What to DM to a newbie group of girls?

[Cergorach]

Mage, relax! The problem is that we're talking about D&D 3E (or 3.5E) and the generic D&D adventure involves a formula that includes combat, lots of combat. Adventures for beginners (1st-2nd level characters) that will only take two sessions to complete and will involve mostly roleplaying and solving mysteries are very rare (if not non-excistent). So i doubt folks can offer you many options for ready to use (step-by-step) adventures, so they try to give what advice they are capable of giving. Most folks are a bit overly helpfull when giving advice if it involves possibly new players, especially if they're female. Personaly i don't think that you'll need to write an adventure if it mostly involves mystery and roleplaying, read through an interesting city book (such as sharn) and 'wing' the two sessions, in my experience it allows you to better 'feel' and adept on the fly.

If you really want to do a ready made adventure you might want to try:
Palace of the Silver Princess (free to download)
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20020121x7
The conversion for 3E you can get here:
http://www.enworld.org/cc/downloads/index.php

It's for 1st-3rd lvl., it's free, you can download it right now, and a fun piece of information: This module is unique in that it was the first TSR adventure by a female designer. Something your players might appreciate...
(although i can't guarantee the roleplaying and mystery, but that's easily added.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OK...read the entire thread. I have one caveat before I make my suggestions: Whichever adventure you use, avoid those with strong negative female stereotypes. Sometimes they hide, so be careful and read the entire adventure before running it.

Suggestions:

1) I agree with the poster who suggested using pregens, at least to the point of having pregens available for selection. If nothing else, they may stir someone's imaginations or help them complete their own PC conception & design. Pregens also let you run a slightly higher power-level game without having to walk newbies through artificial levelling.

2) AEG and FFG published a HORDE of quickie adventures, many of which were reviewed in Dragon Magazine Annual #6, if I properly recall. Some were better than others, but few were actually intro level- hence suggestion #1. Personally, I own AEG's Jerimond's Orb, Castle Zadrian, Servants of the Blood Moon, and The Heart of Amun Khonshu- none of which is lower than PC lvls 2-4.

3) AEG has also published 2 softcover books- Adventures 1 and 2, which contain some good stuff.

4) Dungeon Magazine usually publishes at least 1 low, 1 medium and 1 high level adventure per issue- most of them are pretty decent.

5) I agree with Celebrim's idea of converting UK1. I'd add Village of Homlet. If you're particularly optimistic, try ToEE- my game group started with 1st level PCs and are using it as our campaign's centerpiece, and now our PCs are 7th level.

6) Homebrew: There is something to be said for running something like a caravan that gets ambushed or a sewer crawl after somebody with "The Maguffin": Flexibility. The initial adventure(s) center around some bandits attacking the caravan, or recovering "The Maguffin"...and can easily be stretched into a campaign. All you need is a good party group, a general plot line, the necessary maps, a couple of set encounters and some good random encounter charts.

 

[S'mon]

Palace of the Silver Princess is a good one (available as free download), AIR there's a 3e conversion available.

 

[Hannibal King]

Dungeon magazine had a module or two which involved weddings. Girls love weddings. ;-) Can't recall their names. Maybe someone has a detailed Dungeon index. Ofcourse this assumes you have old issues of Dungeon. ;-)

The_Magician can I ask why these girls want to play? Especially since your convinced they won't play long term. Doesn't make sense to me?

HK

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I have 5 19yr old girls who have asked me to DM to them.

I have dreams that begin with that premise.

Um, Penumbra has a great adventure called Last Dance that deals with romance, intrigue, and, yes, dancing in a sort of faerie realm. It's actually a complex adventure, potentially involving overlapping time streams, so I don't know if it's suitable for newbies from that perspective. However, my experience with young women and RPGs is that they're more likely to enjoy romantic faerie realm dance adventures than most guys are.

 

[yennico]

The Sunless Citadel is good.

IIRC You can not finish this module in two sessions....

 

[Mighty Halfling]

Shameless plug:
Try my short adventure from Dungeon 110. It's called "Buzz in the Bridge." High on role-playing, low on combat. It has options at the back of it to expand it into a longer adventure. Its for 3rd lvl PCs. It's got a miniatures-scaled map of the final encounter. Its got halflings, those cute little guys from "Lord of the Rings."
Here's how Paizo describes the adventure:

THE BUZZ ON THE BRIDGE

The isolated halfing village of Lindley has a problem. The main supply route into town, a large covered bridge spanning a mountain chasm, has been infested by a hive of giant bees. The sheriff has already perished in an attempt to remove the vermin, so when the PCs arrive in town, mayor Dunleary Appletop pleads for their help. A D&D adventure for 3rd-level characters, featuring a miniatures-scale map.

Anyway, good luck in your enviable undertaking!

 

[Tinner]

I like the pre-gen idea, but make sure you leave them all some starting cash, and let them do their own shopping.
Not trying to sound sexist here, but after GMing for my non-gamer wife, I have found that what really holds her interest is shopping for new stuff for her PC. Not just new weapons, but camping gear, misc. bags, henchmen, fashion accessories.
Women in general IMO are much more interested than men in the social interactions possible in these non-combat activities. Let them meet some quirky, interesting shopkeepers and haggle for goods and services. eck, maybe they need some "letters of transit", and have to go to "Rick's Cafe Americain" to negotiate for tem.
Have the shopkeeper offer them the hooks to whatever adventure you want to run, and offer them a sizeable discount on future purchases if they complete the mission.
YMMV, but I've had a lot of success running games for women that start with this set-up.

As for what to actually run -"Mad God's Key" and "Box of Flumph" from recent issues of Dungeon were both big hits with women new to gaming when I ran them with he above caveat.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

1. Don't run a module.

No matter how SHORT a module is supposed to be, gamers have a tendency to get stuck on something or follow a red herring till they beat it to death, raise it from the dead & beat it to death again, then animate just so they can crush it lifeless corpse one more time.

I'd go with a murder-mystery. Have a friend of one (or more) of the PC's request their aid in a slaying (say a rich merchant found dead in a brothel). He needs discretion, so that's why he's not going straight to the authorities.

Get a list of about 6-7 possible suspects & see how your party goes about it's business. Say a rival merchant, thieve's guild man he owed money to, vengeful wife, etc...

As you group pursues various lines of information, watch how they react to it. Thus, by the end of the 2nd session, they can finally find the 'smoking gun' that tells them who the real 'killer' is (maybe he even faked his death).

Don't decide who the killer is ahead of time, let your players explore the world (and rule system) you have set before them.

While this may soud like 'you won't find the correct murderer until X amount of time has passed'.... Well, it is, but if done correctly they won't notice & it allows you a Role-playig intensive session that you can be guareenteed to wrap up when you absolutley have too.


or... You can play 'Playboy, a Realist Simulation' while they play 'baseball bat to the head'

 

[The_Universe]

I have 5 19yr old girls who have asked me to DM to them. Two of them ahve played RPG only once, and the others never had contact with it. Since the two who have played, played D&D3E, I am considering going with that system. Also, I dont believe they are the kind of group that will play many sessions, so I was hoping anyone could suggest a quick and fun adventure for hysterical 19yr old girls that would need no more than 2 sessiosn to conclude.
Thanks.

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