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack, whereas the Autumn and Winter Eladrin don't. However, the Autumn Eladrin deals extra psychic damage with its attacks, whereas the Winter Eladrin doesn't get anything (BTW Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack AND extra damage).
A Winter Eladrin's only role in combat is to cast Cone of Cold once and Ice Storm once, after which it has done all it can for the day.
I was looking at the eladrin because in my campaign I'm gonna have a small eladrin army contribute to a war in Stygia. I initially thought I'd choose Winter Eladrin since they have resistance to cold, but I guess instead I'm using Summer and Autumn Eladrin with Rings of Warmth.
Hexmage-PA on
+1
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I just paid attention to the Winter Eladrin statblock in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and, uhhh, don't let these guys use their weapons.
The Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack, whereas the Autumn and Winter Eladrin don't. However, the Autumn Eladrin deals extra psychic damage with its attacks, whereas the Winter Eladrin doesn't get anything (BTW Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack AND extra damage).
A Winter Eladrin's only role in combat is to cast Cone of Cold once and Ice Storm once, after which it has done all it can for the day.
I was looking at the eladrin because in my campaign I'm gonna have a small eladrin army contribute to a war in Stygia. I initially thought I'd choose Winter Eladrin since they have resistance to cold, but I guess instead I'm using Summer and Autumn Eladrin with Rings of Warmth.
Why not just mechanically bump up the Winter Eladrins?
The beauty of that commercial is that it is far truer to the cartoon than any Hollywood remake ever would be. Also it is far more entertaining than the original cartoon. It’s a hard show to go back and watch. I’ll love it forever but ...oof.
I just paid attention to the Winter Eladrin statblock in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and, uhhh, don't let these guys use their weapons.
The Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack, whereas the Autumn and Winter Eladrin don't. However, the Autumn Eladrin deals extra psychic damage with its attacks, whereas the Winter Eladrin doesn't get anything (BTW Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack AND extra damage).
A Winter Eladrin's only role in combat is to cast Cone of Cold once and Ice Storm once, after which it has done all it can for the day.
I was looking at the eladrin because in my campaign I'm gonna have a small eladrin army contribute to a war in Stygia. I initially thought I'd choose Winter Eladrin since they have resistance to cold, but I guess instead I'm using Summer and Autumn Eladrin with Rings of Warmth.
In general fights last 3 rounds (is expectation) and usually lower than that. Assuming that the coc hits 2(which is stabdard) the dpr budget for the winter eladrin is 27.3. Which seems pretty in line with the others
So I figured it was time to try out D&D with my 7 year old this weekend. Sunday we were at the comic book store and he was so interested in the dice that I bought him a set. We spent the day talking about character options and just before bed he decided he wanted to play a Silver Dragonborn Paladin named Ice Spike.
Monday we end up at the Barnes and Nobles after doing some clothes shopping and end up in the D&D isle. My son ow has a plush mimic dice bag because reasons..... Anyway, a girl comes into the same isle to check out the selection and my son starts telling her all about Ice Spike, beholders, and mind flayers.
I'm reading through Lost Mines of Phlander now, the plan is to actually play Wed night. My wife is going to create a rogue and I think I'm going to DM PC a cleric to make sure he survives the first few encounters. I'll update more after the first session.
Oh and the drive into school this morning consisted of him asking about D&D monsters. It was the only thing he wanted to talk about.
So I figured it was time to try out D&D with my 7 year old this weekend. Sunday we were at the comic book store and he was so interested in the dice that I bought him a set. We spent the day talking about character options and just before bed he decided he wanted to play a Silver Dragonborn Paladin named Ice Spike.
Monday we end up at the Barnes and Nobles after doing some clothes shopping and end up in the D&D isle. My son ow has a plush mimic dice bag because reasons..... Anyway, a girl comes into the same isle to check out the selection and my son starts telling her all about Ice Spike, beholders, and mind flayers.
I'm reading through Lost Mines of Phlander now, the plan is to actually play Wed night. My wife is going to create a rogue and I think I'm going to DM PC a cleric to make sure he survives the first few encounters. I'll update more after the first session.
Oh and the drive into school this morning consisted of him asking about D&D monsters. It was the only thing he wanted to talk about.
@Denada is, like, the unmitigated king of running RPGs for youngins, from what I've seen.
Not sure how well LMoP works for youngins. I'd recommend starting with more of a one-shot. Something something orcs attacks something something a dragon lands. Just start on a more exciting note than a goblin ambush.
