Help with a One-Shot with new players

[Dienekes]

Hello. So because of this whole quarantine shenanigans my brother has asked me to run a game of D&D for him and his friends. I accepted (not much else I'm doing anyway) to do a one-shot that may lead to future consistent play. A few problems: I have never run a One-Shot before, and I have been GMing for the same group of 3-5 guys for basically 15 years, so my style has become pretty much tailored to them.

Any suggestions on getting new folk involved, interested, and having fun in a maybe 3 hour story?

Thanks.

[WaroftheCrans]

It might be helpful to ask them what they want to do. They've never played before, might not even know the classes, and for all I know they might all want to play human fighters.
If they're new to the system, the way I'd want to do it is have an adventure that gets the very basics of DnD out of the way. A little bit of narration, a small fight at the beginning, some social and exploration, and then a last big fight, and the loot.
If they've truly never played before, and you're not going to have a full session 0, it might be a good idea to start them at lvl 3, and play it rules lite. This would make them less likely to die quickly, without making them have too many features and options.

[1Pirate]

Are they new to TTRPGs or just D&D?

[Expired]

Hold an informal session 0 and ask them what they'd want out of the campaign, be it combat, social encounters, or exploration, and then tailor it to that. As for me, I need all three pillars in my games or I find it boring.

[Necroanswer]

It might be helpful to ask them what they want to do. They've never played before, might not even know the classes, and for all I know they might all want to play human fighters.
If they're new to the system, the way I'd want to do it is have an adventure that gets the very basics of DnD out of the way. A little bit of narration, a small fight at the beginning, some social and exploration, and then a last big fight, and the loot.
If they've truly never played before, and you're not going to have a full session 0, it might be a good idea to start them at lvl 3, and play it rules lite. This would make them less likely to die quickly, without making them have too many features and options.

Personally I'm glad the first time I played 5e was with a 1st level character. Classes seem to get a lot of new features quickly at low levels and it can be overwhelming. On the other hand lvl 1 characters can die really easily and it may be hard to come up with an appropriate adventure for them. You could check with the players before designing the adventure to see if they'd want to start with more durable, complex characters or if they'd want to build up to that knowing death is reasonably likely for 1st lvl characters.

[WaroftheCrans]

Personally I'm glad the first time I played 5e was with a 1st level character. Classes seem to get a lot of new features quickly at low levels and it can be overwhelming. On the other hand lvl 1 characters can die really easily and it may be hard to come up with an appropriate adventure for them. You could check with the players before designing the adventure to see if they'd want to start with more durable, complex characters or if they'd want to build up to that knowing death is reasonably likely for 1st lvl characters.

Yeah, the squishyness of all characters at lvl 1 is why I suggested lvl 3, since lvl 2 is more of a dead level for some classes than others. Combine it with rules lite, and hopefully you have a system that isn't too complicated.

As the DM, you can also remind players of ability they have. Lets say we have Joe, the third level champion fighter. He's running low on hit points, and he wants to withdraw from the battle. At this point the DM tells him that Joe has an ability that can let him regain HP, called second wind. Joe now wants to hit the enemies more, and the DM tells him that he has an ability called Action surge, that lets him double his attacks for one round.