Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A bunch of my friends from college have never done any pen and paper RPGs before, so I was going to host a short intro campaign for them (hopefully 3-5 sessions).

So basically I don't want to bog down their first game learning the rules, rolling up some characters, and creating interesting back-stories. So I will start this game handing each of them a blank character sheet, and we start playing right away.

They start as a group of young boys hanging around in a tavern late one winter night to join in on the gossip and see if they can nick some mead while they're at it. As they are just settling down, another man enters the tavern. An older man, with this wispy hair. A stranger to that town, in purple robes that were probably once very costly, but now ragged and covered in dirt. Conversation quiets briefly as eyes wander to him, but people quickly return to their merriment. The tavern being full, the man looks for a table to join, but settles on sitting next to the fire with the boys. He asks the boys how much the ale is, and then gives the one boy enough coin to get rounds for both himself and the boys. When they return with the ale, he introduces himself as so-and-so, a previous court troubadour - and now a storyteller by necessity. Being in a good mood, he offers to give them another round of ale if they will but listen to a story he has to tell them.

As he tells his story they fall deeper and deeper into sleep, from the affects of both the ale and the warm fire on a cold winter night. The players will wake up, not knowing who they are, not knowing if their bodies are their own, not knowing anything. If the players are observant, they will realize that they are actually in the story that the old man was telling, although their characters would be completely oblivious to this fact. As the players go through the game, their skills and attributes will be revealed to them, and perhaps even the story of their life if they get far enough. (Thus eliminating their hassle of creating compelling and balanced characters, as well as adding an interesting element to the game).

I have everything but the most important part, what story was the troubadour telling, and why were the players sucked into it?

The reason its so hard is because I want this game to be fairly simple, but not boorish. Something that a new group could handle, but not something that is not simple.

The guys doing this RPG are mostly very charismatic people, one of them is clever and 2 of them are devious. I'm pretty sure that all of them would appreciate a plot shrouded in intrigue and mystery, with some hack-and-slash thrown in.

Ideas?

Make the characters in the dream play D&D.



You can always adapt Dragons Lair, as it is a pretty straightforward dungeon crawl combining traps, monsters, magic items, and rescuing a maiden. Might want to replace the Dragon at the end with something a bit more manageable for that level, of course.

The old man is actually an Ancient Dragon...
The kids are there to play the roles of the heroes that save the day!!
The kids go through a series of simple tests to determine who wants/can do what....
Use simple mechanics at first.. introduce ability checks as part of the tests... long jump, balance beams, lengths of vines to climb, riddles to solve, maybe even a simple counter balance trap or two...a test of faith..that kind of thing.

Keep a tally of each players success and failures to get an idea of what they want to play as a character by the enthusiasm the players show for the different tests.

Then after the session is over, make the characters for them .. make them like 5th level..so they have some hit points to play with.

The dragon by the way is looking for candidates to "take up the mantle as heroes of the rebellion!!"

What is this rebellion you speak of??? thats up to you!!!

Since this old man used to work in the court, you could make the story about a group of new applicants to court who are sent out to test their skills/because they were causing trouble/etc (could be revealed as you get to know the kind of characters they RP - ie if one is always wanting to smash stuff they were kicked out because he was fighting, if one is very holy holy, he could have "volunteered" the group to go out and do the quest when he heard about it, etc...).

Would solve a few things - the group having not RP'd together before therefore probably having no shared history as a fighting group IC and also letting you really move the goalposts of the story based on how they play.

The story itself could be a simple case of "stuff happening in small town - go sort it out" which could evolve into hunting down an evil cult, possibly also bring out some undead if one or more players seems to want to go that way and you think they can handle it, or perhaps just bring in a few generic monsters that the cult has brought in under their command to unleash on the town.

Combines plenty of scope for PC/NPC interaction and combat, depending on how they want to play.