so my group is a very new group to DnD. We're currently in the middle of all of our first campaign! Our experienced DM is leaving us a job in the coming months, so I decided to secretly start prepping myself in the event we don't find a new DM. I've read that LMOP is a great first time campaign for beginners, and it's relatively short. This will be great so that I can determine my skills as a DM, and if the group even wants to allow me to remain as the DM! I've purchased LMOP, I've just gone through the story quickly to check it out, I've confirmed we have animated maps for all the dungeons (we like to use animated maps for a more interactive experience). Obviously I'm going to read through the entire adventure much more closely, getting familiar with all the important npcs, places, etc. I love that there's plenty of built in text for me to read, it will make me look like I'm somewhat competent.
Were there any bootcamps or video series that really helped you as a new DM to DnD5e?
In the event the group love it, are there any adventures that build off of LMOP?
We all use dndbeyond, so I think that will help out a lot with cutting down on questions others would have if we were just using paper sheets. But are there any other tools that you find useful as a DM?
I'm stoked to study up and prepare, and hopefully give my group a fun adventure when our current DM leaves us!
edit: oh just checked out the encounter builder and combat tracker, and I think I'm definitely going to be using those to help keep battles a bit easier to track! maybe I can even pre load some of those before hand so that it's easier to pull up on the fly.
Dragon's of icespire peak happens around the same area and town. There are easy ways to migrate right to that adventure module from lost mines though you might want to tweak a few things for difficulty since DOIP is made for level 1-6 I believe. So if you are already level 5 at the end of LMOP then most of the content will be a breeze (from a combat point of view) unless you tweak the battles.
Then there are other adventure modules that take place near Phandalin in Leilon. You could always head north to Icewind dale, or go East to the Dessarin Valley , or even south to Waterdeep. There are adventure source materials that cover all of that.
My tip is that while LMoP is great, the plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense without some tweaking.
-The big bad guy doesn't have a reason for doing all this, definitely come up with some motivation for wanting the mines, and for wanting control over the town.
- Unless you really play up that Gundran is a close friend to the players, it makes no sense for them to keep trying to find a guy who was just a guy paying them 10g to deliver a wagon.
- One twist you can put in is at the end you can add Sildar and Harbin imprisoned with the last Rockseeker brother. Have them replaced by the doppelgangers (and maybe play up the doppelgangers in other places). This explains why Harbin never did anything about the redbrands, and why the lords alliance never shows up to help.
- Do Storm King's Thunder after. It actually has advice on continuing from lost mines at level 5 into storm kings, and you can start it just by sending your party down the road east of Phandalin
Really enjoyed LMoP which was the first 5E I ran. Have you checked out Sly Flourish? can definitely recommend his stuff in general - Sly Flourish site https://slyflourish.com/ Sly Flourish Running Phandelver - https://slyflourish.com/running_phandelver.html Sly Flourish youtube Lost Mine of Phandelver Tips 1/4 : Chapter 1, Goblin Arrows
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
I'd recommend reading Game Night Blog's Lost Mine of Phandelver Campaign Resources. It was really useful when I ran LMoP. The Crit table may be slightly OP, the Monster Stats and Encounter lists are a bit unnecessary, but everything else is GOLD. It is really the best resource I can recommend.
My tip is that while LMoP is great, the plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense without some tweaking.
-The big bad guy doesn't have a reason for doing all this, definitely come up with some motivation for wanting the mines, and for wanting control over the town.
- Unless you really play up that Gundran is a close friend to the players, it makes no sense for them to keep trying to find a guy who was just a guy paying them 10g to deliver a wagon.
- One twist you can put in is at the end you can add Sildar and Harbin imprisoned with the last Rockseeker brother. Have them replaced by the doppelgangers (and maybe play up the doppelgangers in other places). This explains why Harbin never did anything about the redbrands, and why the lords alliance never shows up to help.
- Do Storm King's Thunder after. It actually has advice on continuing from lost mines at level 5 into storm kings, and you can start it just by sending your party down the road east of Phandalin
I wholly agree on the idea of giving the villain more of a motivation. Within my own campaign I wrote him a backstory as the son of a wealthy Drow family... which, in the Matriarchal Drow society made him basically an asset to be married away for political power. So he stole a bunch of family money, went to the surface, hired a bunch of goons to help him capture the mines and use the power to overthrow Drow society.
One of the players was a family friend of the Rockseekers, which really did help to justify the players' motivation.
