So I'm currently the DM for our group. When we set the group up, I'd been more interested in playing but we didn't have anyone else in the group with any DMing experience (I had run Lost Mine Of Phandelver for some people just before Christmas). One of the guys in the group said that he would be keen to DM but he's not played the game even as a player before so we agreed that I would DM a campaign so that he could learn the ropes as a player, then he'd take over as the DM.
We're now starting to think about him taking over and I was wondering if people had any pointers for a good campaign for a beginner DM with characters starting around level 5-7? The rest of the players are all very attached to their characters and wouldn't really be interested in starting back at level 1 again.
I looked at Descent Into Avernus since we could theoretically pick it up part-way through but from what I've read elsewhere, it seems like it might be too challenging for a beginner DM? Also wondered about Storm Lord's Wrath. As a group I think we'd like something that's reasonably balanced in terms of RP/exploration/combat. Literally any ideas at all would be a huge help.
Storm Lord's Wrath is a good one to play. It gives the DM an option to continue onto the later modules too, if they still feel like DMing after getting through Storm Lord's Wrath. :-)
SLW definitely has RP opportunities as well as both exploration and combat. If you haven't read it already then that is the most I would say about it.
It does assume that the PCs are level 7, rather than 5-6 - but that would also depend on the experience of the players.
Storm Lord's Wrath is quite nice for a beginner(ish) DM.
Out of the Abyss has the GM juggling multiple important NPCs that may or may not be alive at any given point a tthe start and is probably a bit rough.
Curse of Strahd is a classic, but does require the GM is willing to lean heavily into the roleplaying and descriptions to build the proper mood.
Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden have some nice sandboxy segments which may seem overwhelming at first, but allows you to break the early game into mini-encounters that are easier to run. The Roll20 adaptaions of the modules are quire solid - expecially ToA with a cool overland map where you can remove blank hexes as the players explore to reveal more. It also has some nice helper books on DMs guild to help doing the jungle travel encounters in chapter 2.
I have no experience with Descent into Avernus, so can't comment on that.
From my experience it comes to a two part solution/answer to really be able to answer your question about finding the right campaign.
The first one is how much work does the person taking over as a DM want to put in, it's going to be work regardless but how much is kind of a factor.
The second question is to players really want to play the module itself with some tweaks here or there and do they just want to leave it in the hands of the DM?
The first legit campaign I've ran so far (still ongoing, kind of around the halfway point based off their actions) is Curse of Strahd which is not often recommended as a good starting point for new DM's... but the group expressed interest in wanting to take a break from our main campaign and possibly play that one and I chose to run it.... And my version draws from a bunch of different sources (theres a really good curse of strahd reddit page with a lot of information), some elements have even been drawn from our home game, with a whole explanation for why things are the way they are. It was a bit more work than just running the module as is, but my group was cool with how I wanted to do things and they've been enjoying the whole thing so far.
If the option was to just do the basics and mostly just tweak the existing module, from what I recall the free Frozen Sick Module is a pretty decent one. Although if you are using the same characters and don't want to delevel (which is understandable) the challenges would need elevation (which stands to reason if that also wasn't something the DM would have to deal with than overall character level would need to be considered to find a good module fit).
There are three bonus adventures that were available with the Essentials Kit (Dragon of Ice Spire Peak) using a bonus code.
Storm Lord's Wrath 7-9
Sleeping Dragon's Wake 9-11
Divine Contention 11-13
These are set mostly in the village of Leilon on the Sword Coast near Phandelver so they provide a fairly seamless follow on after either Lost Mines of Phandelver or Dragon of Ice Spire Peak. The Cult of Talos from DoIP and others are the main adversaries. The first uses the same style of leveling as DoIP or LMoP - complete 2 or 3 quests and then level. They even describe it as a "job board" which could work well for a beginner DM. If the characters played LMoP first these would make a logical continuation.
However, it will be harder to DM levels 7-13 than 1-7 because there is just more information that the DM should have an idea about. More spells, each character has more options, more features and more things that they can typically do on a turn. On the other hand, if you really want beginner DM friendly higher level content that might fit into your existing campaign there are very few other options.
Though there are some other options ... :)
Tales from the Yawning Portal
- White Plume Mountain - level 8
- Dead in Thay - level 9
- Against the Giants - level 11
- Tomb of Horrors - level 13
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
- Tammeraut's Fate - level 9
- The Styes - level 11
Candlekeep Mysteries
- this collection has one adventure for every level from 1->17 with two for level 4 if I recall ... so that would be another option since each of the adventurers is relatively short. They share a common theme of books.
-----
I'm currently running a campaign that is a mish mash of GoS, TftYP, the DoIP addons, possibly some Dreams of the Red Wizard from Adventurers League, some CandleKeep Mysteries and some homebrew (using the modules helps reduce prep time - though I do need to make some adjustments to get some logical continuity :) ).
