Critical Role.

Matthew Mercer is going to be voicing Gannondorf * in the new Zelda game! Pretty cool!

(* Character from the trailers, but courtesy spoiler tag as I know some people are going zero-information...)

Tomorrow at 1am (technically sunday) I will be playing DnD with people on Roll 20. I made a Tiefling Sorcerer of the Aberrant Mind. It'll be session 1, we did sesh 0 two weeks ago. I just hope I haven't gone for a to complex character to start with.

Wow, cool! Congrats on finding a group, I know you've been searching a while! Are you playing with a new group you found online, or did you know them already?

Spellcasters can be a little more complicated, but if you are starting at lv. 1 there's nothing to worry about -- the first few levels of each class are designed to ease you in. For instance, Sorcerers don't have to worry about Sorcery Points until lv. 2, or Metamagic until lv. 3.

Tell us about the campaign! Does your character have a backstory?

Yeah, I met them through Roll20. Had a chat with the guy DMing and then we all met on discord for session 0. Had a laugh with them all. Seem like a good group of people.

I did make a back story for my character. Nothing amazing, but I did use the Hermit background as I thought it easier to ease myself in instead of customising everything.

Back story:

Ah great! That's a fun backstory. It sounds like bad fortune follows him very closely, but maybe this adventure can be a new start!

Aboleths are cool monsters -- if you stick with the campaign for long enough maybe you can find the one that mind-controlled you and kick its butt!

Would be cool. The DM read the back story and said he was rattling things around in his head to do with it.

That's a good backstory for the DM to work with, and interesting for you to play as a character.

I've played one campaign in Waterdeep (can't remember it's name) and then jumped into DMing on a homebrew campaign (low magic limits on starting class). We started in lockdown weekly over Discord but now only play on weekenders when we all cross the country to an airbnb somewhere and play (and drink). My DM notes are over 50,000 words long (so, novel length) and we are on session 67 (basically two hours or when we break for food on a Weekender) and they are probably going to hit 80 sessions by campaign's end.

One of my most favourite things I have ever done is run a homebrew campaign. The fact that everything is effectively made up by the group (save for the game mechanics) is just mesmerising to me.

Session 1 I was adamant I wouldn't do voices, but when everyone else was running a character voice I went and watched a video online about making up voices and that was actually super easy, you just need to shake your inhibitions. Discord was a good space for doing that. It is a bit harder to remember who had what voice after a while though.

If I had wrapped up this campaign I would have run it for you Pedz, and others on here, albeit much shortened and streamlined. Probably not a good idea for me to have two continuities running in parallel, and sounds like you've got a good group to play with. Thinking aloud, my other campaign I'm toying with would work well en masse on the forum but I'm some way out from that being ready.

I would love a group from here to play with. The group seem great, the only issue, which isn't an issue really is we start 1 am my time.

I haven't really been able to get a good RPG group going since the pandemic. Even board game nights are still lagging behind what they used to be. Doesn't help either that my friends only seem to be interested in D&D and absolutely no other RPG. I just feel like I'm over D&D now. I think there are better rulebooks out there and the high fantasy setting doesn't excite me at all anymore. I'd much prefer to try something new like Blades in the Dark.

Well, the first session went well. We had a lot of fun. We're doing Lost Mines of Phandelver, so the starter kit story ( I think) we all met up in an inn, offered our services to some dudes and then went on our way. We managed to murder a load of Goblins, and then we followed tracks to a cave where the goblins seemed to be hiding out. We left it there then, as while it doesn't seem like much was done from my brief description of what happened we did play for 3 and a half hours and I didn't get to sleep until after 5 am Looking forward to the next session in 2 weeks time. Had a good laugh with the group. I think I'm the only one to have never played D&D before, well a TTRPG. There are 2 others who have played a Star Wars TTRPG, but not DnD and the others have a little experience but not a lot, so we're all learning as we go, which is ace. We only did combat once and it went well, though I managed on my first attack to completely miss my target I did manage to freeze a guy though so all's good. Anyway. That's a short update for ya.

Sounds like a good first session. Good to get an early combat in there, and some non-combat role playing! Glad you enjoyed it Pedz!

