Our new DM needs a module recomendation.

[Feddlefew]

Our group just dethroned our current A-game DM.* The player replacing them has never been in the DM seat before, and asked me, the B-game** DM, to recommend an adventure module for him.

I have only run Curse of Strahd. Curse of Strahd is a terrible choice for this group.

Our of the currently published modules, what would be good choices for someone who knows how to play 5e but has never run 5e? We have 5-6 players at any given game and would prefer to start at level 3 or 5, but starting at first level isn't a deal breaker. We'd also prefer modules that don't emphasize making the players feel helpless.

Modules which are not up for consideration- because of multi-player veto (1) and what we've played in or run before (2)- are Curse of Strahd (1,2), Tyranny of Dragons/Hoard of the Dragon Queen (1), and probably Tomb of Annihilation (2).

*For reasons that will not be discussed here. :smallannoyed:
**Best described as high power spaghetti western kitchen sink, if you were wondering.

[Bjarkmundur]

Hm, a completely brand-new DM.

The most frequent mistakes a new DM makes is starting off with a big adventure. This often leads to the DM making rulings that he is then stuck with for the foreseeable future. There's nothing as annoying as introducing a magic item that ruins the fun of the game or whathaveyou, and have no way to fix it retroactively. I know, I know. You've got big ideas on what you want to do and how you want to change things. But do it for me and. start. small.

What I recommend is a short and silly three-session adventure. This can have goofy character and follow the exact storyline of an Adventure Time Episode if you like. Just something not so serious and gets everyone comfortable with the new arrangement. The more obviously ridiculous the adventure is, the better. Pull out all the stereotypes. Have the villain be called Professor Hate, and the bartender called Bach Stabbalot. Whenever the players come to the guards and ask for helps they simply reply "Well, I got an arrow to the knee, so I can't".
This allows him to make some mistakes and not feel overly conscious about it, since it is just a silly 3-part adventure after all. Most DMs will think this is totally unnecessary, (myself, included when I was getting started). But let me tell you, this one little trick is a godsend. Whether you believe in it or not.

After that you make new characters, have a session 0, and start either a dungeon-delve like Sunless Citadel or a story-driven adventure with a lot of NPCs like Waterdeep. I'm not much of a wilderness explorer and far-travel kinda guy, so of that is his thing I can't help much. Although sidequests are easy to add to any module, where the group has to go to X to retrieve Y, but the road leads them through the dangerous forest-marsh of Z. I've heard good things about Phandelver, but haven't played it myself.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'd suggest against Storm King's Thunder, too-- I just started it and it's going to take a lot of work to piece together into something coherent. Out of the Abyss is pretty fun, but a new DM should probably ditch most (or all) of the npc companions and think carefully about how to handle all the travel time. A month's worth of random encounter rolls isn't fun for ANYBODY.

Bjarkmundur's suggestion about starting small is a good one. Grab Tales from the Yawning Portal or Ghosts of Saltmarsh and start with one of the low level adventures from those, maybe.

[Bobthewizard]

Lost Mines of Phandelver is a great one for a first time DM. It's very simple and well laid out. I think level 2 is the best place to start with this one. The initial goblin hideout is deadly at level 1 but would be too easy at level 3.

My other recommendation is Yawning Portal. You don't have to use the portal if you don't want to and can just plunk down the individual adventures where you want. Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury are great first time DM adventures. The good thing about this one is you don't have to read the whole book or even commit to it before you start, just run each adventure one at a time. If you want to start at level 3, skip Sunless Citadel and start with Forge of Fury.

Another option is just to find a couple free short adventures online to get your feet wet. Then decide on a longer adventure.

[No brains]

If you would like the silliest possible option to take pressure off of the new DM, a guy who made a D&D cartoon made a 'joke' module that's for around 5th level and is pretty short. There's a link to the adventure through his twitter.

https://twitter.com/crazy_boris/status/1141022207507881986

The series, Dungeon Dynamite is also worth a watch.

[Vorenus]

I second the previous recommendation for Lost Mines of Phandelver. It is an excellent adventure. I've been DMing that for a party of five adventurers and we have completed nine sessions. The party is now level 3, they made it to level 3 at the end of the 9th session, and tomorrow we will have the 10th session. I think we're about 2/3rds of the way through the module because the players have done an excellent job (and the DM has, too, if I may say so myself, completely immodestly) of exploring lots of different options. I estimate we'll be around 13-14 sessions before we finish with LMoP, and then we're going to transition into Storm King's Thunder merged with Tyranny of Dragons. You don't have to do the latter, but I highly, highly recommend Lost Mines of Phandelver.

[FabulousFizban]

tomb of horrors. heh, hehe, heheheheheh

more seriously, village of hommlet is always good. can lead into temple of elemental evil.