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So I'm currently the DM for our group. When we set the group up, I'd been more interested in playing but we didn't have anyone else in the group with any DMing experience (I had run Lost Mine Of Phandelver for some people just before Christmas). One of the guys in the group said that he would be keen to DM but he's not played the game even as a player before so we agreed that I would DM a campaign so that he could learn the ropes as a player, then he'd take over as the DM.
We're now starting to think about him taking over and I was wondering if people had any pointers for a good campaign for a beginner DM with characters starting around level 5-7? The rest of the players are all very attached to their characters and wouldn't really be interested in starting back at level 1 again.
I looked at Descent Into Avernus since we could theoretically pick it up part-way through but from what I've read elsewhere, it seems like it might be too challenging for a beginner DM? Also wondered about Storm Lord's Wrath. As a group I think we'd like something that's reasonably balanced in terms of RP/exploration/combat. Literally any ideas at all would be a huge help.
Storm Lord's Wrath is a good one to play. It gives the DM an option to continue onto the later modules too, if they still feel like DMing after getting through Storm Lord's Wrath. :-)
SLW definitely has RP opportunities as well as both exploration and combat. If you haven't read it already then that is the most I would say about it.
It does assume that the PCs are level 7, rather than 5-6 - but that would also depend on the experience of the players.
Storm Lord's Wrath is quite nice for a beginner(ish) DM.
Out of the Abyss has the GM juggling multiple important NPCs that may or may not be alive at any given point a tthe start and is probably a bit rough.
Curse of Strahd is a classic, but does require the GM is willing to lean heavily into the roleplaying and descriptions to build the proper mood.
Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden have some nice sandboxy segments which may seem overwhelming at first, but allows you to break the early game into mini-encounters that are easier to run. The Roll20 adaptaions of the modules are quire solid - expecially ToA with a cool overland map where you can remove blank hexes as the players explore to reveal more. It also has some nice helper books on DMs guild to help doing the jungle travel encounters in chapter 2.
I have no experience with Descent into Avernus, so can't comment on that.
From my experience it comes to a two part solution/answer to really be able to answer your question about finding the right campaign.
The first one is how much work does the person taking over as a DM want to put in, it's going to be work regardless but how much is kind of a factor.
The second question is to players really want to play the module itself with some tweaks here or there and do they just want to leave it in the hands of the DM?
The first legit campaign I've ran so far (still ongoing, kind of around the halfway point based off their actions) is Curse of Strahd which is not often recommended as a good starting point for new DM's... but the group expressed interest in wanting to take a break from our main campaign and possibly play that one and I chose to run it.... And my version draws from a bunch of different sources (theres a really good curse of strahd reddit page with a lot of information), some elements have even been drawn from our home game, with a whole explanation for why things are the way they are. It was a bit more work than just running the module as is, but my group was cool with how I wanted to do things and they've been enjoying the whole thing so far.
If the option was to just do the basics and mostly just tweak the existing module, from what I recall the free Frozen Sick Module is a pretty decent one. Although if you are using the same characters and don't want to delevel (which is understandable) the challenges would need elevation (which stands to reason if that also wasn't something the DM would have to deal with than overall character level would need to be considered to find a good module fit).
There are three bonus adventures that were available with the Essentials Kit (Dragon of Ice Spire Peak) using a bonus code.
Storm Lord's Wrath 7-9
Sleeping Dragon's Wake 9-11
Divine Contention 11-13
These are set mostly in the village of Leilon on the Sword Coast near Phandelver so they provide a fairly seamless follow on after either Lost Mines of Phandelver or Dragon of Ice Spire Peak. The Cult of Talos from DoIP and others are the main adversaries. The first uses the same style of leveling as DoIP or LMoP - complete 2 or 3 quests and then level. They even describe it as a "job board" which could work well for a beginner DM. If the characters played LMoP first these would make a logical continuation.
However, it will be harder to DM levels 7-13 than 1-7 because there is just more information that the DM should have an idea about. More spells, each character has more options, more features and more things that they can typically do on a turn. On the other hand, if you really want beginner DM friendly higher level content that might fit into your existing campaign there are very few other options.
Though there are some other options ... :)
Tales from the Yawning Portal
- White Plume Mountain - level 8
- Dead in Thay - level 9
- Against the Giants - level 11
- Tomb of Horrors - level 13
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
- Tammeraut's Fate - level 9
- The Styes - level 11
Candlekeep Mysteries
- this collection has one adventure for every level from 1->17 with two for level 4 if I recall ... so that would be another option since each of the adventurers is relatively short. They share a common theme of books.
-----
I'm currently running a campaign that is a mish mash of GoS, TftYP, the DoIP addons, possibly some Dreams of the Red Wizard from Adventurers League, some CandleKeep Mysteries and some homebrew (using the modules helps reduce prep time - though I do need to make some adjustments to get some logical continuity :) ).