Also: Ice Spike is a fucking great character name and you should be proud of your kid for going straight for a dragonborn paladin.
Here's something I've never put too much thought into.... What happens to a spellbook once its spells have been copied?
I know scrolls are used up in the process of coping it into ones spellbook, but what about the spellbooks of fallen mage opponents? Do they get burnt up as well when copied?
My first inclination is to say no, because I like the idea of shelves full of old spellbooks in a big shot wizards's study. But I'm not sure of there is a rule about it.
One of my players has a wizard who consistently reproduces his own spellbook as a textbook for the classes he teaches. It's basically just an open backstory hook to just have his spellbook available (to note this is his public spellbook, it doesn't have his more experimental work in it, but it has a lot of your more basic wizard spells).
So I figured it was time to try out D&D with my 7 year old this weekend. Sunday we were at the comic book store and he was so interested in the dice that I bought him a set. We spent the day talking about character options and just before bed he decided he wanted to play a Silver Dragonborn Paladin named Ice Spike.
Monday we end up at the Barnes and Nobles after doing some clothes shopping and end up in the D&D isle. My son ow has a plush mimic dice bag because reasons..... Anyway, a girl comes into the same isle to check out the selection and my son starts telling her all about Ice Spike, beholders, and mind flayers.
I'm reading through Lost Mines of Phlander now, the plan is to actually play Wed night. My wife is going to create a rogue and I think I'm going to DM PC a cleric to make sure he survives the first few encounters. I'll update more after the first session.
Oh and the drive into school this morning consisted of him asking about D&D monsters. It was the only thing he wanted to talk about.
@Denada is, like, the unmitigated king of running RPGs for youngins, from what I've seen.
I got here as fast as I could! Seven is a great age for D&D. The core of 5E is pretty easy to grasp all things considered, and kids can be especially good at avoiding common D&D pitfalls because they've never played before so they have no hangups.
Unsolicited advice:
Playing a family game with your young kid is one of the few times I actually would recommend a DM PC, particularly one that plays a support role. A support character can be kind of a difficult concept at that age just because their capacity for empathy is still developing, so that's awesome that you've got a cleric queued up. It's a good way to model teamwork and to reinforce that even though you're the DM, you're still all on the same team.
Lost Mines of Phandelver is a perfectly fine place to start imo. One of my campaigns with my daughters started with a goblin ambush on a road while they were investigating a crime scene, and they were I think 6 and 8 at the time. It was a great start and they really got hooked on killing the goblins and then following their trail back to their lair.
It can be tempting to tone everything down and make it way easier because you're playing with a child, but try to resist that temptation (mostly). This is such a great space for them to explore feelings of disappointment, frustration, losing, and making mistakes, without any real-world consequences. I mean you do want to fudge things here and there to make sure everyone is still having fun of course, but don't overdo it just because he's 7.
Don't minimize the math! D&D has a ton of simple math in it that is great practice, especially for a 7-year-old.
Super excited for you @Ken O ! Tabletop RPGs with kids is such a treat.
Thanks so much for the advice! I spent my lunch break making a Dwarf Forge Cleric so Ice Spike will be well protected in his adventuring career. Between the healing and the buffs I shouldn't have to pull any punches. I'll make sure to report back after the first session.
Today after work is my little group's first actual play session; the characters are sorted, sheets printed, dice bought'd, and minis obtained. I had some minis on hand for some of the players, but Rob bought a Tiefling Paladin sort of mini (I think it's Reaper plastic), and I found a Half-Orc Assassin (Reaper metal) for Sam. I spent some time painting it over the holiday weekend (I need to pick up some darker wood colored paints before I do the crossbow) and it turned out pretty nice;
Since three of them have no experience with D&D at all, and one only has a little 5th edition experience, I'm starting them out pretty simple. There's a hook in the Essentials Red Box that leads to a short dungeon; I've modified some of the plot points to mesh with the character's origins but they'll basically be recovering stolen reagents from a caravan they're either riding along with or have been hired on to guard. From there, they'll head to Fallcrest and will see and overhear the reports of some refugees from the Harkenwold, which should lead them right along to Reavers of Harkenwold.
I haven't sat behind the DM screen for ~4 years, so I'll be knocking some rust off myself. Very exciting times, though.
I am currently running my 7 year old daughter through Lost Mines.
