My ascension to DM, and how it happened

Right, now the juicy stuff begins. You're all acquainted with the living-ish legend Sedruid and his joyous backstory. By this point I'd been playing D&D for about a year, solely as Sedruid and solely as a player. That was all about to change...

Let me set the scene for you; it's May of 2020, the UK is in full lockdown due to COVID-19 sweeping it's way across the world. If you're not an essential worker (police, NHS, supermarket etc) you're either on furlough or working from home. I was the latter. I had started a new job in January as a Video Editing Assistant at a financial security company. With not being able to go out too much I doubled down on my interests. Did you hear there's a pandemic?

Several hours of Jedi: Fallen Order, Spider-Man PS4, Skyrim and Witcher 3 later, I turned my attention to the musings that Netflix could offer me. They had recently uploaded all of the series 'Community' on to their platform. I'd heard of it for a few years but never partook because I found the pilot a bit shit. But all I have at the moment is time so let's crack on with this.

To say I enjoyed it is an understatement. If you've watched it then you'll presumably understand, if you haven't, get on it! Every season had different cultural offerings; paintball war? Check. Societal split due to an app? Check. Stop motion episode? Check. But also terrible. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons? Check.

The last peaked my interest. It had been a little while since I'd played, but always wanted to DM. I did what anyone does and I jumped on my friends WhatsApp group and asked the time old question, the first question, the question you've been running from all your life; 'I am thinking of hosting a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, anyone wanna join?'. I can't say I expected a lot of reception. I was wrong. Very wrong. Instantly, most of the group jumped on board. I was taken aback. So I made a WhatsApp group and added everyone in. They were teeming with anticipation.

'I'd better buy a Starter Set' , I thought. No turning back now. So I went on Amazon and found the standard set which came with The Lost Mine of Phandelver which I'd played before so I was familiar. I then did some research into the best ways to set up D&D characters and one by one I got my entire group set up with their characters. I didn't guide them on race or class as I wanted them to live out any pseudo Skyrim fantasies they might have. So, we got a big group of adventurers (hi Alex, Alina, Aadam, George, Jack, Joe, Tom, Dan and John). We have a starter set. Next stop, easy, a discord server and a date. Server created. Date set, 26th May. Now I need advice. I headed to my old DM, Joe. He gave advice on what bots to download (Dice Maiden for the diceless and rythm for the immersion) and then some kind words and encouragement. Okay I am ready.

It's Tuesday the 26th of May. 7pm rolls around and I log onto discord, join the voice server and wait. People join fairly quickly and I encourage them to have their cameras on. Prior to this I'd written a little opening piece to introduce the characters in a way I saw fit. At that time we all lived in/around/were from a town called Bexleyheath, in the London Borough of Bexley. The group met in a tavern in the small town of Bexleyspire. Essentially they all caused a series of disasters in line with their characters which introduced them to each other. Then the story began.

I decided to make this one fairly easy, people needed to understand the game and throwing them in to a confusing fast paced fight wouldn't have been the one. The group were escorting a wagon to the town of Phandalin when they came across a blockage. A narrow path, dwarfed by rocky hills either side, was completely blocked by sharp foliage. An investigation was necessary. The next thing you know, Goblins appeared on either side of the canyon they were standing in, bows trained on all of them. When you have a group of mostly new players, all at Level 1, fighting something as simple as a Goblin can take time. And it did. They were getting used to it, so was I to be fair. A lot of them didn't have ranged weapons. So they either threw battleaxes (??) or attempted to climb the hill to have a better footing to fight the Goblins. Dan backflipped away, Aadam managed to climb the hill and every Goblin was eventually slain. The bodies were raided and they discovered an old pathway in the nearby wall of trees which had been used extensively, was it worth a look? You bet your sweet ass it was.

And that was that, my first session as a DM had come to a close. 10 Goblins had been slain, characters had been understood and Aadam had climbed up. This was beginning to become fun, and many evil plots were stirring in the background...