Thanks. Was great fun. Just wish it was more regular

Well, Session 2 was on Saturday/Sunday. We ended up leaving the cave to go to Phandalin to complete our mission and deliver the goods we were tasked with. After talking to a shopkeeper and getting some free stuff to go and deal with the goblins we then went to a shop that sells weapons and armour. After that, we returned to the Goblin cave to deal with the goblin problem. We spent ages trying to deal with some wolves. The reason being we tried not to kill them and instead free them, freeing them would have been easy, but we needed to make sure they wouldn't attack us. With that, we managed to get them friendly with rations and then we went into the cave to murder some goblins.

As we got deeper into the cave we were spotted by a goblin, they were shot with an arrow, but survived, ran off and decided to unleash a trap which hit both me and the barbarian the goblin returned and was hit by another arrow, again didn't die and set off the same treap taking out the barbarian. I decided when getting back to where I was to rush as fast as I could to a safe place which meant I was not hit by the trap being re-triggered. The issue is the traps kind of split the group a bit, we had the rogue, ranger and myself in one place, the barbarian outside the cave and the cleric on their own further in.

Anyway, got further into the cave, and the goblin who set off the traps got his face smashed in by the Cleric. but with the traps being set off more goblins came to see what the commotion was all about, between me, the rouge and the ranger we took out another 2 goblins. I rushed forward to try to catch up with the cleric, the barbarian did the same and did manage to catch up to the cleric. It meant the cleric and barbarian were in a room together fighting some goblins. The Rogue and Ranger had spotted a mess hall with goblins in, they wanted to make a noise to get them out of there and then flank them, but the plan failed and only some left the mess hall, meaning if they did rush the goblins from behind other would be behind them, and now they are in a pickle. I managed to get to the cleric and barbarian, they killed 2 goblin and when I got to them there was a third which I shot through the face with a crossbow bolt.

With that, a Bugbearr came out from a room in front of us and that's where we ended as we'd been going for over 4 hours. Next session we have a bugbear, with a pet wolf to deal with and the other goblins that were disturbed. Should be fun.

Session 3 update.

We continued where we left off. Against the Bugbear Klarg and his pet wolf Fang. It was a pretty interesting fight. I managed to hit him with Dissonant Whispers, but he succeeded the saving throwing meaning he took half the damage, I then got a bit of distance from him as I was too close and I can't take a hit He started fighting with the Barbarian of the group and they traded a few blows, while the Fang was dealt with by the ranger. I managed to get another hit in on Klarg with a Mind Sliver after missing with my Chaos Bolt. The Cleric who was also in the room had joined in the fray at this time and healed the Barbarian and was also trying to take out Klarg. The killing blow was actually dealt by the Cleric, as I said they initially healed the Barbarian after which they attempted to bash Klarg with a mighty whack from their mace, unfortunately, the mace did not faze him, and the next attack by the Cleric was Inflict Wounds, again Klarg was unaffected, but the Cleric persevered and hit them with a Word of Radiance finishing Klarg off.

With Klarg dead there were still Goblins left in the other direction, we headed that way and took out 2 more goblins on the way to the mess hall, they were killed by the Barbarian and Ranger. The ranger then sneaked up to the mess hall and could see in a little bit. He could see a goblin wearing some chain armour and could hear them speaking to themselves about a dirty human and why have the others not returned. The ranger and I were in contact via Telepathic Speech, he said he would lay a trap for the Goblin and we should make some noise for him to rush out and get caught in the trap.

This was my first time really getting into the RP side of things. I explained to the group I could use Thaumaturgy to make a noise, and someone suggested I try to trick him. I then bellowed out with Thaumaturgy beckoning the Goblin to some to use and that I was a Demi-God of Goblins and would give him the power to defeat the bastard Bugbear. With a very high-performance check, he came rushing along, and wham he was caught in the trap. There I asked a question or 2 about if there was anyone left, if he killed the human and where was the dwarf before telling him the last test was coming and if he survives the arrow in his arse he will gain great power, I then asked the rogue to kill him, they obliged and thwap the goblin died with an arrow to the arse.

