People do those five things in different orders, but I tend to like them in the order listed above. Some people pick class before race, but for me, the race plays a more important part in who your character is. Everything I want to lay out should enhance both your roll playing and your role playing.

Race

So why is race the first thing? Why not class? I think that race will give you a better idea of your character for both roll and role play. And elf might not be as likely to be a barbarian but if they are, you now have a story surrounding that. But for first time players, race can be easier to pick than a class. Picking that you want to be an elf then leads you in certain directions for your class choices. Granted, picking human leaves everything open.

So from the roll play side, like I said, picking your race helps you nail down your class. And I think that the class for a lot of players is a little bit more flexible and most races can play most classes well. Going back to the elf example, you can pick to be an elf and be a fighter, a ranger, a rogue, a druid, or a wizard very easily. And I think that a number of the other classes work as well. Picking your race will give you a narrower target for classes, but a wider target than picking a class and then going back to race.

From the role play side, you now get to create a character with more of the flavor that you might want. When you look at the classes, you have a variety open to you still, both fighters and casters. The race give you a better picture for role playing than class does. How do you want them to interact, do you want a haughty or nature focused character, an elf, a gruff drinking and brawling character, why not a dwarf. The race helps set more of that personality than anything else would.

Class

Class helps focus the character. This really covers both roll and role play again as you can use the class to focus more of the story. But you also get a lot of mechanics out of this. You are going to get your first skills, if you pick a spell casting class your first spells, and you really get to see where you are going to be rolling the dice. Take this time to when looking at the class to find those skills that are going to be your characters standard. What attack is your signature, so when it comes time to combat you are ready to go.

But there is also role play elements to think about. When you pick your class you start to add in other questions. If you are a wizard, what wizarding school did you go to. What connections do you still maintain there? If you are a fighter, where did you learn to fight? Who is your mentor or trainer, and are they still a friend or a foe? Were you in the military or town guard or why did you pick up the skills?

Stats

Now we move into an area that seems more like it is roll playing and role playing. But in reality, it is both. The roll playing part is obvious. You roll your dice and you use the stats to modify them. So with your race and class, you now know what stats you need to be good at. If you are a wizard, intelligence, a fighter, strength, that sort of thing.

But putting down your stats also gives you a ton of opportunity to create more role playing as well. It is tempting to try and be at least okay at everything. Using a standard array for numbers, it is going to give you one thing you are below average at. And that is where you get your role playing. What does it look like to be worse than average at intelligence or to be missing subtly because of lacking common sense from wisdom? What is it like to be a character who isn’t strong? There is a lot of story that starts to develop from your weaknesses, as well as your strengths.

Background

This is the last part of what you need to be thinking about from the book. The background helps flesh out your characters backstory and who you were at some point in time in your life before you decided to go adventuring. This one is much more focused on the role playing side of things, versus the roll playing. In fact, you are unlikely to get any dice improvements out of this beside getting some more skills and maybe some tools to help improve your modifiers.

This is about picking a background and getting four areas in this. You get personality traits, bonds, ideals, and flaws. Check out them more in details in my Building a D&D Character 201 article. But these add in story elements naturally to a character by giving them connections and little ticks and more. These are not hard and fast things your character will always adhere to, but they help create touch points when you aren’t sure how you character would react. It also gives them some skills to fall back on.

Backstory

We are finally to backstory. This one is the easiest to talk about. This one is only role playing focused. This is what helps your dungeon master know how to bring your character into the story. It is also the only part not in the book. However, I put it last because if you don’t know what backstory you want, the other things will help. In fact, they can do most of the writing for you.

If you are an elf, you will see things more one way. If you are an elf fighter, it focused more. An elf fighter who is great with a bow because you have high dexterity but bad charisma, more focused. An elf fighter with low charisma and a military background, you now have a lot of your backstory written for you. You just need to flesh out the details.

Now You Have Your Character!

If you go through those steps, you’ll have a character that is ready to be played. Work with your Dungeon Master through this whole process, because you want your character to fit the story being told. As a dungeon master, I recommend a session 0, a chance to sit around, talk about your story idea and setting and then build characters together. That will create a group more cohesive characters for the players and the world being played in.

What type of character do you want to play next?

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Where we left the crew, they were at Moody’s Bar for some of the duels which Bokken had entered himself into. Barrai and Thrain had beat up a guy at the bar and left only to sneak back in to watch Bokken fight as they didn’t really remember that they were there looking to find where the tunnel that went under Strawgoh came out in Moody’s Bar.

Bokken is facing off against a half-orc who has an okay record in the ring, but isn’t one of top duelists. Bokken comes out of the gate swinging, rushing to cover the ground and pulling out his odachi and getting a hit on the half-orc. The orc swings back hard with his mace connecting, but Bokken continues to press the advantage until he knocks the half-orc down. They get back up again and wallop Bokken pretty well. But Bokken gets through their guard and brings them to the ground where they stay. The healers come out and heal Bokken some as well as take care of healing the half-orc.

After the fight Barrai starts searching for the trapdoor but finds nothing. Bokken, taking a more direct approach asks an older fighter, Jermaine the Wind Storm, if he knows of any tunnel or trapdoor. He says that he knows pretty often students use one that is back by the latrines, but he doesn’t know where it is himself. Bokken passes off that information to Thrain, like Barrai is still searching, but when Thrain goes to look he finds nothing.

They head back to the school and spend more time doing school work, and trying to figure out what is going on with the final. After there has been a little work done to the school, Castillia and Addrus are moved into the barracks which houses Barrai, Bokken, Thrain and Parrag since theirs had been destroyed. They spend some time chatting with them, and Bokken tips Castillia off, since he’s paying he to keep an eye on Narius, about Addrus being one of the spies. Barrai and Thrain spend some time talking with Addrus and find out that there are actually maps of the tower and that the floors, after the proving area, don’t actually change. So if you have the right connections, have enough money, or are in the right guild, you can actually know quite well what you’re going to find on the first nine floors.

