Hey all! So I'm a new DM to a couple of my friends, and I'm running a game for them. We did already start with Dragons of Stormwreck Isle, and they liked it a lot, so we want to continue. They're asking for a longer adventure, to the mid level range, to actually get involved in the lore and plot.
I also really want that for them, but I'm unsure which adventure to pick, since I have a few insecurities: 1) I found myself lacking in my ability to control multiple NPC's at once basically. That's also why I'm dreading campaigns with large cities. 2) I don't have a lot of prep time, so I'm looking for a fleshed out adventure, that will make it easier for me, to also add less improv
I've been looking at a few adventures, such as Ghosts of SaltMarch, and Lost mines of Phandelver andOut of the Abyss
But I'd like to ask if any experienced DM can recommend the pros and cons of the adventures for a new DM, or perhaps an entirely different one. I'm open to 3rd party adventures, as long as it's fleshed out.
Out of the Abyss has a bunch of NPCs that will travel with the players. In combat you can just say that they're fighting another group of enemies while the players are fighting what you're throwing at them. I was using experience for the first half so I let my players know that they could bring in any NPC allies they wanted to, but the NPC would get a share of the total experience. That gave them a safety net that they'd only use if they felt really threatened. But if you don't want to deal with multiple NPCs at once, avoid that one.
Does your group lean more towards dungeon exploration/combat or roleplay? That should help inform your decision. And get you some better suggestions. For example, Princes of the Apocalypse is a good dungeon crawl campaign. And it's designed so you can start with characters at level 1 or level 5. It was the second published 5e adventure so it might be what you're looking for.
Out of the Abyss has a bunch of NPCs that will travel with the players. In combat you can just say that they're fighting another group of enemies while the players are fighting what you're throwing at them. I was using experience for the first half so I let my players know that they could bring in any NPC allies they wanted to, but the NPC would get a share of the total experience. That gave them a safety net that they'd only use if they felt really threatened. But if you don't want to deal with multiple NPCs at once, avoid that one.
Does your group lean more towards dungeon exploration/combat or roleplay? That should help inform your decision. And get you some better suggestions.
Oh wow, ok. So ill probably pass on OoTA for now hahaha. Thank you!!!!
Regarding the partys preference, it's a mix. They're also rather new, so we're enjoying all aspects and learning our preferences.
Ghosts of Salt Marsh is more of a collection of short adventures and one shots rather than a full campaign. You can string them together fairly easily with some imagination but it might feel a bit stop/start.
Lost Mines is a great little campaign, I highly recommend it, but only goes from levels 1-5 so pretty short. They recently released Phandelver and Below which is supposed to be an extended version of Lost Mines but in fact is just Lost Mines and then a second adventure running levels 6-11 with very little connections between the two halves other than the setting. Still a good campaign (I've just finished running it) but you might need a bit of work to try and make the two halves mesh.
For other suggestions Dragon Of Icespire Peak is always a good call for new players and DMs. It's from the Essentials Kit and was the aimed at people who'd never really played before so pretty easy and straight forward but with a nice mechanic of players choosing jobs from a notice board to give freedom. It runs from levels 1-8 but there's a few D&D Beyond exclusive add ons that can take it to level 13 or 14. If you're feeling more ambitious Curse of Strahd is a fantastic campaign, I ran it as my second campaign without much trouble so even an inexperienced DM can pull it off. It has a lot of NPCs across the whole thing but you won't need to control multiples at the same time
I'd go for Phandelver and Below. The Phandelver part has a TON of Dungeon Master notes on various blogs and articles. It's well known, well detailed, and that means you can make it yours but also find a lot of what other DM's did to make it theirs.
I don't know if Lost Mine is available by itself anymore but it has been rolled into Phandelver and Below. Like the above folks said, it is a great adventure for 1-5. I am not familiar with the Below part but the front end is good.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The Dragon of Icespire Peak from the Essentials Kit is a 1-6 adventure designed to introduce players and DMs to D&D. It took my group 17 three-hour sessions to get through it. And if you like it, there are three follow-on adventures that go to level 12. My group enjoyed those as well.
