1e Party Setup, August 23rd

Well, I get the chance to wear the DM's hat after about 8 years, this time using 1e rules. I'm trying to ease everyone into the rule set by only using the PHB for the first session. I also omitted weapon proficiencies and armor class to-hit modifiers, which will be introduced in the 2nd session. I also left out encumbrance for the 3rd session. I will slowly work more material in until we are running with all the core books, than consider adding in extras from either Dragon or Unearthed Arcana.

Either way, the party sets in to creating characters, 4d6 drop the lowest and arrange to tastes. The final party looks like:

Justin: Half-Orc Fighter (DM from the 3e game)
Josh: Halfing Thief (Domineering personality among the PCs so far)
Terry: Elf MU/Cleric (Bad rolls got him Push as his offensive starting MU spell)
Chris: Half-Elf Ranger (This is the neophyte to D&D in general and is terminally shy)

Not a single human, but they all have infra vision. Makes for easy dungeon crawling, but that will change if they acquire henchmen. Will be tough to maintain good morale if they pick demi-human hirelings/henchmen, and if they go for humans to remedy that problem, they will have issues with vision in the dark.

Either way, hiring 0-level help is way beyond the modern gamer; as of 2 sessions the thought hasn't crossed their minds even though I do have a few men-at-arms who are trying to find work. I guess its a difference in mentality, the uber-heroes never need to use hirelings, right?

That covers the bulk of the first half of the session. I tried to get these guys to work on their characters in the weeks before the session, but that failed miserably. We'll see how the level of commitment develops; I will only match player commitment with a commensurate level of DM commitment. Granted, we were working from a limited set of PHBs, but we are up to 3 now.

I'll pick up the action in-game in the next post.