Bokken learning about these maps decides to hang out with some of the fighters from the duels, and joins into a group that is hanging out with Sanphire. He asks them what they know about the third floor of the tower, and gets back some general information. One of the fighters tells him that there’s a lot of fire on that floor. Another says that while there are some monsters, there aren’t as many to fight on that floor, and Sanphire lets him know that this floor of the tower is less about fighting and more about stealth and using your head, which isn’t ideal for Bokken who is not the most stealthy of characters. At that point the other duelists start to swap stories about the tower and pester Sanphire as to when he is going to go back into the tower and try and get past floor 25.

All of the characters spend some time shopping with Barrai buying a number of items, a light crossbow and bolts, chalk, ball bearings, a flask of oil, lock and 10′ of chain, a steel mirror, and after some searching, manacles. Thrain also basically gets himself some jars with oil in them and creates Molotov cocktails. Thrain also spends some time trying to figure out the best ways to not start on fire, and Bokken grabs a jug from the kitchen at the school and fills it with water because he is partially wood.

Also during this time they spend some more time trying to figure out who the other spy might be. Thrain decides to go through Addrus’s stuff now that they are in the same barracks and finds one interesting thing, a chain with five keys on it. This seems out of the ordinary but doesn’t help them get any further into figuring out who might be the other spy. Barrai does spend some time tracing the keys, and then with money he gets from his sponsor he get copies of the keys, from those tracings made up.

Bokken decides that following Addrus around might be useful as well in figuring out who he is working with. He is able to follow him around, he seems him meet with an older man and three students from other schools in the area at an open market, he seems him go into a bank and then into a backroom at the bank and then get a few drinks and watch a few duels. Bokken reports back to Barrai and Thrain and they are a bit surprised that Addrus is going to the bank because it’s a nice bank and unless you have a lot of money they wouldn’t probably accept your business and it would be fairly odd for a student to have that much money. They decide that it’s worth staking out the two locations, the market and the bank to see what activity that they can see from other students.

Barrai watches the bank and sees a few other students go in there, most notably Narius, Edzial (female dwarf barbarian whom hasn’t done much to this point), and Parrag. At the market, Bokken wanders around for a few days and he sees Castillia and Cordon shopping. Narius shopping and then losing his temper when he can’t get stuff for the price he wants. And Dorin actually visits a fairly shady looking stall with occult items. They decide that Narius makes sense to bank at the fancy bank since he comes from a noble family, but Edzial and Parrag that’s a bit odd.

Thrain first follows Edzial and sees her do some shopping picking up trinkets of glass that are of birds, clouds, the sun, and other stuff that you don’t see in an dwarven town. Then she takes them to a courier and gets them loaded into a package. He convinces the courier after Edzial leaves that she had put the wrong address on it and that he was sent to take it to her to get it updated. He takes the package back to the barracks and snoops through it, it’s addressed to Dasthian Corath in the Marthack District, Edfifle, Coldwater Mountains. Thrain knows that Edfifle is a Dwarven town in the Coldwater Mountains, and he finds a love letter form Edzial to Dasthian who is her fiancé. Thrain feels a bit sheepish about that, and returns the package to be sent. He follows Parrag next, Parrag just goes to a bar and has a chat with the bar tender, goes to the bank, and then goes and watches the duels placing a small bet which he loses.

Thrain thinks that’s suspicious and so with Bokken blocking the door, they sit down Parrag and Addrus one evening and accuse Parrag of being the other spy. He tells them that he’s not, but when pushed on it, some of his story about why he banks at such a fancy bank doesn’t make a ton of sense. They don’t get too far with it until Bokken decides to go through Parrag’s stuff and finds a key chain with four keys on it and comparing the keys to the copies that they had made from Addrus’s keys, there are similarities, like they might be for the same sort of location or the same location if that’s why Parrag and Addrus were going to the bank, for a spying reason. Parrag tells another unconvincing reason for going to the bank and it’s when Barrai offers a deal, where they will help keep his cover for him if he admits it that he eventually does. They do some things, like put a lock on their barrack door so that they all have to carry around a key chain, and still keep on acting like they are trying to figure out if Narius or Dorin are spies.

They, and Castillia, go and talk to Assendial and tell her how they figured out who Parrag was and how the small bet after going to the fancy bank first aroused their suspicions. Thrain also asks about the dragon attack and the items that they were shown. Assendial lets it slip, since she thinks they deserve to know a little bit and because they’ve promised Parrag a level of discretion that they can probably be discrete about this, that the scarab item was found underneath the barracks that were destroyed. It seems like whatever the enchantment was caused the dragon to be enraged and want to destroy it, so it attacked the barracks over and over again with acid until the acid ate down to where the scarab was and getting hit, it broke the enchantment on it. They ask for more information, but she sends them off to prepare for their final.

Behind the DM’s screen:

As always, I did limited planning, I basically had planned out the fight, and that was about it. I was curious to see what they would spend time on, and it was actually a really fun session.

With the bank, I knew once I gave Addrus keys that there was going to be something at the bank that the spies needed, most likely a drop or pick-up location for assignments and missions. I also made it so that it made sense for Narius, kid of a noble, to bank there, but it didn’t make sense for the other three, or so it seemed because they didn’t know much about Edzial, hence why I picked her. I tried not to make it too obvious that it was Parrag, and had been planned for it to be him from the beginning, but they did a good job of narrowing things down with their actions.

