Nov 30 2022

This Thanksgiving weekend, I spent the holiday with the in-laws. My husband had the brilliant idea of organizing a DnD campaign to play with his siblings since a couple of them expressed interest in it. I agreed, and we got to work getting everything prepped for the game.

My husband, his siblings, and I love Dragon Quest and I happened to just finish up my first playthrough of the first game, so I decided to make a campaign based off it. I've never DM'ed a campaign before, but I've played DnD as a player and have experience in game design, so I felt comfortable enough to basically make a campaign from the ground up. I played through Dragon Quest I a second time and cross-referenced the Dragon Quest Wiki for plot points, important NPCs, and monsters that the players could face. In terms of monsters, I just took stats of monsters from the Monster Manual and applied them to Dragon Quest monsters. Speaking of which, my husband and I decided to use 3.5 Edition for this campaign since that was the edition we were most familiar with.

A few weeks before we started the campaign, my husband emailed his family a link to PDFs of DnD books we totally acquired legally for his siblings to read through so we had a good idea of what the party's composition would be like. While a couple of them did look through the Player Handbook, some of them... didn't. Hate to complain, but one of them took almost a week to figure out what class he wanted. On top of that, I think I said the phrase "Read through the Player Handbook" at least five times when we were actually in town and helped everyone make their characters. We did get everyone squared away eventually, but it was a painful few days for me and my husband. The party ended up consisting of a Dragonkin Fighter with a focus on grappling and martial arts, a pair of twin Elf Druids (and their wolf and monkey companions), a Half-Orc Beastmaster (who currently has a Slime companion and a wolf companion), a Gnome Ranger, and my husband playing a Goliath Barbarian. My husband is the oldest of nine, by the way.

Let's fast-forward to Thanksgiving Day: the day of the actual campaign. As planned, we started the game while the holiday meal was cooking. With the campaign being based off Dragon Quest I, the NPCs wouldn't take kindly to non-human races, especially not to dragons. For those who don't know, the main villain of the first Dragon Quest game is the Dragonlord and the kingdom's princess was kidnapped by a dragon. If that was the case, why did I allow a player to play a Dragonkin, you ask? Well, I didn't want to outright say no. Our Dragonkin really wanted to play as his dragon OC, and who am I to deny him that? Plus, my husband and I wanted to keep the campaign setting a surprise, so we let everyone make whatever character they wanted, and it would be my job to work with it. I even assured everyone after they created their characters that despite everyone being non-human, I'd make sure it wouldn't be a huge detriment to them in terms of the roleplay aspect.

On that note, at the beginning of the campaign, we start with the party being escorted to the king's castle by one of his soldiers. In character, he warned the party of there being a monster problem and for the party to "not scare His Majesty" when they get to the castle. Their meeting with the king goes without a hitch for the most part, and the party was let loose into the world. They ask around about the state of the kingdom, the Dragonlord, the Sphere of Light that he stole, and other such things. Now, let me just say, I knew that DMs sometimes had to fly by the seat of their pants when the party does something unexpected but holy shit I didn't expect myself to improvise a whole backstory for the Sphere of Light or make six whole recurring NPCs all within the first session.

My husband being a naturally inquisitive person despite playing a Barbarian, managed to pull the most info about the world very early on. Did I make the NPCs a little too willing to give info? Maybe. At any rate, he ran into a scholar (who I had to make up on the fly) who informed him about the legends surrounding the Dragonlord, the previous champion Erdrick, and the Sphere of Light. Speaking of the Sphere of Light, in Dragon Quest I, the only thing that was said about it was that it protected the kingdom of Alefgard from darkness. For the campaign, now there's the implication that the Sphere of Light had something more to it than that. Oops! I mean, on my end, I managed to cobble up something in my notes to make a cohesive backstory for the Sphere but still, man oh man, I was pulling stuff out of my ass for all that.

Speaking of pulling stuff out of my ass, let's talk about some of the NPCs I created during that first session. First, we've got Charles the scholar from Cantlin I mentioned before. He's become amicable to my husband's Goliath Barbarian and is quite excited to talk about his research on the history of Alefgard with him. Next, we've got Daniel, Sean, and Tommy, a trio of royal soldiers who often hang out at Tantegel's tavern when off duty. Daniel loves Slimes, and Sean more often than not has to keep him in check when he starts gushing about them. Tommy is the more temperate one of the three and had a run-in with a King Slime prior to the story. While this next NPC wasn't introduced in the first session, I meant to introduce her at the time. I made two "helper" NPCs that the party could take with them if they felt like the combat was a bit too challenging: Violet the Cleric and Taylor the Paladin. Our Dragonkin wanted to take Violet with them, but the party was hesitant at first since they already had two Druids who could be on healing duty already. After some convincing, they added Violet to the party. While she didn't heal the party too often, she still managed to get some hits on enemies with her crossbow during combat and she became our Dragonkin's unofficial escort so that NPCs would be less apprehensive around him. I like playing out their dynamic, to be honest. It's cute, and it gives a good reason for me to not play scared NPCs all the time lol. As for other notable NPC interactions, our Half-Orc's backstory was that she was raised by wolves and Slimes, so she's not knowledgeable of civilized society. A running gag for the campaign is that she offers dead rabbits to NPCs in exchange for goods and services. She also likes going into the churches to get Holy Water (or as she puts it: "sparkle water") to drink.

As for combat, it's been pretty straightforward. I had to adjust the difficulty for some enemies to compensate for a Dragonkin and Goliath in the party, but other than that, combat has been very managable. However, in our last session, my husband just leveled up, and he started off as a Fighter for its extra feats then reclassed to his intended class, Barbarian. He did warn me about this beforehand, so I gave the upcoming boss a smidge more HP than I planned before. Turns out that wasn't enough, so I bumped up its HP more. Then my husband pointed out he can attack twice on his turn. ... More HP. Speaking of unplanned combat stuff, remember that King Slime I mentioned? Yeah. In the first session, my husband's character ran into a travelling merchant who said he had an encounter with a horde of Slimes. One NPC interaction led to another, and I had to prep a King Slime encounter for sometime later in the campaign. A similar thing happened later on in the campaign when the party was in Galenholm. In the original Dragon Quest I, the only notable thing about it was that it was where the Lyre of Ire was kept. Again, one thing led to another, and now there's a Kraken off the shore of Galenholm that the party decided to fight as soon as I made mention of it. It didn't help that the sea captain NPC I made up on the spot took on a life of his own and was enthusiastic about fighting a giant squid right then and there. Another fun combat highlight during the campaign was when one Druid's monkey companion bashed a skeleton to death (undeath?) with a rock.

Despite some hiccups early on in the campaign, everyone's been having fun with the campaign. Like I said before, this is my first time DM'ing and I'm having a great time with it; improvised moments, planned moments, and all. This was my husband's siblings' first experience with DnD in general, and I'm glad I could give them a positive exposure to the game. We're halfway done with this campaign so far, and we're planning on continuing it around Christmas, so I'll probably get a Part 2 up for this when the time comes!