I'm very new to 5e, having just recently purchased the core books. My group is wholly unfamiliar with it, having usually done games in either 3.5/Pathfinder or D20Modern. But I did convince my friends to give it a go; once they got a look at how the classes worked and the consolidation done between various things into the proficiency bonus (Thank god I don't need to keep track of so many bloody numbers) and the customization available, they wanted to sink their teeth in it a bit. Anyways, I have two campaigns; one still in the planning/brainstorming stage, and one at the point where maps and encounters are being set up.
My Hollow World campaign is the one that's farthest along. This is a particularly nostalgic one for me; my first crack at DMing was this with 3.5, and to get people acquainted with the system, I thought to run this again. It's going to be very kick-in-the-door-kill-the-monster style D&D, and thus easy to get folks acquainted. This is set in the Hollow World, or at least as close to it as I can get. It's heavily inspired by Warriors of the Eternal Sun, my first exposure to D&D. So there's going to be fighting a lot of primal beasties like super-mammals (Dire Bears, Sabretooth cats, and the like). Dinosaurs, too. But I have a few questions to ask more seasoned dms:
A: Given what I understand about how the Spell of Preservation works, a lot of magic straight up doesn't work. Contacting or summoning anything from another plane of existence is impossible, and teleports are impossible. Divination doesn't work, and illusions don't work. Hollow World was the brainchild of a deity-like being named Ka the Preserver with the explicit endorsement of the other such beings, who collaborated to help create it. This is why clerics can call on their deities, though Mystara/Hollow World didn't have deities per se. The problem is warlocks. If a character chooses to roll a warlock, what should I do about them trying to contact or being contacted by their patron? Do I simply ignore it?
B: When last I ran this, because I didn't have proper resources, I used Gnolls as a substitute for the Beastmen. I later learned that the Beastmen are proto-orcs; they are to orcs what Cro-Magnon Man is to humans. There are also other beastman variants that are proto-ogres and proto-trolls (going to directly use trolls here, so that's not relevant). Should I substitute these out and just use orcs and ogres, or just swap stats for Beastmen? The Beastmen are a critical enemy in the early part.
C: I am in the midst of designing a dungeon that I'm not sure where to place in the campaign. It's a dungeon of my very own, and it's meant to give closure to part of the opening: The castle city they start in was on the cusp of losing a war to a powerful Hobgoblin warlord when Ka the Preserver yanked them into the valley to protect their culture, as he is wont to do when a culture is about to go extinct. Some of the goblins were yanked along with them, including the warlord. I'm not sure exactly where in the campaign this dungeon should go, because I fear they will overshadow the Beastmen (or orcs) if I put them in too early. So...need some advice for that.
D: The Burrower. At the end of the video game, this Lovecraftian horror is killed when the party calls upon Ka to deal with it, using a certain scroll. Instead of using Ka to kill it, should I just have the party kill it instead, and use Ka in another fashion?
E: Should I start them at level one or level three? They've all been fighting a war prior to this, so there's that.
That's all. I don't think these are huge issues, but the Burrower question and the extra dungeon are a bit harder to solve than the first two. All in all, I want this to be a Hack'n'slashy game to really get them going for the other campaign. This one is fairly low-ish fantasy, but the next one is going to be high fantasy.
I can't answer A-D, but on E I have some thoughts.
Levels represent your character's expertise as an adventurer, not as a soldier, acolyte, or whatever. The background flavors would cover what they did in the war before they decided to become a rogue or a paladin, or whatever.
If your players are new to 5e, I recommend starting at level 1. This will allow them to experiment a little with their characters before really deciding on a dedicated path. When I start with a new group who have never played before, I actually allow them to do full class swaps up to level 3. I'll also allow swapping fighting styles, arcane schools, etc. Once we hit level 4, that character is set in stone. For veteran players, I'm a little less loose with this, as they should know how the classes work for themselves, for that reason, I'll also start campaigns at higher levels. It sounds like your players are familiar with D&D in general, so you could go either way. Even so, I'd recommend the level 1 start with flexibility, because some of the classes will operate differently than they're used to, and there are few things more disappointing than playing a character in a long campaign that you thought would be fun but ended up boring.