I also wanted to see what they’d do to prepare for tower test, and they did some fun things with that.

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Things pick up immediately with Assendial calling up everyone from the cellar. Dorin tries to sneak into that group, but Barrai spots him coming out of some bushes that he had been looking in last time and had been hiding in during the dragon attack. Barrai calls that to everyones attention and Dorin tries to convince everyone that he was trying to be helpful and out of the way, not just cowering in the corner, but Barrai calls him out on that.

Meanwhile, Addruss comes out of the basement where Bokken knew he hadn’t been before. They call out Addruss on that and he says that he had come in after that fact since he had been outside and with a second year student when the attack had occurred, he hadn’t realized he was supposed to go to the cellar until later. Barrai calls him out on that, but he says that Barrai was probably unconscious when he came in so he wouldn’t have known.

Assendial, having enough off all of this, sent the rest of the students to the mess hall. Parrag and Cordin help Castillia to the nurses station to get her leg treated. Once everyone else has left, she gets the truth from Dorin that he’d been looking for threatening messages in the bush like he’d found before and that he’d just gotten scared. Addruss says that he came in a side entrance which is why Barrai, Bokken, and Thrain wouldn’t have noticed him. Assendial doesn’t look fully convinced, but sends them all into the mess hall.

About half an hour later, Tormin comes in and informs the students that they are going to be sleeping in there for the next few nights just for their protection in case something comes to attack again. Barrai has a lot of questions about what they should and shouldn’t do if something attacks and what the biggest things to attack are from the tower and if they are as targeted as this one was. Tormin says that most attacks haven’t been targeted and that this was an adult dragon and he’s seen ancient dragons come out of the tower before, and if the players see any sort of dragon, to run to the cellar. Barrai asks a few more clarifying questions and they all decide to call it a night.

Once the lights are out, Barrai and Thrain sneak out through the kitchen and Bokken, after losing his plate armor exoskeleton sneaks poorly after them. They notice that there is something up in the watch tower on the campus that is glinting every thirty seconds and Barrai uses minor illusion to create an image of Addruss sneaking. The illusion is spotted and after a few seconds Tormin comes to the door and tells Addruss to get back inside and then mutters under his breath, which Bokken hears, that they wonder why they had recruited an idiot like Addruss. They decide not to sneak to the trapdoor that night.

So next morning, Bokken, to get sunlight to recharge, goes to the top of the tower and meets a flashy half-elf who is smoking a cigarette. They chat for a little bit and Bokken finds out that he is one of two adventurers hired by the school to keep watch just in case something else happens. They chat some about dueling and Bokken is able to get some lessons or sparring with the half-elf. He finds out from Barrai, later, that the half elf is likely Sanphire whom Barrain and Thrain had seen fight in the duels.

They go about their school day until they can get a hold of Parrag and have him join them in talking with Assendial. They tell her that they know that Addruss is one of the spies and that they had found that out from Tormin. Assendial is pissed off at Tormin for letting it slip, but generally keeps a pretty good poker face. Parrag, after the initial shock is pretty pleased that the group has brought him in on that for the credit. They ask him if he’s a spy and he tells them, unshockingly, that he is not.

Barrai interested when the watch shifts sees that there is a female dragonborn up in the tower and goes up to find out who it is. It is Esmelda from the duels whom he’s seen before. He has a brief conversation, and he gets the information that he needs for Bokken that Sanphire will be taking over the watch at midnight.

They wait until midnight and put together a plan where Bokken has grabbed some dried meats and beer during dinner and he’s going to take those out to Sanphire to chat more and learn some fighting skills. Meanwhile, Barrai and Thrain will sneak to the trapdoor and go and explore down there. The party decided to split themselves, not me. It works well, and Bokken goes out and is sent a message by Sanphire to hurry up to the watch tower before any of the teachers spot him. He goes up there and they start to talk about his past and about how he wants to learn skills with throwing knives. He shows off some good dexterity to Sanphire and he suggests that they throw at a target to practice their skills, the target happens to be the barely propped open trapdoor.

During this time, Thrain and Barrai sneak over to the trapdoor and get it open. Barrai stick a piton in to hold the trapdoor just barely open and they climb down the ladder in pitch dark. At the bottom Barrai lights a candle and they can see that there are three passages, one leading under the messhall, one leading away from the tower and one leading towards it. They start out heading down the one leading to the mess hall to see if they can find an easier access when there is a thud and an echo in the tunnel from something hitting the trapdoor.

Behind the DM’s Screen:

Life has been busy so I didn’t have much time to plan. This is a reason that I like to end my sessions on a cliffhanger or in the middle of a scene. It means that even if I don’t have the full session planned out that I can then have a few minutes as we wrap up what was previously going on.

Also, I think I rolled dice twice or maybe three times in the session, it wasn’t much. This was heavier role play and playing off of the role play from what happened in the previous session.

All role play sessions or heavier role play sessions are interesting because it gives the characters chances to interact more and develop what is going on and gives me a chance to see who they care to interact with and what they are thinking. Doing this allows you, as the DM, to figure out which characters they think are important and give them a bigger role in the story being told.

So what can you take away to add into your own game?

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Upon coming there, they were informed as part of a test, that there were spies in their midst that they could get extra credit if they could figure out who they were by the end of the two years there. So, Barrai, Bokken, and Thrain immediately set out to figure that out. They determined that Dorin was a suspect and Barrai used his new found friendship with Domon, another Tiefling, to send Domon to accuse Dorin, which, they aren’t sure was successful.

