Nope, you haven't missed anything.

If you want a true Virtual Table Top, the main 4 people use are Roll 20, Fantasy Grounds, Foundry, and Astral. Talespire is another one that is in alpha or beta or pre-release or something.

Of those, the first 2 (Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds) have the rights to D&D content, so you could, if you wanted to, buy (again) Icespire Peak, and all the books (yes, again) there, and then you would have full access to all of it. I believe there are importer mods for Foundry that will let you grab some to most of the material over to there, but I have not used anything but the PC importer so I can't really speak for that feature.

Quote from CWard83 >>

1st... I would completely forget about the idea of a homebrew campaign.  I'm not saying to outright use a Forgotten realms setting... I'm just saying forget about a Homebrew setting.

Your characters don't need to know anything about the world they are in in the initial sessions.  Just plan your games 1 at a time and build your world from there.  

I have played WAYYY too many homebrew campaigns that fizzled after a couple of sessions.  It's easy to fall into the bad habit of story telling in a homebrew campaign.  You have an idea of how the world should be, and how the characters should act and you end up rail roading them with strange world building ideas.  If you're new to the game, keep things vague, and just build your world around the players after a couple of play sessions.

2nd... grab a couple of adventure books and pull some encounters from there.  Any of the starter packs are fine, or Tales from the Yawning Portal has some low level adventures.  I usually work portions of the adventure books into my homebrew to fit what is currently going on.  This helps me avoid having to build dungeons etc.. or even long encounters.  It gives you and idea of rewards and all of that....  

3rd... sit down with your players and talk about motivation.  I have some frustrating players that always want me to come up with some compelling way to motivate them.  We should just assume your characters want to adventure etc... Make your players come up with their characters motivation.  If everyone is new to the game, I would suggest sticking with a simple concept like greed.  Your players are after wealth and power, that's it. Forget about complicated story arcs like vengence or redemption, these things put too much pressure on the DM to pull off a satisfying conclusion.   Chances are, if everyone is new to this, the players will end up switching characters or changing campaigns before long.  

 

 

 Incredible advice and I agree completely. I've mentioned all of this stuff in my videos but you've perhaps said it all better than I could. In 40ish years of doing this, with 90% of being a DM, everything you offered is spot on and everything you warned of happening is exactly what happens. Well said (stealin' it!).

Hey thanks for the kind words.  I only have about 25 years of GM/DM/Player Experience, but I assume we have all fallen into these pitfalls.