A. I think Warlocks and Clerics will be somewhat in the same boat here. They both derive their spell casting abilities from supernatural others. The rules are pretty vague about the exact relationships between Warlocks and their Patrons, it is not really clear how much, if any, communication takes place between them. It is possible that Ka and the others who assisted him could fill the role of Patrons for Warlocks. They need not always make the pact in their own name. The "Fiend", "Archfey", and "Great Old One" are really flavor text, the mechanics work regardless of who the actual patron is.
B. Not being familiar with role or stats of the Beastmen it is hard for me to comment on this. If you like the sats you have for Beastmen go ahead an use them. if you don't have stats I would use orc and ogre stat blocks, but reskin them as Beastmen.
C. Not sure how to advise you on this.
D. I would let the party face and kill the Burrower. In table top play it usually feels like an anti-climax to summon a powerful NPC and what them fight and kill the Big Bad.
E.
Level 1 5e characters are a lot less squishy than level 1 in previous editions. They are pretty competent over all, but are still simple enough not to overwhelm with all the tricks at their disposal. There are a lot of little differences. Certain spells work differently for example, Charm person and Sleep have much shorter durations than they used to. I have a house rule than when playing any sort of character build system for the first time players are allowed to tweak their characters after the first session to bring them more in line with their character concept. This helps keep players from being overly penalized by lack of system mastery. It is not fun to realize that your character can't do the one thing you wanted them to because you chose the wrong option at character generation because you misunderstood how things worked.
A. Well, the thing is, Ka the Preserver himself doesn't really seem all that interested in worshipers; he has them, but it seems he is most concerned with cataloging knowledge and making certain nothing truly goes "extinct". But I suppose that's easy to see. I mean, in the volcanic regions there are Hellhounds about, and one of the "deities" is clearly some kind of fiend. I don't really know how much influence the fey have, but there are some rather strange places in the area, particularly in the Malpheggi Swamp.
B. I've decided it's just easier to reskin orcs as beastmen, and ogres as Big Beastmen. I'm not restricting my players on any races from the PHB, and someone may choose a half-orc, which makes for an interesting situation where, in essence, this player is meeting what almost appears to be an ancestor.
The one thing about Hollow World is that there is a fan-made conversion in progress, but in the meantime i'm doing some homebrewing. But resources are slim; D&D hasn't seen official support for Mystara as a setting in decades. There are references to Mystara in the DMG, but no real resources for it. I really like Hollow World in particular as a setting, because it can make for a very swords-and-sorcery setting without a lot of other issues. It can be every bit as brutal and violent as anything in stories set in the Hyborian Age, and yet wizards aren't immediately a problem. It's also not depressing like Dark Sun.
Hollow World also has a lot of really cool things in it, like a pirate nation. It's got two different varieties of dark elves; one called simply the Shadow Elves who just live in underground cities but are somewhat nomadic (I'm letting Drow be playable because of them; they exist in the Known World), and the Schattenalfen (a bit redundant in the name, but I didn't name it) who are more like the drow. Though, they don't worship Lolth; they actually worship an evil "deity" (the aforementioned fiend) that just uses them for various things. Oddly enough, the Azcans, a human civilization within Hollow World, worships the same being. Their architecture is thus almost EXACTLY the same, and the two peoples bitterly hate each other and often war with one another; it's not clear who was first to use this architecture here, but it's implied to be the Azcans.
There are a lot of other things, like an early Dwarf civilization, an interesting take on actual Orcs, and a highly technologically advanced form of elves addicted to their technology and thus unable to truly interact with anyone else. Of course there are dinosaurs of every kind, super-mammals (including owlbears) I imagine things like gigantic birds, huge crabs, and anything ancient or prehistoric.
But, it's not a supported setting. Wizards, you need to get in on that. I's love to see a revival of Mystara and Hollow World. I've heard rumors about Spelljammer, though.Maybe we'll see Mystara.
EDIT: Mystara was a thing not when WoTC had D&D, but when it was TSR's property.