We went into the mess hall and helped the human who was, in fact, the person who was with the dwarf who hired us for the caravan. He was healed by the Cleric and myself and the Cleric moved back to Klarg's room, while the Barbarian was checking the goblin corpses and the rogue and ranger stayed with the human and inspected the mess hall for anything else.

While in Klarg's room, a note was found by the Cleric but the writing was in Orcish, while they searched the room I checked the fire for dwarf bits and then cut open the wolf for dwarf bits. It appears the dwarf may have escaped. We had no idea. Anyway, after the Cleric said to me about the letter I rushed off to get the Barbarian who is half-orc, he came rushing back with me to look at the letter. The letter had his father's name on it and he said he'd explain later, and then clammed up. The rest of the group came along to Klarg's room and we looked a little more at the items in the room, it was the inventory for another shop, so we got out of there with the goods.

We left the go back to Phandelver where we returned the goods we gathered back to their rightful owner, and then the group split slightly, my and the Rogue went to speak to Elmar at the goods store and the rest of the group went along to the inn to have some ale. The rogue and I got to the general goods store but it was closed, I then said the last one back buys the drinks and we started racing, now, this was really funny at the time, the rogue with his decent athletics rolled gooseberry fool, a nat 1 in fact. while I rolled a mighty 2, though, with my -2 modifier I technically rolled a 0. The rogue starting to race off fell flat on his face and I seeing this just lost all will to engage with the race I started and we both awkwardly went to the inn.

This is where we finished for the night. The Barbarian got a few pitchers to drink, the human we rescued bought us a few rounds of ale, and after a brief chat, then we all headed to bed.

I'll be honest, this was a really good session, I felt a little put on the spot with the initial doing the Booming voice lay, not by any way there, more myself for doing it, but it went well and I enjoyed it.

We're all level 2 now, we levelled after killing Klarg and Fang. 2 people in the group are nearing level 3 and the rest of us are about halfway there. Excited for the next session, but that'll be in 3 weeks as people aren't available for Memorial Day.

We finished Lost Mines of Phandelver a few months ago

It's excellent reading how you decided to deal with things


We have 3 campaigns going, 2 main ones and then a little side one for the kids.

Finiarél wrote:We finished Lost Mines of Phandelver a few months ago

It's excellent reading how you decided to deal with things


We have 3 campaigns going, 2 main ones and then a little side one for the kids.

That's ace. I did buy the starter kit or whatever the Lost Mines is in, but not played it, I thought I could get the kids involved, but, nope.

I'd love to have another campaign on the go that is the opposite week to the current one as 2 weeks is too long a gap for me

Finiarél wrote:We finished Lost Mines of Phandelver a few months ago

It's excellent reading how you decided to deal with things


We have 3 campaigns going, 2 main ones and then a little side one for the kids.

This is one of the things about D&D I love so much.
It can be played by anyone and be family friendly or a blood filled murder hobo's delight.
You can also play with nothing but pen and paper or moneyball it and have all the minis and terain money can buy.

All it requires is a DM with a little imagination and ability to tell a story.
Even the premade adventures are fun and can be spiced up if you need a little bit more.

I haven't updated my campaign ongoings for a while.

I'm level 3 and we're on session 6.

We were in Phadalin and we ended up getting accosted by a group of bandits, we killed them and had a giant spider eat the corpses, we then broke into a house where more redbrand bandits slept, and killed those as well. this happened a session 4 maybe, and in session 5 and 6 we went around the town actually getting more info on the bandits and then we were tasked to go find a banshee before dealing with the rest of the bandits. Well, we were worried about the town so formed a town guard from the people in the town and found people in the town who were willing to join it. They are now going to defend the town while we travel to get the object we want/need. Obviously, the newly created town guard isn't going to be much cop, but there's an Orc and an old adventurer in the town who are going to help train them and help if anything happens. We left the town and are heading out to another area where Orcs and a banshee are. Next session is on Saturday.


I wish we could get a group here together. I'd love to play with you strawberry floaters.

I'm tempted to buy the DM stuff on roll20 and attempt DMing myself if I can get a few peeps interested. Or maybe try pathfinder or something? I dunno. Anyone interested?

You should give it a go! Nothing to lose.

Follow your heart, but I'd stick to 5e if I were DMing for the first time. Pathfinder can be a bit more complicated, in terms of rules.