She has changed her characters race and name at least three times now.
She has also changed her pet from a Panther, to a Dire Wolf and now an invisible Hell Hound. (all using Mastiff stats)
She is soo kind to the bads. She beat the ruffians at cards and then gave them back their moneys cause she felt bad and wouldn't take the reward money for bringing back the head of the goblin king.
She now has a statue of her and her invisible Hell Hound in Phandelver.
The beauty of that commercial is that it is far truer to the cartoon than any Hollywood remake ever would be. Also it is far more entertaining than the original cartoon. It’s a hard show to go back and watch. I’ll love it forever but ...oof.
Help me out here. I'm playing a tabaxi, and thus I have a climbing speed. My DMs been making me roll acrobatic checks to see if I can actually climb things but I feel that since I have a climbing speed I shouldn't have to. it's not a big deal since it's only a two session game but I'm just curious as to what y'all think.
Posts
I've also been catching up to C-Team since I've run out of CR episodes to listen to. So I might find the game Jerry was in too.
Lots of interesting trivia! For example, the setting's original title was "Thrilling Tales of Swords & Sorcery".
Is a cowardly character, one who might be tempted to abandon his party in a time of crisis, a problematic archetype? Should I look elsewhere for an interesting character flaw? At least in Dark Sun, traveling alone is a likely death sentence so it's not as though he'd be abandoning the group at the drop of a hat. And certainly I could still have a character who cowers away from the more dangerous threats and instead focuses on the weaker ones, or opts to buff his allies instead of hurting his enemies. Has anyone here RPed a coward before that has some advice?
Mechanically speaking, he was a "Pacifist Warlord," which meant that rather than have any attacks of his own, literally every one of his abilities granted an ally an attack instead, usually with some sort of extra bonus even!
The rest of the players hated the character's constant negging, but he was undeniably useful mechanically speaking, granting the heavy-hitters extra attacks every single round.
Unfortunately, this was of course in 4e.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
He think's he's haunted. When the spirits show up, he screams in terror, bonus action disengaged, and runs away. Spirits halve the damage to anyone but you, so it still protects the party.
Half the reason to play this character is to roleplay rage as screaming terror.
I am particularly interested the ship section and combat rules, if one is so inclined to share.
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/ships-and-sea
How about Orizon? It's basically a homebrew Zendikar setting.
One of my players brought it to game last night. I only got a rough look at it as i'm letting my new co DM have first crack at adapting its content later this year. I may try out some ship based combat stuff in a couple of weeks.
Thank you! The concept of floatwood in this setting was something I had already had in mind, but skywhale blubber? Yoink!
Also our ravnica campaign finally started. While at a ravnican parade and festival there was a gruul attack that forced one of the orzhova to step in and save us and now they own our souls and we're apparently currently their murderhobo squad to pay off this debt. As we mulled this over my izzet guildmage goblin tinkerer, scientist, and sorcerer was hastily scrawling a secondary contract to claim IP to any scientific discovery made during this forced arrangement. Our party is myself, a Goliath barbarian who just dreams of being a mast chef, their half sibling, a tortle law cleric and general clerical worker of orzhov, and a monk who grew up in seclusion with his master in the rubblebelt being told never to go into the city or the guilds would try to own him, then the first time he goes into the 10th district in search of his missing master this happens. It's pretty wild so far. That first attack literally opened with me hitting a chaos bolt jump to two extra targets AND a wild magic surge that did necrotic damage to everything around me. there's just actually nowhere to go but down in my combat performance. We murderhobo'd so well that the GM gave his boss monster a heal just to make it last long enough to wear us down for the scripted save. He promises that was the only fight we we're supposed to lose, but also I think he took that as a sign to up the general monster levels we'll be facing
The cookies she would occasionally bake and drive over to deliver to her grown ass son and his idiot friends, among many other things about her, will be sorely missed. Her cookies tasted of love.... and that love tasted like butter.
It felt so great to slip back into character. We were attacked by three flying manticores at one point and I hit them with Hypnotic Pattern and two of them managed to pass the save by rolling 19s. I was sure I was going to send all three plummeting to the ground. The last role of the night was a performance roll with my bard and I ended up rolling a nat 20. We decided at 30+ performance was a great way to wrap up the session for the night.
Fuck Cancer so hard.
Comics, Games, Booze
In hell.
