Hey Guys!

To fill this community with some content, I´ve started a loose journal of my campaign here.
The group has one person extremely familiar with DnD 5 and the rest very new to TTRPG in general, their biggest experience being a 7 game Monster of the Week fewshot i ran them through before this. We play about 70-80% of the time on FVTT/Discord, some rare (special) occasions at my place.
Since we are all adult, I am lentient in campaign attendance. The group consists of 7 theoretical players, but typical sessions are anywhere from 3-5. I think I wouldnt want to play with many more in a session :) that said, for session 2 we had 5 in attendance.

Review of the cast

Garret Blackwood is a smuggler and roughian. He captained the fleet the players were on. OUT undecided, Human Fighter.

Limor Nightfall (absent today) used to be an angel, but descended onto the earth in human form to fight an evil cult. They are a necromancer that specializes in freeing undead spirits and guiding them to their god. Aasimar Necro

Lumis Elderdale is an elite spy from the imperial court. They have lost the inherent connection all elves share, instead feeling it with all other beings except the elves. Woodelf Monk

Martho Rolaun is a split personality (two players play this character). This seems caused by childhood trauma. They devoted themselves to the good gods and are now a Human Cleric.

Rook Finchley is a private investigator and blessed with the knowledge that they will win every dice game, although they lack the knowledge of why. They are oathbound to Zazel. Human Ranger

Zazel used to be a demon, but his invasion was beat back by the crusader. They were somehow bound to a human body and are now in hiding from the crusader. They wish to free the rest of their incursion force from a similar fate and exact revenge on the crusader. They also pulled some demon trick to make Rook lose a dice game, earning their oath of servitude. Human Rogue

Presession

This is short this time. We talked about whether the journal worked for them (it didn’t, there was no entry) but agreed that the infrastructure for it was ok, they had just forgotten.
I had also forgotten to give out incremental advance last time so we started with that.
I also opened a meme channel on our campaign discord, and that was a good move. They post memes about stuff in the game back and forth and it helps group cohesion I think.

Session

Since in the last feedback round (we use stars and wishes for feedback, will expand at the end) several players wished for more RP time and to discover their chars more, I did a soft retcon: I had ended last session on a cliffhanger for the next fight, but we decided that we would actually start play with an exploration RP scene.
The party is shipwrecked, their ship having been tossed around by a giant water elemental. Their ship had broken in half, and they are on an island with a mountain in the middle. They had scaled that mountain last session.

Now at the peak, they found the second half of their ship! They talked between themselves and explored the wreckage for a while, finding clues pointing towards other crew surviving and having left this spot. One player sneakily and carefully scouted the wreckage, some of it precariously hanging over an edge. They noticed a harpy and a weird goblin bat hybrid (already the second weird goblin creature on this island, smells like sideplot) having taken refuge here. A fight broke out, without surprise on either side because the player wanted to sneak on their whole group instead of just attacking, and some roll during that procedure turned out not so good.

We had an excellent fight against some fliers. The harpy and goblin bat I had scaled down to level 2 each, and I repurposed some stirges as vampiric bats. Players were 5 level 1. Two of the players, who are a couple, take turns playing the cleric character, so this session was the first for the person playing that day. The rest of them were very notably more proficient in playing their characters than during last sessions first encounter, so it went rather quick despite some technical difficulties. We just barely reached ED3. Everyone did some cool stuff. The ranger missed a bunch, but due to a reroll blessing by the cleric got in the last hit of the encounter.

After that we had another extended scene of them organizing a shelter out of wreckage and foliage, finding some wild mushrooms and herbs, exploring the half-ship over the abyss and salvaging some rum and a precious item, and talking between themselves. I was happy to see how their characters meshed and talked between each other!
The precious item was some resounding weapons, book of loot p. 21. A pair of a fine elven scimitar and excellently crafted dwarven mace, both contraband and part of the shipment intended for the Prince of Shadows. For now, they are in the fighters capable hands.

In the morning, we had a scene of them gaining overview over the island they are stranded on. There are 5 points of Interest.

