Phandelver : Part 1

So, it was a return to Phandelver indeed. One new player, one semi new player, one player from a long time ago, two semi regulars and one regular.

I asked for them to peruse the motivations from the princes of the apocalypse book - I'd photo copied them so as to make that easier (it wasn't for personal use - I handed it to someone across the table! Take that, copyright!). But as much as I leave players to monitor their own HP, I didn't write down their motivations - I think I remember some, like 'best served cold' and someone was after the mud wizard. I'll write them down next time.

So they'd already played part of this under another GM and now found themselves leaving a goblin hideout and entering Phandalin.

I'm not sure I'm excited by this format they seem to use of presenting a whole lot of buildings and hoping the PC's kinda get excited or something about them enough that they get this quest inside. The druid player did investigate the shrine and spoke to it's priest and of her woes a bit, but then it was back to the pub. I went from player to player asking one at a time what they do (otherwise they both tend not to do anything, then they latter think how they didn't get to do anything - to be fair, the louder voices do tend to do the most if you don't go from player to player). So they ate some crusty bread and heard various rumours. I actually found the rumour of someone in the village being killed as quite strong, brutal even in tone. Nup, not a ripple amongst the players - though who knows, sometimes the players with a PC who'd care, well, the player gets caught up in keeping up with the group. So you get a hive mind effect - and if the hive mind shrugs at murder, well it does. And maybe the pally just didn't hear me read the rumour - it was loud in the shop!

So instead the pally seems to get piqued by a rumour of some child having found a secret tunnel in the forest that leads into the manor ruins on the side of town. After speaking with the child who knew of this other kid, they decide to rest the night because (at a guess), the goblin hideout probably beat six shades of resources out of them!

Motivated by this random direction, the PC's awake from their luxury one gold rooms the next day and head out... More next time!