In their barracks they had gotten matched up with Dorin, a Gnome Rogue who fancied himself to be the leader of their barracks no matter what Barrai, Bokken, and Thrain told him. During the time that our three main characters were talking to the other students, Dorin had gone through their stuff, but they didn’t find that out until after an introductory meal where Bokken considered breaking into a teachers office to see if there was more information on the students and who might be the spy. In the end, he didn’t break in, but had Castillia, an elf whom they trust and trusts them, start spying on Narius, a rich halfling.

They returned to their barracks to find out that there things had been gone through, but Dorin not being the brightest, hadn’t trashed his own things so they quickly caught on and accused him. Thrain, as a revenge when through Dorin’s stuff, including a couple of daggers and books that were written in a language that none of them understood, possibly because none of them speak gnomish. Needless to say, Dorin was pissed off, and Barrai decided to try and restrain him when he went to bed, but that didn’t work that well, so Bokken, instead took up just watching him sleep, since Bokken, as a warforged sleeps with his eyes open, however, Bokken wasn’t a great watch and Dorin snuck out.

Dorin went to one of the teachers and the next morning the Thrain, Barrai, and Bokken were confronted about how they had been treating Dorin. They gave a half hearted apology and Dorin said he wanted to transfer to another group. Tormin, the teacher, agreed, and the group was happy enough and really wanted to get Narius into their barracks to keep a closer eye on him, so Tormin presented them with a challenge. They could pick who they wanted if they, minus Dorin, could take on another barracks and beat them, otherwise, he would decide. They went to an arena and the teachers, keeping an eye on things, and other students watching the spectacle watched as Thrain, Barrai, and Bokken took on Castillia, Narius, Adris – a human, and Cordon – a dragonborn.

Barrai gets to act first and gives Bokken some inspiration and then starts to mess with Castillia, who, swiftly puts a stop to that with a wicked arrow shot dropping Barrai. He gets floated off by the teachers. Thrain then returns the favor to Castillia and the sides are down to two, Thrain and Bokken, against three. The fighting slows down after the first volley as Cordon, with her dislike for Thrain, immediately moves in to target him. They trade attacks with Cordon even using her lightning dragons breath on Thrain, but his stead volley of eldritch blasts eventually knock her down to the ground. Bokken, meanwhile, has gone and faced off against Adris, the fighter. They trade blow after blow dealing little damage to each other with Narius, who had claimed to be a great shot, struggling to hit Bokken. His frustration mounting and Thrain joining the fight, Bokken eventually falls to the two on one attack and Thrain is left to face both Narius and Adris. But, with a bolt form his crossbow, Narius is able to drop Thrain, and the Barrai, Bokken, and Thrain await their fate as to whom will join their barracks. Tormin gives them Parrag, an elf whom they had actually not talked to before. Castillia, after the fight assumes that they had wanted her to join their barracks.

After that, the bell rings, and having missed breakfast, they need to go and start their first day of classes with courses on Court Etiquette, Second Story Work, Poisons and Antidotes, Demonology as their core courses, but then they could specialize in a few different areas. Bokken chose Assassination and Thievery, Thrain – Curses and Necromancy, and Barrai decided on Conjuring/Summoning and Curses. Bokken had a few other people going into what he was looking at with the likes of Dorin and Castillia and more. But Thrain was the only student to pick Curses for their main focus, and Barrai the only one to pick Conjuring/Summoning.

That’s where the session ended with them finding out that they have two tests in the Tower that will determine most of their grades for the school year, at which point, thematically, they’ll level up.

So behind the DM’s screen a little bit.

This was a fairly scripted session. I knew that most likely the players would quickly figure out that Dorin was the one who had gone through their stuff and probably rough him up or threaten him a little bit. I also had thought maybe it would come to light that they had accused him through Domon of being a spy, but that didn’t happen.

The fight that they were going to have, depending on which barracks they picked it was either going to be hard or deadly, they got hard, which was still deadly at such a low level for them, mainly because of the numbers game.

I gave Cordon her dragons breath feature to use. I probably could have just used a spell to simulate that for her, but thematically it worked and did slightly less damage than the spell.

The fight was fairly standard in that it had an end goal because they were facing off and try to knock down and out their opponents, but the story beat to it was that they were deciding who got to be in their group. And the decision that was it was Parrag was a die roll, there were 8 options so 8 sided die, and it landed on him.

Dorin slipping away while someone was just watching him, that was the one part I wasn’t sure what would happen, I knew that he’d try, though. So I gave him disadvantage on his roll for stealth and he rolled a 15 and a 20, plus two since he’s sneaky, and that was considerably better than Bokken’s 10.

What has been hitting your table? What story are you a part of?

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Quick reminder of our characters:
Thrain the Hill Dwarf who became a Hexblade Warlock
Bokken the War Forged who was granted the ability to become a great Fighter (Samurai)
Barrai the Tiefling who now gets to use their musical and story telling skills as a Bard (sub-class to be determined)

At this point in time, they are all level 1.

Upon leaving the tower they were given what basically was an exit interview to gather what their powers they had been granted. A runner took all of their skills around to the various schools, but the characters (players) were given a free choice of what school they wanted to pick as a group.

There were eight different schools:
School of Spying and Espionage
School of War and Combat
School of Charm and Seduction
School of Wisdom
School of Business and Money
School of Order and Government
School of Nature and Raw Emotion
School of Dark Arts and Assassination

They went with the last one, though they did debate for a little while around some other the other ones, The School of War and Combat made sense and they were also interested in Nature and Raw Emotion. At that booth they spoke to Tormin, a recruiter and one of the teachers at the School of Dark Arts and Assassination and had to explain why they wanted to go and what skills they had that would be useful for the Strawhog – Ye Old School of Darkness and Magic. Tormin told them that they’d be in a barracks, bunk house, type set-up with another person who had gone through the trial of the Tower at the same time as them, a Gnome named Dorin.

