For the past few months, my friend Dave has been working on his own TTRPG, documenting his misadventures on his personal blog.
Time and time again, a game mentioned as inspiration has been Land of Eem, a whimsical and family friendly take on the genre that seemed like a perfect mix for my friend group.
So, after bothering Dave on Signal, asking questions and advice, I ended up acquiring the core rulebook as well as the free Quickstart guide, which included the initial adventure that we all played together.
Some backstory
For a long time I was not familiar with what a TTRPG even was, I had heard about Dungeons & Dragons here and there. I still have vivid memories of watching Nedâs Declassified School Survival Guide featuring some stereotypical nerds dressing up as wizards and playing with miniatures, making it all seem rather cringe to kid me. I donât actually remember much of this, maybe TTRPG fans were happy and making memes about themselves like that.
Anyway, with later shows like Stranger Things bringing it up to a mainstream audience, I started to think more about how cool it would be to live our own adventures and the like.
Even later, with my own discovery of the Dungeons & Daddies actual play podcastz and even my favourite gaming podcast Into The Aether doing a short series playing a DnD campaign titled Out of the Realm, my interest kept growing even stronger.
Point is, I knew that I would eventually fall, but D&D seemed much more complicated and full of depth that I didnât quite want to get into, especially because I would be the one directing the whole thing. But other than that, there was one roadblock in the way.
To put it simply, my parents used to be the kind of people who were worried Pokémon and Harry Potter were demonic. And the same was true for D&D. Thankfully, they understand things better now, and no longer see everything with magic in it as pure evil.
Still, as a believer myself, I felt a bit weird about a game where people can call upon a deity or devil, do rituals and the like. Itâs not because I think itâs real (after all, I play videogames like Hades). I would actually be happy to play this myself if I were in someone elseâs house, or even during a voice chat in my own room. However, we were gonna play on the living room, and Iâd rather about making a fuss about it if some uncomfortable situation happened.
So, when I saw how Land of Eem was a less obscure, more family friendly, more wholesome, more focused on building relationships, solving conflicts through dialogue, much simpler to get started with, and still incredibly fun and praised, it became the obvious choice.
Before the session
After buying the game, I watched a variety of videos, reviews, critiques and the like. Everyone kept praising pretty much every aspect of it, with a few nitpicks on things like crafting and money mechanicsâwhich I mostly avoided during my first session anyway.
I shared the news to my friend group, and everyone was really excited and curious about it, one of them created his own character in advance, others decided to use the premade ones available with the Quickstart files.
Since pretty much everyone is a complete noob for this stuff, I was doomed to become the Game Master, the one guy in charge of the world, NPCs and keeping things fun and fairâor sometimes pretty unfairâfor everyone. I printed out some of the character sheets and a quick reference for the rules, I bought a set of dice for each of my players, and read a bit of the campaign as well!
After the initial confusion that comes with starting something completely new, I realized how simple to follow the book really is. After giving a read to some of the rules and tables, I really didnât do much else, I didnât read it from cover to cover or even a full section at all, just what I thought Iâd need for my first session.
The information from the quickstart campaign was rather simple, but it was more than enough for me to improvise and let things happenâor so I thought at least.
At first, I didnât want to implement travel mechanics. I was aware that Dave hadnât done it for his first session, and I thought I should do the same, but after joining the Discord server of the game, some people said that it would be worth trying, so I got over my own insecurity and and decided Iâd wing it and deal with the possibility of going completely off the railsâŠ
The session begins
The one-shot campaign is titled Curse of the Chicken-Foot Witch and is found in the quickstart guide. Iâll pretty much spoil the whole thing, and highlight some of the unique moments during our play, most of which happened during travel and the like. There were quite a lot of questions Iâll share as well, in case any kind reader familiar with the mechanics of Land of Eem has some advice of how things could have gone and improve in the future.
We all sat together and I asked them to introduce their characters to each other, I wonât go into detail here, but the party consisted of a Dungeoneer, a Rascal, a Loyal Chum and a Bard. I gave a set of dice to all of them, as well as their character sheets, except for the Loyal Chum who made his own.
The party starts in Wallyâs Waffles and Wogies, a restaurant located in Used TâBe Forest, one of the many regions of The Mucklands, which is a huge sandbox where the game takes place.
