Hey guys, ive been a player for multiple years and ive DM'd a few one shots but i want to run my first campaign. But id like to use one of the official dnd campaigns as a first time as im dont want to start with a homebrew.
Ive played the curse of strahd campaign a bit, so i dont want to run that one with my current group as they are the ones im playing it with. But was wondering if anyone had some good suggestions on a good first campaign to start with? What would you suggest and why would you suggest it?
Everyone always suggest Lost Mines of Phandelver to new players. Honestly, I'm not as much a fan of that adventure over all. I really like the exploration and adventure feel of Tomb of Annihilation. You and your friends can spend months sand-boxing around the jungles of Chult, fighting a good mix of monsters and finding all kinds of treasure before delving into the meat of the actual end-game dungeon for a pretty epic end-fight when you're ready.
I am a huge fan of running Sunless Citadel for new players, to the point I could almost run it without the book at all. It's short-ish, it's got all the good pieces of an adventure, it has a memorable NPC, and can easily be tied into other adventures. Almost every group I've run through it has done something different, there are a few different plot hooks which should capture most player styles, and it's fairly forgiving to the ad-lib DM. I've also found that you can give your players a lot of grace based on their familiarity with the game, you can dial it back for the new players, giving them time to learn, or you can drop them in the deep end making the adventure much more harrowing. I'm a bit fanatic about the adventure, if you can't tell, but I feel it's got a better grasp on getting players into the game than LMoP does.
I am a huge fan of running Sunless Citadel for new players, to the point I could almost run it without the book at all. It's short-ish, it's got all the good pieces of an adventure, it has a memorable NPC, and can easily be tied into other adventures. Almost every group I've run through it has done something different, there are a few different plot hooks which should capture most player styles, and it's fairly forgiving to the ad-lib DM. I've also found that you can give your players a lot of grace based on their familiarity with the game, you can dial it back for the new players, giving them time to learn, or you can drop them in the deep end making the adventure much more harrowing. I'm a bit fanatic about the adventure, if you can't tell, but I feel it's got a better grasp on getting players into the game than LMoP
Ill happily take a look at it :) thank you for the suggestion
Tomb of Annihilation is widely viewed as being one of the best official campaigns. It does have a couple structural problems, though.
The introduction is very efficient at getting the characters to Chult, but it's a little boring. This is one thing a lot of DMs change.
The adventure seems to encourage the characters to linger in Port Nyanzaru (there's a lot to do there), but the death timer goes against this somewhat. If you want your players to spend some time in the city, you'll need to reconcile this somehow.
The jungle trek is very much a sandbox. On one hand, this can be great because of the variation, but on the other hand, it's going to start feeling random and somewhat inconsequential after a while. One suggestion for fixing this is to have planned adventuring days (though the PCs don't have to know this) to give some structure. Or alternatively, you can create some subplots to weave through this trek to make random encounters feel more connected.
Another advantage of ToA is that there are a lot of good supplemental resources for it on DM's Guild that are either free or pretty reasonably priced, so that's something to check out if you do end up running it.
So, I'm running Tomb of Annihilation as my first campaign and let me tell you...it's a lot of work and a bit overwhelming. As Jreggers mentioned, the introduction is a bit boring so I made my own intro. Not a big deal. What I'm finding difficult is filling in all the blanks that the module leaves. Yes, there's supposedly a lot to do in Port Nyanzaru, but there are limited details on the locations within the city. Apparently a shadow government of "Beggar Princes" run the outer city but there is absolutely no information on it. I found myself having to fill in a LOT of blanks the module leaves behind.
ToA is also a sandbox. It's great to let your players explore, but it's sort of harrowing to prepare because you have no idea where your PCs will try to go or end up. The random encounters table can also be a pain. We're having a lot of fun so far, mind you, but it's a little rough when you're a new DM.
like AK30 says, running one of the big campaigns like Tomb of Annihilation is at big mouthfull for a first time DM.
Lost Mine of Phandelver is made as a starter campaign and tbh does the job pretty well while not being overwhelming. I would recommend running Lost mine, and after a few sessions you might already find yourself comfortable with doing some changes to it.
I'd cast my vote for Lost Mine - I've DMd for many years, but it works as a great training ground for both DMs (either new, or switching to 5e like I was) and players alike.
It starts with a simple encounter and dungeon crawl, then really opens up, with plenty of player freedom, and options to take the material and run with it when you feel more confident. It As it's a starter set, it gives you all the basic information that, while you probably already know the rules, is handy to have so you can focus on narration and role-play.
