My First D&D 5e Game

I played in a D&D 5e game run by +Rob Conley last night. Short version: it was great. Rob began running us through the Starter Set module "The Lost Mine of Phandelver," and we had a really good time.

Trivial though it may be, the last time I played a game with an official Dungeons & Dragons logo on the cover...

• Ronald Reagan was president
• There were two Germanies and the Soviet Union was still a country
• People used phone booths instead of cell phones
• The Bangles were walking like Egyptians, Bon Jovi was living on a prayer, and George Michael wanted your sex

What have I been doing in recent years? Playing retro-clones and shouting at kids to get off my lawn.

I'm used to PCs having at least one negative attribute modifier, level-one magic-users with only one spell, and characters dying at 0 HP. I'm also used to kids ignoring me when I shout at them to get off my lawn.

So I will admit I was reticent about some things in the new rules, like the fighter's second wind ability, but man, by the end of the first round of combat our group faced with four stinking "measely" goblins, I needed it! Our two mages (despite all their HP -- what? you get more than 4?) went down in a surprise round volley of arrows (one nearly killed outright), and my own fighter got dropped to 2 hp before he even took his first action. Jeesh. Granted, Rob, our GM, was rolling in the 18-20 range for just about every attack the goblins made, but still. The second wind came in handy. Not a wimpy mechanic for wussy pretty boys at all, but a fairly necessary feature it turns out. The combat can be deadly enough to make even the most curmudgeonly grognards happy.

All in all, I have to say I have decided I really like the rules. The only rough spots were where we ourselves had to look things up, just because the rules were new to us. The rules really are smooth and not excessively complicated. I could probably get my head around them enough at some point to even feel comfortable running a game (which is saying an awful lot, since my motto is: "If it ain't dead simple get it out of my face").

Really a fun game run by Rob and an excellent set of rules. I walked away from my first "official" D&D game since the late 1980's with nothing but good things to say about it.