In the past, I’ve seen the sentiment that in 5th edition D&D, a level one adventurer can’t accomplish much. I recall even having a sympathetic read of this idea. I know of many whose games begin after skipping level one, or structure the game in such a way that a single encounter or session might give additional experience to bump them beyond to level two. I’ve run games like this.
I have entirely and utterly been shown the error of this idea.
I started running my current game via Discord (and Talespire once it released) back in November of 2020. My group is mostly people I’ve known via online video games for a few years, with the single exception of my cousin. Two of them had never played a tabletop RPG before.
It’s one of those two, so grateful for the fun he was having in the game I ran, who decided to begin running his own game, and invited me to play. There’s another two people in our little community he invites, as well as the other player who is green-as-grass to D&D from my game.
Our brand new GM decides to run a published adventure to ease him into everything – he reads online a bit and chooses Rime of the Frost Maiden, which is pretty new and it’s been well received. (So far for me? It’s been a blast.)
I’m playing a rogue named Cole. I’m joined by another rogue, Aero; a wizard, Lady Hemlock; and a cleric, Ajani (who is indeed named for the MTG character). And this team shattered any preconceived notion I had about level one being unmeaningful. Long D&D story following below.
We arrived in Brynshander on the eve of a New Moon. In the module, these are auspicious nights, with the towns each offering a sacrifice to their angry goddess who has plunged them into an unending winter. But, it’s lucky for our characters, because the innkeeper we speak to is kind enough to offer travelers free rooms for the night to keep them off the streets.
Over time, we each arrive at the Northlook. Our GM has me enter first, and after the party is each introduced and given a few moments to interact with one another and the innkeeper, and a dwarven woman we learn to be named Hilm scatters the regulars out of the bar with her own entry leaving only us.
She’s looking for someone to find and apprehend one “Sephek Kaltro.” She claims to have witnessed him killing someone – a murderer, with at least three victims attributed to him by her. She tells us there’s information that these killings are linked by these village lotteries – intended sacrifices that were not made, for one reason or another. This is the first time our characters learn of the New Moon sacrifices.
“So, you want us to track down one murderer when this town is full of them, committing one this very night?” Cole asked.
Hilm was stumped by that. Whether she condoned the lotteries, we never found out. We debated long, but uselessly, as Hilm was not actually anyone with authority in Brynshander and couldn’t have stopped the lottery regardless. The town’s mood in general wouldn’t prove much different. These people had been battered by two years of winter. No one had been able to break it. They believed the Frost Maiden implacable, her power absolute. Ultimately, we agreed to find Sephek, but none of us were happy with the town’s decision to sacrifice and murder their own. In time, we all found our way to our rooms. Our GM described the procession of people marching down the road toward the gates very near the inn. Cole watched them from the window. I didn’t think he’d be able to stop it alone. He was only level one, after all.
But I knew he’d try.
Ajani was the first to leave his room and return to the inn downstairs. I followed, then Aero and Hemlock. Our innkeeper sat at the bar, weeping. The choice for the lottery had been one of his workers – Maleena, who’d served our food and drinks.
We stepped out into the crowd. Aero and I edged around and into the alleyways branching from the overrun road. Ajani and Hemlock navigated through the crowd to the opening, where they walked Maleena toward the gate. Cole and Aero found the wall, scaled it quick and quiet. Ajani and Hemlock stopped the procession and spoke with Maleena. She tried to reassure them that it would be okay, that they didn’t need to do anything on her account. She says she’s sick, that she doesn’t have much time left anyway.
Ajani asked the people who’d led her to the gate if he could go with them, and they agreed. They withdrew, leaving Ajani, Hemlock, and Maleena as the gates began to open.
I reached the top of the wall, and discovered a blizzard just beyond its stones. It encircled the town entirely, a pure wall of whirling white and ice. (The GM was playing some ambient music, and a Bloodborne track hit just then. It was incredible.) I looked at it with wide eyes, stunned for a moment, then set to work. I knotted a rope around the crenellations and tied my crowbar into the loose end to weigh the rope down. GM has me roll survival, and I get a middling result, around 12-15. The crowbar is torn from the rope as I toss it over the side, and the end is dancing restlessly in the wind, but the loop around the crenellation is secure.
Aero, who is an aarakocra, noticed that the two guards on our side of the gate looked over toward us, but one of them grabbed the back of the other’s head and twisted it back down. He sees the rope below, grabs it from the top, and begins to fly down.
The wind of the blizzard throws him to the ground and nearly kills him then and there (it took about 7 or so of his eleven hitpoints).
The gates close behind Ajani, Hemlock, and Maleena, leaving them in the blizzard. The cold is shear and unrelenting, and Ajani holds Maleena close, though his own warmth is fading. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the end of the rope flailing in the air. He begins marching them toward it. He snags hold of it and keeps it still so that Maleena and Hemlock may climb. He finds Aero and gets him up, before climbing himself.
As Maleena is brought to the top, I throw my own cloak onto her, pick her up, and run to the nearest tower where I deduced a fire would be kept burning through the night for the guards to use. It didn’t matter if anyone saw us – we needed to get her warm. The others filtered in quickly.
Then the guards came.
They were her brothers.
We finessed a story, the younger of the two having gone out after his sister in the night to die beside her, the older as the witness. We took them back to the Northlook, and the innkeeper used his own contacts to get them on a carriage southward and away before the next day’s over, closing the Northlook to customers the following day “in grief” so they have a place to stay.
It had all gone so perfectly, I honestly thought it was part of the module.
Our new GM revealed that it wasn’t. He’d decided in the last hours leading to the game to make the night a New Moon, just so that one of our players whose character’s chosen background didn’t come with gold could stay at the inn that night. That everything we’d done, he’d not had anything to go off of.
His first game as a GM.
Experience isn’t the only thing valuable in this hobby. Level one characters can be just as heroic as they are at level ten, or twenty; the only real difference is the scale. And a first-time GM can create one of the most incredible scenarios in a game I’ve ever had the privilege to join in entirely by accident. If you’ve wanted to start running a game but been hesitant, I recommend you take the plunge.
Damn I love D&D.
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