So I'm DMing for a group of people who want to get into D&D but have no idea where to start.
Due to constraints I'll only be able to host a one-shot adventure, so I was hoping you guys could help me come up with some ideas.
I was hoping to start the adventure somewhere typical like a tavern, where the group could introduce themselves and roleplay out of combat a bit to relax, and then somehow from that end up in a dungeon so they could experience actual combat and problem-solving.
They all meet in a tavern. A man comes in panicked, and pleads with everyone in the bar to save his daughter, as kobolds have kidnapped her and carried her off to their fort in the forest. Design the fort around your player's abilities so they can each have shining moments of awesome.
End it either with total victory, a hook that will send them on further adventures together, or something from your magical realm.
Christopher Williams
If you want my advice, I would personally start the adventure in the dungeon due to the time constraints. Get straight to the good stuff. From there, the roleplay and actions will speak out for the characters.
Now some questions:
1. Where is the dungeon located? Is it in a forest? On a mountain? Alongside a beach?
2. What was this dungeon like before its current state?
3. What resides within the dungeon now? Why are they there?
4. Are the characters premade? Are the characters being made at the table?
Henry Watson
Start them at level 20 with 10 million gold and make them all play full casters.
John Sanders
The problem is that I wouldn't know how to write a story that starts in a dungeon. It has to have some kind of point to it. The only scenario I thought of where it might start directly in a dungeon is something like "They all wake up in a mad wizard's lab / cult's secret lair with no memory of how they got there" but I'm not too fond of the idea.
This actually sounds pretty good. I'll definitely keep this idea in mind.
lmao
Michael Thomas
Party meeetups take forever, and in my opinion are rarely worth the time invested, so let them all come up with something that connects their characters together during char gen.
Then open up with a description of total darkness and a feeling of numbness as slowly, a faint muted sound reaches their ears. The sound soon crystallizes as the screams of their mission guide who was supposed to bring them to their destination. Through a hazy and blurry view, as their eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, and the party gets up on their feet, they witness the screams dying down and a host of monsters attacking them.
Tl;dr the adventures starts with them waking up after falling through a deep hole in the floor
Benjamin Moore
That Tavern stuff is lame as shit.
Better to play what I call D&D improv.
Just throw out some random premade characters and make up the quest based on one of those premade boards.
Put minimal effort into planning because players flake and it's hard to get regs. If they like the game enough to regularly show up for D&D improv then you gradually progress into letting them flesh and then eventually making their own characters.
Personally I prefer to play what I call a low magic campaing of what I call D&D Hardcore which is where all players start as Human Fighters and their stats are 4D6 straight-sub the lowest, but straight down the stat the sheet with no allocation.
Player can then multiclass if they find masters/books and try really, really, hard.
Standard D&D is so passe and boring, the Tavern and module stuff is a complete snore.
If this is a one shot, definitely have premade characters and start them off tied up in the 'dungeon'.
Damn I hate that word Dungeon, but I prefer it to be a realistic setting like in a Count's basement because they all have relatives/associates who were conspiring to overthrow him.
Now they have to escape and fight other humans of various professions: torturer, thugs, maybe a corrupt captain of the guard. Then there are guard dogs, giant rats/centipedes, slimes.
Try to keep it semi-believable, none of this your holy grand fairy-elf of dragon blood whatever crap that Hasbro totally killed D&D with.
The first rule of real D&D is to never refer to your party as 'Adventurers', it's way too meta.
Jaxon Carter
>I'm a lazy, boring DM who can't create compelling adventures with original ideas, so now we play a beer-and-pretzels game where no one is even expected to care".
Why not just have boardgame night? Then your inadequacies are irrelevant.
Hunter Thomas
Whatever you do, don't listen to this retard
Gavin Green
"You meet in a Tavern" "Which apropos of nothing, is on fire."
Justin Diaz
Have a strange market set itself up in the middle of the city, selling fantastic treasures and magical items at very low prices, (which are actually illusioned junk. The party are the "clever" people who figure out the ruse, and are dropped through a pit/pulled through a wall/vanish into a mirror and have to fight their way through weird shit to escape and foil the shenanigans.
Fritz Lieber had a story like this in his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books. Some interdimensional scammers trading glamoured crap for real treasure. The friendly guy out front with a broom was some kind of weird ass statue with a sword, the slave-girls in cages were giant spiders, ect.
You can start the characters out "purchasing starting equipment" in the bazaar, and after getting their gear they find the weird new store where everyone swears there was only a blank wall the other day.
Josiah Torres
This way they don't even have to start out "as a party", they can all get pulled into the weird trap when they catch on to the ruse, and have to escape cooperatively.
Christian Hall
...
Luke Nelson
...
Connor Myers
Pretty sure I have more years of successful DMing then both of these guys put together from 1st to 3.5
What are you other than keyboard bitches?
Being a DM is more about knowing how to improvise on the spot than planning anything because if your players are not idiots they will outthink all your plans regularly--and being a GOOD DM you need go with, not circle them back around.
Best quests have honestly been where the players went off target, ie decided to break into a rich guy's house--totally all improv.
Pretty sure DMs like you would piss your pants and cry like babies or make up some magical bullshit to make them end-up in your precious boring dungeons.
OP the quests people are offering on here are below what you could get if you torrent or buy one, so not sure what you're going for.
Luis Morris
finish your storytime you faggot
Nicholas Hughes
>Pretty sure I have more years of successful DMing then both of these guys put together from 1st to 3.5
Pretty sure you don't, faggot. Don't play the "I'm the more experienced X" card on Anonymous people on the internet.
When D&D gets wearisome for me, I take some years off and run another game, but I've been running them a pretty damn long time.
YOUR mistake is laying out some Rube Goldberg plan where Z follows Y which followed X, you're begging for that to be foiled by out-of-the-box thinking/pure randomness.
You are pretty sure of a lot of things for a shit-tier DM who's resorted to running ignorant "everyone is a fighter with randumb stats" game.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you have, in fact, ran D&D since 1st edition. Badly I can presume.
Daniel Sullivan
>OP the quests people are offering on here are below what you could get if you torrent or buy one, so not sure what you're going for.
Yeah, take advice from "lol roll random fighters" guy. He knows where it's at.
Camden Perry
I've posted it part-way in, and not even in chronological order, it's in no way a proper storytime. Also, you didn't ask politely.
