D&D 5E First Official Homebrew Campaign Adventure - Need help with ideas!

Yaztromo · Dec 28, 2016

JovialLichKing said:
Ok, I'll go first with some familiar tried and tested stuff...

- The party meets in a tavern
- A tomb or graveyard full of undead
- A classic cave/dungeon crawl with plenty of goblins and a goblin boss
- A trap/magic-filled wizard tower
- Somebody needs to be rescued
- Some element of mystery to be solved

What else?

A prophetic dream!...

alienux · Dec 28, 2016

JovialLichKing said:
Ok, I'll go first with some familiar tried and tested stuff...

- The party meets in a tavern
- A tomb or graveyard full of undead
- A classic cave/dungeon crawl with plenty of goblins and a goblin boss
- A trap/magic-filled wizard tower
- Somebody needs to be rescued
- Some element of mystery to be solved

What else?

You meet Cochise. At first you think he's a terrible guy.

You fight, then you get to know him.

You come to respect each other, and at the end of the picture...

you're friends.

Sorry, I read the original post in the voice of Harry Flugelman

aco175 · Dec 29, 2016

I would recommend starting off in a town where the PCs can go around a bit and maybe attend the local fair like mentioned earlier. A few small dungeons close to town can send them out for a few days before returning. The first few levels go by fast and the players will want to level up as soon as possible. I would also vary the monsters a bit so new players can see a few more things in the game. Another theory on playing is to start with an encounter/fight to get the action flowing right away.

I might start the adventure with a simple bar scene with a quest and a bit of interaction. Some kobolds or goblins living in the entrance to a crypt with a couple encounters before coming to a crypt door that has not been opened by the kobolds/goblins. Inside you can have some skeletons and maybe a shadow or something. They can come back to the town after the first part and get some information on the 2nd part or they can camp there for the night before going in. Tie the crypt to the innkeeper and have a family heirloom in need of retrieval. The PCs can earn free room and drinks when they come back. Everyone loves free drinks and a local bard singing a song after them.

Demetrios1453 · Dec 29, 2016

A kobold adventure is always fun and memorable for first time players. I don't know if you have Volo's Guide to Monsters, but if you do, the kobold variants in it would make for some interesting but not too difficult fights for first-timers. A cave with a few groups of regular kobolds, a kobold inventor and a winged kobold/urd to spice things up in the middle, and then a kobold sorcerer as a final boss should make for a fun first dungeon.

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Geoarrge · Dec 31, 2016

Short ideas:

-The party is part of a peacekeeping force patrolling a province on the verge of rebellion. Structured hexcrawling.
-The party gets embedded with the bad guys as spies while clearing a dungeon for them. Vanilla dungeon, but with a twist on downtime.
-The party gets awarded land deep in the frontier. Base building and defense.
-The party escorts a group of missionaries to a region populated by a recently discovered monstrous species with some potential for civilization. Combination defense/hexcrawl, plus an excuse to debut your or someone else's homebrew race.

psychophipps · Dec 31, 2016

My homebrew starts with the PCs working as extra muscle/protection for a construction crew to help establish an efficient route from the capital area to an agricultural area to the North. Think slightly improving the Oregon Trail for more effective colonization leading eventually to improved commerce.
Of course, bandits and other hijinks shall ensue on the route along with a relatively early Princes Mononoke-type encounter to let them see a hint as to what is going on in the world, a Ghost in the Darkness type situation when they build a bridge across a gorge with some hangry Manticores, and finally running into a 13th Warrior type situation with a gnoll/undead army and meeting a Big Bad.

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Kabouter Games · Dec 31, 2016

Jester David said:
Let the players make their own backstory. And ask them leading questions. You can set them up for creativity. "When you were ten you suffered a tragedy. What was it?"
Push them to name villages and locations, to give events in the world. Which you can then use to build the setting.
It might be handy to seed inter-connectivity between the players. Have each player have met the person on their left in some way.

I recommend starting with a fair or carnival. A non-combat situation where they can get used to the game system and their character sheets. So they can roll a few Acrobatics or Athletics checks to catch a greased pig, make a few attack rolls in an archery contest, make a few Constitution saving throws to keep down pie, etc.
Keep the NPCs limited unless you want to force roleplaying initially (which I would ease into).

Give them a quest but really emphasise the freedom to do anything. This is the strength of RPGs over video games and other forms of media. They can make their own decisions and follow their own path.

I recommend cliffhangers as well for the first few sessions. Don't resolve everything and have some suspense at the end. That encourages people to come back and keeps the group together.

I don't think I can "THIS" sufficiently to show my agreement with it.

The great thing about having it all be new is that you can have a variety of stuff prepared and still not railroad the players. Bang - here's the starting village, right there on the map. You have three different adventures all planned and mapped out. On your map, the Crypt of the Icky Doodz is northeast of the village, but they don't know that. So when they cross the river and head southwest, you just plop the Crypt in front of them.

It takes some practice to be able to just wing it. You'll get there.

JovialLichKing · Dec 31, 2016

You guys, these are fantastic suggestions! I really appreciate the thoughtful replies here.

After thinking about it a bit more, I'm going to attempt to do an adapted version of Lost Mines of Phandelver. It really seems to be an excellent well-rounded, and memorable adventure. At this point I'm thinking I'll just change most of the names so that they sound a bit less "Forgotten Realmsy". Wish me luck!

I'll definitely be referring back to this thread for future adventure ideas though. Some really great stuff here.

JovialLichKing · Feb 8, 2017

So the first adventure went great! I ended up doing a quest where the players went up a snowy mountain path to retrieve an artifact from a mountaintop shrine. Along the way they encountered a giant spider, some harpies fighting a band of dwarf scouts, a sleeping stone giant, and some terrain and weather related obstacles. (This is a modified adventure that I heard from a YouTuber.)

Our next session is this Saturday. We left off with them standing in the main room of the shrine just about to retrieve the artifact.

I'm now trying to figure out what the next quest should be - do I have them go back down the mountain without incident and start something completely different? Or do I force them to get back down via inside of the mountain and make that the next session? I will have about 3 hours of game play to fill. Would love to get some ideas from you all!

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alienux · Feb 9, 2017

I wrote a 5E adventure that has the party go to a cavern to retrieve an artifact. Once they get inside, the entrance seals up and they're unable to get out. They get the artifact rather quickly, but there's an entire adventure in and of itself of escaping from the sealed cavern.

Not sure if that's something that would fit in with what you have in mind, but if you want to check it out for inspiration, you can download it here:

https://brianmhall.wordpress.com/20...eons-dragons-adventure-the-cavern-of-sundark/

D&D 5E First Official Homebrew Campaign Adventure - Need help with ideas!

Yaztromo

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alienux

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aco175

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Demetrios1453

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Geoarrge

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psychophipps

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Kabouter Games

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JovialLichKing

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JovialLichKing

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alienux

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