Calpurnia
2010-06-14, 11:18 AM
Hi!
So in a few months I'll be running my first ever in-person D&D game, 3.5. The players are all good friends of mine and completely new to the game; I started them out by building some first-level characters and running practice fights, all the while trying to figure out what kind of game they'd like to play when the time came to start the campaign. When we last met, I got a list of elements they'd like to see included (organized by general theme:)
Mummies
Pyramids
Scarab beetles
Sphinxes
Camels*
Jackals
Tailless cats
Cool Egyptian-style treasure
Generic treasure
Booby traps
Bouncing mushrooms
Angry mobs
Mimes
Fiddlers
Robespierre*
Guillotines*
Bad wigs
Village burning
Fireworks
Golems made out of food (calzones, cannoli)
Jensen Ackles* (as a lute player)
Jungles
Explosions
Zombies (hordes of the undead)
Creepy statues*
Mines
Canaries
Dungeons
Dragons
Lava level
Pirates
Ice level
Grouper Queen*
Giant Rat Squid*
*- These are inside jokes; we're a quirky bunch.
We also worked out a sufficiently wide-open adventure hook: some god or another has called upon these unlikely heroes and ordered them to gather together in order to retrieve the legendary Golden Sheep Egg.* A few of them have integrated their backstories together.
(Side note: I wanted to take something of a 'whatever you want' attitude during character creation, so I kept the worldbuilding deliberately vague save for one point that came up as a joke but since integrated itself into the fabric of my fictional universe: the groupers. Giant floating fish roam this world and eat things that displease them. They have a hive mind and originate from their forehead of their massive grouper queen fully-formed.)
So what I'm looking for: general advice for helping new players get into the game, specific advice on taking at least a few of the elements listed above and creating a coherent whole out of them, true love, and maybe some pointers on DMing real-life games when the players are your rowdy best friends.
Your help is greatly appreciated!
So in a few months I'll be running my first ever in-person D&D game, 3.5. The players are all good friends of mine and completely new to the game; I started them out by building some first-level characters and running practice fights, all the while trying to figure out what kind of game they'd like to play when the time came to start the campaign. When we last met, I got a list of elements they'd like to see included (organized by general theme:)
Mummies
Pyramids
Scarab beetles
Sphinxes
Camels*
Jackals
Tailless cats
Cool Egyptian-style treasure
Generic treasure
Booby traps
Bouncing mushrooms
Angry mobs
Mimes
Fiddlers
Robespierre*
Guillotines*
Bad wigs
Village burning
Fireworks
Golems made out of food (calzones, cannoli)
Jensen Ackles* (as a lute player)
Jungles
Explosions
Zombies (hordes of the undead)
Creepy statues*
Mines
Canaries
Dungeons
Dragons
Lava level
Pirates
Ice level
Grouper Queen*
Giant Rat Squid*
*- These are inside jokes; we're a quirky bunch.
We also worked out a sufficiently wide-open adventure hook: some god or another has called upon these unlikely heroes and ordered them to gather together in order to retrieve the legendary Golden Sheep Egg.* A few of them have integrated their backstories together.
(Side note: I wanted to take something of a 'whatever you want' attitude during character creation, so I kept the worldbuilding deliberately vague save for one point that came up as a joke but since integrated itself into the fabric of my fictional universe: the groupers. Giant floating fish roam this world and eat things that displease them. They have a hive mind and originate from their forehead of their massive grouper queen fully-formed.)
So what I'm looking for: general advice for helping new players get into the game, specific advice on taking at least a few of the elements listed above and creating a coherent whole out of them, true love, and maybe some pointers on DMing real-life games when the players are your rowdy best friends.
Your help is greatly appreciated!