Then I gave them two weeks of time to do whatever they wanted, Barrai practiced the harpsichord, Bokken picked up work at a warehouse and made a bunch of money moving boxes non-stop for that time. Thrain went to brush on his fighting and sparring at a local combat focused gym.

Showing up at the school, Strawgoh, they met Dorin. He was a pompous little gnome who clearly had a chip on his shoulder and was trying to be important. Barrai made friends with him by bribing him with a gold piece, but Bokken really didn’t acknowledge him, and Thrain constantly referred to him as a halfling, as a goof, though the best part was when the player, not the character, forgot that it wasn’t a halfling. They dropped their stuff off in the barracks and then joined the other nine students for their introduction to the school.

Head Mistress Assandial told them about the school, about how hard it was going to be, about how they still might die, even in the school and if anyone wanted to leave now they could. But everyone stuck it out. She then told them what became the focus of the rest of the session, there were two spies in their midst, two of the people had been recruited prior to the test of the Tower and already had some training. Those two would get extra credit if they could stay hidden for the year. But if someone correctly figured out who they were, they could get those extra credit points. But wrong guesses, there was a consequence for that.

Bokken immediately began investigating and looked for the people who stood out the most, the richest, the prettiest, whatever caught his eye. He spotted a halfling who looked rich and spoke to Narius. While Narius was a bit of a pompous jerk, Bokken didn’t get the feeling that Narius was likely a spy at that time and decided to offer to work for him if he had a job. Which, Narius said he would consider it once they graduate and he started his own assassin’s guild.

They talked to a bunch of other of their classmates, Domon a Tiefling Warlock who wasn’t that smart. Thrain interjected himself into a conversation between Cordin a Dragonborn Wizard and Sadran the Aasimar Wizard who Bokken had noticed earlier. Sadran was nice enough, but Cordin treated Thrain fairly rudely. They talked to Addruss a Human Fighter who had gone through the Trial of the Tower with Castilla a Wood Elf Rogue.

Barrai used his ability to cast the message spell to get information from Domon that he’d gone through the tower trial with the Aasimar, Sadran, and an Elf whom the players haven’t talked to yet.

At one point, Dorin, appointing himself, or trying to appoint himself, leader of the barracks decided to confront the party and see if they’d just tell them that they were spies. However, the party turned it on him pointing out that he was the only to survive the group of four, which seemed fairly suspicious to them.

Finally, the party talked to Edzial, a Dwarf whom they don’t know what class she has yet. However, she says that she went through the trial with Domon, Sadran, and the elf that they didn’t talk to. And the characters call her out on that. She gives a reason that they is investigating to see how much they know, but the players note that she, like Dorin, is the only one who didn’t have party survive the trial of the tower.

The players, since they decided that they could trust Castilla, spoke with her about their suspicions as to who might be the spies, but they really didn’t have all that much proof and they didn’t want a wrong accusation on their record. Barrai, since he is also a Tiefling and Domon had made a big deal out of that earlier, leveraged that friendship to convince Domon, not the brightest character, that he should go and accuse Dorin for them.

And that’s where I ended the session with Domon off to do that.

The DM Notes portion, if you don’t want to see behind the screen don’t read further.

There were only a handful of rolls in this session, once they started talking to people, they rolled for several insight checks but that was about it. I’ve run sessions like this before with little rolling but it wasn’t planned.

So about the planning itself, I had all 8 schools determined and I had the cast of characters, teachers and students whom they’d meet at whatever school they went to. Would they have always been paired with Dorin, no, Barrai asked early who they were going to be paired with, and I had him roll a D10 to determine which out of 11 students they’d be paired with, yes the math doesn’t work.

Also, for preparing for something like this, don’t come up with a new batch of teachers and students for each school, my four teachers (two of them met so far), and nine students were going to have the same names no matter what. Now, the fact that Dorin is a Gnome Rogue and Castilla is a Wood Elf Rogue, those things could have changed.

I was also potentially prepared for combat in this scenario. Only because they went to the school of Dark Arts and Assassination did they end up being a test and students. It was going to be a school who was going to send in some spies that the players would have had to have fought and figured out what they were after instead. But it worked well this way for the school.

Strawgoh is Hogwarts backwards and because of that Bokken now has a commanding officer, mentor named Rettop Yrrah as well, Harry Potter backwards.

This session went really well and I had a lot of fun with it, even though it wasn’t dice chucking combat or an epic set piece of massive story, it was a bunch of different smaller social interactions, some funny, some normal that the players had. Even with the funny ones probably being the most entertaining, the players have already gravitated and made Castilla someone who is going to be important later because they trust her, you never know who they will pick.

Feel free to steal ideas from this for your own game and let me know, what would you have picked for a school in the players shoes? Do you think they are right and Dorin is a spy (I should say, spies were set before they got Dorin as a bunk mate)?

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But first, let’s meet the characters, we have Barrai a Tiefling, Thrain a Hill Dwarf, and Bokken a War Forged. You’ll notice that there are no classes tied to them, that’s because I decided, we’re starting at level 0. They are all just average characters to slightly above average with 10’s across the board for their stats, plus racial bonuses, that’s because of the Tower of the Gods.

So, what is a Tower of The Gods? It was a magical tower that appeared about 200 years ago. Bigger than a city block and going up into the clouds, no one knows how tall it is. Monsters spilled out of it devastating the lands around it. The nations put up a quick defense after the initial shock and devastation. But the number of monsters seemed unlimited, eventually, as morale was getting low, a group of soldiers at one of the Towers took the fight to the Tower itself and found an entrance. When they came out, they had stemmed some of the flow of the monsters but also came out stronger with new abilities (aka D&D Classes). Once the news spread of this more people went into all the Towers and while most perished, those who came out came out stronger and had slowed the flow of the monsters.

