DnD for the faint of heart?

I am working on some character sheets for 5 people of middling interest in Dungeons and Dragons to play a short campaign. Running from level 1 to 5 if they're fight heavy and kill everything. Probably be 4 at the end.

They don't want LotR, they don't want GoT, they want something distinct. So I am using some unearthed arcana and homebrew stuff to try and roll them some choices to interest them. Wondering if anyone had any feedback on where I was headed and perhaps any suggestions on ways to engage players that are curious but not committed to the idea of a game that happens on paper and has no real visual feedback.

I mean, I have a map, it is partially filled in and the grey areas will be a random encounter table roll. That'll let them explore and find their goal, but they don't get any special feeling the way slot machines and Final Fantasy does.

5 people and I am trying to give them at least 9 character sheets to pick from.

Anyways, Male Gnome Barbarian with a Scythe. Hinting to push them towards Berserker.

Male Elf Artificer with Thunder Cannon. Long lived Elf finds interest in the deepest of the arcane kinda deals.

Female Tiefling Blood Hunter with two weapons, both Rapiers. Basically the Drow no one names.

Warforged Bard with Hand Crossbow and a Dagger for just incase. Putting into the backstory that it doesn't realize it is not a Male Goliath.

Female Dragonborn Rogue with your standard Short Sword and thiefiness so the one guy I am pretty sure will take it will. Girl because fuck him for always talking about dragons.

Male Minotaur Paladin with Whip and Sabre. Themed as a holy bounty hunter sort. Belmont.

Male Dwarf Druid with a Staff. Dwarf went out into the world and saw that nature has its own beauty, made a believer of him.

Female Half-Orc Ranger with Longbow and Short Sword and Buckler.

Female Aasimar Cleric with Mace and Shield. Painting them as being marked by a higher power and committed to helping others.

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Nothing? Alright, was hoping for a little more in the way of ideas on things to do to keep a potentially disinterested player engaged and maybe thoughts on how to make either some other, "interesting," builds or make what I am toying with better. Mais c'est la vie.

...Why are they picking from character sheets and not making their own characters, exactly?

Cause they are generally interested in the idea of playing, but find the spreadsheets confusing and imposing.

They asked that I make some for them to pick from that would be fun.

The spreadsheets?

How about just asking them to come up with characters and them build them with them?

That’s a sound idea. Op, Listen to this user.

Also, because you know what; all this here is just slapping together class race and une the barest info about equipment without actually telling us what makes the character interesting aside from a few one offs like “the Warforged doesn’t know it’s a Warforged,” that’s a plot hook built in, but we know nothing else of your campaign or your friends so we don’t fucking know what to tell you. Hell we don’t even know the third pillar of your pregenerated characters, the backgrounds.

Though, from a DMing Perspective, knowing one friend is going to gravitate toward the Dragonborn that you made female because you want to fuck with him for always talking about Dragons is a petty out of game move. A good DM fucks with people using their own in game decisions over time, and I don’t know you or your player well enough to gauge whose maturity I need to insult for “dur I’ll make him play a Lady because I think it will inconvenience him a I will,”.

Jesus fuck, if it’s their first time gaming don’t actively try to antagonize them. Just make bunch of pregens for them to choose from and give them options that won’t edge toward their states disinterest in LoTR fantasy and GoT fantasy.

What kind of fucking session do you intend to run? What’s he setting and what are the plot hooks. You want advise at least provide some more of the barest fucking details about what you’d like to ducking accomplish with this session to keep them interested for more or something more involved in their part. It’s not fucking rocket surgery and it seems sparse for a whole fucking thread but we’ll make due with that by arguing and being pedantic.

Fuck.

Now speak, foolish OP, speak that over the course of today and tomorrow we may have discourse if this thread survives, for having imparted my observation, opinion, and pertinent questions I am going the fuck to sleep.

Alright, the idea I had been fleshing out was doing some work for the local government followed by the realization the guy giving the quests was into some shady shit too.

Setting wise I was putting this all on a continent that is largely comprised of the major human/gnome/halfling nation, with a wizard enclave of mixed races in one direction, an Minotaur city in another with a largely uninhabited forest in between them, Mountain range with spatterings of Giants, Goliaths, and nomadic Dwarves in the third, and a coast in the other.