Waterdeep Dragon Heist might also be fun for them and comes with plenty of helpful notes for DMs as well. It technically ranges from 1-5 but you could stay at 3 go from there up instead. Definitely NOT OoTA! lol That is an immense adventure and slog with tons of moving parts, not for the faint of heart! :)
We’re on to the last chapter of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. It’s quite a streamlined campaign: I imagine some tables would find it a bit “railroad-y”, but we’ve been enjoying it. It runs from level 1 to 11, so probably the span you’re looking for.
We have played some of Storm King’s Thunder, which is good and runs over roughly the same range of levels (with the option to start at 1 or at 5). That’d probably be a better option for tables that like to wander off and explore as the mood takes them; we prefer generally to have a reasonably clear storyline, so have got on better with SotDQ.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight is another good campaign, but less “classic” in setting and runs levels 1-8.
Novice DM here - I recently ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist for a group of 5 players, and it went well. The early chapters contain good detail to get you started. The players take up residence in a small street with a number of shops and NPC shopkeepers nearby - and you can spend more time developing whichever NPCs your players take a shine to. The encounter maps are good.
Locations. It gives you one really big map of Waterdeep - which is cool - but the later chapters don't give you specific addresses for anything! So, that'd be the one bit of prep I'd recommend - either take a look at the interactive maps online (which have 'canon' locations not listed in the book), or get some markers out yourself and pick where you want key locations to be. If I ran it again, I'd get some sticky dots and just pick where I wanted to put Trollskull Manor, various noble houses, the Temple of Gond and so on.
Villain. The gimmick of the book is that the DM chooses 1 of 4 possible villains, and the choice determines the season of the story and the order of a late-game chain of encounters. I ran the first 3 or so sessions without being specific about the season so I could delay choosing while learning more about the party. Once I knew which villain would best resonate with the group, I started emphasizing the season - building up the summer heat. But it could have been the winter cold, or autumn gales, whichever suits your group and villain.
Pacing. The book gives the party two objectives - the treasure hunt, and the restoration of Trollskull Manor, which they get early in the story - and at times, they weren't sure which one to focus on. I think it works best if one feeds into the other - the treasure hunt becomes the active quest, with the goal of finding enough gold to rebuild the manor. I.e. even though Trollskull Manor is chapter 2 or so, you don't have to stop the main plot so the players can finish rebuilding - rather, fixing it becomes a background goal with small milestones as they continue the treasure hunt. I printed a tracking page for them: goal 1250 gold, with 100gp segments for them to fill in as they earned it.
Mini-missions. The players can join a range of factions with a table of short missions to go on for each one. If you know your players want to build repute with a particular faction, I found it helpful to plan a bit more detail in advance, as the mini-missions only have brief details ('go to the docks and find Maxeene, the talking horse; persuade her to talk to you with a DC 13 charisma check'). I decided she was a brown and white draft horse, laid-back and food-motivated, and so on. And I found a way to bring her back into the story later as her faction was also interested in following the same NPCs the players were investigating. Several of the mini-missions had NPCs that the players saw in passing later.
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Currently homebrewing the Mistveil Rogue, an elusive infiltrator that can vanish into thin air.
We’re on to the last chapter of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. It’s quite a streamlined campaign: I imagine some tables would find it a bit “railroad-y”, but we’ve been enjoying it. It runs from level 1 to 11, so probably the span you’re looking for.
We have played some of Storm King’s Thunder, which is good and runs over roughly the same range of levels (with the option to start at 1 or at 5). That’d probably be a better option for tables that like to wander off and explore as the mood takes them; we prefer generally to have a reasonably clear storyline, so have got on better with SotDQ.
I thought of these, but just really wanna play them as a player hahahahaha
Novice DM here - I recently ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist for a group of 5 players, and it went well. The early chapters contain good detail to get you started. The players take up residence in a small street with a number of shops and NPC shopkeepers nearby - and you can spend more time developing whichever NPCs your players take a shine to. The encounter maps are good.
