Last Sunday I played my first D&D game as a player and absolutely loved it. I’ve wanted to play a game since I first started DMing for my daughters a few months ago but finding a game when you live in Northern Ireland is not that easy.
After trying to get accepted to several games on Reddit a DM asked me to contact him. We chatted for a while then he invited me to join a new game he was starting. It appears finding players who’s personality fits your game is not that easy either. Long story short we’ve now started a new game in his fantasy land world with another 4 players based around the UK and Europe. We’re playing on Roll20 which is a virtual tabletop/battlemap and using discord to communicate. There’s been a bit of a learning curve but after character creation and the first session, the whole thing looks like it’s going to work really well.
Character Creation on Roll20
Our first session was a session zero so essentially not playing but finding out about the world and creating our characters. The DM asked us to roll characters together which was a great experience. You roll 4d6 x 5 times in order removing the lowest number on each roll. In English what that means is you roll 4 x 6 sided die. Whatever number is lowest you remove then you add the other numbers together. This leaves you with a number which is 18 or below, then you use this number as your strength score. Your character in DND has 5 scores which make up their character they are strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. These characteristics strongly influence the classes you can play.
By rolling them in order the dice decide what your character will be good at which is really cool. I’ve ended up being a bard. Then you build out a character backstory, link it to the other players stories, then build out some layers and then you’re ready to get stuck in for your first real session.
The character creation took a lot longer than I thought. Once you understand Roll20 it’s not that hard but when you are both fairly new to Roll20 and D&D there’s a lot of looking things up. But the group were really helpful and it taught me a lot about being able to run a game online when I’m ready.
The first session
The first session was a lot of fun. You’re still getting to know the DM, the other player and their characters. You’re also getting to know the world so there’s a lot of information going in. But we ended up in a mini 4 room dungeon fairly fast which was a great start as we got to learn by doing which is the best way. By the end of the first session, we had completed the task at hand and were on our way to the next step on our journey. It was set up almost like an episode in a bigger TV series which was really cool. The role-playing is a little awkward to start with but once you throw yourself in its much easier and everyone enjoys the game more when we’re all doing the same thing.
We played for about 4 hours which went ridiculously fast. I couldn’t believe it was midnight when we finished the session but everyone had a ball. I’m really looking forward to the next session and then potentially running a game online myself.