Now, the monsters still show up, but there are guards at every tower to deal with the small monster incursions. But, of course, a tower that is powerful enough to give people new skills, that’s something that every nation wants and they want several of them if they can. So the nations fought over the tower until a shaky truce was made. Now, there are schools that not only train you to be ready for the Towers but instruct you in the new skills you have when you leave. It’s a honor to be sent into the Towers and not an honor that every can afford or could survive.

Thrain, Bokken, and Barrai are three of a new group of trainees going into the Towers who have come to them through different paths.

This is where the game basically kicked off, with those three waiting their turn to go into the tower to see if they’d survive and come out the other side with new found skills. When they went in, they were given a riddle and a chance to equip themselves, grabbing a few weapons, they ventured further into the magical tower which took them to many different areas.

There was a jungle room where the floor was poisonous and they had to swing from branch to branch on vines towards one of the exits, but if they fell, it might mean their death.

There was a room with a moat, all they had to do was get across it and they’d be able to go through one of two doors. But there was a sea serpent swimming in the moat, and it wasn’t something they could jump across. Using some quick thinking, they grabbed vines from the other room and were able, using their fourth test taker, a jacked halfling named Steve (the players named him not me), and the War Forged tossed Steve up to the ceiling where he was able to grab onto a hook and tie a vine to it. They had some troubles swinging across, but eventually did, but Steve notices there was a trapdoor, a third door, at the bottom of the moat.

That led them to a room with a bunch of floating tiles. They quickly discerned that they could move them around and use them to get to another door way. Unfortunately, having a jacked halfling and a dwarf trying to get past each other on a 3×3 foot tile didn’t work and Steve fell to his death.

This led them into a room that was basically pitch black. When they stepped into the room, shadow creatures started attacking them. They made a break for it but both Bokken and Barrai were knocked down by the creatures. Thrain had to drag them into the next room where they were revived.

In this room, it was something pretty different. There was just an old lady drinking tea and she offered them some tea. Bokken, rolling low, sniffed the tea, thought it smelled good, so he drank some of it as did the other two. This opened their eyes and they saw that the old lady was a monster in disguise, but the monster didn’t make a move to attack them. Finding out that the next room was the last room, they bid the lady/monster farewell and continued on their way.

In the final room they were given 6 different goblets that they could drink from. Once the drank from them it allowed them to see an exit from the tower. However, the old lady had told them that which one they drank from could make a difference on how they walked out of the tower. They each picked and drank and walked out of the doors that appeared to them as:

Thrain the Hill Dwarf Warlock
Barrai the Tiefling Bard
Bokken the War Forged Fighter

And that’s where the first session ended. We’ll probably be adding a fourth player at some point in time, so we’ll have to see who is added to the party.

What do you think of the game thus far?

Just some DM notes on this. I set it up so that the doors were different colors, I didn’t delve into it too deeply if it was tied to the elements or what, but that’s what the players took away from it.

All the rooms were generally planned, but how many they had to go through and what order they went through them in was kind of up to how the game went. I just picked two rooms, one for each door and then repeated the process for each room after that. They were moving through them pretty fast, so we ended going through more than I’d thought so we could go for a little, plus I needed a way to kill of Steve.

So, that lends itself to another question, why Steve? Again, I didn’t name him, but I always wanted someone with them in the tower for at least a little bit of it. That would allow me to show them bits of the tower if they missed it. But it would also give me someone who I could kill, show off some of the deadliness of the tower, and also that if you die in the tower, you’ll be forgotten in the real world.

What will come next for them? Probably getting them recruited into a school and let them play around with their powers.

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Almost forgot to share this, it was a rush, but I go through nine different level 1 characters for Dungeons and Dragons. I was hoping that I could knock them out fast, but it took a little bit, but I got them done. And I demonstrated how you can use D&D Beyond to create your characters as well.

These will be a characters that I’m going to be using in a one shot. So I created a good variety of characters. I had a question asked that I missed last night, but basically, I didn’t go with two personality traits because I wanted to keep the characters more generic for a one shot.

The beer last night was from Indeed Brewery. Mexican Honey Light Lager. It’s a good beer and a nice light one. Not the best winter beer, but I wasn’t feeling a big and heavy beer last night.

Bottoms up!

We all know about dwarves from such classics as Snow White and more so Lord of the Rings. Really, Lord of the Rings is the basis for so much of Dungeons and Dragons, because it is the basis for so much fantasy in general. Dungeons and Dragons has built upon it, to really build out the dwarven structure of society that you don’t really fully see in Lord of the Rings.

Dwarves tend to live in a pretty rigidly structured society, and that’s one of the defining features. I think that Wizards of the Coast recommend that dwarves are lawful in their alignment. This comes because dwarves are generally part of a large family group and so you have certain family expectations to live up to.

Dwarves also live for a longer than human life span. It’s not as long as elves, but dwarves still live for several hundred years. Instead of taking that time out to go adventuring, they are going to be working on honing their skills to create their masterpiece, whether that is some ale, sword, piece of armor, etc., that work is how you’re going to get recognized as a dwarf in your society.

Even with that, dwarven society is rigid. So while you can probably work your way up the societal ranks by creating a masterpiece, the amount of time you have to work on that is going to be low if you’re in a lower rung of a family. However, being in a family is very important, you could also call it a clan, though they are generally set-up as a family group from ages ago. If you are clanless, you are an outcast who other dwarves really look down upon. You’d be hoping that someone will invite you into their clan so that you can have some standing in your life.