Wallyâs restaurand is the last known location of L. Dorothy Sandwich, a local gnome heroine who was in pursue of Chara the Chicken-Foot Witch. After asking around to a couple of characters there, we realize Chara has been cursing people left and right, transforming them into creatures; and we also realize one of the characters there, a huge muskrat, is actually L. Dorothy Sandwich, who was cursed as well, and lost her magic Wand of Decursification. The heroes are now tasked to save the day!
A rocky start
Hereâs where one of the first questions showed up. Where is the money and the shops?, one of my players wanted to find a shop nearby to buy weapons and the like. I ended up a bit dumbfounded, I looked at the map and all I could see was the little drawing for the Wallyâs place, and some other small towns. I also didnât know if my players had money, if they should roll to get some to start with, or whatever. They wanted to visit a different place to find a shop and I was already panicking because who knows where to go from there. From all the possibilities I just told them âthereâs no other shops, you can just buy waffles if you wantâ and well, I still didnât know what to do regarding money, I just got Wally to say âIâll give you a bunch of waffles free of charge if you help us!â. Not the best moment but at least no more time was lost.
Then travel mechanics started. Land of Eem does hex crawlingâthe giant world is divided by hexagonsâand you have 4 travel turns. The first two during daytime, the last two at night. You can travel 2 hexes per turn (at day) and rest during the night (or risk travel but only 1 hex per turn, not recommended). Each turn I roll a dice to see if they have a random encounter.
They roll a âperilous encounterâ. On their way to the witchâs lair, they find a blind NPC trying to get to some city which was like 10 hexes away, panic ensues again. Like, are they really going to walk with this guy somewhere else where I have no idea of where to do or what? Am I done for? Will I have to come up with something on the spot?
But nah, my players had my back, one of them came up with a fact of the region (this is an ability they can use in the game) and said that there was someone heading to that city, and that they could get a ride as well. This someone was actually an NPC that was a mentor figure to that player, which counted as a significant NPC encounter, which lead to another questionâŠ
They say goodbye and continue on with their lives but now Iâm getting asked about something else. How does XP work and when do we level up?
I think it was clear from the rulebook that there are certain amounts of XP points and that, in my opinion and from what Iâve seen on D&D shows, you donât level up until the end of the session. In any case, they wanted to level up and some of them had the points so I just let them level up, no big deal I guess.
Then there was another question⊠do we have any food to start with or what? The same issue as coins, I didnât know if the party had any food. I donât think they needed any but still. I know there is a way to go gather food during the night, but I also didnât know how to determine what food they got out of it. I assume there was a table I could have used to roll for some random food, but I didnât see anyâŠ
The flow gets going.
After those questions that would probably be easy to answer had I read the rules properly, we continued on our journey!
During the trip, the party stumbled upon a public bare-fisted boxing match, and they were offered to bet for one of the fighters! The Bard of the party betted it all on the weak-looking boxer, and used an ability to basically make something happen, got a Complete Success and not only did he win the bet, but I made it so a gold tooth out of the knocked out boxer landed right in front of him, so he got a little extra reward⊠or maybe a new enemy seeking revenge in the future?
Although I liked what I did, I feel like I could have made it so everyone made a bet and some won and some lost! That might have been fun too.
Continuing the trip, they ended up with another rather annoying encounter⊠A giant skunk got in the way, and all of them got blasted with its stink, this gave them a -1 on all Social Checks, which they thought may be necessary to convince the Witch to do the right thing. They were going to travel to one of the giant lakes that was like 6 hexes away, but I managed to convince them to at least check out the dungeon first, since they were already so close to it!
They finally made it to the Lair of the Witch, hidden somewhere in The Crack, which, yes, itâs a crack in the middle of nowhere, they were very scared and didnât want to go downstairs, they were doing rolls to see if they could notice anything or find some clues⊠They got a signâa piece of woodâand got to see there was a body of water down there, maybe a pond? There were bubbles and such coming out of it, they thought about taking a warm bath to clean up the stink, so they finally decided to head down there.
Of course it was all a trap, they failed with a plus so they got a hint of a body of water, but as they went down, I slowly let them know they they are pretty much heading into a swamp, with only a few slippery rocks to walk on and get to the other sideâŠ
Into the dungeon
Three paths can be seen after crossing the swamp, but one of my players has the tremendous idea of throwing a rock to the water to see what happensâŠ
One of the âslippery rocksâ moves, and some bubbles signal that something is heading their way⊠the rock pops out and stands above the water, not a rock, but a giant purple toad. They quickly run away behind some big rocks out of its sight, while the toad simply stares at nothing, as its vision doesnât seem very good.
