My friends and I have decided to play D&D together. We are all adults and super excited!

Our first session will be in two weeks and we all are over the globe so we will be playing virtually. I am our DM and we all have no experience. There will be 6 players and myself. 

We all want to make sure this is going to be fun but I hoped you all could help with some start up questions to make sure we hit the dungeons at a crawling speed.

Questions that we would need help with are as follows:

• What would be a campaign that we should jump into? (any recommendations would be great)
• I see there is the encounter builder coming soon. Since we are all going to be virtual what do people use/recommend that would help in the interim to give the players the feel of that space? (low cost, low barrier to entry would be great)
• I don't want to go crazy yet on grabbing books but, to get a taste what would be the staples that are going to make a huge difference? (i.e. youre going to DM you need the Dungeon Masters guide for sure and + x things)
• What homework do you give your players before starting a campaign or would you if no one has played before? (have characters created, read (x) rules, etc..)
• The best do's/dont's that you have from your experiences.

Thanks so much for any responses and help. I'll make sure to update you all with how it goes! 

Quick hits on a couple of points.

• I like to give my characters the setup for the party, and have them tell me why they are in the party. For example, I'll send out some info describing the world, and explaining where they are starting and what they are doing. "You will be starting in the city of BlargBlah, and you are a party of explorers working for the Duke." I'll give a description of the city, the duke, and what they generally do. And then I ask for my players to tell me why they are in a party of Ducal Explorers. (Learned this lesson when a friend started a Star Wars campaign, told us we'd be joining the rebels in the first night, and one guy made a character who "would never join the rebellion". Okay...?) This helps the players jump in with at least an idea of why they are where they are. Gives them instant motivation.
• Of course you need to feel free to make edits to their stories...but give them some room to help create things too. Instead of the Dragonborn player having to ask you "are there dragonborn nearby", have the player tell you where he came from. "There's a small community of dragonborn in the mountains near the city, I'm from there." And then, if it's important to the campaign that this is not true, you go back to the player and say "Okay, mountain community, but it's a week's travel away."
• Establish right away whether you are going to allow PvP (player vs player combat). I suggest no. You just make it a flat-out rule. Either something like "Everyone's character must have a reason that they get along with everyone else" or "It's okay to 'not get along', but there will be no combat among the party."
• For the first option there, one way to go is once the players have characters, have each write up a one paragraph description, and then send those to all the other players. Tell them that they have to have a reason why their character at least tolerates each other character.

So the whole deal is something like this: "You are in the city of BlargBlah, and you are explorers for Duke Ducal. He employs you to go into the wilds and map them, in his efforts to tame the surrounding wilderness. Your party consists of an Elven warlock, a Halfling wizard, etc etc." Then you give them the player-written descriptions, and each player decides for herself why she tolerates, or likes, the other characters. They don't have to tell you necessarily, but they have to know why themselves. Then, when the Neutral-Jacka$$ Rogue does something that would really upset the Lawful-Prissy Cleric, the cleric's player knows why he's not just smiting that Rogue on the spot. :)

Lost Mines of Phandelver is a really good starting adventure.  It guides you through how to run an adventure and provides a good example.

The Players Handbook is almost enough by itself to run a campaign.  One of the biggest things in the DM's Guide is the magic items.

Letting the players make up some things about the game world, where they are from, people they know, etc, is a god way to get them feeling connected to the world.

Quote from Brotherbock>>

Quick hits on a couple of points.

• Establish right away whether you are going to allow PvP (player vs player combat). I suggest no. You just make it a flat-out rule. Either something like "Everyone's character must have a reason that they get along with everyone else" or "It's okay to 'not get along', but there will be no combat among the party."
• For the first option there, one way to go is once the players have characters, have each write up a one paragraph description, and then send those to all the other players. Tell them that they have to have a reason why their character at least tolerates each other character.

Quote from DavetheLost >>

Lost Mines of Phandelver is a really good starting adventure.  It guides you through how to run an adventure and provides a good example.