And I think that’s one of they key points, dwarves really like order in their lives. A dwarven adventurer is going to be seen as a bit of an outcast from normal dwarven society and might have troubles coming home again, if they just up and left their clan. However, clans will most certainly send out dwarves to adventure to help maintain stability, to spread the word of dwarven deities, and to look for some great treasure that would be the centerpiece for the clans standing among the other clans.

Mechanically, dwarves are slower than other races such as humans and elves, but their make up for that by having a bonus to constitution. You really get the double down on constitution with some of the dwarven sub races which get more HP per level on average than other races playing a similar class. Dwarves also have advantage against being poisoned, and even if they do end up being poisoned, they are poisoned less. You also gain some proficiency with various tools and weapons to start, so if you are playing a class that wouldn’t get access to some weapons, you now are going to have access to them.

But let’s talk about some Dwarven backstories…

My clan is the black sheep of clans. We generally deserve our reputation. Our clan is known for employing shady methods of gathering trinkets. If something goes missing in your clan, it might show up in our clan a generation later, I’m not saying how it got there, but it might happen. I, with my particular set of skills, got asked not just by my clan, but by the clans as a whole to head out into the world. The older generation said it felt like there was some changes on the wind that might be an issue for us. They were possibly also tired of me taking their stuff.
Class: Rogue
Alignment: Lawful Evil/Lawful Neutral
Background: Criminal

I miss my little blacksmithing shop. It was a quaint little place that gave me peace, but I can’t ever see it again. I was kicked out of my clan for a misunderstanding. I had started to build up a name for myself and go up in the clan, which was getting on the nerves of some of the family members who were closer to the main family. I was set-up on day when one of the nobles staged it so that I thought I saw an assault in progress. I snapped and used my smithing hammer and killed a dwarf before they could stop me. The whole issue came out, and while the noble was punished, for my crimes I was exiled. Now I’m searching for a treasure or something that will get me back into my old clan so I can go back to my black smith shop.
Alignment: Lawful Neutral/Lawful Good
Class: Barbarian
Background: Guild Artisan

All praise Moradin, the god of Dwarves who heats our forges and makes our armor and weapons strong. Brothers and Sisters who have fallen away, I am coming for you. My clan has sent me out from our sanctuary against the ravages of the underdark in a time of need when the Drow and Duegar attack. I am coming when I can to bring you back to your faith and stop whatever or whomever is driving you away from your faith. That was the letter that I sent out two years ago, I’ve been on the road every since. I know that just showing up as a lowly member of Moradin’s church will not grant me an audience with someone so fully corrupted. I seek a way to show Moradin’s power to them.
Alignment: Lawful Good
Class: Paladin/Cleric
Background: Acolyte

Dwarves are an interesting race to think about and give good role playing opportunities if you lean into some of their traits. I didn’t talk about the rivalry/dislike between dwarves and elves, because I did in the elf article last week.

Have you played a dwarf in a D&D game? How have you built your dwarf up?

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Theater of the Mind

With Theater of the Mind, the combat takes place in the peoples heads. If Jane’s Dwarf is charging the Vampire on the far side of the room, there’s nothing physical to represent you getting closer together, you are all just picturing what is looks like in your heads. The chandelier and balcony that might be in the room are also these concepts floating around. And if you need there to be two chandeliers instead of one, you can change that up on the fly.

That’s one of the big advantages of theater of the mind, if the player wants there to be a giant pile of straw beneath the edge of the loft in the barn, there totally can be. If the bad guys are in a tough spot, can they cut a rope and ride up to the ceiling as a chandelier drops to the ground?  You better believe they can do that. Your combat on a mountain can have everything that you want it to have, even surfing down an avalanche fighting the bad guys as you go until the avalanche peters out.

The downside to this is always, the question, are they in range? I really want to cast fireball, are the bad guys in range, how about for magic missile, how about for acid spray? Or someone having a different idea of what it looks like on the battlefield than you do. It’s something that as players and DM’s you have to be flexible and ready to describe what you see the battle looking like so that everyone can get on the same page.

Mini Combat/Tactical Combat

This type of combat takes place on a battle grid/battle map with minis of the monsters and the players so that they know where they are. Basically everything in the room is drawn out on the board. When you are planning out your attacks, you know where everyone is and can discuss strategy more so than you would in theater of the mind because the map is laid out in front of you.

The main advantage to this is that everyone knows precisely where everything is and how close they are to everyone. If they want to cast fireball, the player can see how many monsters they can catch in the blast. Everything in the room is also there so you can describe your actions more clearly if you aren’t great at remembering the details of what the place looked like or aren’t great at adding things on the fly, so it can help spark creativity that way.

The downside is that there are clearly drawn limits on the board. The hayloft that is partly over the barn is hard to have because you can’t see what’s under the hayloft. If there’s only one chandelier on the map, there’s one chandelier on the map. So nothing can be abstracted and if someone wants to try to do something, say run across a table and take a flying dive at a bad guy, it might take them a couple of rounds because that’s what the grids say, so you lose some of the cool moments of the DM being able to say, “You do that, give me a dexterity check to see how it goes.”

Which is Better?

So, I said that either of them is fine at the start of the article, and after writing out my thoughts, I agree with myself still. Either of them is fine, it depends on the group and it depends on the situation. I personally primarily run theater of the mind because I don’t have to come up with anything extra. If there needs to be a combat because someone slapped the king, there’s no rushing to draw a battle map, the combat can just start. However, at the end of Season One of Dungeons and Flagons, we used a battle map and tactical combat. So I can make it work both ways. If I were to suggest something, I’d suggest doing primarily theater of the mind with a little tactical combat thrown in.

