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View Full Version : One-shot adventures for new players?



aurelian
2014-01-17, 08:35 PM
I'll soon be DMing for some friends who are visiting, all but one of whom haven't played D&D before. We'll have one or two 3-4 hour sessions, and they'll all be level 1 characters.

Can anyone suggest some short, prewritten 3.5 adventures? Along with good encounters, some interesting roleplaying or mystery solving would be very nice.

Yes, that's all. I'm willing to buy books, and know someone with an extensive collection of Dungeon and Dragon magazines, so those are fair game.

Airk
2014-01-17, 11:58 PM
I'm not sure I want to be That Guy, but if they've never played an RPG before (I know you only said they hadn't played D&D before, but it's the odd gamer who players RPGs but has somehow missed D&D)... are you _sure_ you want to start them with a game that has hundreds of pages of rules?

You could make this easier and possibly more fun for all involved by picking a more prep light game and just improvising something fun.

Rosstin
2014-01-18, 01:55 AM
I like to start off players who are new to RPGs in a pure roleplay one-shot with only the most basic rules. Like, maybe their characters have abilities but they're clear-cut abilities like "you can fly" rather than things involving stats or dice-rolls. Then I make things more about exploration and puzzle-solving rather than combat.

I guess that seems counter-intuitive, but for the kinds of games I like to run it works rather well. And it helps people who think of DnD as a big scary messy confusion, to get into it without a huge giant book. I just think it gets the concept of roleplay off more elegantly.

Then I would step them up into more rulesy games from there. Fate looked like a surprisingly good system for newbies last time I checked it out.

I know people like to decry systemless games as a "magical tea party" but I think you can have a lot of fun with just puzzles, roleplay, and simple rules about the world. Which DnD can often be like anyway when you're playing with a good group.

I think the real advantage of a system-heavy game like DnD is how much you can do outside of the game, in terms of how much fun it is to design a character. In-game, I think the lure of treasure and XP is one of the big appeals of DnD, so make sure that's something that motivates your players.

inexorabletruth
2014-01-18, 09:14 AM
Ka-PLOWIE!
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95929
http://www.dndadventure.com/html/adventures/adv1.html

You're welcome. :smallcool:

aurelian
2014-01-18, 01:56 PM
Ka-PLOWIE!
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95929
http://www.dndadventure.com/html/adventures/adv1.html

You're welcome. :smallcool:

Much thanks.


I'm not sure I want to be That Guy, but if they've never played an RPG before (I know you only said they hadn't played D&D before, but it's the odd gamer who players RPGs but has somehow missed D&D)... are you _sure_ you want to start them with a game that has hundreds of pages of rules?

You could make this easier and possibly more fun for all involved by picking a more prep light game and just improvising something fun.

I like to start off players who are new to RPGs in a pure roleplay one-shot with only the most basic rules.

Actually, these people are definitely planning to start a D&D game on their own in the future, and have started reading the rules already. They happen to be visiting, so I thought this would be kind of fun.

But I see your point. If it wouldn't work out, any suggestions for running a pure roleplay one-shot?

Airk
2014-01-18, 08:24 PM
Fate Accelerated is probably a good choice for a rules-light 'freeform' game. It's pay what you want, the rules are pretty trim and tidy, and it doesn't specifically encourage any particular mode of play, so it works well for free-form-ish roleplay.