Intro to D&D - Deadly Dinner Party!

Creating your character

Since I'm running this with the intent of it being an accessible intro to D&D I'll be setting up appointment times for folks to choose from in the week leading up to game day so that we can verbally work through character creation. This is also to be able to have time for me to share source materials as we work on it together, just in case you don't want to commit to buying any digital or physical books yet. So all you need to do is sign up and start thinking about what kind of a character you'd like to play and we can work through the rest! Even if it's simply a vague idea like "I want to play someone like Willow from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'", we can figure that out together! However if you would like to start looking at source materials on your own, we'll be limiting options to these books: - The D&D Player's Handbook (either the 2014 or 2024 versions are okay!) - Mordenkainen Presents: "Monsters of the Multiverse" - Mythic Odysseys of Theros

Preparing for the session

We will be running the game itself on Roll20, so players will need to have an account on Roll20 (don't worry, a basic account is free!). The game page on Roll20 is also where I will be posting some basic info regarding what to expect from the game, communicating safety tools, creating a forum to ask me questions, as well as a form to sign up for a free character creation session. On that note, I'll be hosting those free character creation sessions on Google Meets, so an account where you can join those will be necessary, as well as a mic and video camera (it can even just be your phone!)

What Maddie brings to the table

I love getting to create the ambience of the game, which includes my own character voices, creating background images, providing music, and more! I also try to lean more on the Rule of Cool already, but even more so in regards to games like this where I want it to be easy to learn to play! I find that in these cases specifically it helps to still stick to the source material rules so there's something to learn off of and not have to think on the fly, but in these games I find that "Rule of Cool" to me ends up being more applied just as a cushion to remind everyone that if you accidentally break a rule or forget, you'll be okay! I find that this also helps with character creation for beginning players so that we can start with a vague idea of a character OUTSIDE the "proper" character framework for the game, and rather than try to make the character fit the rules we can make the rules fit the character.

Homebrew rules

- Things like drinking a potion, switching/grabbing weapons, etc, count as bonus actions in my games. My rule of thumb is "How long does it take?" So popping a cork off a bottle and drinking a potion, in my opinion, takes a short enough amount of time that I would consider it a bonus action. But taking that cork off the bottle and coating your dagger in poison is gonna take enough time that it counts as an action - If you are playing a character who can cast spells there tends to be some conflicting rulings out there on how casting spells and cantrips on the same turn can work. My general rule is that you MAY cast a spell and a cantrip in the same turn, as long as one of them is tagged as having a casting time of "bonus action". But you may NOT cast TWO spells in the same turn.

How Maddie creates a safe table

The Roll20 game page will have a link to a Google Form where you can individually submit your "lines and veils" to me (the form will also include a description as to what this means). I will then compile all of these into a shared Google document link for everyone to read over and acknowledge. I will also do this process for another thing called "Want/Will/Won't" lists and "Stars and Wishes" so that we can communicate specific things that you all would like to learn or experience in the game! We will also have the opportunity to discuss this in your free character creation session! X, N, & Os will be messaged, however I also allow my players to throw up "white flags" on video (a white piece of paper, for example) to communicate the need for a pause for ANY reason.