I also played up Sildar's injury from the Goblins to explain why he couldn't particularly help going forward. Weirdly, my players never once attempted to speak to Harbin, so I never had to do much to explain why he's not particularly helpful... I think they just kind of assumed he was a pushover or corrupt to begin with and just ignored him.
Storm King's Thunder and Dragons of Icespire Peak are largely accepted as the easiest adventures to flow into from LMoP. I went from LMoP to Hoard the Dragon Queen, and it took a good bit of finagling to get them from the end of LMoP to HotDQ... whatever quest you decide to go on next, though, its' good to decide early and try to figure out a good way to seed the next adventure in LMoP. The dragon Venomfang is a good jumping off point, since he's kind of just... there in the Adventure seemingly just to be able to put a Dragon on the cover of the box.
My suggestion if LMoP goes well and the group are happy to continue playing with you as DM is to do a campaign starting at level 1 (or maybe 2) with new characters:
As new players they may have made choises about their characters they regret starting with new characters allows then to start afresh
Starting a new campaign allows the players to experiance a different type of character
As players get higher levels they have many more features and skills they can use and it can get complex for new players,for example at 7th level a lot pf spellcasters get polymorph that allows them to turn into an beast they have seen and will then have the stats of that beast , that spell alone gives them a lot of choice.
Playing at higher levels can make things much more challenging for you as a DM Spells I've been playing for several years have DMed about a dozen one shots (I am on a server where characters can progess by playing a series of one shots) and wouldn't be comfortable DMing players above about level 7.
Nearly every published campaign starts at level 1, while it is possible to take such a campaign and change things so the players start at level 5 (or so) it takes a lot of work to balance encounters and without much experiance you may struggle, for example a published campaign may have the PCs encounter a pack of 4 wolves at level 1, that wouldn't be a challenge for level 5 characters so you may choose to replace them with bears but would black, brown or cave bears be a reasonable challenge? Should you change the number from 4 to something else?
You don't need ot worry about how to link the campaigns together, you can pick a campain based in a completely different place (without having to either change all the locations or somehow get the players to a completly different place
I will second what other people here have said, I started off with LMoP and then we played Dragon of Ice Spire. It was really fun. Because of these I picked up DMing for our next adventure (WDH). I find the books give you most of what you need for most things your party will get up to. Just having good note taking helps so you can remember what your players are up to and keep track of combat. Good luck, it is a lot of fun.
You could also try Dungeon of the Mad Mage after LMoP. It starts off at level 5 (I believe) and goes really far. It shouldn't be too hard to get the players from Phandalin to Waterdeep, and there could be some fun encounters during the journey.
Honestly with enough effort and creativity, you can easily build off of the ending. You could just keep going with the story and move into homebrew territory or do like I did and write a decent transition into another campaign book.
I wrote in a drow attack when my players brought The Black Spider to the townmaster and they watched every ally they made so far get murdered. One of my players wanted to switch characters, so I was able to kill him off in a cinematic way before they were all taken prisoner, therefore starting the Out Of The Abyss campaign book.
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Hello,
so my group is a very new group to DnD. We're currently in the middle of all of our first campaign! Our experienced DM is leaving us a job in the coming months, so I decided to secretly start prepping myself in the event we don't find a new DM. I've read that LMOP is a great first time campaign for beginners, and it's relatively short. This will be great so that I can determine my skills as a DM, and if the group even wants to allow me to remain as the DM! I've purchased LMOP, I've just gone through the story quickly to check it out, I've confirmed we have animated maps for all the dungeons (we like to use animated maps for a more interactive experience). Obviously I'm going to read through the entire adventure much more closely, getting familiar with all the important npcs, places, etc. I love that there's plenty of built in text for me to read, it will make me look like I'm somewhat competent.
Were there any bootcamps or video series that really helped you as a new DM to DnD5e?
In the event the group love it, are there any adventures that build off of LMOP?
We all use dndbeyond, so I think that will help out a lot with cutting down on questions others would have if we were just using paper sheets. But are there any other tools that you find useful as a DM?
I'm stoked to study up and prepare, and hopefully give my group a fun adventure when our current DM leaves us!
edit: oh just checked out the encounter builder and combat tracker, and I think I'm definitely going to be using those to help keep battles a bit easier to track! maybe I can even pre load some of those before hand so that it's easier to pull up on the fly.
