"New" DM seeking advice

[TerribleMedic]

Hello all, I've recently had a group of friends express interest in playing D&D. Now none of them are very experienced with it nor are they comfortable with roleplaying. Would 4th edition be an okay system to get them into the genre? If so what books should I allow and what preset modules would be good ones to start them on? I've played 4th edition before but it only lasted a couple sessions due to scheduling conflicts. Any advice you can give would be appreciated.

[Kurald Galain]

That really depends on what genre you have in mind - high fantasy? Gritty fantasy? Beer and pretzels? Horror? It also depends on whether your friends are gamers already (of any kind), because if they're not, a rules-light system would probably be a better match.

[TerribleMedic]

Fantasy would probably be more their style. All four the players were big into WoW back in the day. They are all primarily video gamers and last I heard they were big on League of Legends, Diablo 3, World of Tanks, Trackmania, and there might be a few others I'm missing. With that in mind do you think this is an okay system to introduce them to tabletop games?

[Kurald Galain]

Yes, that sounds like a fine combination.

I would recommend to avoid both the red box intro set and the Keep On The Shadowfell (KOTS) module as a starting point, as both are known to be pretty bad. If you want, you can download any number of Living Forgotten Realms adventures for free, just grab three or four of those and run the one you like best (then look for a few more by the same author).

[TerribleMedic]

Which books would you suggest I have them use for character creation? Are player's handbooks 1 & 2 going to be enough or will that leave them lacking?

[Inevitability]

What exactly is considered 'bad' about the RB adventure?
As far as I see it, it's a nice small dungeon with opportunities to learn many of the advanced mechanics of the game, a puzzle encounter, and a couple of social encounters.

[Nightgaun7]

Which books would you suggest I have them use for character creation? Are player's handbooks 1 & 2 going to be enough or will that leave them lacking?

Divine Power is pretty darn useful if anyone wants to play a Paladin. Beyond that I don't really know, since I just use the Compendium and Character Builder for everything.

[Kurald Galain]

What exactly is considered 'bad' about the RB adventure?
It's not so much that the adventure is bad, but that the red box as a whole is (1) way too expensive for what it offers, and (2) not actually fully compatible with the main rules.


Which books would you suggest I have them use for character creation? Are player's handbooks 1 & 2 going to be enough or will that leave them lacking?
At low levels they're fine. Starting from high heroic tier, certain classes may run into issues that were fixed in splatbooks, most notably the paladin.

I do recommend restricting book choice for beginning players, simply because of choice paralysis. Asking a new player to pick a heroic feat out of the 80 or so in the PHB1 is easier than asking him to pick one out of the 500+ in the character builder.

[TerribleMedic]

Excellent, thank you for the advice. I will use it for getting this campaign in order. Now I just have to get their schedules in order.