The story is actually pretty compelling too, and while quite short, has potential hooks into other campaigns such as Horde of the Dragon Queen.
If you're new to DMing, another idea might be to run a shorter adventure (something like 3 or 4 sessions at most) that can lead into one of these other campaigns. This might give you an opportunity to work out the kinks before you dive into something longer. There are a lot of good one shot adventures out there that could serve this purpose.
I don't have anything against Lost Mines of Phandelver beyond the fact that it's a little dull. But as Chequers notes, it leaves plenty of room for you to make changes, and it's reasonably short. Tomb of Annihilation, by contrast, is longer and more complicated to run, but the flavor is a bit more exciting (though of course your mileage may vary).
As a new DM to 5e I will also say lost mines. It provides extra help for a new 5e DM (I have DM'd for 4e and 3.5) and this is perfect for me. It gives you just the right amount of extra info with some side possibilities. Once my group got to part 2, it quickly became a little overwhelming to me with all the characters in town and all the possible forks the group could take.
It provided me a good primer for other adventures that are much more than this one. I am reading ToA now for future use.
I am a huge fan of running Sunless Citadel for new players, to the point I could almost run it without the book at all. It's short-ish, it's got all the good pieces of an adventure, it has a memorable NPC, and can easily be tied into other adventures. Almost every group I've run through it has done something different, there are a few different plot hooks which should capture most player styles, and it's fairly forgiving to the ad-lib DM. I've also found that you can give your players a lot of grace based on their familiarity with the game, you can dial it back for the new players, giving them time to learn, or you can drop them in the deep end making the adventure much more harrowing. I'm a bit fanatic about the adventure, if you can't tell, but I feel it's got a better grasp on getting players into the game than LMoP
Ill happily take a look at it :) thank you for the suggestion
One more nod for Sunless Citadel here. You can get it on dndbeyond as a partial purchase of Tales from the Yawning Portal, which is nice. Look for Meepo - he's an NPC that has potential to be fun. :)
I know what your question is and I'll answer it at the end. I'm just saying that because I know what you're asking and I want you to know I know what you're asking.
But first, I'm going to offer a bit of advice, because the gaming industry and, sadly, most DMs have this 100% back asswards.
You should not begin with a module (this is what we called published adventures back in the dark ages of gaming, so you'll still hear it from us oldheads now and again). Published adventures SHOULD be considered ideal for experienced DMs, but we always seem to be recommending them to new DMs, who utterly lack the skillset necessary to run them well.
It's simply too much information. A published module (or campaign, or adventure path, whatever) is on the order of 100x the amount of information you need to keep in your head as a GM. And it's hard. If you didn't write it, you cannot possibly have the depth of understanding of it you need to run it well. You're new. It's going to take time to get accustom to being on that side of the table; learning how to adjudicate and, more importantly, when to adjudicate. Learning your players, their tastes and tendencies.
I'm not saying don't use a published WORLD. I cut my teeth on Dragonlance, but I never ran a module, nothing published. I used the world as I knew it. I used the classes and monsters etc. from the Tales of the Lance Boxed Set and later the Sovereign Press books, yes, but I had read the books, I knew the world, and I made my version of the world. And the advantage of that? I KNEW EVERYTHING, because the entire campaign existed in my head. I wrote a ton of stuff in advance, sure, but because I wrote it, I always had an answer for what I forgot.
Don't get me wrong, running published stuff can be a blast, especially when it's as well made as Curse of Strahd. But a first time GM? You don't need all that information, and it can very quickly overwhelm you. There are two books you must master; the PHB and the DMG. After that, concentrate on gaining system mastery and feeling comfortable with pacing a session.
At the end of the day here's what I'm saying; you run a published campaign, you're going to spend 50% of the game flipping through the book and re-reading the area/room/npc/whatever descriptions, because you don't have the experience to know what you NEED to know for a session. Being a DM isn't hard, but it takes a long time to master, and even masters are slowed a bit when they're running someone else's content. So if you think you're making it easier on yourself to run something out of a book, I'm saying you're wrong. It's FAR easier to run something you create because it's already right there in your head, and you do not need to over-create, as module writers must.
