When I arrived at university, there were a lot of interesting societies, but one that I was particularly interested in was the Tabletop Gaming Society, mostly for this mythical game I had heard of called Dungeons and Dragons. I had no previous experience of it, but it had always seemed like this "nerd game", and that I was exactly the kind of nerd who would enjoy it. After playing a single oneshot as a pre-made character, I was instantly hooked.
My first character that I played with the society was a High Elf Rogue, named Vadania Nailo. She did pretty well, but sadly became locked in the dungeon of The Black Spider from the Lost Mines of Phandelver, the session before lockdown was enacted. As such, the tabletop society completely shut down for a year, and she is technically still trapped in that dungeon.
Shortly after starting playing, I discovered Critical Role, and the lockdown allowed me to binge watch the entirety of campaign 2, and at this point it dawned on me that this was not just "some nerd game", and it was something for anyone and everyone.
After the resuming of the university society, I decided that I would have a go at being the Dungeon Master. I didn't have a huge amount of experience actually playing D&D, but I felt like I had read a lot and knew enough about the game to at least try to approach the legendary Matt Mercer. Of course, I was vastly underprepared for my first session, and it was an important learning experience. I kept going, undeterred by the shenanigans of the players I was assigned, and eventually I started to become more comfortable with what I was doing. The society initally ran The Lost Mines of Phandelver again, as it is a campaign suitable for newer players, but we progressed into The Storm King's Thunder. There were multiple DMs at the society, and we were coutned up at the start of the session, and a limit of 6 players per DM gave a limit to the amount of people that could join that session. The players were then randomly assigned to the DMs, and we all played a set amount of story. This worked decently well, but it was somewhat alienating for newer players, having to be dropped into a session with a load of level 6 players.
As the sessions progressed, I started to put my own spin on them, most notable by adding in an NPC who was directly based off of one of my friends. She appeared in every tavern that the party went to, and offered to read their fortune for them. This gave the players a somewhat fun diversion, and allowed me to try out Tarot reading at the table, which I still do.
Recently, the society had changed how it does things, and we instead gather around 4-5 oneshots, allow the players to group up themsevles, choose a oneshot and be assigned a DM. The party then runs that oneshot, but are constraiend to level 3. This prevents new players from being completely alienated with high level abilities and monsters. Sine the society accepted custom oneshots, I have also started writing my own. I will not be releasing them here, as I will probably bring down the wrath of WotC upon myself, but as of the time of writing, I have 2 custom oneshots.
Seeds of the Underdark starts with mysterious monsters appearing that are not of this realm, as well as spheres of the world being replaced with caves. The party must figure out why this is happening, and stop it of possible. The oneshot was written with both fighting and roleplay heavy sections in, to try to cater for as many players as possible, with the option to just skip all the RP if they decided to.
The Happy World of Haribo was based on something I heard during the course of a previous session. I had accidentally badly written the name of a town on a map, and the party ended up calling the town Nestlé instead. The next town they visited, they ignored its actual name and just called it Cadbury instead, and at one point, a player asked where Haribo was. As such, I created a oneshot set in a theme park called the Happy World of Haribo, which has been abandoned for some time, and needs clearing out of monsters in order to be revamped and re-opened. For this oneshot, I had to make some custom monsters, the Coloured Giant Gummy Bears. They are essentially just modified Grey Oozes, with some of their abilities removed to make them slightly easier. I also took an idea I found online and made Black Giant Gummy Bears, which have the non-newtonian ability from
this tumblr post. Essentially, the players have to hit under its AC rather than over it. When I added this to one of my previous encounters for fun, it created some very confused players, to the amusement of everyone.
I would heavily recommend Dungeons and Dragons to everyone, at least try out a single session.