This was one of my first experiences as a gamemaster. I was just making up a campaign and trying to use dice rolls as I saw fit, using no rule book at all. That was my first mistake. My second was letting my adventurers start at a higher level. The balance just wasn't there and it made things tough. It wasn't until after we had started that I realized what a mistake I had made, because I had no idea of what to throw up against them. That wasn't going to stop me though, so I just started with some exploration to get a feel for the experience. I would soon see they desired to fight, and I had to throw them up against something.

We had only three players in this adventure: an elf ranger, a dwarf fighter, and a halfling mage. I had let them start at level 6 which, since I was making up rules, allowed them to have many spells, skills, and strength. I figured the best way to get a feel for battle would be to throw a wide variety of enemies up against them. This is when I found that things were not going to work out.

I decided to send out a huge group of orcs to battle them. I created a really powerful orc leader that would command these orcs in battle and continue to be a replayable character for me to guide the campaign with. Well the adventurers didn't have a problem with most of the orcs, but that caused them to get a little too cocky and they attacked the head orc. I hadn't expected them to be in good enough shape to attack the boss orc, so I wasn't ready for this. I had made the head orc too powerful and with just a few attacks, all of my adventurers were dead. Needless to say, I never did this again.

I decided to send out a huge group of orcs to battle them. I created a really powerful orc leader that would command these orcs in battle and continue to be a replayable character for me to guide the campaign with. My adventurers really showed me what they were capable of and tore through my army of orcs in no time. They were in great shape and began to attack the head orc. They were handling him easily and I knew I was about to lose my main character for this campaign, so I had to find a way to intervene. I created an even more powerful orc that broke up the battle by killing the head orc and taking no damage from my adventurers. This causes the adventurers to turn tail and run, but now the campaign was a lot more difficult to plan without a good balance. We restarted soon afterward.