Locations. It gives you one really big map of Waterdeep - which is cool - but the later chapters don't give you specific addresses for anything! So, that'd be the one bit of prep I'd recommend - either take a look at the interactive maps online (which have 'canon' locations not listed in the book), or get some markers out yourself and pick where you want key locations to be. If I ran it again, I'd get some sticky dots and just pick where I wanted to put Trollskull Manor, various noble houses, the Temple of Gond and so on.
Villain. The gimmick of the book is that the DM chooses 1 of 4 possible villains, and the choice determines the season of the story and the order of a late-game chain of encounters. I ran the first 3 or so sessions without being specific about the season so I could delay choosing while learning more about the party. Once I knew which villain would best resonate with the group, I started emphasizing the season - building up the summer heat. But it could have been the winter cold, or autumn gales, whichever suits your group and villain.
Pacing. The book gives the party two objectives - the treasure hunt, and the restoration of Trollskull Manor, which they get early in the story - and at times, they weren't sure which one to focus on. I think it works best if one feeds into the other - the treasure hunt becomes the active quest, with the goal of finding enough gold to rebuild the manor. I.e. even though Trollskull Manor is chapter 2 or so, you don't have to stop the main plot so the players can finish rebuilding - rather, fixing it becomes a background goal with small milestones as they continue the treasure hunt. I printed a tracking page for them: goal 1250 gold, with 100gp segments for them to fill in as they earned it.
Mini-missions. The players can join a range of factions with a table of short missions to go on for each one. If you know your players want to build repute with a particular faction, I found it helpful to plan a bit more detail in advance, as the mini-missions only have brief details ('go to the docks and find Maxeene, the talking horse; persuade her to talk to you with a DC 13 charisma check'). I decided she was a brown and white draft horse, laid-back and food-motivated, and so on. And I found a way to bring her back into the story later as her faction was also interested in following the same NPCs the players were investigating. Several of the mini-missions had NPCs that the players saw in passing later.
Wow, that's super detailed!! Thank you so much!!! I'm afraid running a city like Waterdeep is still too daunting for me though
Waterdeep Dragon Heist might also be fun for them and comes with plenty of helpful notes for DMs as well. It technically ranges from 1-5 but you could stay at 3 go from there up instead. Definitely NOT OoTA! lol That is an immense adventure and slog with tons of moving parts, not for the faint of heart! :)
The Dragon of Icespire Peak from the Essentials Kit is a 1-6 adventure designed to introduce players and DMs to D&D. It took my group 17 three-hour sessions to get through it. And if you like it, there are three follow-on adventures that go to level 12. My group enjoyed those as well.
I don't know if Lost Mine is available by itself anymore but it has been rolled into Phandelver and Below. Like the above folks said, it is a great adventure for 1-5. I am not familiar with the Below part but the front end is good.
I'd go for Phandelver and Below. The Phandelver part has a TON of Dungeon Master notes on various blogs and articles. It's well known, well detailed, and that means you can make it yours but also find a lot of what other DM's did to make it theirs.
I went for this, but probably won't change it up much. Though it's great to know that's an option
Ghosts of Salt Marsh is more of a collection of short adventures and one shots rather than a full campaign. You can string them together fairly easily with some imagination but it might feel a bit stop/start.
Lost Mines is a great little campaign, I highly recommend it, but only goes from levels 1-5 so pretty short. They recently released Phandelver and Below which is supposed to be an extended version of Lost Mines but in fact is just Lost Mines and then a second adventure running levels 6-11 with very little connections between the two halves other than the setting. Still a good campaign (I've just finished running it) but you might need a bit of work to try and make the two halves mesh.
