Before we begin a new campaign, I need to teach a new player the rules but I only have 1 hour. Matt Coville to the rescue.

On the eve of our new campaign, The Curse of Strahd, we had a brand-new player join our group. Anthony has never played D&D and knew nothing about it. I didn’t want him to feel left behind but I also didn’t want to bog down the game, stopping every ten minutes to explain what a d20 was, what does AC stand for, what’s the difference between a long sword and a short one, what is a saving throw, proficiency bonus, death save, on and on.

Time is of the essence. I had Anthony show up to the first session early. I had already created his character based upon what he wanted to play. He wanted to play a drow elf paladin but we could have just as easily used any pre-generated character of any race or class. Initially, Anthony was going to play the easier-to-learn fighter, but our Strahd campaign has no one who can heal (or turn undead) so we made him a paladin. Now I just need a simple 3-5 room dungeon to teach him to play.

Enter Matt Coville and his Delian Tomb. Matt Coville is my favorite D&D YouTuber and his series on “Running the Game” is the best RPG content out there. One of his very first episodes (Let’s Make an Adventure) described The Delain Tomb; a simple 5 encounter dungeon that could be run in 3-4 hours. I did it in 30 minutes. But how is that possible you ask. Let me show you…

But before we begin, just a few more words about Matt Coville. I cannot stress enough, how integral Matt Coville was when I got back into this hobby. His wildly successful YouTube channel stared in 2016 and I started this paltry website in 2019. Unbeknownst to Matt, he became my mentor, my coach, my guru. In many ways, I have emulated (i.e. stolen) his style of play and morphed it into my own. A few years back, he began creating some wonderful Third Party Content for D&D that delved into areas that the “official” D&D rules did not cover. Strongholds & Followers, Kingdoms & Warfare, and Flee, Mortals are all excellent books and I highly recommend you add them to your RPG Library along with anything else in their store that strikes your fancy. (FYI, I bought these books with my own money, and I am not paid for this endorsement. In fact, I’m pretty sure Matt Coville doesn’t even know I exist.)

 

In a strange twist of fate, the success of Matt Coville (and others) lead the parent company of D&D (Wizards of the Coast & Hasbro) down a greedy, dark path and into the OGL scandal of 2023. As D&D went down this rabbit hole of devestatingly terrible PR nighmares, Matt Coville had to step away from his beloved game and Matt’s Production Company, MCDM, focused on creating their own RPG system, dubbed Draw Steel. I have not yet read the rules, but I’m excited for them. Just by the title alone, and the knowledge that Matt loves 4th edition D&D, I envision the Draw Steel system to be a combat-centered tactical system that strives to make fantasy roleplay more fun, exciting, and engaging with epic actions and cinematic flourishes. Fingers Crossed.

Bear in mind, my player and I played our Delian Tomb session on July 19, 2025. Then, in my fastest turn around ever (2 days), I wrote this very post but entended to hold on to it, and all my susequent Curse of Strahd diaries, until after I had completed the Campaign Diary for Tomb of Annihilation. I was shocked when I saw that, on July 31, Matt Coville held the Draw Steel Launch Party including a complete video of his group playing through the intro adventure that just so happens to be a revamped, updated, and expanded Delian Tomb. Here is the link to that video: The Delian Tomb Episode 1. The co-aligning coincidences were too compelling to ignore. The convergence of time, space, and intellectual properties compelled me to put forth my thoughts and experience of this incredible (simple, smart and perfect) teaching adventure. But enough of this gay banter (and shameless plugs); back to my original post.

Please note, that I am running the original 5-room Delion Tomb and not the expanded version above. As I said, per Matt Coville, the original Tomb can be run in 3-4 hours with zero experience on the part of the players. So how did I manage to cram it all down to just 30 minutes? I did it by running the Tomb as a solo player one-shot, dropping the number of enemies, trimming all the fat and chucking all that annoying roleplaying. Bleh. And with a little tweaking, this also made a perfect prequel that fleshed out a part of the player’s backstory. By the way, Anthony’s character is a drow elven fighter who seeks greater purpose in his quest to become a paladin. His name is Crush, so I will refer to him as such going forward. Adventure Awaits!