1. A pitch black temple on a sister island. This is where the main plot about the evil chained god progresses. There are some old floats visible on the shores of this island, but it is too far to swim to., soplayers will have to build sth too or use magic or figure it out somehow.

2. To the north, a seemingly abandoned village with only young saplings around it, instead of the dense foliage abundant elsewhere. It seems people who lived there cut down the trees around their village, built floats and went to the temple. There will probably be 1 hermit NPC here, maybe an encounter too. Certainly more plot and hints!

3. To the east, extremely dense and colourful foliage. Patches of blueish, purple or pinkish trees. My idea for this is some kind of fey glade, maybe this can also be where the spliced goblins come from. Maybe an encounter with some plant monsters and of course plot info about the island itself and its purpose.

4. To the south, a rough and rocky shore, filed with wreckage from an old fleet. A player used an icon point to make it a crusader fleet! My idea is that it has some ghost sailors, magic items, maybe info on the personal quests and relations with the crusader a few chars have and of course, plot info (there is a pattern here, I know…it’s a little quantum ogres, but you gotta get to the plot sometime :D)

5. To the west, a patch of forest with absolutely no movement. No deer, no birds, no sound. I want to have the lair of a very strong monster here – maybe a basilisk, or owlbear or sth. Maybe a cub too. This is also where it turned out in play that the survivors had went.
   Players decided to track the survivors, have them maybe build a boat while they checkout the temple. Some also expressed interest in going north or south respectively, so I think in the end we will visit most of the places.

I ended the session running an extended challenge (https://blog.artemisgames.co.uk/archives/875) which is a mix of skill challenge and montage designed to take resources like a combat would, instead of combat. The challenge was getting down from the mountain in one piece and finding the survivors. On the way, a mortally wounded third mate was encountered, along some giant scorpions. Chasms were vaulted, trees climbed, paths found, players fell down ravines etc pp.
We ended the session with them entering the small cave they now know some survivors hide in, and will pick up next session with (finally) the first NPC encounter!

After session

We did a round of stars and wishes (https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/blog/stars-and-wishes) for feedback, which I like. It turned out the ranger player is not super happy with their character, we will see how we can accommodate them! They are very urban focused and in combat do great damage, but are rather simple.
After the session, the players remained in the call over an hour extra, talking among themselves and planning a social get together – excellent! I am very confident with this group. We will have a great campaign

As always, I´d be very happy to read your comments, tips and tricks.
Im especially keen on further advice on how to use the icon relationships better!

Hey Guys!
To fill this community with some content, I´ve started a loose journal of my campaign here.
The group has one person extremely familiar with DnD 5 and the rest very new to TTRPG in general, their biggest experience being a 7 game Monster of the Week fewshot i ran them through before this. We play about 70-80% of the time on FVTT/Discord, some rare (special) occasions at my place.
Since we are all adult, I am lentient in campaign attendance. The group consists of 7 theoretical players, but typical sessions are anywhere from 3-5. I think I wouldnt want to play with many more in a session :) that said, for session 1 now we had 6 in attendance.

Pre Session

Between sessions, one player who was missing at s0 approached me to make a character. He originally wanted to make a character that I would have seen as problematic: a fallen angel, kicked out for dabbling in necromancy, then apprentice of the lich King until being kicked out by them too, due to being too powerful.
I managed to turn that way down in the process of making their char with them. They are now an ex-angel, willingly in a mortal shell to walk the world and combat the cult, my main bad guys. They are still a necromancer, but now ask lost souls for one last bout of assistance before sending them off to a good afterlife at their gods side. So the necromancer turned out to be an all around good guy support character with a motivation to follow my main quest baked in- neat, not at all what I expected when I heard fallen angel necromancer! I guess the lesson to myself is, even if I cringe a little at the character concept initially (as I did with both the angel and demon character in my group now) just ride with it:

1. player engagement is king. If its their first character, expect some (to you) cringey stuff and let them have it. It will turn out fine!
2. The game mechanics will knock any character that feels themselves infallible and perfect down a peg or two.
3. You will find story beats in this, 100%

We started the session with some to-do stuff: the cleric had a spell too much, the fighter had chosen a talent for two-weapon fighting but ticked that they had a shield, not all of them had images and tokens yet, one was also missing a name. Lastly I asked them how they would like to keep a journal: in foundry, google docs or via discord. They chose discord, I opened a channel and we got to start playing about half an hour after meeting up.