Hereâs where some more confusion showed up, I wasnât sure how to do combat just yet, but for the most part any problems were dealt with by coming up with random solutions!
The Dungeoneer (a Gelatinous Goo by the way)exposed himself firstâsacrificing himself for the othersâand distracted the toads (yes a few more of them showed up later!). One of them attacked with its long elastic tongue, but a lucky roll made it so the hit went right past him (heâs a Goo after all).
The Bard got engulfed by one of them when trying to step on it to get to the other side of the swamp, he failed in athletics. Thankfully, the Loyal Chum invented a new lore where those toads are scared of light and by using his lantern and pointing it at their eyes they got them to spill out the Bard. However, the giant toad emitted some gases that dealt some damage to the Bard, still nearby.
Turns out Engulfed mechanics are a simple Might check every turn, but hey! This was funnier and more creative, even if they used an ability for it.
The Rascal was super athletic and she got to the other side of the swamp in an elegant fashion, while the Goo was the last to cross, but the Toads simply ignored him.
They ended up going through a passage leading to a dark cave room, where the ghost of a ballerina gave them a scare, in reality, she was Maura, Charaâs greatest rival, she was bullied and teased to no end, and she felt lonely and died of drepression, cursed to not find rest, as Chara kept a prized posession of hers, her favorite tutĂș. To make matters worse, Mauraâs lover who had come to rescue her years ago, was also cursed, becoming a skeleton, swinging his sword at random (he had lost his skull somewhere) still trying to seek revenge. My heroes now have the chance to recover Mauraâs tutĂș and her loverâs skull headâhis name is Sir Galladee by the way.
The skeleton kept swinging at anything that moved, but all the party managed to avoid getting hit, Except for the Goo guy but at this point heâs kind of indestructible I guess. They decided to look at the two possible gatways, one of them leading to another boy of water filled with strange giant worms, and they other leading to a closed door, although the place was rather misty. They headed to the door and realized it was locked, thankfully, the Rascal realized they had a lockpick, and she managed to get it open perfectly and silently in one goâŠ
After opening the room, a strong scent of cookies invaded their nose, which contrasted heavily with the collection of bones and skulls seen all around the room, someone was baking cookies, for some reason.
Once inside the room, they soon saw something quite scary, it was a very weird⊠pug. A bipedal pug making cookies. After seeing the party of strangers, it quickly started to growl, looking menacingly (as menacing as a pug can look), until one of the party members grabbed a skull, which happened to beâit was a Complete Successâthe favorite ball for that pug to catch and play withâŠ
The Loyal Chum that grabbed it was unsure of what to do⊠many options where mentioned, there was a flimsy bridge nearby, but they didnât want to hurt the pug by throwing it there and having it fall to its demise. They could throw the skull to the room with the skeleton, but they didnât want the pug to hurt or get hurt by the skeleton in any way⊠In the end, the Loyal Chum kept the skull ball nearby and the pug happily followed along.
They also started to search for the skeletonâs head, which was easy to find given it was wearing a helmet. Returning to the previous room, they had to figure out how to get close to the guy swinging around his sword, but one of the items a party member had was a net, so they threw it, and even though they didnât land it on the guy, they managed to get the sword tangled up, and got close enough to place the skull back in place!
Sir Galladee was rather grateful, and he wanted to help defeat the witch, so we headed back together to the room with the bipedal pugâThe Loyal Chum had stayed behind to avoid any problems.
There were two exits nearby, one entryway lead to another swamp full of very ugly-looking giant worms that they didnât want to deal with at all. The other room was behind a closed door, and there was a certain mist or smoke coming out of it..
They opened the door silenty, and there they saw the back of an ugly creature making ugly noises, preparing some strange potion on her cauldron, wearing a tutu. Chara the Chicken-Foot Witch! And all the way to the other side of the room, the Wand of Decursification!
The boss fight?
I have to be honest, I was running out of stamina! And I was very scared about how I would handle this as a GM. The pugânamed Crunch by the wayâwas Charaâs pet, and was supposed to obey on command, but the Loyal Chum held Crunchâs favorite ball to play, so it would not move as long as his eyes were on the ball. Having both together in one room was very, very dangerous if this ended up turning into a combat.