I'm very new to 5e, having just recently purchased the core books. My group is wholly unfamiliar with it, having usually done games in either 3.5/Pathfinder or D20Modern. But I did convince my friends to give it a go; once they got a look at how the classes worked and the consolidation done between various things into the proficiency bonus (Thank god I don't need to keep track of so many bloody numbers) and the customization available, they wanted to sink their teeth in it a bit. Anyways, I have two campaigns; one still in the planning/brainstorming stage, and one at the point where maps and encounters are being set up.
My Hollow World campaign is the one that's farthest along. This is a particularly nostalgic one for me; my first crack at DMing was this with 3.5, and to get people acquainted with the system, I thought to run this again. It's going to be very kick-in-the-door-kill-the-monster style D&D, and thus easy to get folks acquainted. This is set in the Hollow World, or at least as close to it as I can get. It's heavily inspired by Warriors of the Eternal Sun, my first exposure to D&D. So there's going to be fighting a lot of primal beasties like super-mammals (Dire Bears, Sabretooth cats, and the like). Dinosaurs, too. But I have a few questions to ask more seasoned dms:
A: Given what I understand about how the Spell of Preservation works, a lot of magic straight up doesn't work. Contacting or summoning anything from another plane of existence is impossible, and teleports are impossible. Divination doesn't work, and illusions don't work. Hollow World was the brainchild of a deity-like being named Ka the Preserver with the explicit endorsement of the other such beings, who collaborated to help create it. This is why clerics can call on their deities, though Mystara/Hollow World didn't have deities per se. The problem is warlocks. If a character chooses to roll a warlock, what should I do about them trying to contact or being contacted by their patron? Do I simply ignore it?
B: When last I ran this, because I didn't have proper resources, I used Gnolls as a substitute for the Beastmen. I later learned that the Beastmen are proto-orcs; they are to orcs what Cro-Magnon Man is to humans. There are also other beastman variants that are proto-ogres and proto-trolls (going to directly use trolls here, so that's not relevant). Should I substitute these out and just use orcs and ogres, or just swap stats for Beastmen? The Beastmen are a critical enemy in the early part.
C: I am in the midst of designing a dungeon that I'm not sure where to place in the campaign. It's a dungeon of my very own, and it's meant to give closure to part of the opening: The castle city they start in was on the cusp of losing a war to a powerful Hobgoblin warlord when Ka the Preserver yanked them into the valley to protect their culture, as he is wont to do when a culture is about to go extinct. Some of the goblins were yanked along with them, including the warlord. I'm not sure exactly where in the campaign this dungeon should go, because I fear they will overshadow the Beastmen (or orcs) if I put them in too early. So...need some advice for that.
D: The Burrower. At the end of the video game, this Lovecraftian horror is killed when the party calls upon Ka to deal with it, using a certain scroll. Instead of using Ka to kill it, should I just have the party kill it instead, and use Ka in another fashion?
E: Should I start them at level one or level three? They've all been fighting a war prior to this, so there's that.
That's all. I don't think these are huge issues, but the Burrower question and the extra dungeon are a bit harder to solve than the first two. All in all, I want this to be a Hack'n'slashy game to really get them going for the other campaign. This one is fairly low-ish fantasy, but the next one is going to be high fantasy.
I can't answer A-D, but on E I have some thoughts.
Levels represent your character's expertise as an adventurer, not as a soldier, acolyte, or whatever. The background flavors would cover what they did in the war before they decided to become a rogue or a paladin, or whatever.
If your players are new to 5e, I recommend starting at level 1. This will allow them to experiment a little with their characters before really deciding on a dedicated path. When I start with a new group who have never played before, I actually allow them to do full class swaps up to level 3. I'll also allow swapping fighting styles, arcane schools, etc. Once we hit level 4, that character is set in stone. For veteran players, I'm a little less loose with this, as they should know how the classes work for themselves, for that reason, I'll also start campaigns at higher levels. It sounds like your players are familiar with D&D in general, so you could go either way. Even so, I'd recommend the level 1 start with flexibility, because some of the classes will operate differently than they're used to, and there are few things more disappointing than playing a character in a long campaign that you thought would be fun but ended up boring.