OK, so that out of the way. I really do love Curse of Strahd. The best thing about it is you run Death House then the campaign proper, you can bring your PCs back to your *real* world proper as Big Damn Heroes (TM) and continue in whatever world you want because it's a demiplane. Plus I'm a Dragonlance dude, so naturally I have a soft spot for Tracy Hickman's other work as well.
I'd go with some of the other posters starting with Lost Mines of Phandelver.
However, as with any published content used in a home game, I would set it in a context of your own world (whether that is a part of the Forgotten Realms or not). You don't need that much of a world to start with. Perhaps just a town/village or other location where the characters forming your party meet up and create their stories. This would essentially be the session 0 of the campaign. Modules which are run as one-offs often don't have the same level of character detail, development and reacting in character (if not actual role playing) that a campaign has.
If you want to lead into Lost Mines then the characters could be hired as caravan guards after they have spent a bit of time interacting with each other in the starting location. Alternatively, Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury could be kicked off by rumours of treasure or perhaps a rescue mission of some sort started in the local tavern or from a local patron.
Another possibility is to have events in the town lead to having the party choose what to do .. if they decide to take the caravan guard job you play LMofP .. if they choose another path then they find something different. This helps support the feeling that they are in a sandbox and that their decisions matter.
Using a published module means that you'll need to read it and understand both the individual encounters and the broader content so that when the players do something unexpected you can respond to it without them noticing that they have gone off the prepared script. Be creative and tie them back into the module as smoothly as possible. Going off script is less frequent in a dungeon crawl but certainly possible in some of the town areas of LMoP.
I'd also disagree that published content is harder. It does include a lot of details ... however, when you create your own stuff you will either need to have pretty much the same content or be able to improvise the content on the spur of the moment as you go along. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the DM somewhat improvising story details to fit the actions of the characters but you want the players to believe that the content they encounter was created earlier. If the folks playing can't tell then you are succeeding. However, it can be easier at times to improvise within your own content than when playing someone else's ... on the other hand, there is nothing that says you have to play a module exactly as written.
Finally, a quick comment on ToA. I'm about 20 sessions (80 hours) into a ToA campaign and our party just reached Omu in the last session. ToA is a true sandbox. You can hide anything in the jungles of Chult but the content provided in Chapter 2 of the module covering the entire continent ... doesn't do a particularly good job due to the travel times involved. There are several interesting places described in ToA but jungle travel is a 1 hex/day (2 hexes/day in a boat on a river). Some of the ToA content is in the north (Port Nyanzaru and Fort Belurion), some in the Misty mountains to the west, some on the southern coast, some in the fire peak mountains in the middle, some on the east coast. The problem is that a party can only encounter a fraction of the enclosed content if they stay on the death curse time line outlined at the beginning ... just due to travel time. It could take 40 days of travel through the jungle just to go from the north to the south or the east to the west. Random jungle encounters get boring after a while and the jungle encounters are mostly aimed at level 1-4 characters ... and this all assumes that they can actually figure out where they need to go in a reasonable time frame.
ToA also has very few magic items and little gold in general. There isn't much to prepare the characters for Omu and the dungeon beyond where they need to have reached at least 9th level. The DM in our campaign has pulled in some guild adept content (Return of the Lizard King, Ruins of Matolo) to add content and areas which we could encounter while traveling in Chult. Adding these helped quite a bit. However, in my opinion, ToA would not be a good starting point for a newer DM since it takes quite a bit of improvisation to keep the jungle travel interesting and relevant.
Don't get me wrong, running published stuff can be a blast, especially when it's as well made as Curse of Strahd. But a first time GM? You don't need all that information, and it can very quickly overwhelm you.
I completely agree with being overwheling for a new DM. As I mentioned before, even with the Lost Mines, I got quickly overwhelmed and reread many of the characters until I got a better understanding of the NPC in town. However, I would still opt for this first because it holds your hand with extra info that will become natural as you play more. It even mentions not to worry about knowing everthing about everyone in town. I am just a perfectionist like that.
That adventure comes in the starter kit for a reason. It is meant for new players as well as new Dungeon Masters.
In addition, I am in the process of making my own adventure and it really has helped me understand what is expected of me and how in depth I can or should go when creating stuff.
It's simply too much information. A published module (or campaign, or adventure path, whatever) is on the order of 100x the amount of information you need to keep in your head as a GM. And it's hard. If you didn't write it, you cannot possibly have the depth of understanding of it you need to run it well. You're new. It's going to take time to get accustom to being on that side of the table; learning how to adjudicate and, more importantly, when to adjudicate. Learning your players, their tastes and tendencies...
