My first exposure to TTRPGs was through an old podcast, which to my surprise is still running, called Critical Hit. Take a moment and read that again, I do not mean Critical Role started in 2015. I mean an old veteran of the podcasting world that started in 2009. Critical Hit by Major Spoilers was a great launching point into the world of TTRPGs, even if by today's standards their beginnings are a bit "unpolished". Playing in D&D 4e they had their work cut out for them but their combination of veteran players and newbies and everything in between grabbed my interest well enough. I can't tell you the surge of nostalgia I got when I pulled up their website for reference. It was quite an adventure for a 15 yr old who had been sequestered in the realm of homeschooling. I owe a lot to Major Spoilers and am happy to see they are doing alright to this day.
Though I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons, however, it wasn't the first TTRPG I ended up playing. I got myself the box set pretty early and made myself a character, but my real experience began when I found out a friend in the Boy Scouts also was interested in playing. But they had gotten hooked into Pathfinder. So as the one bringing the majority of interested parties, I decided to switch to Paizo's system to oblige them. My friend wanted to play and I was eager to start crafting a world like the only Game Master I knew at the time, Rodrigo Lopez from Critical Hit. I spent at least a solid two months preparing to run my ultimate adventure. Finding a map of Paizo's world, scouring the wiki, not satisfied with how little was filled in at the time and writing my world, remaking the map in paint, etc. Some of you probably know where this is heading and others are wondering about the actual game I ran. Let's get to that.
Map Taken & Badly Edited from DarthSunshine42
The Unnamed Campaign
Our band of adventurers was Alex (Ranger), Jasper (Barbarian), Fey (Warlock/Magi?), and Samantha (Cleric). I started the adventure by offering them a shady job from a shady man in a shady building to deliver a shady package. It was so obviously a bad idea to take the job, but like good adventurers, they snapped up the quest with an eagerness you could call foolhardy... and immediately I learned my first lesson. Players will never do what you want/expect them to do.
Everyone was new to this except Fey, my friend who brought us all together. She was driving people forward and helping guide the experience, no matter how cringy I was making the "twist" to be. Well unfortunately I had different plans, and to this day I shudder at how complicated they were. Crash course time for the basic plot. *INHALE* There is an invasion happening from the northern empire into the southern kingdom that is supposed to be a blitz to take the southern kingdom by surprise and shock the world into falling into a world war that is being orchestrated by a shadow organization to be so large and terrible that the gods are forced to descend and intervene which will enable the leader of the shadow organization, a mad immortal from a long gone era, to kill the gods to avenge his past era the gods of the world destroyed to make room for their own creations *exhale*.
Yeah I know, kind of a lot for anyone's first time playing and I was trying to throw them right into it. I was so eager to replicate the amazingly well-built world Critical Hit made and reach the highs they did after 100+ episodes. All this hinged on my players declining to take the quest from the shady guy, a member of the shadow organization, and getting marked for death so they didn't "spill any secrets" about the job. Something which none of them even had! But the younger me didn't know much better. I will say he did a half-decent job of pivoting the adventure to continue, even if he had to call a 15 min break only 10 mins into the session.
A Surprisingly Fun Journey
Discounting the rocky start, everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time as things progressed. The party fought and then befriended a native bird people (mostly), discovered an underground river ferry where a pair of brothers were assassinating clerics (for some reason), traveled to a walled library city the northern empire took over, blew up some airships, and even took on these mysterious goo-punk zombie things. They gained friends and allies, started piecing together the shadow organization, and got some awesome magic items. Samantha had to bow out of the campaign after a bit, but then I got to meet one of my best friends Andrew (Rogue), and his pet slime mold (irl not in the game).
It honestly was your picturesque teenage pseudo-D&D adventure. I learned a lot about monster encounters in the crunchy Pathfinder system. It is a whole lot but I think it benefited my future games immensely. It certainly stressed me out enough. I'd recommend a softer approach to any future GMs out there. I also got to flesh out what was quickly becoming a full homebrew world. It was great until…
The Prof. Sirus & Efreeti
The party was steadily getting closer to encountering the shadow organization directly. Eventually finding a hidden facility where I had planned to give them their first major downbeat, though that isn't how I was viewing it at the time. If I had put more thought into the aftermath of that fight I am sure it wouldn't have started the downward spiral. But I didn't, all I was thinking about was how cool my first BBEG was going to be. Which was the start of my second not so easily learned lesson.
Prof. Sirus was one of six BBEGs that made up the shadow organization and I wanted my players to hate him. Pompous, supremely magical, cold-hearted, and his entrance where the party stumbled on him experimenting on a live person hit all the notes. If I had left it at that and had him leave I would have succeeded. But I wanted to show off and I initiated a combat I knew my players couldn't win. Shot off some powerful spells and turned to retreat as the "minions" took care of things. But Alex (Ranger) wasn't going to let him get away. Fired a shot that struck through the Professor's defenses and angered him. One of my flaws to this day is either unable to switch my pov from NPC to GM quickly enough or being completely engrossed as the NPC and forgetting my role as GM. I have improved a lot thankfully.
But back then I had hardly understood this. So in full pompous villainy mode, I took the Professor's turn and threw two fireballs into the face of Alex (Ranger) and consequently the entire party. They were level 5 at the time I think and I creamed nearly all of them. Andrew (Rogue) survived and stabilized everyone. Alex (Ranger) straight up died but we worked it out so if he accepted being disfigured by the blast he could live. It was handwaved and everyone agreed to it since no one wanted to make a Pathfinder character from scratch and Alex was new. It was fine, it was a one-time thing, it makes sense and there were still consequences. Would have been fine if it wasn't for the next encounter.
A random war party from the northern empire stumbled into the party a few sessions later. It was a random encounter on a table I had just built and was testing. It fits the tone and set the world. It would be a cool quick combat with just a few soldiers and a weakened Efreeti. But it wasn't at all. A series of bad rolls and a critical hit saw Fey (Warlock/Magi?) die instantly from the Efreeti. The rest of the party survived and it was sad, but I didn't leave well enough alone. I didn't let my party experience consequences. I stepped in as a god of the world and forced Fey's (Warlock/Magi?) character to be saved. Gave my veteran player no choice and ripped her back into play. At that moment I realized I couldn't let go of my player's characters and removed any sense of the impact the campaign had. This was my second lesson.
The Aftermath
The game slowed to a stall maybe 6 or 7 sessions later. People were busy and with interest lost in the game there was less of an effort to make time. I realized what I had done much too late, and apologized to Fey much later than that. To this day that friendship felt different and I'm not happy about how I acted. It might seem weird to think that interaction caused a rift, but I was overbearing and controlling. My writing doesn't give appropriate context. We are still friends and we played another campaign after that but we drifted further apart after I fumbled, for different reasons, that campaign as well.
I learned a lot from my first campaign. Some were practical but it mostly was simple experience. Learning my players are not pieces in my world but rather storytellers using my world. How consequences are important to drive a campaign forward. A little about how real feelings get tangled into a simple game with friends. A lot of good memories and some lasting regrets. But it was the start of my journey and I wouldn't trade it for anything else.
Wow, that was quite a ride down memory lane. Made me realize where some of the core traits of my GMing style started to develop. I would say my first TTRPG campaign retrospective has been quite fulfilling. Can't wait for the next one.
