A Dalliance in Deerford

A | Introduction

A1 | This website

Welcome to “A Dalliance in Deerford”, the “My First One-Shot” from Buried Aeons. This document was written with one primary goal: to enable a new or experienced GM to guide a group of 1 to 4 new adventurers through a short adventure in 3 to 4 hours if you play the first two acts or 5 to 6 if you play the entire thing. We tried to include a lot of the elements that make D&D so much fun and that are recognisable to first-timers, making it perfect for people who want to get acquainted with the game. The adventure was written with D&D 5e (2024) in mind and was playtested with it, but it should work just fine with other game systems with minimal adjustments.

Buried Aeons has tried to make this adventure as complete as possible, but does assume you have some “standard” materials on hand. As a GM, you basically only need these pages and the internet (with a dice-rolling website), pen and paper, and probably a printer to play... But what is a TTRPG without dice? And if it fits your playstyle, printed battlemaps and puzzles help flesh out the story a bit more, especially for new players.

So take your time to read through the adventure beforehand and decide for yourself if and which of the maps and puzzles you’d like to print out. And whether you’d find it helpful to keep sourcebooks like the PHB and the DMG on hand.

A2 | Preparations before playing

A2.1 | "Session Zero"

Alright, so you've found a group of players who want to play D&D for the first time, and you’ve settled on this adventure. That’s great! But before you start playing, it’s a good idea to hold a mini “session zero” first.

In a “session zero” for a full-sized adventure, you’ll often discuss the theme and the group’s expectations, but you’ll also discuss what is and isn’t acceptable at the table and what kinds of topics shouldn’t be brought up at all.

We could write an entire new document on how to run a good session zero, so we won’t cover that here. But you can find some excellent videos on YouTube about how this works.

For now, the most important thing is to mention that the main goal is for everyone to have fun during this session, then ask how far you, as the GM, can go in describing combat, and finally emphasize that when it comes to the rules, the GM always has the final say!

A2.2 | Characters

During or after your session zero, you can have your players create characters according to the rules described in the D&D 5e Player’s Handbook, or similar rules from another system. The characters are level 1 for this one-shot, and you should have already agreed on which classes and races they can be during Session Zero. If you haven’t done this yet, be sure to do so before you begin! For this adventure, there are no restrictions on what kind of characters your players can create.

You can also use ready-made characters, which can be found here.

A3 | Let's play!

We're almost ready to play! Here's one last quick explanation of how to read the adventure chapters:

Text that's in a block like this you can always read out aloud; these are usually descriptions of the environment. Bold red text indicates Non Players Characters (NPCs), usually enemies or other characters that are important to the plot. If you see text that is yellow and bold, such as [History][10], have your players roll the specified skill or ability check or save. In this case it's History, so they roll a d20 and add the score listed for their ‘History’ skill. If they roll higher than or equal to a certain number, a 10 in this case, it’s a success; otherwise, the roll fails. You can tell from the context what the various events mean.
Example: Read this passage aloud first. [History][10] You can read this aloud if they roll higher than a 10, and [15] this if some players have rolled even higher than a 15.

For more information about checks see this page.

Text that isn't in blocks is additional information, and you can describe it however you like. Italicized text are items. Text (in parentheses) is additional information, usually not directly relevant to the plot, but it can add some color to the world if you're players are curious.

Finally our adventure will begin at the Barley Fair. Have fun!