First, I give just a few lines that sets up the scene. My campaign starts in the country of Cormyr in the Forgotten Realms but you can change the names and places how ever you want to fit your game. I explain to Crush that the Drow live in caves underground and this is his first time ever above ground. “Crush, you exit the Underdark near a village called Espar. There you meet a kindly knight. The knight says, “Good sir, you should wear a hooded cloak around here. Most would not take kindly to a drow in their midst. But I can see you are no ordinary dark elf and you are on a quest to do some good in this world. Perhaps we can help each other. I am Lanniver Hezom of the Order of the Gauntlet, a group of good deed doers. A gang of goblins are attacking travelers on the north road. Go and eradicate them.”

I explain that I would usually have the player make some skill checks to see if you can track the goblins to their lair. If your player is a tracker, by all means run those checks. But that takes time and Crush doesn’t have those skills, so we’ll skip it. “You track the goblins to a hidden forest glen. Toppled pillars led the way to set of stairs going into some sort of shrine. Roll me a Perception check.” After rolling his first ever d20 and adding up his Perception bonuses, Crush passes. “You hear at the bottom of the stairs two rough, high-pitched voices complaining about being stuck on guard duty again. What do you do?” I explain that here Crush can do almost anything he wants. He can stomp down the stairs to either attack or talk to whatever is down there. He can attempt to sneak in and get a look at what things are down there and maybe get the jump on them. He can make a noise up here and attempt to draw them out, but also maybe alert others to his presence. Or, he could even say to hell with this, abandon this quest, and go back to his miserable, boring life under ground. Crush chose to be a sneaky bastard.

Unfortunately, Crush is wearing chainmail and is notoriously un-sneaky. Roll a Stealth roll. He rolled poorly but just high enough that he didn’t know if he passed or failed. Roll another Perception check please. Pass. “You hear one of voices below say, “Shh. I think something’s coming down the stairs.”” Okay, now Crush knows he failed, but I won’t always make it so obvious. Bursting into the room, Crush discovers two goblins standing in a room that used to be some sort of shrine. Neither side is surprised. Roll Initiative.

Running through the combat basics, and after a staggering amount of failed attack rolls on both sides, Crush kills one goblin and injures the other. But it is the goblin’s turn and Crush is down to just 2 hit points. The next hit will kill him. So, I have a lesson in morale, where the goblin attempts to run and retreat further into the shrine. I explain that this usually (always) means that the goblin is running for reinforcements. But Crush gets to use a reaction for a single opportunity attack (I ignored the fact that goblins get to use a bonus Disengage action, maybe the goblin panicked). Success! The goblin is struck down before he can sound the alarm. Next step: Loot the corpses and search the room. I had also meant to give Crush a potion of healing prior to the adventure, so I retcon that here and go over how that works and Crush heals back up to 12hp. I use a homebrew rule that you can drink a potion of healing as a bonus action and roll hit point recovery normal (2d4+2), but if you use your full action to drink one, you get max healing (10hp). But you do you.

Back to the shrine. The goblins have some copper pieces (24) and a few silver (6) on them, but their weapons and armor are rusty garbage, not worth keeping, and more importantly not worth lugging back to town to grind out a ludicrous amount of gold, ala Skyrim. Around the Offering Brazier in the center of the room, I change the Oath to fit my game: “I will defend the night against those who would befoul its light.” Ooh, mysterious. You can change the wording to suit your player’s class, race, or backstory. A bard could have the lyrics of a song, a wizard some arcane script, a monk could have a fortune cookie proverb. Whatever. On to the scythe trap hallway, where I completely stole the way to defeat it from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I explain that this is where one would normally have the thief check for traps, but he’s no thief, so he’s screwed. I changed the area to have a few more clues and anyone can look for traps, so roll Perception. Pass with a 16. Passing the DC 8 check, I read, “As you walk down the hall, you see a message scrawled on the wall. It reads, “The penitent one shall pass.” Because you rolled so high (over DC12) you even spot a pressure plate on the ground and a thin slit in the walls right about head high. Since you rolled really high (over DC15), you also see, just beyond the pressure plate, a crude wooden “bridge” that could be used to cross the plate without triggering it. What do you do?”

