Let’s talk about first sessions…

After a very long hiatus, I am pleased to report that we finally have a gaming group back together again… this time with kids involved (both under the age of 10)! We recently had our first session, which was primarily character generation… which was somewhat boring for the kids.

Many of us hadn’t played in years, and we had a brand new player. The majority of our group was familiar with D&D 3.5e, so we opted to use the materials that we had on hand instead of all ponying up for the 5e books.

By the time we finished character generation, the kids really wanted to get to do something with their characters so I started by having the party come together on a road to a festival, where they encountered an easy battle against some rats. The group proceeded to get comfortable with some roleplaying in-character, and then I lightly went about setting up the plot.

As far as first sessions go, it wasn’t bad… the adults straightened out some questions they had about the rules and the kids got a chance to roll dice and kill some rats, while getting used to Skill checks.

Do you have any particular structure to your opening sessions? How about those to follow? I usually like to set up a handful of plot lines and see how the group wants to unfold the story, with the most critical aspect being whether or not the group seems to be having fun.