D&D 5E Level 0 Intro Adventure Help

[jsears2002]

Hi all-

I have been out of D&D for a while, and am looking to get back into the swing by DMing a group of friends here soon, picking up with 5th Ed.

Only one of the players has gamed before, but no one with 5th ed, so we will be learning the ruleset together. My idea was to have a level 0 adventure that might set the mood of the campaign or setting, and let people learn the basics of the game, without already tying them down to a specific character/race/class.
Does anyone have any experience or tips for something like this? Here are the thoughts I have had already:

1. Start some sort of "fun" session: Kids in some sort of "adventuring festival" (think beginning of NWN2). Kids are fighting imaginary or stick monsters with wooden swords and bags of stones for spells. Healing done by candy, and so forth. No stats, no craziness, just basic rules, puzzles and so forth.
The issues I have with this are:
A. Do I already tie them to a race at this point, or could the characters be totally unrelated to the story?
B. Could/should the end of this tie in with the story? (A dragon comes by and wipes out the village, or orcs come by and attack, and the kids, partnered with other adventurers, have to run/sneak out of the area)

2. Instead of the fun session, start with the normal village setting, and the players as adults, then the adventure starts as they have to escape the town. Along the way, give the players options to the weapons or abilities as they move through, thus letting them determine which class they may be interested in without having to force them to choose without them knowing about all the class nuances.

Again, I could really use some helpand guidance from anyone who has done this, or thought about doing it. As they are new, I want to give them a fun enough time that they might ask to return to their characters and the world I have placed before them.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tormyr]

I could see this working similarly to the beginning of Fable. You get chances to exhibit your alignment, and that plus some of the experiences could carry over into your campaign if you wanted to go that direction. Nobody has a class or race or background at this point. Give them the commoner stat block and let them get the feel for the attack roll, saving throw and check. The numbers will have no modifiers, so it will just be straight die rolls.

Give opportunities for the kids to be mean or nice, cowardly or brave, sneaky, smart, strong, etc. I would only run this for 1 to 2 sessions max. Everyone will have an idea of the different rolls and have a small basis that they can choose to use in the campaign. Or, you could include races and a bit of background, but people can always choose to run a different character in the campaign.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I don't think 5E characters are complex enough to need to start at 0 level, especially basic characters.

If the goal is to get started playing and teaching 5E then level 1 should be fine. I don't quite understand what you would get out of a 0 level experience that would be better than 1st level. You could probably create pre-gens in short order too.

 

[jsears2002]

The reason for the 0 level characters what to let the players have some fun and choose the roles to play without having to pick a class yet; players chooses to use magic though the course of the one-shot adventure, then "grows up" to be a wizard or sorc for the campaign. The idea is just the intro way of helping the players to choose something they may be interested in while having some fun.

 

[Scripture]

I got reintroduced to D&D through 5th Edition with something called Defiance in Phlan. The DM said we could respec the characters up until 4th level, so we could get a feel for different classes. The adventure itself is five 1-hour situations.

I liked it well enough. It was an ad hoc group and I had not played in 30 years. The setting is real easy and informal and the time passed quickly.

I believe the DM said this is what they play at GenCons to introduce the new rules.

 

[GX.Sigma]

That's a really interesting and cool idea. If it works in your campaign, go for it!

It seems like it would be useful for players who are completely new to RPGs, but I don't think it is needed if they're coming from other editions.

 

[jsears2002]

I agree.

I am hoping that this will interest those who have never experience this type of gaming before. The trick is all my players are in love with Diablo 3, so I ay have to tailor this initial moments to get them hooked, then slowly introduce the rp aspects.

I will keep y'all posted, if you would like. Let you know how it turns out...if it does.

 

[Joe Liker]

For players who are already familiar with Diablo 3, I don't think there's any need to ease them into the decisions of class or race. Simply describing the classes and races available should give them a pretty good idea of what they want to do.

And keep in mind, they aren't really locked into their initial choices. The multiclassing rules allow for some drastic changes in direction as a character develops.

In fact, I find it rather refreshing to think about a party that might develop organically over time as opposed to planning the entire course of the character's growth on day one.

 

[fba827]

I personally don't think a 0 level would work well with the type of people I play with, but if it works for you, all the power to young hope it ends up fun for you.


Totally just speaking off the cuff (and therefore these ideas are not really thought out or tested). ....



If you want to include picking race as party the introductory adventure then you may want to consider taking the approach that they are spirits preparing to reincarnate onto the mortal world. And then have some sort of guide who asks them, do you feel quick and nimble and like the forest is your home, or stout and rugged like with the spirit of the mountain within you. And so on. And then give them some weapon that is prototypical of that chosen race, pretend that they have a +1 proficiency bonus and run through a pretend fight ( thus only prof bonus to add since no stats at that moment
And then have something like six caves ( one for each ability score)
and then describing each cave as the cave for spirits who feel strong mental capacity, those of wisdom, those of great physical strength, and so on. And whichever cave they go in, that would correspond to whichever stat they want as their high primary stat. And within each cave is some sort of test or object that corresponds to different classes that use that primary stat.

That feels like a lot to walk through with little rolling and more story context for walking through character creation. So I don't know if that serves your purpose or not.

Edit; typed on a tablet, apologies for typeos, spelling, and grammar.

 

[Wrathamon]

Lvl nothing ...

The kid can move and take an action. He can also talk at anytime and do other stuff during his action...
D20 no modifiers and make everything have AC 8, all saves and checks 8. Just have them describe what they want to do and they roll to get higher than 8 to succeed. Make it more about roleplaying and talking about the actions they want to do. Any damage they do is a D6 and they have 6 hps. Anything that can hurt them only does 1 (max 2) points of damage.

They get on the rollercoaster ... and become characters.

Have them ROLL Stats. I would do the 4d6 reroll 1s in order. Why in order, lets choices for them to worry about. If they roll high in str then they will focus on that. Then let them swap a couple of them around after they pick a race and class to help define their character.

Normally I think background should go first but in this case you can pick a background for them like folk hero that they all share or let them pick this before they pick class.

Once they have their stats and a background have them use the base human (keep it simple) stats and then pick a class. I would just use the Basic Rules classes

Their stats should help guide them to a class

If you feel that they can handle more information (then other races can be used)

At this point you can modify their character but if some of the classes are still a bit too complex you could remove a class feature. Casters only get cantrips for example. Dont worry about spell slots yet.

OR

play this Monster Slayers with them at first
http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/4dnd/monsterslayers

then if they seem to like it grab the D&D Starter set and use the premades and play that adventure, then pick up the PHB and go crazy!