What not to do when your group doesn't show up...

It is the morning of 27th July and I was up ridiculously early considering I promised myself that I would have at least a few more hours sleep that day as a treat for the week previous...that didn't happen (my dog Ludo woke me up of course).

We were scheduled to meet up at my house at 3pm to possibly start a near full days session of D&D Lost Mine of Phandelver, I had already in the week lost one of the group to illness (she didn't die just was really sick). But 2 weeks of prep and obsessively thinking about it in those moments were your alone and there is nothing to actually think about, went down the drain in one text message which left me with a group of one.

So what to do with myself now that my day at that point of effectively ruined? what you shouldn't do is spend 3 hours complaining that people will only let you down and that you might as well give up (you can guess that I needed that extra sleep at this point...I was pissed). Nearly threw the starter set in the bin, a huge over reaction to the situation, life is exactly that...life, things won't always plan out exactly how you plan and you need to adapt to the situation and move on.

I took a deep breath and did three things;

1. Text the group members individually to sort out another day/time for us to get together to start this campaign.
2. Wrote some additional story to add to the pre-existing story that comes with the starter set to add some twists and turns to make it my own.
3. Turned on the Xbox One and watched some recorded streams on YouTube (itmejp)

From this I have started writing a chronicle on the adventure they are about to take, including the failed departure of the group to transport the goods to Phandelvan. I will be attempting to write what happens on this blog and in future possibly record it.

Please leave any comment or stories on how you have to adjust to your group...speak soon.

D&D Starter Set and beyond....

Like most gamers I pear across the edge of gaming mediums looking for something new to engage in that will last for as long as my attention span permits it.

I have been gaming (video games) for the vast majority of my life, I do proclaim to know it all or be the greatest that there ever was but personally I do know what I enjoy the most from games, a good story. The is what motivates me to hand over my hard earned cash.

For nearly a year now I have been looking into D&D, waiting for what I believe to be the right time for me to throw my hat into the ring and give it a go at least for a couple of sessions anyway. I searched for my local gaming groups and couldn't find one that was running a D&D campaign, I was tempted to try one of the other gaming systems out there but i stuck to my guns and said "no D&D first then anything else is extra" this might be a stubborn way to get into it but I made up my mind.

Fast forward to July 2014, I picked up my D&D starter set from my local gaming store and proceeded to gaze at the contents unknowing what 80% the booklets were talking about. I read through them twice over to try and get a grasp of what I had thrown myself into. The disadvantage rolls, hit dice and actions came into place...I reached a point where I knew vaguely understand what people where talking about on YouTube videos.

So its with that realisation and the fact I still cant find a gaming group to join in my local area that I appointed myself DM, my search for some players began. In no time at all I had 4 eager players waiting to set up a session.

As we travel through the forgotten realms and encounter dragons and such i shall endeavour to write as much as possible in this blog to hopefully interest more to this gaming system and the community at large.