For other suggestions Dragon Of Icespire Peak is always a good call for new players and DMs. It's from the Essentials Kit and was the aimed at people who'd never really played before so pretty easy and straight forward but with a nice mechanic of players choosing jobs from a notice board to give freedom. It runs from levels 1-8 but there's a few D&D Beyond exclusive add ons that can take it to level 13 or 14. If you're feeling more ambitious Curse of Strahd is a fantastic campaign, I ran it as my second campaign without much trouble so even an inexperienced DM can pull it off. It has a lot of NPCs across the whole thing but you won't need to control multiples at the same time
Really? Then I think I'll make Curse of Strahd my next campaign.
Again, thank you everyone for the advice!!!!
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Hey all!
So I'm a new DM to a couple of my friends, and I'm running a game for them.
We did already start with Dragons of Stormwreck Isle, and they liked it a lot, so we want to continue.
They're asking for a longer adventure, to the mid level range, to actually get involved in the lore and plot.
I also really want that for them, but I'm unsure which adventure to pick, since I have a few insecurities:
1) I found myself lacking in my ability to control multiple NPC's at once basically. That's also why I'm dreading campaigns with large cities.
2) I don't have a lot of prep time, so I'm looking for a fleshed out adventure, that will make it easier for me, to also add less improv
I've been looking at a few adventures, such as Ghosts of SaltMarch, and Lost mines of Phandelver andOut of the Abyss
But I'd like to ask if any experienced DM can recommend the pros and cons of the adventures for a new DM, or perhaps an entirely different one. I'm open to 3rd party adventures, as long as it's fleshed out.
Looking for the more classic setting in general.
Thank you very much for the help!
Out of the Abyss has a bunch of NPCs that will travel with the players. In combat you can just say that they're fighting another group of enemies while the players are fighting what you're throwing at them. I was using experience for the first half so I let my players know that they could bring in any NPC allies they wanted to, but the NPC would get a share of the total experience. That gave them a safety net that they'd only use if they felt really threatened. But if you don't want to deal with multiple NPCs at once, avoid that one.
Does your group lean more towards dungeon exploration/combat or roleplay? That should help inform your decision. And get you some better suggestions. For example, Princes of the Apocalypse is a good dungeon crawl campaign. And it's designed so you can start with characters at level 1 or level 5. It was the second published 5e adventure so it might be what you're looking for.
Oh wow, ok. So ill probably pass on OoTA for now hahaha. Thank you!!!!
Regarding the partys preference, it's a mix. They're also rather new, so we're enjoying all aspects and learning our preferences.
Ghosts of Salt Marsh is more of a collection of short adventures and one shots rather than a full campaign. You can string them together fairly easily with some imagination but it might feel a bit stop/start.
Lost Mines is a great little campaign, I highly recommend it, but only goes from levels 1-5 so pretty short. They recently released Phandelver and Below which is supposed to be an extended version of Lost Mines but in fact is just Lost Mines and then a second adventure running levels 6-11 with very little connections between the two halves other than the setting. Still a good campaign (I've just finished running it) but you might need a bit of work to try and make the two halves mesh.
For other suggestions Dragon Of Icespire Peak is always a good call for new players and DMs. It's from the Essentials Kit and was the aimed at people who'd never really played before so pretty easy and straight forward but with a nice mechanic of players choosing jobs from a notice board to give freedom. It runs from levels 1-8 but there's a few D&D Beyond exclusive add ons that can take it to level 13 or 14. If you're feeling more ambitious Curse of Strahd is a fantastic campaign, I ran it as my second campaign without much trouble so even an inexperienced DM can pull it off. It has a lot of NPCs across the whole thing but you won't need to control multiples at the same time
I'd go for Phandelver and Below. The Phandelver part has a TON of Dungeon Master notes on various blogs and articles. It's well known, well detailed, and that means you can make it yours but also find a lot of what other DM's did to make it theirs.
I don't know if Lost Mine is available by itself anymore but it has been rolled into Phandelver and Below. Like the above folks said, it is a great adventure for 1-5. I am not familiar with the Below part but the front end is good.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The Dragon of Icespire Peak from the Essentials Kit is a 1-6 adventure designed to introduce players and DMs to D&D. It took my group 17 three-hour sessions to get through it. And if you like it, there are three follow-on adventures that go to level 12. My group enjoyed those as well.