Don't get me wrong, running published stuff can be a blast, especially when it's as well made as Curse of Strahd. But a first time GM? You don't need all that information, and it can very quickly overwhelm you. There are two books you must master; the PHB and the DMG. After that, concentrate on gaining system mastery and feeling comfortable with pacing a session.
At the end of the day here's what I'm saying; you run a published campaign, you're going to spend 50% of the game flipping through the book and re-reading the area/room/npc/whatever descriptions, because you don't have the experience to know what you NEED to know for a session. Being a DM isn't hard, but it takes a long time to master, and even masters are slowed a bit when they're running someone else's content. So if you think you're making it easier on yourself to run something out of a book, I'm saying you're wrong. It's FAR easier to run something you create because it's already right there in your head, and you do not need to over-create, as module writers must.
I'm going to disagree with this pretty strongly. When you're just starting to DM, it's already enough to have to learn how to run the game and adjudicate things fairly. DropkickCleary hits the nail on the head with how difficult this is. But trying to plan a homebrew adventure or setting at the same time is going to make that even more difficult. Most new DMs aren't going to know the first place to start when it comes to planning an adventure or creating a campaign setting. If they try to do this at the same time they're learning everything else it takes to be a DM, it's very likely the adventure, campaign, or world they create will be subpar at best.
When I first started DMing, I jumped straight into homebrew, and I think it was a bad decision. I've kept all my notes over the years, and looking back on them now, it's very clear those first adventures just weren't good. It took me a while to learn certain lessons about how to structure an adventure and make it interesting that I think I would have learned faster if I'd run some published adventures first. I've seen and played in groups with other new DMs who have made the same mistake.
Published adventures do have their own problems, but these generally pale in comparison to the number of things that can go wrong with a homebrew adventure. As with anything, though, there are some published adventures and campaigns that are going to be easier to run and better-suited to your needs than others, but there's a lot you can learn from running one and from identifying things that worked and things that didn't.
As others have noted, it's probably best to stick with a smaller adventure like Lost Mine of Phandelver first. You might even want to run something even shorter than that. I may have let my enthusiasm for Tomb of Annihilation get the better of me in recommending it, but it's probably not going to be a good fit for a completely new DM.
That's not to say you shouldn't start thinking about creating your own homebrew. By all means jot down ideas as they come to you. You'll just want to hold off on putting those ideas into practice in the form of a longer adventure or campaign until you really have your feet under you as a DM. When you do get to this point, make sure you're diligent about seeking advice for how to structure adventures and campaigns, as it's nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
As others have noted, it's probably best to stick with a smaller adventure like Lost Mine of Phandelver first. You might even want to run something even shorter than that. I may have let my enthusiasm for Tomb of Annihilation get the better of me in recommending it, but it's probably not going to be a good fit for a completely new DM.
That's not to say you shouldn't start thinking about creating your own homebrew. By all means jot down ideas as they come to you. You'll just want to hold off on putting those ideas into practice in the form of a longer adventure or campaign until you really have your feet under you as a DM. When you do get to this point, make sure you're diligent about seeking advice for how to structure adventures and campaigns, as it's nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
That's why I like Sunless Citadel. It's more than a one-shot, but not as long as LMoP, has a dungeon that's populated in a well thought out manner, and if I recall correctly it provided pretty decent DM advice on running the NPCs. LMoP's pregens with their backstories already plugged into the plot are quite nice for first timers though, and it's designed to ease a new DM in to different aspects of the game just as it does the players.
For new DMs homebrewing stuff, the biggest advice I'd give is to remember that you don't need to create the whole world before you start. You just need enough to have a sense of what the area around your adventure is like, and some general ideas about the world as a whole.
Sly Flourish's "Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master" has some good advice for useful session prep (and avoiding overpreparing). Matt Colville's Running the Game videos are worth checking out too (including considerable worldbuilding advice if you do want to make your own big setting).
Hey guys, ive been a player for multiple years and ive DM'd a few one shots but i want to run my first campaign. But id like to use one of the official dnd campaigns as a first time as im dont want to start with a homebrew.
Ive played the curse of strahd campaign a bit, so i dont want to run that one with my current group as they are the ones im playing it with. But was wondering if anyone had some good suggestions on a good first campaign to start with? What would you suggest and why would you suggest it?