This is gonna be way up there, but the opportunities to be both the conscience of the party and Raw RP that will come from asking Zariel whether anything she's doing actually matters is really tempting.
First off, is she or is she not the same entity as Takhisis from the Dragonlance setting? The authors of Dragonlance insist she is a different being, but from what I can tell more modern publications say that Takhisis is just what people in the Dragonlance setting call Tiamat (modern sources also say that the planes of Magic: The Gathering are somehow part of the Great Wheel and that Eberron and its entire cosmology are also within the Great Wheel, so whatever).
Second, what exactly is her alignment? Tiamat is initially listed as Lawful Evil in the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, Chaotic Evil in The Rise of Tiamat, and is referred to in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes as "a force of Chaos bound to a place of Law."
I think these days she's just shilling for Renault in Brazil.
The Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack, whereas the Autumn and Winter Eladrin don't. However, the Autumn Eladrin deals extra psychic damage with its attacks, whereas the Winter Eladrin doesn't get anything (BTW Spring and Summer Eladrin get multiattack AND extra damage).
So the average DPR here breaks down to:
Spring: longsword or longbow 22 damage
Summer: longsword 38 damage, longbow 36 damage
Autumn: longsword 24 damage, longbow 25 damage
Winter: longsword 5 damage, longbow 4 damage
A Winter Eladrin's only role in combat is to cast Cone of Cold once and Ice Storm once, after which it has done all it can for the day.
I was looking at the eladrin because in my campaign I'm gonna have a small eladrin army contribute to a war in Stygia. I initially thought I'd choose Winter Eladrin since they have resistance to cold, but I guess instead I'm using Summer and Autumn Eladrin with Rings of Warmth.
Why not just mechanically bump up the Winter Eladrins?
Comics, Games, Booze
In general fights last 3 rounds (is expectation) and usually lower than that. Assuming that the coc hits 2(which is stabdard) the dpr budget for the winter eladrin is 27.3. Which seems pretty in line with the others
Monday we end up at the Barnes and Nobles after doing some clothes shopping and end up in the D&D isle. My son ow has a plush mimic dice bag because reasons..... Anyway, a girl comes into the same isle to check out the selection and my son starts telling her all about Ice Spike, beholders, and mind flayers.
I'm reading through Lost Mines of Phlander now, the plan is to actually play Wed night. My wife is going to create a rogue and I think I'm going to DM PC a cleric to make sure he survives the first few encounters. I'll update more after the first session.
Oh and the drive into school this morning consisted of him asking about D&D monsters. It was the only thing he wanted to talk about.
Comics, Games, Booze
@Denada is, like, the unmitigated king of running RPGs for youngins, from what I've seen.
Also: Ice Spike is a fucking great character name and you should be proud of your kid for going straight for a dragonborn paladin.
I know scrolls are used up in the process of coping it into ones spellbook, but what about the spellbooks of fallen mage opponents? Do they get burnt up as well when copied?
My first inclination is to say no, because I like the idea of shelves full of old spellbooks in a big shot wizards's study. But I'm not sure of there is a rule about it.
How does magic proliferate if there's no way to copy spells down without what you're copying it from being destroyed?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I got here as fast as I could! Seven is a great age for D&D. The core of 5E is pretty easy to grasp all things considered, and kids can be especially good at avoiding common D&D pitfalls because they've never played before so they have no hangups.
Unsolicited advice:
Super excited for you @Ken O ! Tabletop RPGs with kids is such a treat.
Comics, Games, Booze
Since three of them have no experience with D&D at all, and one only has a little 5th edition experience, I'm starting them out pretty simple. There's a hook in the Essentials Red Box that leads to a short dungeon; I've modified some of the plot points to mesh with the character's origins but they'll basically be recovering stolen reagents from a caravan they're either riding along with or have been hired on to guard. From there, they'll head to Fallcrest and will see and overhear the reports of some refugees from the Harkenwold, which should lead them right along to Reavers of Harkenwold.
I haven't sat behind the DM screen for ~4 years, so I'll be knocking some rust off myself. Very exciting times, though.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
She has changed her characters race and name at least three times now.
She has also changed her pet from a Panther, to a Dire Wolf and now an invisible Hell Hound. (all using Mastiff stats)
She is soo kind to the bads. She beat the ruffians at cards and then gave them back their moneys cause she felt bad and wouldn't take the reward money for bringing back the head of the goblin king.
She now has a statue of her and her invisible Hell Hound in Phandelver.