What to run for a group of complete beginners?

[Turjan]

Thanks for the answers so far .

The Sunless Citadel is a nice tour through several skills, and I already had the experience that Meepo makes for involved PCs. I have less positive experiences with the goblin ambush and the final fight. I like the adventure, but maybe I have to change something. If the group consists only of 3 players, I might better run it as second adventure than as a first.

I've completely forgot about Orcfest. I've got that lying around somewhere, but never used it. It has some good advice in it, but a question to people who ran that one: What did you do with the orc masks after the adventure? I wouldn't like the players to keep them.

I don't have D&D for Dummies. I had the old 3.0 starter box, but that one seems to have got legs, at least I cannot seem to find it.

The Burning Plague might actually work. As I see it, a short starter might be in order before I throw them into a usual 1st level adventure. At least I have more time for some other preparations then.

 

[The Lost Muse]

I'll second Death in Freeport as an excellent first adventure; it was the first module available for the d20 System, and is available in a revised edition from RPGNow. A little intrigue, a little combat, and it's designed for fish-out-of-water characters right from the start.

 

[Turjan]

How experienced are these players? I know they're n00bs, but have they familiarized themselves with the rules? Have they created characters?

None of that. They don't know the rules and don't know how to create characters; they just want to play . I'm considering to provide them with pregenerated characters, maybe about 8 chars to choose from. I had once been in a similar situation with a different group, but character generation took far too long, because I had to go through it with each of them, one after the other. It got boring for everyone else (it took them nearly three hours ; the wizard was a real pain...). Fortunately, we had enough time to get to the interesting part fast enough, so they were quite excited in the end. This time, we have less time, though.

 

[VirgilCaine]

The Burning Plague is the adventure for complete beginners. It is straightfoward without being booring and has a nice mix of simple combat, problem solving and even the possibility for some role-play. Most important of all it showcases all the most important of the basic dnd skills: trapfinding, stealth/scouting, melee fighting and flanking, turning undead, cover and ranged attacks, spellcasting and a boss fight.

Oh, and its a free download too.

Hope that helps.

Just make sure you downgrade the "boss" at the end to a 1st level cleric with a wand of animate dead, not the full Clr5.

 

[Turjan]

Just a point of advice: Don't run the full-set D&D rules. Combat in D&D is complicated. I would either use a rules-light system to start or drastically edit combat. I've seen new players rapidly get frustrated and disinterested during the first combat scene. Say "yes" to the players a lot, and maybe consider action points.

That's good advice. I usually start with basic combat only, so no "bull rush" and other special manoeuvres.

 

[Shadow145]

There is a dungeon crawl adventure as part of the D&D Basic game, Mini's, characters, maps and all.

Burning Plaque worked really well the time I was in the same situation you are.

Also, I believe there is a free adventure on Necromancer's Games site called "The Wizard's Amulet" which might be good, I was going to use that one one time but the game never happened.

 

[Turjan]

I'll second Death in Freeport as an excellent first adventure; it was the first module available for the d20 System, and is available in a revised edition from RPGNow. A little intrigue, a little combat, and it's designed for fish-out-of-water characters right from the start.

I've (only) got a foreign language version of that one . This would be a completely different campaign then. I'm not sure about the "piratey" feel and tend more to a very clichéd D&D experience for the intro.

Just make sure you downgrade the "boss" at the end to a 1st level cleric with a wand of animate dead, not the full Clr5.

Okay, a well played Clr5 is definitely too much for them.

 

[IronWolf]

I've completely forgot about Orcfest. I've got that lying around somewhere, but never used it. It has some good advice in it, but a question to people who ran that one: What did you do with the orc masks after the adventure? I wouldn't like the players to keep them.

I believe they were

Spoiler

charged magic items, with limited charges left

?

EDIT: Added some spoiler tags to be safe.

 

[Turjan]

I believe they were

Spoiler

charged magic items, with limited charges left

?

EDIT: Added some spoiler tags to be safe.

It was somewhere hidden in the text, but I read it again and

Spoiler

they had, indeed, only 2 charges left.

Thanks .

 

[EdL]

I would strongly recomend not starting with Sunless Citadel. It gets real hard much too quickly for noobies, IMHO. And even if they do survive they slam right into the "Whadda ya mean, there's no possible way to rescue them?" situation at the end. I'd be hesitant to run it (at least as written) as the first adventure for long time gamers!