First time DM with first time players - A recap

Hi All

felt like sharing how my game session today went as a first time DM with players who are all new to DnD. Maybe as inspiration to other fresh DMs, or for some veterans to give feedback and advice, and just for y'all's entertainment.

So my players are not really fantasy people, I'm not sure any of them have watched all Lord of the Rings movies, or played any RPG. Which is good for me, as I can shamelessly steal existing stories and NPC names.

I wanted to keep my first session with them easy and fun, so they can see if they like the game without going into too much detail and prep work. They never played DnD or knew how it works, so I wanted to focus on fun and basic mechanics.

The hook was simple. They arrive in a village and learn that the Mayor's daughter was kidnapped by goblins and he asks them to save her.

As expected, my players immediately tried to derail my planned story. They started asking why the goblins would kidnap the daughter of the mayor of a simple farming village. Ok, I was prepared for that. They want to ransom her for an amulett. Players immediately ask if the amulett is special to the goblins. The mayor doesn't want to tell them. They roll perception DC and discover he's hiding something.

They try to persuade him, and, for the second ability check in the game, roll a nat 20. Fuck my DM life, but I guess that's a rite of passage. So the mayor confesses that his ancestor was a hero who thwarted the last goblin king's attempt to use the Amulett to bring a goblin god demon into the world and lead the goblins to world domination.

Players immediately decide that the amulett would be better on their hands and demand it. Together with the Paladin of the group, I convince them to maybe leave that and save the girl first. But they demand double the reward. Mayor tells then that his wife, a hunter, knows where the goblins are but got injured.

Players visit the wife, discuss how much she is injured and if they should use one of their healing magic slots, which is solved by the cleric using a medicine check to discover she's not in critical condition and will heal well on her own.

But she tells them where she was ambushed by goblins, and that goblins use poison and traps.

At least the whole section really helped in teaching them how ability checks work, so I wasn't too mad at that.

Players head out and run into two goblins, the goblin ambush failed because (due to the wife's hint) had an advantage on perception throws.

Players defeat both goblins and knock them unconscious to interrogate them (the party's rogue speaks goblin). They ask some very good questions, such as how many goblins there are and what traps they have (very proud of them for remembering the wife's mention of traps).

I horrifically bungled up the combat btw. For example I completely forgot about the effects weapons can do upon hit, like vex, slow etc. Ah well, every DM starts somewhere.

Goblin prisoner tells the party where their cave base is, how many goblins (three plus a goblin boss) there are, and that the cave is protected by a tripwire poison arrow trap.

Party discusses how to proceed. Rogue tries to trick the goblins into leaving the cave. Ideas how to solve the tripwire trap range from sending the goblin prisoner first, over just stepping over to it, to just cutting it.

Rogue then wants to infiltrate the cave and immediately forgets about the trap. Saved by a good perception DC. Party decides to just cut the tripwire while everyone is in cover.

Then they try to lure the goblins out with the Rogue impersonating one of the goblin prisoners. But the player slips up and says there are enemies here attacking the goblin King. Mind that the King is not here, I only told them about a goblin boss.

So that alerts the goblins and they come out with the kidnapped girl as a hostage. Party tries to negotiate, fail. Cleric tries to charm the goblin boss and fails. Ranger tries to snipe the boss and fails. Bard wants to use thunderwave but decides against it after I remind her that the girl is in the AoE.

A big boss fight erupts, which results in both the ranger and the bard going down, but only after the bard rolled a critical attack and oneshotted one of the standard goblins. The goblin boss falls. Players revive their downed companions and I decide that the last two goblins flee. Players use the cleric's command spell and one shot from the rogue to stop them and take both as prisoners.

They free the girl who is scared. Bard decides to play music to cheer her up and rolls a nat 1 on performance. Ok, the performance is so bad that the girl thinks the bard is a clown and starts laughing hysterically. It helps in calming her down, so guess whatever works, right?

The party also takes some loot, including a green glowing stone with the image of a demon face. Everyone rolls history, religion or arcana checks and they discover that these are artifacts of the last goblin king, given to trusted chieftains and commanders and depict the goblin demon that the last king tried to bring into the world. Strong hint from me that this might be dangerous and should be reported to somebody in power. Nobody actually rolled for arcana, let's hope that decision doesn't come back to bite them ...

They discuss what to do with the goblin prisoners, rogue wants to kill them. But they just decide to tie them up and the bard uses their speak with animals spell to ask a forest mouse to bite through their rope ties after some time.

They bring back the girl and collect their reward, eat in the town and take a long rest. In the morning they decide to bring up the green stone with the Lord of Neverwinter. They contemplate stealing the amulett but decide to leave it for now.

And that was the end of session 1.

All in all it was a great success. everyone had fun and I got them addicted, so they want to play again in one or two weeks (so I need to plan a new adventure session).

So my main plan worked, they learned how ability checks and combat work and they got really into the role playing aspect (they basically all play idealized cooler versions of themselves). I have a rough idea for the larger campaign (with the threat of an emerging goblin king and demon summoner), and how to tie it into the backstories of the characters.

Looking forward to my next game with them.