Running through the options, Crush could attempt to disarm the trap (Sleight of Hand) with thieves’ tools he doesn’t own or know how to use. He could jump the trap (Athletics/Acrobatics) hoping he doesn’t bump his head on the ceiling, falling back onto the plate, or triggering some other unseen mechanism. He could try to snag the bridge on the other side (with rope and crowbar that every smart dungeon explorer carries) and drag it to him (a higher Athletic check). Or he could solve the trap using the clues. Of course, my attempts at being clever were thwarted by Anthony’s lack of knowledge of the Indiana Jones movies. (Just get out of my house. I mean it! Go!) I give him a DC3 Insight check to learn that penitent gives us the word Repent! Now he gets it, and Crush crawls through the hall on his hands and knees, grovelling and repentant. He triggers the trap, but the scythe blades shoot out harmlessly over his head. Thankfully, there is no follow-up blade shooting out of the floor; forcing one to also do a barrel roll through the trap like Indiana Jones had to do, because that is just stupid and has nothing to do with being penitent. When was the last time you saw the pope do a cartwheel?

By the way, I added the “bridge” because while the goblins are too “light” to trigger the trap, the boss in the next room is not, and he needs a way to get past the trap as well. Hence the portable bridge (two raised wooded planks) that his goblin minions put down for him. Moving on.

In the next room, I changed the bugbear to a hobgoblin because a bugbear will destroy a single 1^st level character. The hobgoblin has only one goblin buddy, whom the hobgoblin is distractedly screaming at about something. It doesn’t matter what, because I only want to give Crush a surprise round and introduce the concept of distance and movement speed. The enemies are 40’ away. If Crush runs in, he will be exposed and open to attack. If he stays where he is, using a range weapon with surprise, he attacks with Advantage and now the enemies have to run at him, also unable to close the distance without Dashing, but either way, open themselves up to another attack by Crush. The only question is which one to hit first?

Quick lesson in combat economy. The more enemies there are, the more chances they have to hit and kill you. Take out the weaker ones first, and even the odds. With his surprise advantage, Crush hurls a javelin at the goblin facing the other way, and rolled his first ever Natural 20! His first Crit Hit! Perfect. And in our campaign, we don’t just do double damage. I’ve re-introduced the infamous Seth Skorkowsky Critical Hit / Critical Fumble Table. “Crush, Roll a d100,” (after I explain how that is done using 2d10.) Crush rolled an 84. Checking the table… holy crap, Quadruple Max Damage! Adding it all up, plus his strength bonus (which is only added once, not 4 times!) that equals 26 points of damage. More than enough to eviscerate the poor goblin. “The javelin pierces the goblin, right through his neck and out the other side. Blood sprays all over the shocked hobgoblin, quickly followed by the javelin which also hits the hobgoblin in the shoulder. Roll a 1d6 for that damage.” Always feel free to add embellishments that don’t strictly follow the rules as written when something cool happens.

That extra hit did 3 points of damage and good thing too, because Crush didn’t land another blow for a dozen rounds. Meanwhile the hobgoblin went on a rage fueled rampage striking blow after blow on the poor potential paladin. He’s back down to 2hp. Since he is technically a fighter for this scenario, I give Crush the Second Wind bonus action. Good, he’s back up to 11. Then bam, bam, bam! Three hits in a row and so…, Crush is dead. “Uhm, okay, let’s talk about Death Saves. You are unconscious and dying. Assuming the hobgoblin doesn’t tear your body to pieces, you need to roll a 10 or higher three times using a d20 die before you accrue three failures. You mark it on your sheet right there. Give me some rolls.”

4, 6, 7! Are you kidding me! Okay, let’s talk about the concept of Dice Jail. This is where your dice go when they completely suck! Let’s just put them over here in the corner to think about what they’ve done wrong and you can use these dice instead. Now this is why you go adventuring with other people. Usually, one of them will run over and waste an action “stabilizing” your useless, squishy body to keep you from dying for reals. But you don’t have any friends here, do you? All right, what are we gonna do?

“Okay, that last killing blow didn’t happen. As the sword is about to cleave you in two, a white gold light shines down from the statue; oh, by the way, there’s a statue in this room. This light envelops you like a pair of spectral wings and shields you from that last hobgoblin attack which now glances harmlessly off this holy light. Apparently, the goddess this statue represents has recognized you as a champion to her cause and saved your life. You have 1 hit point left. Now kill this mutha-fu…” Shush ya mouth.