Everyone always suggest Lost Mines of Phandelver to new players. Honestly, I'm not as much a fan of that adventure over all. I really like the exploration and adventure feel of Tomb of Annihilation. You and your friends can spend months sand-boxing around the jungles of Chult, fighting a good mix of monsters and finding all kinds of treasure before delving into the meat of the actual end-game dungeon for a pretty epic end-fight when you're ready.
I am a huge fan of running Sunless Citadel for new players, to the point I could almost run it without the book at all. It's short-ish, it's got all the good pieces of an adventure, it has a memorable NPC, and can easily be tied into other adventures. Almost every group I've run through it has done something different, there are a few different plot hooks which should capture most player styles, and it's fairly forgiving to the ad-lib DM. I've also found that you can give your players a lot of grace based on their familiarity with the game, you can dial it back for the new players, giving them time to learn, or you can drop them in the deep end making the adventure much more harrowing. I'm a bit fanatic about the adventure, if you can't tell, but I feel it's got a better grasp on getting players into the game than LMoP does.
I was actually looking a Tomb of Annihilation as a possibility and ive heard good things about it.
Ill happily take a look at it :) thank you for the suggestion
Look for the Tales from the Yawning Portal supplement, it has that as well as 6 other modules in it, covering many levels of play.
Tomb of Annihilation is widely viewed as being one of the best official campaigns. It does have a couple structural problems, though.
Another advantage of ToA is that there are a lot of good supplemental resources for it on DM's Guild that are either free or pretty reasonably priced, so that's something to check out if you do end up running it.
So, I'm running Tomb of Annihilation as my first campaign and let me tell you...it's a lot of work and a bit overwhelming. As Jreggers mentioned, the introduction is a bit boring so I made my own intro. Not a big deal. What I'm finding difficult is filling in all the blanks that the module leaves. Yes, there's supposedly a lot to do in Port Nyanzaru, but there are limited details on the locations within the city. Apparently a shadow government of "Beggar Princes" run the outer city but there is absolutely no information on it. I found myself having to fill in a LOT of blanks the module leaves behind.
ToA is also a sandbox. It's great to let your players explore, but it's sort of harrowing to prepare because you have no idea where your PCs will try to go or end up. The random encounters table can also be a pain. We're having a lot of fun so far, mind you, but it's a little rough when you're a new DM.
like AK30 says, running one of the big campaigns like Tomb of Annihilation is at big mouthfull for a first time DM.
Lost Mine of Phandelver is made as a starter campaign and tbh does the job pretty well while not being overwhelming. I would recommend running Lost mine, and after a few sessions you might already find yourself comfortable with doing some changes to it.
I'd cast my vote for Lost Mine - I've DMd for many years, but it works as a great training ground for both DMs (either new, or switching to 5e like I was) and players alike.
It starts with a simple encounter and dungeon crawl, then really opens up, with plenty of player freedom, and options to take the material and run with it when you feel more confident. It As it's a starter set, it gives you all the basic information that, while you probably already know the rules, is handy to have so you can focus on narration and role-play.
The story is actually pretty compelling too, and while quite short, has potential hooks into other campaigns such as Horde of the Dragon Queen.
If you're new to DMing, another idea might be to run a shorter adventure (something like 3 or 4 sessions at most) that can lead into one of these other campaigns. This might give you an opportunity to work out the kinks before you dive into something longer. There are a lot of good one shot adventures out there that could serve this purpose.
I don't have anything against Lost Mines of Phandelver beyond the fact that it's a little dull. But as Chequers notes, it leaves plenty of room for you to make changes, and it's reasonably short. Tomb of Annihilation, by contrast, is longer and more complicated to run, but the flavor is a bit more exciting (though of course your mileage may vary).
As a new DM to 5e I will also say lost mines. It provides extra help for a new 5e DM (I have DM'd for 4e and 3.5) and this is perfect for me. It gives you just the right amount of extra info with some side possibilities. Once my group got to part 2, it quickly became a little overwhelming to me with all the characters in town and all the possible forks the group could take.
It provided me a good primer for other adventures that are much more than this one. I am reading ToA now for future use.
"Shadow Hide You..."
One more nod for Sunless Citadel here. You can get it on dndbeyond as a partial purchase of Tales from the Yawning Portal, which is nice. Look for Meepo - he's an NPC that has potential to be fun. :)
I know what your question is and I'll answer it at the end. I'm just saying that because I know what you're asking and I want you to know I know what you're asking.