By this pointâsince the start of the game, actuallyâthe party of characters kept wanting to roll and attack something, from their own mentor that gave them a visit, to the blind NPC that wanted a ride, to the sad ballerina, and even the pug. I am told this is a common ocurrence in any sort of play between first timers. I never let it slide, however, but now that we were at the last battle, I somehow didnât want them to do it eitherâŠ
Chara still has some good inside her, thatâs what all the NPCs were saying in wallyâs business, however, I had a hard time figuring out what to do. I knew they wanted to fight, but I also wanted them to convince her.
In the end, I feel like I made a mistake here, that I let them convince her way too quickly. It only took a few attempts, and then I was like âsure, that worksâ. My own brain couldnât figure out ways to make it more challenging, to be honest.
I probably should have done more rolls to see how I should have acted, but I went a little dumb and just let them win easily after like three arguments.
The worst is that this could have been easy to avoid had I read the instructions.
What I did was:
- They get to the room. Conflict ensues, one player parleys, the other one parleys, another one parleys, they win cuz what they said just made sense
What I should have done:
- They get to the room, we finally go into proper combat, I explain to them the 4 phases of conflict (we never really had to, as everything before has been pretty much an obstacle and pretty easy to improvise), and they choose what to do, we roll for initiative and the like and see how it goes.
I didnât really read combat rules properly and I feel like everything felt a little rushed in the end.
After convincing the witch to change her ways, she returns the tutĂș and the wand and promises to work on undoing the curses she made.
We walk back to the ballerina ghost and give her the tutĂș, she does a little farewell for her beloved skeleton. Chara also gifts us a little toad repellant that we use to return through the swamp safely, and we go upstairs to the surface from there. Sir Galladee letâs us now about how his destiny has been fulfilled as well, and how he shall reunite with his lover, turning to dust once we reach the top.
After such a farewell, the party now heads back to Wallyâs!
The return!
Back to hex crawling! The way back home was rather uneventful, other than stumbling upon someone wearing jail clothes and holding a very, very suspicious looking jewel and offering it to us with seemingly no consequences. One of the party members took it, but they did a very successful intimidation roll and said to the guy to not try any more funny business with them.
Other than that, we made it back to Wallyâs place, we delivered the Wand of Decursification to L. Dorothy Sandwich, and even though we still stank, the day was saved! Dorothy went back to her gnome shape and Wally offered waffles for everyone to eat!
Aftermath
And well, after a couple of hours, our first ever session was complete! Everyone had a lot of fun, much more than I expected.
I got a lot of nice feedback from my players, they really enjoyed it all, but were also a little confused by some of the things that I admittedly didnât research properly myself.
To list it all, here are some of the things that lingered with me and my friends.
- How much money do you start with or how to earn it.
- Where are the shops, Food and resource gathering.
- When to level up, during the session or until the end?
- Keeping up stakes when things are easily solved with dialogue
- Going back/winding down after the adventure
Most of these I feel have many suggestions in the core rulebook, I mostly stuck with the Quickstart PDF just because I was lazy, but Iâll definitely skim through the main rules soon enough.
As a consequence to the fun we had, I ended up caving in and acquiring the Deluxe Box Set, which comes with a giant map, a GM screen, the physical core rolebook, bestiary and sandbox campaign, and a set of dice and miniatures! The shipping was very expensive, but I sure hope itâs worth it.
I think that will help a lot for some of the difficulties we had as well, since travel was a little confusing when I had to scroll up and down the PDF on my laptop or my phone. I think having the book there (all of them with a bound bookmark too!) will be a huge benefit.
Overall, despite all the fumbles I did, everyone had a fantastic time together. As a completely new group trying this for the first timeâone of us didnât even know we were going to do this at allâI think we did very well!
Yes there were the âI wanna make X or Y nonsensical overpowered thingâ, and lots of questions like who rolls next or using items or saying things out of character that should be said in character, and all those other nitpicks that nobody noticed because I am the only one who has listened to what an actual play session looks like when done by people who are used to it.
In the end, I am looking forward to becoming a better GM, and to seeing how far my friend group can go on these adventures!
This is day 10 of #100DaysToOffload
