I think it was about three years ago that my friend Jordan, until recently also my coworker, played one or two sessions of D&D with me after work at the office. And it was a few months ago that she told me her boyfriend Iain wanted to try it out, and asked me to run a game for them. Of course, I said I would. On Saturday evening, we followed through on that agreement.

The group consisted of the three of us, another former coworker Ali, and two others, Anthony and Michelle, whom I met that night for the first time. I was only the slightest bit nervous about whether they would all enjoy themselves; this crew did not resemble your expected group of enthusiastic D&D players, and you probably wouldn’t look at any of them and immediately think they might own any d20’s. I figured, realistically, they’d have a good time for one session, and probably be satisfied to say they had tried D&D once in 2017.

I report to you happily that my fears had no foundation. Everyone seemed really excited with a ton of questions as I gave my opening spiel about how the game was going to be played, and passed out their pre-generated character sheets. Even though Ali had no idea what she was getting into—she said she knew what the game was called, and that was it—that didn’t daunt her one bit. She played the cleric, the only one in the party with any healing, and was giving Iain, the fighter, shit for getting knocked out so often in the third combat encounter.

By the time we did character introductions, Michelle had a marvelous backstory ready to go for her elf wizard, involving love lost and a broken-hearted-fueled self-destructive streak. The erstwhile lover and the ex’s new partner had names too, and if Michelle’s character hadn’t died in the final fight, I would have liked, in some subsequent session, to bring those two in as NPCs.

Saturday night’s adventure involved exploring a recently-cleared mummy’s tomb, which had, unbeknownst to the party, become the new home for a minotaur who was in the process of digging out his labyrinthine tunnel network with the help of a crew of a few kobolds. Since they were level one, I scaled the minotaur’s stats back, but he turned out to still be very deadly, and by the end of the final fight, Jordan’s ranger was the only one still on her feet, with Anthony’s rogue unconscious and desperately hanging onto dear life.

Level one is tough, man.

I would guess that what most made the session successful was the group’s chemistry before sitting down at the table. I suspect they would have had fun with each other whatever we did, which reminds me of my own tendency to turn my friends into D&D players, instead of trying to make friends of other D&D players. There was already a rapport and comfort that made jumping into the game and into their characters easier, and rewarding as they each performed for their friends.

In subsequent text messages over the next 48 hours, there seemed to be a consensus that we should play again, and regularly, but since I’ve started a masters program recently, I don’t have a lot of time on my hands. The best thing, I figure, is to train one of these eager new players in DMing, so they can keep playing whenever they like. Michelle was the first to volunteer, and we’re going to make that happen, starting with a second session next month. My goal is that I will get to be a player, rather than the DM, someday soon in this group.

Oh, and I unlocked an achievement! For the first time, I DMed an entire session using only my own painted minis that fairly accurately depicted their intended creatures, including minis for the PCs. We didn’t use a grid, just loose relative position on the coffee table. I think the connection to a physical representation helped, especially for first-timers. I might make more of a habit of designing adventures based at least partially on the monster minis I have ready to go.