Dragon's of icespire peak happens around the same area and town. There are easy ways to migrate right to that adventure module from lost mines though you might want to tweak a few things for difficulty since DOIP is made for level 1-6 I believe. So if you are already level 5 at the end of LMOP then most of the content will be a breeze (from a combat point of view) unless you tweak the battles.
Then there are other adventure modules that take place near Phandalin in Leilon. You could always head north to Icewind dale, or go East to the Dessarin Valley , or even south to Waterdeep. There are adventure source materials that cover all of that.
Have fun!
Right on, thank you. I’ll check them out!
My tip is that while LMoP is great, the plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense without some tweaking.
-The big bad guy doesn't have a reason for doing all this, definitely come up with some motivation for wanting the mines, and for wanting control over the town.
- Unless you really play up that Gundran is a close friend to the players, it makes no sense for them to keep trying to find a guy who was just a guy paying them 10g to deliver a wagon.
- One twist you can put in is at the end you can add Sildar and Harbin imprisoned with the last Rockseeker brother. Have them replaced by the doppelgangers (and maybe play up the doppelgangers in other places). This explains why Harbin never did anything about the redbrands, and why the lords alliance never shows up to help.
- Do Storm King's Thunder after. It actually has advice on continuing from lost mines at level 5 into storm kings, and you can start it just by sending your party down the road east of Phandalin
Really enjoyed LMoP which was the first 5E I ran.
Have you checked out Sly Flourish? can definitely recommend his stuff in general - Sly Flourish site https://slyflourish.com/
Sly Flourish Running Phandelver - https://slyflourish.com/running_phandelver.html
Sly Flourish youtube Lost Mine of Phandelver Tips 1/4 : Chapter 1, Goblin Arrows
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Nice, I'll check it out today! Appreciate the recommendation.
I'd recommend reading Game Night Blog's Lost Mine of Phandelver Campaign Resources. It was really useful when I ran LMoP. The Crit table may be slightly OP, the Monster Stats and Encounter lists are a bit unnecessary, but everything else is GOLD. It is really the best resource I can recommend.
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I wholly agree on the idea of giving the villain more of a motivation. Within my own campaign I wrote him a backstory as the son of a wealthy Drow family... which, in the Matriarchal Drow society made him basically an asset to be married away for political power. So he stole a bunch of family money, went to the surface, hired a bunch of goons to help him capture the mines and use the power to overthrow Drow society.
One of the players was a family friend of the Rockseekers, which really did help to justify the players' motivation.
I also played up Sildar's injury from the Goblins to explain why he couldn't particularly help going forward. Weirdly, my players never once attempted to speak to Harbin, so I never had to do much to explain why he's not particularly helpful... I think they just kind of assumed he was a pushover or corrupt to begin with and just ignored him.
Storm King's Thunder and Dragons of Icespire Peak are largely accepted as the easiest adventures to flow into from LMoP. I went from LMoP to Hoard the Dragon Queen, and it took a good bit of finagling to get them from the end of LMoP to HotDQ... whatever quest you decide to go on next, though, its' good to decide early and try to figure out a good way to seed the next adventure in LMoP. The dragon Venomfang is a good jumping off point, since he's kind of just... there in the Adventure seemingly just to be able to put a Dragon on the cover of the box.
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My suggestion if LMoP goes well and the group are happy to continue playing with you as DM is to do a campaign starting at level 1 (or maybe 2) with new characters:
I will second what other people here have said, I started off with LMoP and then we played Dragon of Ice Spire. It was really fun. Because of these I picked up DMing for our next adventure (WDH). I find the books give you most of what you need for most things your party will get up to. Just having good note taking helps so you can remember what your players are up to and keep track of combat. Good luck, it is a lot of fun.
Thanks guys! Looking forward to prepping and giving my players a good time!
You could also try Dungeon of the Mad Mage after LMoP. It starts off at level 5 (I believe) and goes really far. It shouldn't be too hard to get the players from Phandalin to Waterdeep, and there could be some fun encounters during the journey.
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
Honestly with enough effort and creativity, you can easily build off of the ending. You could just keep going with the story and move into homebrew territory or do like I did and write a decent transition into another campaign book.
I wrote in a drow attack when my players brought The Black Spider to the townmaster and they watched every ally they made so far get murdered. One of my players wanted to switch characters, so I was able to kill him off in a cinematic way before they were all taken prisoner, therefore starting the Out Of The Abyss campaign book.