The Players Handbook is almost enough by itself to run a campaign.  One of the biggest things in the DM's Guide is the magic items.

Letting the players make up some things about the game world, where they are from, people they know, etc, is a god way to get them feeling connected to the world.

 Awesome i just picked those up. Im reading the DM guide now. 

Words of Wisdom from Experience DMs

Look through there for some. Now for your specific Questions.

• Lost Mine of Phandelver is the best campaign for a new DM and players. From what I've seen, this is a consistent opinion across the entire Forums. Afterwards you can either continue with those characters, or now that your players now how to play they may want to start back at level 1. You can either make your own campaign or find other Adventures to play. Please note that not all campaigns should be set up like the Adventure books show them. Don't, figuratively, try to write a book with your campaign. Most of the story should be what the players do, not preset events that your trying to force them through.
• Not sure what you mean by this since what I believe the Encounter Builder is going to be and what your question seems to be about are different, so I'm going to assume a bit. First, if you mean an online way to show where the characters, monsters, and objects are, a virtual board in other words, most people use Roll20. Second if you mean the Monsters in that Encounter, the general rule of thumb is that a single CR 1 Monster is a standard fight for 4 Level 1 Characters. Of course a fight environment may make the encounter more or less challenging, but I'm pretty sure there is no specific rules for determining difficulty or XP for such. For XP on non-monster encounters, I general give 5XP for an Easy Challenge, 10XP for a Medium Challenge, 25XP for a Hard Challenge, and 100XP for a Very Hard Challenge, if it's just one event; if it's a Quest I usually give 100XP per Level of the Quest (as in the level I expect the party to be) on its completion.
• Sense your online, your not going to need as much physical things. I would get just the Player's Handbook to start out with. You can just get most of the regular Magic Items and Monsters your going to use either from the Adventure Book itself or the Website, so I don't think Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) or Monster Manual are worth it. The only thing you need to know from the DMG is the Attunement Rules, which are in the Basic Rules on this website. If your physically buying the books then I suggest only Xanathar's Guide to Everything (XGE) right now. If your buying digital content, then that's a different thing. Grab some items that your individually interested in. I highly suggest from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide getting the Subclasses not in XGE and the Spells.
• Your players should read up on the Basic Rules, if any other knowledge is needed, the DM should provide it. Basic play structure: DM describes stuff, Player says what their Character attempts to do and/or say, DM tells them if they need to roll anything, Player rolls anything they need to roll, DM describes stuff. D20 is rolled for Characters to do something, D100 is rolled for something random or percentile based, all others are primarily for damage and secondly for individual actions or tables. Playing RPGs and Fantasy games should be enough to get imagination going.
• See the Link above.

I wrote up a home made cheat sheet broadly summarising each race, class, and background to try and help my players quickly get an idea of what they would like to play as. I also printed out a couple of cheat sheets for major things to know during gameplay so everyone can check most things on the fly without needing to sift through a book or ask the GM everything. It comes to about 4 pages of bullet points explaining what each ability/skill is for, things to do during downtime, the mechanics of exploring, combat, and magic plus explanations of a lot of the more common terms, bit it is intended more as a reminder than a crash course.

With only 2 weeks prep time and no experience yourself, I will echo that going for something pre made will be best and Lost Mines is usually recommended for beginners. It might also be worth finding a game to jump into for a session yourself, or to watch a couple of sessions on youtube to get a bit of a feel for how things run.

Another thing that seems quite common is a session zero, essentially everyone gets together to figure out their characters together, then at the end of that hopefully a taste of gameplay, usually with some big opening scene. This would also be a good opportunity to make sure everyone has had a chance to flick through the basic rules and has at least an idea how everything works before diving in proper.

Remember that you're all telling a collaborative story together, the rules are there to be used as you, the DM, see fit. Don't get too caught up in remembering every single individual rule as otherwise you won't be concentrating on helping the players tell the story! Even veteran DMs and players are often sent to one of the handbooks to double check a rule.

If you're not sure about a rule, make a call in the moment and then make a note for yourself so that you can look it up after the session. Tell your players you are doing this, it'll help them remember the rule later on.

