First Time Player Through Discord and Foundry VTT
I played my first Shadowdark game as a player, my first game organized through discord, and my first game using Foundry VTT as our play space, which blew my mind all over the room! I joined the Shadowdark Discord and saw that there were postings for upcoming games so I followed that info and messaged the DM who sent me a link to his discord and we were off! I didn’t need to make a character or anything beforehand, all I had to do was show up and be ready to play for 3 hours. So that's exactly what I did!
- Follow this link to join The Arcane Library discord: https://discord.com/invite/thearcanelibrary
Easy right? Yes, but here's the thing, throughout all of this my anxiety was through the ROOF! I was scared to message the DM, I was scared to say “hi” in the discord general chat after joining, and I was scared to join the game when the time came to play. Fear was absolutely my biggest hurdle. Fear that I would be a burden, make a fool of myself, and be shunned by the Shadowdark Discord community. In hindsight it may have been a slight over reaction.
All of the setup and preparation was done in Foundry VTT and this was my first time ever using that program. And it was awesome! That being said, booting it up that first time during that game was very overwhelming with how much it has going on. Thankfully I was guided by the veteran DM and group who had all used it many times before and they really helped me figure out what the hell was going on.
- A snap shot from Foundry VTT. Not the game I played in because it felt weird to take a pic of that game. This is me working on my new adventure in the program!
My favorite features were having my character sheet with all of its items in one place and auto generating all the numbers with my character’s modifiers. Being able to control my individual character as they moved around the map, and the best part for me is hands down the fog of war feature. Our adventuring party couldn’t see a thing without a torch and it was terrifying in the best way! The only con I have right now, with my first experiences using Foundry VTT, is the steep learning curve. There's so much going on that it truly was overwhelming, but I think with some experience and the plethora of tutorials out there it’s just a matter of sitting down and using the program so that I can help bridge that intimidating gap for my own group.
The game itself was a lot of fun and a big departure from what I'm used to running as the forever DM of my home games, which was nice to see. It was also the thing I was most excited about experiencing: how does another DM run their game? The gentlemen who ran this game was old school, from the days of yore, when a clear goal was given along with clear directions to the dungeon. The dungeon itself getting more and more dangerous the further down we went.
We were given the task to stop orcs from raiding the King’s road, the reward being 25gp per orc head we returned with. From there we were told that the orc raiders could be found in some ruins out in the wilderness, so after gearing up we headed out, found the ruins, and started killing. It was great! After our initial surprise attack one of the surviving orcs fled down a set of stairs going deeper into the bowels of the ruins.
Before following, I tried to cast my cure wounds on an injured ally and failed my roll miserably. This being one of my only times ever running a character man is it a bummer when you fail that spell check and your spell is gone for the day, especially when it happens on the first attempt. I love Shadowdark’s system of spells staying available when you succeed on a check, but it still blows when you fumble that check. The show must go on, however, and so we headed down the stairs after those lucrative orc heads.
In classic overly cautious play we walked past all the doors that might have had orcs and went down another set of stairs, skipping past all the doors we found there as well, until we found an open room with 3 statues. One was an angel holding a real sword, the other was a demon holding a real mace, and the final was a priest holding a real rolled up scroll. After a few minutes of deliberation we decided to not touch anything and get out of there because we were terrified. Most likely a wise move, but I was curious what would happen if we did do something and it bummed me out that the DM didn’t get to see his creation come to life. I guess the bait wasn’t good enough for us to risk the chance of hardship, which is a lesson I will carry with me going into my future adventure designs.
After back tracking we came to a door we had originally passed and decided to listen at it. Hearing nothing we went inside where we found two broken coffins and a wailing spirit that immediately attacked us! It really started to mess us up and we had the unfortunate realization that non magical weapons did no damage to the creature at all. Thankfully our wizard was rolling like Walter Ray Williams Jr. and killed the evil monstrosity in three rounds before the vengeful spirit could claim any of our party members. It did unfortunately infect our fighter with a flesh eating curse that we had to get removed in town, costing us most of our profits, but such is the life of an adventurer.
Our time in the ruins came to an end after a group of orcs ambushed us as we back tracked out of the dungeon. We killed them with relative ease, my Protection From Evil spell keeping one of our party members alive, no big deal, hold your applause. Getting back to town we took part in the lowest level on the carousing table and I made friends with a blacksmith after beating him at arm wrestling. What a great mechanic carousing is. All in all it was a lot of fun and I’m so glad I overcame my own personnel fears and joined in! While I’ve played TTRPGs for over 10 years, I’ve only ever gotten to play two or three times, so a chance to be in someone else's game is always a great time and this was no exception!
Hopefully this article inspires you to check out the discord communities for your favorite TTRPGs and get into a game! I know it’s anxiety inducing and scary but it was absolutely worth it! Hell getting to see Foundry VTT in action made the whole experience worth it for me! I’ve already bought and watched a ton of tutorials on it so that I can start running my own games in it and even begin to share my written adventures through Foundry VTT so others can play that way as well!
As we approach the end of this blog I want to extend an invitation to 4 players who would be interested in joining me for a play test of my next adventure! No, not “Escape From the Halls of Annihilation” that I teased in my last blog, this adventure is another free one that I’m hoping entices people to sign up for my mailing list! It’s called “The Stand at Stone Arrow Inn” and here’s a little snippet of what the adventure is about,
“The town of Joanston has a serious rat problem and the citizens are getting desperate, so desperate that it’s a Rat Catchers market. Unfortunately, most of the Rat Catchers were lost when a plague swept through the town on the backs of the vicious rat swarms. Stone Arrow Inn, a local landmark with its famous Thunder Ale, is in need of anyone up to the job of removing the Plague Rats and Thorne (the owner), known for his generosity, is willing to pay top dollar!”
If you’re interested in being a part of the play test the date will be Monday Sept 8th at 8:00pm EST, please send me an email at cameron@waywarbeacon.com. The four open chairs will be assigned on a first come first serve basis. We will be playing in Discord and using the Foundry VTT. I hope to see you there and thanks again for being a part of the Wayward Beacon community!
- Cam
