Hey ya'll! Since we're all quarantined, I offered to DM a game for my family on Easter. One of my sisters and my mom has never played, my other sister has played Pathfinder a handful of times, and my dad was a DM back in the day for 1E but hasn't played since. I'm a fairly new DM and player, so I'm looking for some good simple lv 1-3 encounters that would have a entertaining fun story. My mom in particular doesn't love really intense gross monsters, so I'm trying to find something that both she would find entertaining but also engage my dad as an oldschool player. Free would be preferable lol but I don't mind having more adventures in my DM vault.
My ideas thus far is to run the first goblin encounter in LMoP since I'm currently running it for another group, but that seems sort of boring to me in terms of narrative, and looking into games made for children seems too simple. I'll continue to poke around DM's Guild but if you guys have any ideas I'd love to hear it!
Thanks!!!
Edit: It's worth mentioning that I don't live with my family and therefore, need a game that can be completed in 2-4 hours since it'll be difficult to pick up later. I'm under work from home orders so I haven't been anywhere in almost two weeks lol.
Adventure League modules are all designed to be run to completion in that amount of time. DMs Guild has them all for purchase. ($3-5) Probably one of the best loved modules among new players is The Black Road (DDAL05-02) Basic job is escorting a wagon caravan through the desert, with several encounters along the route. No big lore dumps needed to explain what’s happening. But it has environmental hazards, goblin fights, skill checks against sandstorms. Pretty balanced introduction to the game. Not much in the way of exploration or dungeon delving, though. No kicking the door in and looting the room. Just as well with newer players, they tend to prefer being told what’s going on to taking initiative to kick in every door.
A lot of the Encounters of the Week articles would work, some of them wouldn’t even be hard to tie together.
Matt Colville has some great videos about making and running your first game. The encounter for it is called The Delian Tomb, I’ve ran it for quite a few new players and it’s always gone well.
Adventure League modules are all designed to be run to completion in that amount of time. DMs Guild has them all for purchase. ($3-5) Probably one of the best loved modules among new players is The Black Road (DDAL05-02) Basic job is escorting a wagon caravan through the desert, with several encounters along the route. No big lore dumps needed to explain what’s happening. But it has environmental hazards, goblin fights, skill checks against sandstorms. Pretty balanced introduction to the game. Not much in the way of exploration or dungeon delving, though. No kicking the door in and looting the room. Just as well with newer players, they tend to prefer being told what’s going on to taking initiative to kick in every door.
Something like this might work very well for the group! I'll have a closer look at this one in particular and poke around other AL modules. I do want to DM AL someday but I want to get a little bit more experience under my belt as an AL player first, so grabbing AL modules wouldn't be such a bad idea in general.
Matt Colville has some great videos about making and running your first game. The encounter for it is called The Delian Tomb, I’ve ran it for quite a few new players and it’s always gone well.
I watched a lot of his videos before I started DMing! It's incredibly useful advice.
Whatever you go for, it needs to be really short, so consider something that's light on combat, and rather focus on creativity and solution solving.
I think you're right in terms of light on combat, I'll plan for 1 boss battle and maybe a smaller battle towards the middle... puzzle heavy is probably the way to go, though.
Hey ya'll! Since we're all quarantined, I offered to DM a game for my family on Easter. One of my sisters and my mom has never played, my other sister has played Pathfinder a handful of times, and my dad was a DM back in the day for 1E but hasn't played since. I'm a fairly new DM and player, so I'm looking for some good simple lv 1-3 encounters that would have a entertaining fun story. My mom in particular doesn't love really intense gross monsters, so I'm trying to find something that both she would find entertaining but also engage my dad as an oldschool player. Free would be preferable lol but I don't mind having more adventures in my DM vault.
My ideas thus far is to run the first goblin encounter in LMoP since I'm currently running it for another group, but that seems sort of boring to me in terms of narrative, and looking into games made for children seems too simple. I'll continue to poke around DM's Guild but if you guys have any ideas I'd love to hear it!
Thanks!!!
Edit: It's worth mentioning that I don't live with my family and therefore, need a game that can be completed in 2-4 hours since it'll be difficult to pick up later. I'm under work from home orders so I haven't been anywhere in almost two weeks lol.
Adventure League modules are all designed to be run to completion in that amount of time. DMs Guild has them all for purchase. ($3-5) Probably one of the best loved modules among new players is The Black Road (DDAL05-02) Basic job is escorting a wagon caravan through the desert, with several encounters along the route. No big lore dumps needed to explain what’s happening. But it has environmental hazards, goblin fights, skill checks against sandstorms. Pretty balanced introduction to the game. Not much in the way of exploration or dungeon delving, though. No kicking the door in and looting the room. Just as well with newer players, they tend to prefer being told what’s going on to taking initiative to kick in every door.
A lot of the Encounters of the Week articles would work, some of them wouldn’t even be hard to tie together.
Matt Colville has some great videos about making and running your first game. The encounter for it is called The Delian Tomb, I’ve ran it for quite a few new players and it’s always gone well.
My first thought was: run a session of "Tales from the Loop".
Whatever you go for, it needs to be really short, so consider something that's light on combat, and rather focus on creativity and solution solving.
Ludo ergo sum!
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"real life is a super high CR."
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
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Something like this might work very well for the group! I'll have a closer look at this one in particular and poke around other AL modules. I do want to DM AL someday but I want to get a little bit more experience under my belt as an AL player first, so grabbing AL modules wouldn't be such a bad idea in general.
I watched a lot of his videos before I started DMing! It's incredibly useful advice.
I think you're right in terms of light on combat, I'll plan for 1 boss battle and maybe a smaller battle towards the middle... puzzle heavy is probably the way to go, though.
Oh this is fantastic, thanks a ton! I'll be checking this out every couple days for sure.
Still more than happy to hear if anyone else has had good experience with specific modules, but thanks so far for the assistance!