I have been asked to dm a campaign for a group of mostly new players. Possibly 5-7. I want to make a fun memorable experience but don’t have much experience creating my own campaigns. I was wanting to do a one shot with them being maybe level 5 due to potential scheduling conflicts restricting regular sessions. My general idea is to have my party wake up in a dungeon or castle of sorts without their memories. They would know their abilities and make their own characters but won’t have much knowledge of backstory. The story that unfolds is that someone has trapped them here as a ploy to siphon power to increase their own abilities. The end reveal I was thinking was to have one of my players that actually have experience to be the BBEG as a fun surprise twist at the end and to show that anything could happen in the world of dnd. I don’t want to put a lot of world building for this one and not come up with another story if a dm or player with more experience than me might think this could ruin the experience or future desires to play dnd.
I would advise avoiding doing the plot twist, especially if done without the player playing the BBEG's consent. This is their very first time in D&D and will likely shape their outlook on the game as a whole.
Surprise player villains are not fun mainly because they break party cohesion, if done with new players it can give them the mindset of it being perfectly normal to backstab their party and distrust one another. What I would recommend is talking to your party about a player not being who they seem to be and seeing if that would be a fun idea before it happens, they still won’t know who is going to betray them, but they have the preparation to avoid taking it personally.
For new players, I’d recommend not starting at 5. I’d say 3 at the highest. By level 5, there’s too many things to do that they won’t understand. Also, pregen the characters. They won’t understand why this kind of magic person needs int while the other one needs cha, for example. And making characters with a bunch of new players will probably take the whole session. Just hand them some character sheets and let them know that if they want to play more, they can make their own custom character. And I mean hand them paper sheets. For a new player, it can be easier to scan than trying to figure out which tab to use on the computer version.
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I have been asked to dm a campaign for a group of mostly new players. Possibly 5-7. I want to make a fun memorable experience but don’t have much experience creating my own campaigns. I was wanting to do a one shot with them being maybe level 5 due to potential scheduling conflicts restricting regular sessions. My general idea is to have my party wake up in a dungeon or castle of sorts without their memories. They would know their abilities and make their own characters but won’t have much knowledge of backstory. The story that unfolds is that someone has trapped them here as a ploy to siphon power to increase their own abilities. The end reveal I was thinking was to have one of my players that actually have experience to be the BBEG as a fun surprise twist at the end and to show that anything could happen in the world of dnd. I don’t want to put a lot of world building for this one and not come up with another story if a dm or player with more experience than me might think this could ruin the experience or future desires to play dnd.
I would advise avoiding doing the plot twist, especially if done without the player playing the BBEG's consent. This is their very first time in D&D and will likely shape their outlook on the game as a whole.
Surprise player villains are not fun mainly because they break party cohesion, if done with new players it can give them the mindset of it being perfectly normal to backstab their party and distrust one another. What I would recommend is talking to your party about a player not being who they seem to be and seeing if that would be a fun idea before it happens, they still won’t know who is going to betray them, but they have the preparation to avoid taking it personally.
For new players, I’d recommend not starting at 5. I’d say 3 at the highest. By level 5, there’s too many things to do that they won’t understand.
Also, pregen the characters. They won’t understand why this kind of magic person needs int while the other one needs cha, for example. And making characters with a bunch of new players will probably take the whole session. Just hand them some character sheets and let them know that if they want to play more, they can make their own custom character. And I mean hand them paper sheets. For a new player, it can be easier to scan than trying to figure out which tab to use on the computer version.