But first, I'm going to offer a bit of advice, because the gaming industry and, sadly, most DMs have this 100% back asswards.
You should not begin with a module (this is what we called published adventures back in the dark ages of gaming, so you'll still hear it from us oldheads now and again). Published adventures SHOULD be considered ideal for experienced DMs, but we always seem to be recommending them to new DMs, who utterly lack the skillset necessary to run them well.
It's simply too much information. A published module (or campaign, or adventure path, whatever) is on the order of 100x the amount of information you need to keep in your head as a GM. And it's hard. If you didn't write it, you cannot possibly have the depth of understanding of it you need to run it well. You're new. It's going to take time to get accustom to being on that side of the table; learning how to adjudicate and, more importantly, when to adjudicate. Learning your players, their tastes and tendencies.
I'm not saying don't use a published WORLD. I cut my teeth on Dragonlance, but I never ran a module, nothing published. I used the world as I knew it. I used the classes and monsters etc. from the Tales of the Lance Boxed Set and later the Sovereign Press books, yes, but I had read the books, I knew the world, and I made my version of the world. And the advantage of that? I KNEW EVERYTHING, because the entire campaign existed in my head. I wrote a ton of stuff in advance, sure, but because I wrote it, I always had an answer for what I forgot.
Don't get me wrong, running published stuff can be a blast, especially when it's as well made as Curse of Strahd. But a first time GM? You don't need all that information, and it can very quickly overwhelm you. There are two books you must master; the PHB and the DMG. After that, concentrate on gaining system mastery and feeling comfortable with pacing a session.
At the end of the day here's what I'm saying; you run a published campaign, you're going to spend 50% of the game flipping through the book and re-reading the area/room/npc/whatever descriptions, because you don't have the experience to know what you NEED to know for a session. Being a DM isn't hard, but it takes a long time to master, and even masters are slowed a bit when they're running someone else's content. So if you think you're making it easier on yourself to run something out of a book, I'm saying you're wrong. It's FAR easier to run something you create because it's already right there in your head, and you do not need to over-create, as module writers must.
OK, so that out of the way. I really do love Curse of Strahd. The best thing about it is you run Death House then the campaign proper, you can bring your PCs back to your *real* world proper as Big Damn Heroes (TM) and continue in whatever world you want because it's a demiplane. Plus I'm a Dragonlance dude, so naturally I have a soft spot for Tracy Hickman's other work as well.
"The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible."
- Mark Twain
I'd go with some of the other posters starting with Lost Mines of Phandelver.
However, as with any published content used in a home game, I would set it in a context of your own world (whether that is a part of the Forgotten Realms or not). You don't need that much of a world to start with. Perhaps just a town/village or other location where the characters forming your party meet up and create their stories. This would essentially be the session 0 of the campaign. Modules which are run as one-offs often don't have the same level of character detail, development and reacting in character (if not actual role playing) that a campaign has.
If you want to lead into Lost Mines then the characters could be hired as caravan guards after they have spent a bit of time interacting with each other in the starting location. Alternatively, Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury could be kicked off by rumours of treasure or perhaps a rescue mission of some sort started in the local tavern or from a local patron.
Another possibility is to have events in the town lead to having the party choose what to do .. if they decide to take the caravan guard job you play LMofP .. if they choose another path then they find something different. This helps support the feeling that they are in a sandbox and that their decisions matter.
Using a published module means that you'll need to read it and understand both the individual encounters and the broader content so that when the players do something unexpected you can respond to it without them noticing that they have gone off the prepared script. Be creative and tie them back into the module as smoothly as possible. Going off script is less frequent in a dungeon crawl but certainly possible in some of the town areas of LMoP.
I'd also disagree that published content is harder. It does include a lot of details ... however, when you create your own stuff you will either need to have pretty much the same content or be able to improvise the content on the spur of the moment as you go along. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the DM somewhat improvising story details to fit the actions of the characters but you want the players to believe that the content they encounter was created earlier. If the folks playing can't tell then you are succeeding. However, it can be easier at times to improvise within your own content than when playing someone else's ... on the other hand, there is nothing that says you have to play a module exactly as written.