Actual game session start

I was, of course, anxious by that point. Could I still pull off my strong start to the whole entire campaign after dallying for half an hour?
What I ran with was 5 minutes of exposition of how they had all been on a ship together, part of a small fleet that was secretly smuggling and belonged to the fighter char. For the rest, it was just passage on a safe journey to Shadow Port, a city of extremely questionable repute where some of them hailed from. Since they chose Prince of Shadows as their group patron, who dwells there, I will want them to go there and receive quests.

They were on this short and typically safe passage, observing the night sky and the fiery rune that is visible there since a few weeks. The strong start was, then, how out of nowhere, the rune expanded as if someone kept writing it, adding some lines. This somehow (we will find out the connection later in the story hehe) prompted a gigantic water elemental to rise from the ocean, howl at the rune and the astral ring it is etched into (think rings of Saturn) and rage out – in the middle of their fleet. Their ship got thrown and skipped as a stone on a lake, and they passed out with a cracking sound. Exposition end.

They then woke up close to shore, in the wreckage of the back of their ship, in a small reef closeby to an island they didn’t recognize immeadiately. I then made them aware of a group of goblin-sharks (thanks Midgard bestiary!) and smaller obedient mook sharks picking their stuff and closing in on them – first fight time!

The fight took quite a while, reaching ED 4. I was not necessarily shooting for that level of involvedness on the first fight, it made this part take up a big part of session time, but oh well 😊
The players had a load of fun. Necro and Cleric were, in the beginning, not fighting very effectively, choosing melee attacks over their spells, but I quickly reiterated how stats influence different parts of their interaction with the world and reminded them of how their characters go, and they quickly were more engaged and having fun. It was good I had reviewed their characters and mechanics so that I could help them! Some of the less experienced players chose more complicated classes, but it will be fine in a few sessions, and again, player engagement is king.

I did run the Necros Deathknell wrong here and allow them to finish off individual mooks. The monk got to pull off a lot of cool stuff with their forms- my favourite is “Monkey taps the shoulder” for now. The cleric was smiting my caster goblin-sharks at range, the ranger got some good snipes in, the rogue did an extremely cool maneuver surfing on a passing tortoise and the fighter player was having loads of fun protecting the rest of their precious cargo. They asked to have two flintlock pistols along with their two cutlasses – I said yes, but am not sure what the appropriate damage dice would be and if they can dual wield. They now have d8 and dual wielding bonus. I think that’s ok because all their talents etc are for melee, but will keep my eye on it.
For environment, I had the half-rest of ship they were fighting on slide down off the sandbank and towards the deeper sea at Round 3 or 4. I telegraphed this one round before via sounds and they all jumped off, except one of the necros summons.

After the fight, I described their environment extensively, including an ominous temple on a sister-island some 4km out, conveniently not reachable by swimming. Then I let them short rest (this took up some time again, explaining the mechanic). Then they talked for a while, noticed how necro and rogue (the demon and angel chars) looked extremely similar, got their bearings, looked for some of their stuff (like the rangers familiar) and described their characters. I would have liked to extend the scene, but the fight and pre session talk took up a lot of time in our session.

We finished the session with a 15 minute montage of them scaling the center mountain of the island, while procuring some food and water. They are now on top of the mountain, in front of the other half of their ship (maybe swept here by the giant elemental-wave?).

Next session start will be them exploring that, and maybe fighting some harpies or bats that took up roost there during the day.
Prepwise, I prepped waaay too much and, if the rate is similar, have the next 2-3 sessions prepped basically – great job, past me!

As always happy to hear your comments or tips for next game