We finally did it. We had our first session of the something new game I started up to replace The Magical Millennium (which remains on hiatus for the time-being) and even though two of our players couldn’t make it, we had a successful first session. I designed the campaign to be playable with as few as two player characters, so having a few people out isn’t a huge bother for me or the game I’m running. It’s still Dungeons and Dragons 5e, of course (2014 version for everything except I’m including the Weapon Mastery feature for 2024 because that feels appropriate for this collection of powerful characters), since most of my players aren’t that interested in going far afield, but I’ve done an intense bit of hacking and homebrewing to alter the basic systems to work on a different scale than the game was originally intended to run at. Most of this is just massaging numbers a bit (a thing I can do because the “Bounded Accuracy” of 5e allows me to alter the numbers in ways that have predictable outcomes), but there’s a few changes to how the rules play out, how success and failure should be interpretted, and how the mechanics of the game are designed to interact. Most of which is not stuff my players need concern themselves with since I’m the one running the show and I know how to alter everything appropriately. What my players are supposed to be concerned with is building the myth of their semi-divine character!

I started the session simply enough. We reviewed character sheets, fixed some issues (and missed some issues that got fixed later, after our break) and then I launched into the basic pitch of the world. We are telling exaggerated stories. Yes, there will be some entirely human and vulnerable moments here, not to mention failures and loss, but the characters my players are portraying are supposed to be larger than life and representative of the best (and worst) that people and gods have to offer in one neat package. We should paint with broad strokes, take big swings, and hold loosely to our ideas so that we can always grab for something better when it shows up. It’s a fairly simple thing, given all the touchstones we’ve put together and the fact that most of my players are doing the homework to familiarize themselves with any touchstones they don’t know, but I’m probably going to keep repeating the pitch (or at least this much simpler version of it) before each session so we can stay focused on creating myths rather than just playing D&D.

To that end, rather than dealing with how our characters were brought together and how they learn about the troubles plaquing their home, I had them summoned by the Pantheonic Council that now rules the burgeoning city-state (soon to be kingdom or even empire) of Daelen who bluntly but politely told these demigods what was wrong and what needed doing. I threw in some notes about ritualistic observances, things being known that these high priests should have had no way of knowing (harmless stuff for now) but did because of the domains of their gods, and a couple nods to the various religious practices of the people they met. It wasn’t meant to be terribly involved and I did my best to keep my players moving along as they dug into what was being presented to them and the people doing the presenting. After that, thanks to a good roll from one of the players, they used social pressure to get one of the high priests to spill what he knew but had apparently been hiding from the council at large. It wasn’t much, but it did turn the strange contraption slowly moving towards the capital into a more solid threat as it is the unattended creation of the god of invention who couldn’t be bothered enough to claim it as his, much less actually keep track of it. My players have yet to figure out what this means in any kind of practical sense (other than that this god, Afflo, won’t be upset if they wreck it), but I’m sure it’ll come out in due time.

After that, since I’m trying to keep things moving along in general heroic myth mode, I made sure my players were geared up, gave them all appropriate mounts, and sent them on their way. Rather than roll my own encounter checks, I had each of the players roll a d100 to determine if their divine auras attracted the attention of anything, if their domain knowledge (their ability to just know true things about the world absent any direct input) was triggered by anything nearby, if a heroic event was going to occur, if a heroic flaw was to be played with, and so many other little things (most of which are grouped at either end of the table, with a 26-74 result being “nothing”). The first day of their three days of travel came up empty, but the child of the god of warfare and hedonistic revelry rolled a 100 on the second day so I gave her exactly the sort of thing her player had said she wanted: a beast to kill. They passed a small village that was in the middle of fighting a losing battle to defend their home from a nasty creature I called a “Turtspull” (because it is a mix between a giant spider and a massive bull that inhabited a giant turtleshell it used to protect it’s fleshy abdomen from attack). The Demigods rolled up just in time to start fighting alongside the remaining portion of the militia (who all fell before the end of the fight), and quickly took it down thanks to one of them diving inside the shell to stab directly at it’s well-muscled but easily-pierced body. It was a fun bit of combat that gave the player exactly what she wanted (though she was not as effective in combat as she probably would have liked, due to bad rolls) and a great way to end our first session.

The last addition to a “standard” D&D type campaign I’ve made is that I’m tracking the Mythos of every one of the Demigods. Every moment of massive success or devastating failure will be logged and built into the public’s image of them. Right now, it’s not super important since they’re just starting out, but it will eventually matter that the scion of war and hedonism got a natural 20 (total of 27) to intimidate her horse into following her directions and then immediately rolled another natural 20 on getting her horse to help her navigate through the village to where the fight was taking place. Now, in the stories of that character as she is discussed in the world, she will have a smart steed that always knows the path and is more afraid of her than of any beast they might encounter. What that will mean beyond appearing in the stories of this demigod is not yet clear to my players, but every single one of the players had a moment where they got to shine in the game (and not JUST because they rolled a staggering number of natural 20s in our brief session) and so their mythos will grow. I am excited to continue building these moments of mythical action since I know what the purpose of them is, but I’ll have to keep that under wraps for a while longer. Hopefully not too long, though! I’m planning for this campaign to move relatively quickly, after all. One more session should get us through the encounter with the strange machine and back to the city, whereupon they’ll reach level 2 and I can tease their next adventure (or cut before then so I can figure out something for the direction they wound up going in-game). This is going to be fun!