I was going to start the campaign with one from rpg.rem.uz/ called the Fey Sisters fate.

The others I was going to custom roll based in part on party composition and how they handled the first. I was absolutely going to send them into a haunted graveyard to kill some cult of necromancers if they had the paladin or blood hunter. Reclaim some kidnapped rich children in the Kobald infested former Dwarven settlement if the Dwarf was in. Put and end to Goliaths raiding if the Warforged was picked.

As each mission took place they of course get their chance to check the rumour mill as well as shop. I plan to plant seeds of no one quite liking the lord, and especially not his headman.

Final bit should be the, "oh no the lord's trusted advisor isn't just a bit of a dick, he's plotting to take over." The idea being that while these problems had not been started by the headman, they had been encouraged by him; troops moved out of the way to allow a raid here, guard tower understaffed and overrun there.

I would have the lord himself just being a bit of a boob to whom power was invested by blood, not his worth. And the headman a bastard brother looking to claim, "what's rightfully mine."

>> A good DM fucks with people using their own in game decisions over time

A very good point.

Doable, definitely doable. I was going with the flow on their request to make them, but forcing them to think about what they want to play as is prudent.

We get together semi-weekly, mostly, for a game night that lasts between 3 and 5 hours. There are drinks and chips and mild alcoholic abuses.

Alright, so players. We shall call them Nantuk, Cletus, Wifey, Creepy, and Joe.

Nantuk is a good guy, into 80s music, native north american, drinks gasoline, into nerdy things. He has listened to a couple podcasts of people playing DnD and wants to give it a whirl.

Cletus is the biggest redneck I have ever seen in my life. He loves his booze, he loves his guns, but most of all he loves to have fun with people. He loves to play board games and bounce humour off other players while doing so, Nantuk has Cletus basically convinced that Dungeons and Dragons could be fun.

Wifey is Cletus' wife. She's really, really into Harry Potter, Supernatural, 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight, and other preteen shit. She enjoys the odd game with the crew but is not convinced of the value of sitting around talking a game. Monopoly she can get, imagination she is confused about.

Creepy is, our dragon fetishist. Posters, statues, books about them... He's got a raging hard on for dragons. I am half convinced if I looked under his bed I would find a dragon dildo. He's a nice enough guy, a friend of Wifey's, but the dragon thing is mentioned too often for comfort in my books. He comes around for any gaming night he can and plays seriously and has a good time with practically any game. 'Cept Lords of Waterdeep, where he got the Beholder for his Masked Lord and didn't realize how Corruption works. He was a pouty bitch then.

Joe is the most average fucker in the world. More interested in the chips and booze than the games, he comes for the company more than the gaming.

Joe and Wifey are the two I am most worried about not being able to accommodate.

Alright, now Incan offer advice.

I like the idea of play starting with the party before local lords/representatives going “You have been summoned for your reputation as problem solvers. Here are our problems and here is what we offer you should they be resolved in a manner we find agreeable,” setting mission parameters might help regarding the hostages or something the villains of the mission have that the lords in question (or the corrupt advisor) want.

If Wifey is down for monopoly but doesn’t see the value of imagination yet, take things away from total theater of the mind. Battle mat, dungeon tiles, and minis to sell the combat. Make interesting but quick to assemble or preassemble environments for your purposes. It might be worth it to buy some of large gridded battlemat paper to pre draw combat encounter locations or infiltration locations that you can throw on the table and have them navigate, explore, get into fights in.

As for Joe, keep the booze and chips on hand and gauge his reaction at the start and end of the session.

It may be easy to, besides including the explanations and mechanics of the character backgrounds, provide bullet lists for each pregen’s history and space for the players to figure out matters of personal preference or choice. The dragon born you made a girl, for example, don’t fill in gender or appearance but let the players figure that after a brief explanation of what each race is.

You have a solid idea for a campaign or at least a one shot set up, engage them and remember to pay attention to your table.

As an engagement tool, it might be worth it to use poker chips or some kind of counter as Inspiration. Award it when you think someone is especially engaged, has a good idea, or does something everyone else thinks was pretty cool. Having a physical token to redeem for the reroll helps take it out of just a mark on the sheet or imangination space.

You might have this, just do what you can and have fun with it