On Sunday, September 26th, 2021, Elemental Beacon successfully hosted the first event for the community of Bucharest! Its name was D&D Workshop for Beginners and, as you can imagine, was an event aimed at teaching new players how to play D&D.
We admins had a blast meeting all of these new wonderful players, sharing our knowledge with you, and playing with you during the Adventure Session. We cannot wait to start working on a new event and invite you all again for another day of adventures!
Until then, let’s review together how the event went!
Introduction & Presentations
The event’s official start time was 10:30 am. Because of COVID-19 regulations, we had to limit the capacity of the venue to only 30 people, which we believe greatly affected the participation rate as a green pass or a negative PCR test were mandatory in order to enter the venue.
Nonetheless, we were very happy to see that people started gathering by the entrance at 9:00 am! When we mentioned coming early to make sure to have a seat, we didn’t mean this early! But kudos to you! It’s better to be early than late, and we do appreciate that in our players!
After a few drinks and coffees, we started the event officially with the first part, the presentations!
What is D&D and how it came to be?
Admin and DM Alexandre spoke about the history of Dungeons & Dragons, how it came to be, and how it developed during the years. He also explained the role of the player and of the Dungeon Master with a nice and funny interaction with some of the attendees, who came to the front stage to play a quick 10-minutes session to showcase improvisation.
We sadly have no pictures of Alexandre’s presentation. If you have any, please send us!
How do you create a character?
The second presentation was by me, Nicola, founder, and DM of Elemental Beacon. I went through all the races and classes from the Player Handbook to give an overview of what’s possible to create and how any idea you have can actually work as a character and shine!
I also explained how to create a good backstory from the point of view of both the player and the DM, with some examples as well.
I did not expect my presentation to be this long so I had to rush through it. If you are interested in downloading the slides of this speech or if you didn’t catch everything, please find them here: D&D Workshop For Beginners – Character Creation
Combat and Math
Rareș, our other admin and DM, presented about combat in D&D, how to calculate numbers like Initiative, Armor Class, weapon damage and hit, etc.
He also explained in detail how to use the dice, the concept of DC (Difficulty Class), and went through an entire fight with some example characters.
You can download the slides of this speech here: D&D Workshop For Beginners – Combat Calculations
Workshop
After the presentations, all the attendees got to work and created their own characters! This part was one of our favorites, as every single person was so immersed in trying to create something epic that will award them a prize in the Character Creation Contest (yes, we had a contest with prizes from our sponsors!).
Everyone had cool ideas and was very engaged with other attendees to improve upon what they created, asking questions left and right. We did also notice that some of the attendees were experienced players as they knew how to fill in every single detail of their character sheet, and they were also going around to help others! We thank you for that!
After the lunch sponsored by our host Snakes & Wizards, we announced the three winners of the contest. Three of the attendees wrote the best backstories for their characters and won, for the first prize, a copy of the Essential Kit and a miniature painted by our admin and DM Alexandre, for the second prize, a miniature painted by Alexandre and a dice set, and for the third prize, a dice set.
All prizes were gifted by our sponsor Red Goblin who also gifted a d6 to each and every attendee in addition to a 10% discount on any product purchased with a special coupon card that was given to everyone at the venue.
It’s Adventure Time!
This. Was. Amazing!
Right after announcing the winners, and thanking everyone who joined us for this fantastical day, we started the Adventure Session!
Some of the attendees got the chance to play with us a one-shot, 20 of them to be exact!
The adventurers saw the characters that they just created during the workshop, come to life and fight their way through puzzles, deception, and combat, to save the life of some poor villagers kidnapped by an evil Mind Flayer.
We ended the day with a drink together, and sharing contact to meet again!
We had a blast!
The entire day was amazing! We had so much fun with all of you folks who joined and we cannot wait to start this all over again! We thank each one of you for participating and for making this event happen! Thanks also for the tips you left in our chest, and thanks to our sponsors Snakes & Wizards for hosting the workshop and Red Goblin for gifting so much material!
We really hope you had as much fun as we did, and that you learned something! Elemental Beacon has plans for more events in the future, spanning topics like advanced D&D, painting, printing, DM workshops for beginners and advanced, homebrewing, etc.
Keep an eye on our Facebook page and this blog for more information!
Until then, good luck, adventurer!