The three follow-ons are:
It looks like they are $5 each.
Waterdeep Dragon Heist might also be fun for them and comes with plenty of helpful notes for DMs as well. It technically ranges from 1-5 but you could stay at 3 go from there up instead. Definitely NOT OoTA! lol That is an immense adventure and slog with tons of moving parts, not for the faint of heart! :)
We’re on to the last chapter of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. It’s quite a streamlined campaign: I imagine some tables would find it a bit “railroad-y”, but we’ve been enjoying it. It runs from level 1 to 11, so probably the span you’re looking for.
We have played some of Storm King’s Thunder, which is good and runs over roughly the same range of levels (with the option to start at 1 or at 5). That’d probably be a better option for tables that like to wander off and explore as the mood takes them; we prefer generally to have a reasonably clear storyline, so have got on better with SotDQ.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight is another good campaign, but less “classic” in setting and runs levels 1-8.
Novice DM here - I recently ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist for a group of 5 players, and it went well. The early chapters contain good detail to get you started. The players take up residence in a small street with a number of shops and NPC shopkeepers nearby - and you can spend more time developing whichever NPCs your players take a shine to. The encounter maps are good.
Locations. It gives you one really big map of Waterdeep - which is cool - but the later chapters don't give you specific addresses for anything! So, that'd be the one bit of prep I'd recommend - either take a look at the interactive maps online (which have 'canon' locations not listed in the book), or get some markers out yourself and pick where you want key locations to be. If I ran it again, I'd get some sticky dots and just pick where I wanted to put Trollskull Manor, various noble houses, the Temple of Gond and so on.
Villain. The gimmick of the book is that the DM chooses 1 of 4 possible villains, and the choice determines the season of the story and the order of a late-game chain of encounters. I ran the first 3 or so sessions without being specific about the season so I could delay choosing while learning more about the party. Once I knew which villain would best resonate with the group, I started emphasizing the season - building up the summer heat. But it could have been the winter cold, or autumn gales, whichever suits your group and villain.
Pacing. The book gives the party two objectives - the treasure hunt, and the restoration of Trollskull Manor, which they get early in the story - and at times, they weren't sure which one to focus on. I think it works best if one feeds into the other - the treasure hunt becomes the active quest, with the goal of finding enough gold to rebuild the manor. I.e. even though Trollskull Manor is chapter 2 or so, you don't have to stop the main plot so the players can finish rebuilding - rather, fixing it becomes a background goal with small milestones as they continue the treasure hunt. I printed a tracking page for them: goal 1250 gold, with 100gp segments for them to fill in as they earned it.
Mini-missions. The players can join a range of factions with a table of short missions to go on for each one. If you know your players want to build repute with a particular faction, I found it helpful to plan a bit more detail in advance, as the mini-missions only have brief details ('go to the docks and find Maxeene, the talking horse; persuade her to talk to you with a DC 13 charisma check'). I decided she was a brown and white draft horse, laid-back and food-motivated, and so on. And I found a way to bring her back into the story later as her faction was also interested in following the same NPCs the players were investigating. Several of the mini-missions had NPCs that the players saw in passing later.
Currently homebrewing the Mistveil Rogue, an elusive infiltrator that can vanish into thin air.
Thanks you for the detailed replies everyone!!! It really gave me an awesome perspective and idea.
I thought of these, but just really wanna play them as a player hahahahaha
Wow, that's super detailed!! Thank you so much!!! I'm afraid running a city like Waterdeep is still too daunting for me though
I'll avoid OOTA, thanks!
Yeah, want to continue further, but want to play those myself hahahaha
Ended up going for this
I went for this, but probably won't change it up much. Though it's great to know that's an option
Really? Then I think I'll make Curse of Strahd my next campaign.
Again, thank you everyone for the advice!!!!