Finally, a quick comment on ToA. I'm about 20 sessions (80 hours) into a ToA campaign and our party just reached Omu in the last session. ToA is a true sandbox. You can hide anything in the jungles of Chult but the content provided in Chapter 2 of the module covering the entire continent ... doesn't do a particularly good job due to the travel times involved. There are several interesting places described in ToA but jungle travel is a 1 hex/day (2 hexes/day in a boat on a river). Some of the ToA content is in the north (Port Nyanzaru and Fort Belurion), some in the Misty mountains to the west, some on the southern coast, some in the fire peak mountains in the middle, some on the east coast. The problem is that a party can only encounter a fraction of the enclosed content if they stay on the death curse time line outlined at the beginning ... just due to travel time. It could take 40 days of travel through the jungle just to go from the north to the south or the east to the west. Random jungle encounters get boring after a while and the jungle encounters are mostly aimed at level 1-4 characters ... and this all assumes that they can actually figure out where they need to go in a reasonable time frame.
ToA also has very few magic items and little gold in general. There isn't much to prepare the characters for Omu and the dungeon beyond where they need to have reached at least 9th level. The DM in our campaign has pulled in some guild adept content (Return of the Lizard King, Ruins of Matolo) to add content and areas which we could encounter while traveling in Chult. Adding these helped quite a bit. However, in my opinion, ToA would not be a good starting point for a newer DM since it takes quite a bit of improvisation to keep the jungle travel interesting and relevant.
I completely agree with being overwheling for a new DM. As I mentioned before, even with the Lost Mines, I got quickly overwhelmed and reread many of the characters until I got a better understanding of the NPC in town. However, I would still opt for this first because it holds your hand with extra info that will become natural as you play more. It even mentions not to worry about knowing everthing about everyone in town. I am just a perfectionist like that.
That adventure comes in the starter kit for a reason. It is meant for new players as well as new Dungeon Masters.
In addition, I am in the process of making my own adventure and it really has helped me understand what is expected of me and how in depth I can or should go when creating stuff.
"Shadow Hide You..."
I'm going to disagree with this pretty strongly. When you're just starting to DM, it's already enough to have to learn how to run the game and adjudicate things fairly. DropkickCleary hits the nail on the head with how difficult this is. But trying to plan a homebrew adventure or setting at the same time is going to make that even more difficult. Most new DMs aren't going to know the first place to start when it comes to planning an adventure or creating a campaign setting. If they try to do this at the same time they're learning everything else it takes to be a DM, it's very likely the adventure, campaign, or world they create will be subpar at best.
When I first started DMing, I jumped straight into homebrew, and I think it was a bad decision. I've kept all my notes over the years, and looking back on them now, it's very clear those first adventures just weren't good. It took me a while to learn certain lessons about how to structure an adventure and make it interesting that I think I would have learned faster if I'd run some published adventures first. I've seen and played in groups with other new DMs who have made the same mistake.
Published adventures do have their own problems, but these generally pale in comparison to the number of things that can go wrong with a homebrew adventure. As with anything, though, there are some published adventures and campaigns that are going to be easier to run and better-suited to your needs than others, but there's a lot you can learn from running one and from identifying things that worked and things that didn't.
As others have noted, it's probably best to stick with a smaller adventure like Lost Mine of Phandelver first. You might even want to run something even shorter than that. I may have let my enthusiasm for Tomb of Annihilation get the better of me in recommending it, but it's probably not going to be a good fit for a completely new DM.
That's not to say you shouldn't start thinking about creating your own homebrew. By all means jot down ideas as they come to you. You'll just want to hold off on putting those ideas into practice in the form of a longer adventure or campaign until you really have your feet under you as a DM. When you do get to this point, make sure you're diligent about seeking advice for how to structure adventures and campaigns, as it's nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
I have created two campaigns that are designed for two new players, levels 1-4.
Clam Island: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf
Frostglade Tundra: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyZ_4eEyKE
That's why I like Sunless Citadel. It's more than a one-shot, but not as long as LMoP, has a dungeon that's populated in a well thought out manner, and if I recall correctly it provided pretty decent DM advice on running the NPCs. LMoP's pregens with their backstories already plugged into the plot are quite nice for first timers though, and it's designed to ease a new DM in to different aspects of the game just as it does the players.
For new DMs homebrewing stuff, the biggest advice I'd give is to remember that you don't need to create the whole world before you start. You just need enough to have a sense of what the area around your adventure is like, and some general ideas about the world as a whole.
Sly Flourish's "Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master" has some good advice for useful session prep (and avoiding overpreparing). Matt Colville's Running the Game videos are worth checking out too (including considerable worldbuilding advice if you do want to make your own big setting).
This post almost went a year between responses... let dead posts rest in peace.