Hey Veeky Forums I've roped in some new friends into playing Dungeons and Dragons this weekend but problem is they've never played and I've never DM'd for new players before. I'm thinking of taking them through Curse of Strahd and I'm wondering if anyone here has any tips for guiding new players through D&D in general.
I was thinking of giving them pre-gen characters too; since I showed them the PHB races/classes and they were all very confused and had no idea what they wanted.
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Also requesting some nice flowcharts and stuff to help them learn what they can do during their turns, and stuff that explains the basics of D&D for quick reference.
My advice for new players is to avoid CoS as alhough it is atomospheric it is an unforgiving setting. Every main encounter should be a potential party wipe and can be rather harsh on new players. Although the naievity of new players would make them very expoitable which is good news for Strahd until he gets bored
Nice! Thanks!
But I'm really hoping for something I can print out that the players can always have in front of them.
You might have to make a handout. Is this 5e?
Option overload can be a real problem for new players. One of the reasons I like old school D&D is that players can just choose a class and go.
Instead of pregens, maybe just hold their hand through character creation. It familiarizes them with where things are on the character sheet.
I like to dole out standardized or random gear packages, so players don't get paralyzed with shopping.
get mines of phandelver
read it front to back at least once
pre-gen characters are a necessary evil, since people will want to get a hang of playing first before they make something of their own
lost mines is a good place to start, for your players and you
lots of combat, lots of opportunities for talking, the option to go stealth, a "my first dungeon dive", and if you decide to fight the green dragon your first TPK
it will help a lot if you can improvise, but for now mines of phandelver has a lot of the most reasonable reactions for NPCs already listed
another option is to look for conversions of keep on the borderlands, if you want nostalgia
Yup - 5e. When I first played D&D my DM had us make our own characters on the spot which was a real fuck around as he tried to help 4 different people make characters at once who had never done this before. For standardized equipmnt - 5e luckily has things like explorer's pack, or dungeneer's pack, etc, so that'll make picking equipment easy as I'll just hand them the explorer's pack.
& I can see both your points. I was worried about some of the stuff in CoS and how dangerous it can be. I did go over the basic settings of some of the official adventures, and the players preferred the idea of gothic horror. Although I did think if making a DMPC that's in the background to help sorta guide them and keep them out of trouble (sometimes), as well as filling in whatever gaps the party has
pregen for sure. if they want to make their own players come up with a one-shot, make them play an evening with pregen then allow them to make.
make sure they talk and don't all make rangers or something.
Our new-player integration theory was pretty much this. We'd run a simple pre-genned character one-shot (get a pile of templates and just have them pick one; avoid drowning them in choices), which would start with a combat encounter, then a bit of looting, exploration, and skill use. We'd end it by all leveling up and finally fighting a (usually overtuned) boss-fight. If they're new to RPing in general, you might want to give the pre-gen characters come with some over-the-top stereotypical character traits to give them some direction, and then reward them if they go with it.
The goal was to keep things lighthearted, cover the core mechanics, and just get them used to the general feel of the game before you kick off something where they'll be emotionally invested. What you do after is entirely your call, we always had a running campaign going that they'd have to be integrated into, which doesn't seem to be the case for you.
Not sure that's much help, but it's what I got.
>Also requesting some nice flowcharts and stuff to help them learn what they can do during their turns
Here's my favorite one, I have this printed in the front of my D&D binder.
>crobi.github.io
Thanks man. This looks really good.
bump
I had my first D&D game earlier this month, what my DM did was to split us up into groups when we created our characters so that they would have connections to one another in their background story.
That way we had role play incentive to stick together as a group which minimized arguments in the group.
She held our hands through character creation and gave us tips on how to make our characters not useless.
For our first session she started out with an easy encounter. Four goblins, two with short bows, all of them with schimitars.
After that we were introduced to the story and to each other in character. The plot hook was money and helping other people.
Now, our DM had a worst case scenario, because our ranger decided to go chaotic stupid and wanted to loot everyone and everything. She handled it with tough love, meaning, if your characters do something that warrants a negative reaction from the NPCs, don't you dare pull any punches. Your players need to know that being chaotic evil murder hobos has consequences.
We almost got TPK'd by some city guards and that ended the first session.
In the next session our party was a lot less reckless and destructive.
Cont.
The first session should have a mix of combat, story telling and skill challenges.
Our first three sessions had a lot of combat encounters that eased us into the system. They started out easy and grew gradually more difficult.
Make sure to take it slow and explain to your players what they're doing right, but never what they're doing wrong. If your players are fucking up and forgetting key aspects of their characters, gently remind them that they can use Hex for more damage on their eldritch blasts or that they can give downed people healing potions to get them into the fight.
This whole thing is going to go a lot slower than a usual session, but easing them into the system is definitely worth it. Your players will come back for more and they'll quickly get really good at it.
This is all really good, thank you! I saw that there was a small module for CoS about some haunted house. It looked alright and I was thinking of easing the players into D&D with that.
You're very welcome.
I hope it goes well for you guys.
Not OP, but I had a question.
What do you call a man in arms that is not precisely a guard, he patrols the land and answers to calls of help from the populace? He is still has to follow the laws set by his Lord.
You could have them describe the sort of character they each want using standard fantasy tropes and then do the technical work of choosing features yourself based on that.
In the actual game I'd tend to lean more fluffy and rules-light than with an experienced group. Focus more on investigation and role-play than combat, and similarly go easy on the skill checks. This is the sort of time when it's very appropriate to fudge rolls and even disregard the rules entirely for the sake of the story, although it's more important than ever to remember you're not the PCs' opponent. All of the above does rather depend on the temperaments of your players though. Some more information about them might help the accuracy of people's advice.
I always kind of liked the Spirit of the Century approach to tying PCs together. Of course, there you're incorporating your background directly into character building by picking up Aspects related to your story, but the idea of shared previous adventures is pretty cool regardless. It might not particularly fit the power curve of D&D though, where you start off as mooks without much power (and there's that quote by Gygax about character background being what happens at levels 1-3).
I very much like the idea of having them explain a concept of their character and then I do the technical work to make it
Unfortunately there isn't much info about them I can give. I only met them about two weeks ago at a course for Tafe (college for yanks I think?) Two of them were very interested in D&D and have said they always wanted to play it, the other two joined because it sounded cool. Their introduction of D&D was through the show Stranger Things mainly.
Two of them are from Southern Asia, and were the ones most interested in it.
One guy is a true blue aussie kinda guy.
The final player seems quite reserved and quiet. He mentioned he had very few irl friends.
We'll be possibly having some beers at the game too. So things should be quite relaxed.
a marshal
Land-Warden in Europe, Marshal in the USA
Could call him a yeoman for a more medieval feel.
