Solo LMoP - 01. The Party

Playing Dungeons and Dragons by myself... and making a good story out of it. 

For many years I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons, both as a player and lately also as a DM. But in the later years my chances to be a player have been severely limited by social distancing, time management and my personal life – about which I will not be complaining since being a human being with human connections is a precious thing that I value highly. Over the last few months I have tried to play D&D via discord, using the Play by Post system but that just resulted in me spending more and more time on my phone, playing PbP and neglecting my actual life. As a person who is very much susceptible to any kind of addiction I needed to stop myself and quit that hobby cold turkey.

But now I am back to where I was. I am missing the chance to actually play. So I will try this idea that I have been toying with for some time: writing myself through a prewritten module while determining choices based on the characters backgrounds, motivations or random rolls. I have tried this before but now I will put the story that emerges in writing, blogging about it whenever I finish a specific chapter of the game. Maybe this will increase my enjoyment of the game. I will use quite a few tools to do that. First of all I will use the digital toolkit of www.roll20.com to make my characters. To create fitting character art I will use www.heroforge.com and to create tokens to go with that I'll use Tokenstamp. 

To start out easy I will play myself through the starters adventure “Lost Mines of Phandelver”, using the premade characters, because why not? If it flops at least I won’t have invested an enormous amount of time and effort.

The starting party consists of a Dwarf Cleric, a Halfing Rogue, a High Elf Wizard and two Human Fighters.

🎲First Roll, based on the amount of possible name origins for the human name, choosing out of the 17 options from XGTE: 15 (Roman) 
🎲Rolling for name gender, 1d2 (not because of bigotry, just for the name origin): 2 (female) 
🎲Rolling for name, 1d100: 34 (Drusa) 
🎲Rolling for the second human name origin, 1d17: 14 (Polynesian) 
🎲Rolling for name gender, 1d2: 1 (male) 
🎲Rolling for name, 1d100: 29 (Haunui) 
🎲Rolling for the name gender of our Rogue, 1d2: 1 (male) 
🎲Rolling for name, 1d100: 22 (Egart) 
🎲Rolling for the name gender of our Cleric, 1d2: 1 (male) 
🎲Rolling for name, 1d100: 46 (Harbek) 
🎲Rolling for the name gender of our Wizard, 1d2: 2 (female) 
🎲Rolling for name, 1d100: 71 (Quillathe)

So here we have our five adventurers: 

Drusa, a female human fighter with the noble background (Lvl 1 Character Sheet) (Full Character Art) (Token)

Haunui, a male human fighter with the Folk Hero background (Lvl 1 Character Sheet) (Full Character Art) (Token)

Egart, a male lightfoot halfling rogue with the criminal background (Lvl 1 Character Sheet) (Full Character Art) (Token)

Harbek, a male hill dwarf life cleric with the soldier background (Lvl 1 Character Sheet) (Full Character Art) (Token)

Quillathe, a female high elf wizard with the acolyte background (Lvl 1 Character Sheet) (Full Character Art) (Token)

These characters are given to me by the game itself, they have very little background as is. There is however a bit of background written on the back of the sheets that connects the characters to the story and gives them a plot hook to start off with. Taking these hooks, I try to logic together their motives to become a traveling party of adventurers. I will italicize the parts of the story that has come from my own imagination, to clearly separate the given and the invented. 

Drusa, who is heir to a meaningless title since her ancestral home has been completely eradicated by the eruption of Mount Hotenow wants to join forces with the knight Sildar Hallwinter to take the reigns in Phandalin, a small frontier town that is currently being rebuilt after haven been sacked five centuries ago. She is the most easy of the five characters to link to the story, having a straightforward goal that drives her as well as the abilities that make her a logical choice as a leader of this group.

The eruption of the mountain also robbed Haunui's family of their home. Impoverished they found their way to Neverwinter where he has spend the last few years working as a porter in the harbor. He tasted fame when he stood up to an abusive captain and feels he is destined for greatness. Wanting to return to one day clear his hometown of evil - the ruined town of Thundertree - Haunui has joined up with Drusa who he met at an Inn and bonded with over their shared story of the volcano destroying their homes.

Harbek, who after his disappointing time as a mercenary of the Mintarn militia has devoted himself to Marthammor Duin, the dwarven god of explorers and travelers. He has heard about a man called Daran Edermath who lives in the town of Phandalin and wishes to rid it of the thugs that throw their weight around the town. Teaching these bullies, called the Redbrands, a lesson sounds like a worthy goal and since he is fed up with the life of a guard Harbek has been asking around for a caravan traveling to Phandalin. He joined up with Drusa and Haunui for that very goal.

Egart has reasons to join this group of adventurers that align with Harbek's, though because of a different origin. Egart was a member of the Redbrands once, but has been betrayed by someone within their ranks and had to flee the town because the leader of the band of thugs - a wizard named Glasstaff - wanted him dead. He now wants his revenge, and having overheard Harbeks conversation with Drusa and Haunui he quickly rushed to join up as well, since these strong folks with even stronger motives and opinions might prove to be the perfect cover he needs to exact his vengeance. 

Finally there is Quillathe, who has spend most of her life in service to the temple of Oghma, the god of knowledge, studying the lore of the multiverse. She has had visions of an ancient ruin that once held a shrine to her god. But the ruin has now been overrun by a goblin tribe who defiled the shrine. Quillathe wants to find the ruin, now called Cragmaw Castle, drive out the goblins and cleanse the shrine. A priest of Tymora living in Phandalin might know more about the ruin. Guided by her vision Quillathe has simply appeared among the other adventurers, stating her desire to join them on their journey. Intrigued by the strangely awkward priestess they have welcomed her amidst their group. 

That is all we need to start with. We have a group of cobbled together adventurers with different motives but a common goal: To get to the town of Phandalin together. It's all we need. I'll pretend not to know more about the adventure here, since it's more fun that way. 

Telling this story step by step, rolling for battle, decisions and other parts of the adventure and trying to make sense of what the dice tell us, I'll play my way through Lost Mines of Phandelver. Telling the tale of this strange group of unlikely allies will help me improve myself both as a player and a DM, I hope. At least it will challenge me to think creatively, that much is sure. 

I'm looking forward to this journey. It's going to be an interesting ride, I'm sure of it.