Okay, so we all had fun . . .

Last night I got together with a trio of old friends (as in, guys I've gamed with for literally decades) and the wife to run my first ever 5th Edition D&D game.

Okay, I had fun. We all did.

Mind you, we only had one encounter (the initial encounter with goblins in the Lost Mines of Phandelver module). The party decided not to try to find the goblin lair right away, but pressed on to Phandalin in case their patron, the dwarf Gudren Rockseeker, had managed to escape the ambush. When they didn't find him in town, they promptly set about meeting the townfolk and racking up side-quests, Elder Scrolls-style.

I can't swear for all of the rules, since the game session was higher on role-playing than combat (not at all a bad thing, mind), but first impressions:

First, I really like the concept of Hit Dice as a way of replenishing hit points between combats without needing a cleric. It really moved things along, especially after . . .

The goblins in the initial encounter were actually quite threatening, thanks to their high sneak skill and fairly good damage-dealing capacity, at least with Dexterity-based weapons (bows, scimitars). Fortunately for the party, I played the goblins as overconfident once they thought they'd taken the party's tank (paladin) down. Fortunately, the dragonkin bard's breath weapon bought the paladin enough time to heal himself while the kenku rogue pelted them with arrows from atop the party's wagon, driven by the druid.

It occurs to me that had I played the goblins cautious and to the hilt, I might well have ended up with a TPK. It occurred to my players as well--there were some (somewhat) fond reminiscence about our first (and third-to-last) 4th Edition game some years ago, when we did get TPKed by the initial encounter with a kobold ambush.

Combat was fast and furious, and the players looked for every opportunity to gain Advantage--which is a mechanic of such pure genius that I can't believe that it took 40 years of role-playing games to come up with it. It was interesting that everything has more hit points in this edition (if you count the PCs having hit dice to expend between encounters) but everything also deals more damage and hits far more often. The net effect is brings combat speed to 1st Edition levels.

Of course, 1st Edition combat could really drag out at higher levels, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in 5th.

Most of our skill checks were Intelligence-based as characters tried to figure out clues, so I'm still waiting to see how that plays out.

We only saw a few spells used. From reading the PHB, PCs get more spells per day, but the spells are weaker in power compared to their 1st Edition Equivalents. For example, sleep in 5E affects 5-40 hit points (23 average), which is the equivalent of two goblins, and lasts for only a minute (10 combat rounds), while sleep in 0-1st Edition affects 4-16 hit dice of creatures (so an average of, say, 10 goblins) and lasts for an hour or so. Charm person in 5E lasts only an hour; in OD&D it can last potentially forever.

Thoughts on what I could bring over into an OD&D or S&W game, should I ever run one again:

• The advantage/disadvantage mechanic. Again, it's pure genius.
• The hit dice mechanic. It's a great way to give a group of PCs a longer adventuring day without decreasing leathality.

For those interested in the campaign details, we've started an Obsidian Portal page. A fair amount of the material will make it onto this blog--it's good to have backups at least.