A. I think Warlocks and Clerics will be somewhat in the same boat here. They both derive their spell casting abilities from supernatural others. The rules are pretty vague about the exact relationships between Warlocks and their Patrons, it is not really clear how much, if any, communication takes place between them. It is possible that Ka and the others who assisted him could fill the role of Patrons for Warlocks. They need not always make the pact in their own name. The "Fiend", "Archfey", and "Great Old One" are really flavor text, the mechanics work regardless of who the actual patron is.
B. Not being familiar with role or stats of the Beastmen it is hard for me to comment on this. If you like the sats you have for Beastmen go ahead an use them. if you don't have stats I would use orc and ogre stat blocks, but reskin them as Beastmen.
C. Not sure how to advise you on this.
D. I would let the party face and kill the Burrower. In table top play it usually feels like an anti-climax to summon a powerful NPC and what them fight and kill the Big Bad.
E.
Level 1 5e characters are a lot less squishy than level 1 in previous editions. They are pretty competent over all, but are still simple enough not to overwhelm with all the tricks at their disposal. There are a lot of little differences. Certain spells work differently for example, Charm person and Sleep have much shorter durations than they used to. I have a house rule than when playing any sort of character build system for the first time players are allowed to tweak their characters after the first session to bring them more in line with their character concept. This helps keep players from being overly penalized by lack of system mastery. It is not fun to realize that your character can't do the one thing you wanted them to because you chose the wrong option at character generation because you misunderstood how things worked.
A. Well, the thing is, Ka the Preserver himself doesn't really seem all that interested in worshipers; he has them, but it seems he is most concerned with cataloging knowledge and making certain nothing truly goes "extinct". But I suppose that's easy to see. I mean, in the volcanic regions there are Hellhounds about, and one of the "deities" is clearly some kind of fiend. I don't really know how much influence the fey have, but there are some rather strange places in the area, particularly in the Malpheggi Swamp.
B. I've decided it's just easier to reskin orcs as beastmen, and ogres as Big Beastmen. I'm not restricting my players on any races from the PHB, and someone may choose a half-orc, which makes for an interesting situation where, in essence, this player is meeting what almost appears to be an ancestor.
The one thing about Hollow World is that there is a fan-made conversion in progress, but in the meantime i'm doing some homebrewing. But resources are slim; D&D hasn't seen official support for Mystara as a setting in decades. There are references to Mystara in the DMG, but no real resources for it. I really like Hollow World in particular as a setting, because it can make for a very swords-and-sorcery setting without a lot of other issues. It can be every bit as brutal and violent as anything in stories set in the Hyborian Age, and yet wizards aren't immediately a problem. It's also not depressing like Dark Sun.
Hollow World also has a lot of really cool things in it, like a pirate nation. It's got two different varieties of dark elves; one called simply the Shadow Elves who just live in underground cities but are somewhat nomadic (I'm letting Drow be playable because of them; they exist in the Known World), and the Schattenalfen (a bit redundant in the name, but I didn't name it) who are more like the drow. Though, they don't worship Lolth; they actually worship an evil "deity" (the aforementioned fiend) that just uses them for various things. Oddly enough, the Azcans, a human civilization within Hollow World, worships the same being. Their architecture is thus almost EXACTLY the same, and the two peoples bitterly hate each other and often war with one another; it's not clear who was first to use this architecture here, but it's implied to be the Azcans.
There are a lot of other things, like an early Dwarf civilization, an interesting take on actual Orcs, and a highly technologically advanced form of elves addicted to their technology and thus unable to truly interact with anyone else. Of course there are dinosaurs of every kind, super-mammals (including owlbears) I imagine things like gigantic birds, huge crabs, and anything ancient or prehistoric.
But, it's not a supported setting. Wizards, you need to get in on that. I's love to see a revival of Mystara and Hollow World. I've heard rumors about Spelljammer, though.Maybe we'll see Mystara.
EDIT: Mystara was a thing not when WoTC had D&D, but when it was TSR's property.
While I understand bumping's a bit frowned upon, some news: My first game is tomorrow, and I'm a touch nervous. I've DMed before, but not 5e.