[jaappleton]

I'd recommend against a module entirely.

I think this started with Tomb of Annihilation, but on DMsGuild they have some officially recognized one-shots that can accompany the module. Maybe one or two sessions is all they last.

If you're a brand new DM and you pick up a fully published module, with all that entails, it can quickly become overwhelming.

Its for this reason that I recommend one of those official one-shots, just to get their feet wet. Something like Return of the Lizard King.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/220608/Return-of-the-Lizard-King

[Zhorn]

get hold of some of the Adventurers League modules. The're stripped down to be run and completed in a session, add in some of the roleplay and free-form stuff that's more of the home game flavor and you've got 2-3 sessions right there.

[Nagog]

I'd recommend running through the D&D Beyond series Encounter of the Week. It's been going for quite some time now, and each encounter leads into another, so there's a good narrative flow and it includes various monsters and the like the party is likely to encounter as well as suggestions on adjusting those based on player choice/party level. Also, it's a few months of travel, so pick two points on any map ever and hit the road, then decide on a overall plot when you get to the end of the road there.

[Great Dragon]

I agree with Grod_The_Giant about SKT, and would add "avoid Tyranny of Dragons!".

Either Village Homlett (into Temple of Elemental Evil) or Ghosts of Saltmarsh can be a great way to get a new DM started.

I'm looking forward to Decent into Avernus, myself.

[Feddlefew]

Thanks for the help. Y'all are making good points for having the New DM start with short adventure rather than a full campaign, which I hadn't considered. Since his game will be meeting every other week, any adventure we run needs to be reasonably short.

However, my understanding of the situation has changed since I ran the session Saturday. This was the first time we had a big combat in my campaign, and I learned a few things about my group.

First, we now have 7 players, and I can see this number continuing to increase because the host (the former DM) won't say no to people who ask to join. I put my foot down and said no more players in my game- even if they show up character in hand- but the new DM might not do this. The new player is another experienced DM I've played with previously, but he doesn't have time to run a game.

We might have to subdivide the group.

Second, due to the way the previous DM handled combat over the past 6ish months, about half of my players have basically un-learned how the 5e action economy works, and need to be gently reminded that they are allowed use basic class abilities and bonus actions. So we're starting the new A-game at level one. :smallsigh:

I've been away at college for the past few years. The former DM and I are friends, but I generally won't play in his games for more than a session or two because our DM and Player styles clash- I am a Problem Solver, he likes his scenic railroads.

... There was also The Dragon Incident, but I digress.

Now that I'm taking a gap year I agreed to run a B-game so that he has more time to prep. He then insisted I play with the group in his game so it wouldn't be awkward. My brother has been playing in his group, and he suggested maybe having another experience DM in the group would help the game.

I ran two sessions of my campaign so he could prep a big story encounter. During my game I did collaborative world building, let the party flex their non-combat skills and was generally really permissive about what they could and couldn't do. The party had a blast and got super excited when their basic class abilities worked. That should have been a warning sign.

Then we did his sessions.

The first one I played in was fine, if a little clunky. Very standard dungeon crawl stuff. I helped him prep and got a little miffed that he decided to disregard my warnings about using stock riddles. We obliterated the boss encounter.

The second session was a disaster.

Everyone left angry. I said I wasn't playing in his campaign again.

And then the rest of the group also quit his campaign. :smalleek:

The full explanation of what went wrong is very, very long- campaign spanning, according to my brother- and deserves its own thread, but TL;DR I'm suddenly trying to re-calibrate everyone's expectations on what the DM does and doesn't do and help the New DM learn the ropes.

[Chad.e.clark]

I started with Dragon Heist and Blue Alley, and had thoroughly good time, players did too.

[Throne12]

Saltmarsh or storm kings thunder is what I would recommend.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I would stay away from Princes of the Apocalypse and maybe Out of the Abyss as well. Those two, plus SKT, have organizational problems and big sandboxy periods. As a result, they require a lot of advance prep and aren't very responsive to chaotic players without an agile DM. Princes is nifty as a series of set pieces, but the overarching adventure structure is a bit crap and I struggled to get into it. Abyss is similar, though the adventure and motivations for it make a bit more sense. Some of the structural problems can be handwaved a bit by reducing travel time and narrating days of random encounters rather than playing it out. Some pieces are very, very cool, especially in the second half, but balance is poor especially with a big group.

Based on your version of the story, I'd start with either Lost Mines of Phandelver or a low level module from Tales from the Yawning Portal or Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and then just have him pick and choose the modules that really get him jazzed. If he decides he wants a big adventure path, you guys can jump into Abyss around level 8 or 9, or into Storm King's Thunder at 5 or so without too much trouble. (Actually, the opening bits of SKT are some of my favorite parts, even though they're just throwaway 'get to level 5' junk.)