The reason I say that is because that makes your big boss battles feel more special. You have this visual aspect that makes that battle feel unique and special as the story winds down. But it also takes a lot of work off of the DM’s plate by having most of it being theater of the mind. When you are drawing a map or building terrain and buying minis it can take a lot of time, a lot of money, or both. Or, in my case, it can take a fair amount of artistic skill that I don’t have (yet).

But it really does come down to your group, maybe your group would have too much trouble wrapping their head around distances in combat if it’s all theater of the mind. I’ve been trying, as I play to set it up better where things are either in range or they aren’t, not to break it down into how many feet someone is away, because that means a whole lot more mental math for me, and I do enough math in real life as it is. Abstracting those things out can bug some players though, so be careful while doing that and know your group.

Do you have a preferred way of combat in D&D? Do you prefer it to be tactical or theater of the mind?

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Everything it gives you really works the best that way. Even your skills such as being able to use a disguise kit really push you towards being a rogue. I think that’s one of the weaknesses of some of these backgrounds, they align too closely with a particular class, and in the case of urchin, I think it’s probably the most glaringly obvious example of a background like that. I personally think the best feature to this background is that you get general knowledge on city planning and layouts. That sounds weird that it is one of the cooler things, but being able to walk into a town, and within a few minutes be able to generally guess the layout, that’s fun.

So what are some non-rogue classes that you can turn into an interesting backstory with this background?

When I was young, I ran away from home to the big city to become part of the circus. It turns out that the circus doesn’t just allow every runaway into their troupe without you having some skill first. I had spent the little money that I’d taken from my parents to get to the city, so I had to start panhandling to try and get money. I must not have been all that good at it because a monastery took pity on me and let me stay at their place. They offered to train me and give me a roof over my head, as long as I continued to earn my way. It was doing some odd jobs around the monastery, and if I wanted more money, I had to continue to panhandle. Soon I’d found my own spot to sleep out in the town and while I stayed working with the monastery for training, I spent my days with the other kids who were earning money on the streets. One day a man came and offered a lot of the kids money to do some work for him. I didn’t really need the extra money and I could always go back to the monastery, so I turned him down. But a lot of kids went with him. He came back a week later and offered the deal again. Then after doing that and getting fewer and fewer takers I saw one of his guards taking kids by force. I realized that the kids he had been taking weren’t coming back either.Now I want to know what has happened to my friends and stop this man.

Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Monk

I was an unwanted child. My parents already had three kids, and apparently I was an accident. I understand why they didn’t want another child, now, thinking back on it. They weren’t able to feed us all, and they had to send out my oldest sibling to work before she was done with her education. I felt like I wasn’t wanted, which I wasn’t, and even though my parents and siblings said that they loved me, I didn’t feel it. I ran away from home, just into the city we were in. I was hopeful that I’d be able to find someone who wanted me. I wasn’t able to do that, so I just hung out and begged for money or scraps of food. It was a horrible lifestyle, but I refused to go back to my family if they really didn’t want me. I heard from other urchins that they had tried to find me for a little bit, but given up assuming I’d been kidnapped. Eventually I felt bad, but instead of going back, I started going to where my oldest sister was a kitchen help. It was a school that taught magic. So I’d sit along the side of the building, listening to my sister work in the kitchen. But then I heard something more interesting. It was a classroom that had it’s windows open near the kitchen. Soon I was sitting under that window learning about the theories of wizardry. I was so curious that I bought a little notebook and started writing down what they were teaching. It took me forever practicing in back alleys, but eventually I was able to cast a spell. One day I realized that my sister hadn’t come to the kitchen for a few days, so I went off to look for my family, just to make sure they were all right. There had been a fire in the poor district of town and their house had burned down, but according to some people they hadn’t been killed. I decided it was time to return home, and I realized how much I missed seeing my sister every day so now I’m looking through the town to find where they might have gone.

Alignment: Neutral Neutral/Chaotic Neutral/Lawful Neutral
Class: Wizard

The under city is a place that no respectable person goes. Thankfully for everyone, I’m not a respectable person. My horns show that I’ve been demon marked and therefore I am bad. I wasn’t really given a choice in that, people always told me that I was a monster. Things down in the under city are even terrible for me. I don’t get enough food, and I have to scavenge what I can. There was a plague that’s broken out down here before, and I barely escaped with my life. In fact, when I got sick, everyone left me for dead, because the plague always killed. A kind doctor came to me and said that if I were willing to help him in the future, he’d be able to help me. I agreed because I didn’t want to die. I didn’t realize what I had done though. A few months later he came asking me to burn down a temple. Now, I’m not very religious, but burning down a temple seemed like a bad idea.  I told him no, but he insisted and my plague came back to me, and I felt my body withering away again. I promised again to help him and burned down the temple that night. Now I need to find a more permanent solution to my illness because I don’t want to do more like that.

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Class: Warlock
Race: Tiefling

The worst thing that can ever happen to a dwarf is that they are made casteless. It doesn’t happen often because you have to do something very wrong. That’s what I did, something very wrong. I was part of a raiding party out in the  mines fighting off a band of Drow who were coming up from the underdark. Things were going poorly for us, but as a dwarf you never leave a comrade behind. I was scared though, so I took off running and left left the four remaining members of my troop fighting. They were able to kill off enough drow to drive them back, but when they came back and found me hiding, my warrior caste was removed and I was sent down into the slums as a casteless. I want to return to where I was before, but you have to do something heroic and I don’t think I can do that on my own.

Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Fighter
Race: Dwarf

There are some ideas for playing an urchin who wasn’t a rogue. What have you done for an urchin backstory before? Have you played a character where them being an urchin was an important part of it?

This also wraps up the D&D backgrounds, I hope that you’ve enjoyed them.

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