Crush’s new dice are good dice, and the hobgoblin lay dead at his feet. Oh, thank god. Looting finds 5 gold and 24 silver. You write that down. I have Crush add this to his inventory. Crush finally gets to have a look at this statue. Give me a History or Religion check, whichever is higher for you. 12 on the d20 and History +1, Pass. You recognize the statue as Sehanine Moonbow. She is a goddess of the surface elves. She is the goddess of the night, the dead, and the moon. Here’s a tip. If I tell you that some shopkeep’s name is Bob or this is George the Guard, you don’t need to remember that. But if I give you a name like Sehanine Moonbow, that name is definitely gonna come up again. So, write that down. Obviously, your statue can be whatever is relevant to your game.

Next, I explain that a big part of searching a room is looking for hidden, unobvious things. Maybe something is behind the statue or if there was a desk or chest in here, you would search inside it, or look for a secret compartment or a secret door. Roll a perception check to search the room. Another Nat 20. Yes, these dice are much nicer, thank you. Crush, you find a secret door, but you don’t know how it opens. You also find a plaque at the base of the statue that reads, “Speak my oath, only if you can keep it.” I changed this “riddle” a little to make it easier to solve but also to hint that speaking the oath might have consequences.

Anthony gets this one right away. “Oh, it was that line out in the first room. What was that again?” Well, if you the player had remembered (or written down) the line, you could just say. Or I could give you an Insight check to see if your character remembers it. Or Crush could walk all the way back, probably forgetting about the scythe trap and triggering it, taking damage until you get to the first room and read it again. Or I can pretend you did all that and just give it to you again. Crush likes option D. “I shall defend the night against those who would befoul its light.” Crush repeats the oath and the secret door opens revealing a hidden crypt beyond.

After speaking his, now binding, oath, I’m feeling generous. Crush also feels a warm glow throughout his body, healing him back to full. He also feels a powerful sense of purpose and obligation. A soft yet strong feminine voice calls out from the beyond. “In the next room, my loyal servant has been tainted by dark magic. Put him to rest once more, then take up his mantle and vanquish all other such abominations you find from this moment henceforth.” Again, you can tailor all this blah blah to suit your player’s goals.

Entering the crypt, I added that the stench of decay and corruption is over-powering. Roll a Constitution saving throw to keep from retching and being poisoned for the next minute or so. Success! But had you failed, you would have rolled with disadvantage for the first few rounds of combat. As you enter the tomb, a stone coffin lies in the middle of the room. Then the lid of the coffin is pushed aside by a bony hand inside the coffin. A skeleton rises up, wearing tattered armor, but still holding a pristine sword and shield branded with the mark of Moonbow. A holy symbol of Sehanine attached to a chain is worn around the neck. How was this faithful warrior corrupted by some necromancer and turned undead? Who knows? And the answer will not be part of this campaign. Naturally, the skeleton attacks. Roll initiative.

This fight is much more balanced than the last one. Both sides traded blows, until at last the undead abomination lay dead once more. I had considered teaching the Turn Undead ability; but that can come later. Crush lay the skeleton back in the coffin, reconsecrating the grave, but he was hesitant to take its stuff. I told him directly you get the sense that Moonbow intends for Crush to have these items. And that is the story of how a despised drow soldier became a paladin of the surface elven goddess Sehanine Moonbow and given a life-long quest to rid the world of undead.

When Crush reported his success to Knight Hezom, he said. “Congratulations, you are well on your way to becoming a true hero. I have another quest. Wolves have attacked a farmer and his family on the Eastern Road. His wife is dead and the children have been dragged off into the night. Kill the wolves and return the children if able. You will need more than just yourself for this mission. Go to the local tavern and recruit more heroes to aid you. Three more ought to do it. If they won’t be men of valor, I will offer 25 gold each if they survive. Good luck.”

All in all, this was a perfect Intro adventure. Sure, I killed the character in the third encounter, but I’m sure he learned a valuable lesson about sticking together and never getting separated from the party. In less than 45 minutes, the new player learned most of the basic combat mechanics, skill checks, saving throws, note taking, even death saves and more importantly, thinking outside the box. Plus, this thrusts a new player into our fantasy world, giving him a backstory, motivations, and I even made him the initial quest giver of the actual campaign. Thank you again, Matt Coville! I hope that Draw Steel is a huge success and you continue to make dope stuff.

As for our group, instead of the usual next week… in just ten minutes, our new heroes meet, get caught in a trap inadvertently set up by the new guy and battle to survive in the dreadful world of Barovia. But that is for another post (that will likely take me longer than one week to write.)

As always, the best way to teach D&D is to play D&D, and Game On!