Don't worry about making mistakes, your players most likely won't notice and even if they do, you're the DM so your word is final!

General points:

- Never tell your players the DC of a roll, it really breaks the immersion if you do. Fine if you're all rules lawyers, but not if you are all interested in roleplaying.

- If a player finishes off a foe, give them a chance to roleplay what happens by saying: "Describe your kill." At my last session, my wife (new to 5e) rolled and hit a wolf that had 2 remaining HP. I didn't bother to ask her to roll for damage as she was clearly going to kill it, so I just asked her to describe the kill. She came out with, "I bring my battleaxe crashing down upon the wolf's head, dividing its skull in twain." It was much more fun for her and for the rest of us than me saying, "Ok great, the wolf is dead. Now it's the goblin's turn ..."

- Once you have your players engaged (you'll know), sit back and enjoy it!

Use your rules lawyer if you are lucky enough to have one. Mine is the best.

• I picked up the Lost Mine as our starting point based on everyone's recommendations. So thank you!

• "so I'm going to assume a bit. First, if you mean an online way to show where the characters, monsters, and objects are, a virtual board in other words, most people use Roll20." apologies if this was unclear. I assumed the encounter builder was the way to show maps and a virtual board ill check into roll 20 then. or any other options that are wallet friendly.

• Your players should read up on the Basic Rules, (ill make sure everyone peruses the rules then and I spend the time to focus in on getting through it between now and then)

• See the Link above. (was super helpful thank you so much!)

Quote from Fishfingerrosti >>

 

- Never tell your players the DC of a roll, it really breaks the immersion if you do. Fine if you're all rules lawyers, but not if you are all interested in roleplaying.

 

Particularly important for things like Stealth, Deception, etc., where it's possible for the player to think they have succeeded when they have failed. "Does he believe my story?" "He seems to..."

With only 2 weeks prep time and no experience yourself, I will echo that going for something pre made will be best and Lost Mines is usually recommended for beginners. It might also be worth finding a game to jump into for a session yourself, or to watch a couple of sessions on youtube to get a bit of a feel for how things run.

(Would you recommend since I picked up the Lost Mines to find a game to play that as well or something different just to get other flavors. (my so far experience is ive listened to some critical role sessions and some other ones but ive been googling a bunch)

Quote from Bundaga >>

With only 2 weeks prep time and no experience yourself, I will echo that going for something pre made will be best and Lost Mines is usually recommended for beginners. It might also be worth finding a game to jump into for a session yourself, or to watch a couple of sessions on youtube to get a bit of a feel for how things run.

(Would you recommend since I picked up the Lost Mines to find a game to play that as well or something different just to get other flavors. (my so far experience is ive listened to some critical role sessions and some other ones but ive been googling a bunch)

 

I wouldn't worry about finding a game of Lost Mines specifically, anything that is a similar style should help get your bearings. Learning to adapt to your players is a major part of being a DM, so even with a module if you just try to copy someone else exactly things will likely go wrong. A lot of session preparation is finding inspiration and modifying things to fit your story/world/players... including that completely unexpected thing they literally just did right this moment.

While I do not watch critical role myself, I hear good things about it so it will give you a bit of a feel of how an experienced DM runs things. I expect you noticed that the different DMs you found each had their own styles, getting an idea of the range of things that work will be useful, but it is only after you start playing that you and your players will really figure out which elements you want to focus on and which are less important to you.

I expect there are a few of us that will be interested to hear back in a couple of weeks how your first session went. The only thing I can say for sure is that it will be a learning experience, it is also very likely to be great fun.

Lost Mine of Phandelver is great for new DMs and players.  If you use the regenerated characters, make sure that you read the backstories and think about how those work with the story.  you will particularly need to pay attention to the Rogue's backstory and think through how that affects encounters in a couple of key areas.  The campaign guide doesn't give you a heads up about that--one of the few things that got missed.  I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, but if you want specifics, PM me and I'm happy to provide more info/suggestions in this regard.