Getting Into D&D 5e Adventures

After setting up the table and everyone coming back into the room, I asked if the knights retainers were going with them or staying in town. They decided they should stay in town and gather information and rumors.  I thought that was very creative.  After the PCs started traveling, I gave them a description of the area that included a hill with cairns atop it and in the distance they could make out the windmill on another hill.  They spotted some humanoid foot prints that appeared to go in the direction of the cairn.  The adventurers decided to approach the windmill first since their quest was to have the woman that lived in the windmill return to the village due to dragon sightings in the area.

I ran the windmill similar to the written quest.  They saw the Manticore, but one change was that it appeared to be very skinny, and Adabra yelled for help from the windmills upper window.  The PCs spent some time deciding the best course of action and actually rolled a nat 20 on insight, so I read the manticore description to them.  This helped them know that a Manticore can be “bribed”.  After convincing the knight not to attack, they offered the Manticore enough food for it to leave (this will be great as a future encounter later in the campaign). The characters were able to help Adabra and convinced her to come back to town.  This differed from the written quest, but why wouldn’t she come back to town after having a manticore try to eat her?  She rewarded them with a potion of healing.  They asked her to pack up her belongings and supplies while they explored the cairns.

I added a small encounter with orcs at the cairns.  I wanted to let the kids have a chance to kill some bad guys since I knew the manticore was not going to end up being a combat.  As they explored the cairns and old ruins the orcs were able to successfully hide and catch them by surprise.  This was a dangerous encounter due to how bunched up the characters were.  The first orc charged the halfling druid and rolled a 1, falling down.  The second and third orcs charged the knight and both missed their attacks.  The orcs took their second round with one standing, another moving to engage the Gnome warlock, and the knight taking 7hp of damage.  The knight and druid were able to kill one of the orcs that turn.  In the next turn the Gnome Warlock took some damage and after some successful attacks in that round and the next the heroes were able to slay the three orcs.  They discovered that these orcs appeared to be starving and saw that they were gathering mushrooms growing near the cairns.  The PCs healed themselves and then returned to get Adabra and bring her back to town.

In town they collected their reward of 25 GPs and decided to travel to the Dwarven Excavation as their next mission from the job board.  Next up for me is making the maps!