Zardnaar
Legend
Thought I would share a funny story. Locally D&D is doing great with several stores stocking it and 1 dedicated game store and another store that has gaming rooms for Magic, board games, D&D etc. Tues-Thursday is D&D night and each night is 3 groups. There is some overlap of players. AL never really caught on as the DMs didn't like it and the drop in drop out nature of it didn't work.
Anyway tonight efforts was 21 players, 3 groups of 1 DM 6 players. Fairly goog gender split with 2-3 females at each table, 1 female DM. DMs tend to be on the young side I am the oldest there I think but there are a few late 20's annd maybe early 30's but mostly student age.
Got there early and I heard one group was talking about planescape while waiting on 3 players to show up so I went and said hi and talked to them about it. He was 16, liked Planescape, and was actually running it that night and was talking about Sigil and the rule of 3 and the lady of pain. Turns out he had heard about it online and had the PDFs for the Planescape boxed set. Mordenkainines Tome of Foes was being used, Tieflings and Drow were being used, 3/6 of our table are a variety of elves. There was a noticeable gender difference in the races selected with younger female players liking elves while the males were picking things like Goliaths, Genasi, Tieflings and Humans over the several tables. 4 female players on 2 tables all had elves, the first one I talked to I said let me guess Elf and she had a Drow. Back in the 90's I had 3 females in a 6 person 2E group, all played Elves one of the guys had a half elf the more things change huh.
The training table has a short campaign lasting around 6-8 weeks before the DM cyclees in new players with the other players moving onto new games. She seems to enjoy training new players and I'm up next as it turns out for DMing duties so a I am picking up a couple of her players to build a new group around. People also seem to be familiar with 3E but they must have been fairly young when they played it and a few were familiar with Pathfinder/Golarion.
So the question is what would you do with an unknown group of inexperienced players as I have not really had to deal with this well ever. Over the years I have just added 1-2 players to my group until all the old guard were gone, and now even the new guard are cycling out with life/jobs/marriage etc. I was wanting to use Midagrd but don't want to swamp people with options so PHB+ Xanathars and SCAG, probably default to the Realms. KISS principle Base out of Waterdeep perhaps, looking at smaller adventures with trips to the local areas and maybe stick the Isle of Dread somewhere in the sea off the coast of Faerun or maybe plug Saltmarsh in somewhere perhaps near the Mere of Dead Men and run the old 2E adventures there tailored to 5E.
Princes of the Apocalypse is also an option but smaller adventures they can digest in smaller chunks might be the better way to go.
The other idea is a fantasy not Egypt game with tombs to plunder, lost cites (B4) to discover, with Slavers etc prowling around. A fantasy Mediterranean world.
Anyway tonight efforts was 21 players, 3 groups of 1 DM 6 players. Fairly goog gender split with 2-3 females at each table, 1 female DM. DMs tend to be on the young side I am the oldest there I think but there are a few late 20's annd maybe early 30's but mostly student age.
Got there early and I heard one group was talking about planescape while waiting on 3 players to show up so I went and said hi and talked to them about it. He was 16, liked Planescape, and was actually running it that night and was talking about Sigil and the rule of 3 and the lady of pain. Turns out he had heard about it online and had the PDFs for the Planescape boxed set. Mordenkainines Tome of Foes was being used, Tieflings and Drow were being used, 3/6 of our table are a variety of elves. There was a noticeable gender difference in the races selected with younger female players liking elves while the males were picking things like Goliaths, Genasi, Tieflings and Humans over the several tables. 4 female players on 2 tables all had elves, the first one I talked to I said let me guess Elf and she had a Drow. Back in the 90's I had 3 females in a 6 person 2E group, all played Elves one of the guys had a half elf the more things change huh.
The training table has a short campaign lasting around 6-8 weeks before the DM cyclees in new players with the other players moving onto new games. She seems to enjoy training new players and I'm up next as it turns out for DMing duties so a I am picking up a couple of her players to build a new group around. People also seem to be familiar with 3E but they must have been fairly young when they played it and a few were familiar with Pathfinder/Golarion.
So the question is what would you do with an unknown group of inexperienced players as I have not really had to deal with this well ever. Over the years I have just added 1-2 players to my group until all the old guard were gone, and now even the new guard are cycling out with life/jobs/marriage etc. I was wanting to use Midagrd but don't want to swamp people with options so PHB+ Xanathars and SCAG, probably default to the Realms. KISS principle Base out of Waterdeep perhaps, looking at smaller adventures with trips to the local areas and maybe stick the Isle of Dread somewhere in the sea off the coast of Faerun or maybe plug Saltmarsh in somewhere perhaps near the Mere of Dead Men and run the old 2E adventures there tailored to 5E.
Princes of the Apocalypse is also an option but smaller adventures they can digest in smaller chunks might be the better way to go.
The other idea is a fantasy not Egypt game with tombs to plunder, lost cites (B4) to discover, with Slavers etc prowling around. A fantasy Mediterranean world.
