5e newbie adventurer suggestions?

[Varen_Tai]

So I have't DMed in well over a decade, and I am waaaayyyyy too busy to spend a lot of time in prep for a campaign. I have several kids/step-kids begging me to teach them D&D, so I picked up the core 5e rulebooks, but I need some help finding some good modules (free or paid, whatever) for beginners and a very busy DM. I want an adventure (or even full campaign!) that gives me everything I need for a full pen & paper game to help some folks who have never even role-played before.

I've been out of the P&P version of the game for so long that I'd love some direction from some of you that have been more connected to things 5e. Suggestions?

[SunderedWorldDM]

Lost Mine of Phandelver is a good one, and an extra perk is everyone and their familiar has written about how to run it good, so an hour of googling with the module at hand should be good enough to get you at least a few sessions of play. Unfortunately, it only comes in the boxed Starter Set, AFAIK, and while the extra accessories in there are quite nice, they may not be necessary.

Princes of the Apocalypse is a bit nebulous outside of the dungeons, and you'll need to flip through and wrap your head around it a little bit before you start running, but it should be very good for low-prep, and will last you a long while. The dungeons in particular are quite useful, even if you're running something else, having elemental dungeons on hand for 3/4 tiers of play ain't a bad deal at all.

Storm King's Thunder is open ended, but the sheer number of easily accessible FR resources out there would probably help a lot with prep. It's not a terrible adventure, for newbies or experienced players, and while it may not be the lowest prep, it's probably one of the best "campaign experiences" on this list.

I don't know much about the modules on DMsGuild or DnDBeyond, so someone else will have to fill in there, but those are my endorsements out of the main line of products. Good luck, and no matter which option you choose, you'll be sure to have a blast!

[Evoker]

This should probably be moved to the 5e subforum. You can request that it be moved by reporting it yourself and asking that it be moved in the text section of the report.

[Varen_Tai]

That works. :)

[Falconcry]

I believe D&D Beyond still has the Frozen Sick for free on their website. It is a starter adventure in Matt Mercer’s Exandria. Free accounts at DDB are also a good way for the kids to keep track of stuff and not be so overwhelmed.

[Man_Over_Game]

Lost Mine of Phandelver is a good one, and an extra perk is everyone and their familiar has written about how to run it good, so an hour of googling with the module at hand should be good enough to get you at least a few sessions of play. Unfortunately, it only comes in the boxed Starter Set, AFAIK, and while the extra accessories in there are quite nice, they may not be necessary.

I haven't been a big fan of DMing Lost Mines of Phandelver. It's got a good middle, but a very obnoxious beginning for newer players. Between having to leave the supplies behind to hike for an hour, not having any info on the possible traps (including the flood trap) that doesn't involve taking goblins as hostages, no interesting scenery or events that occur, most of the scenarios are all combat by default, and the first encounter being an ambush on a new party...it just hasn't met the bar I was expecting for it.

I'd strongly recommend Sunless Citadel, from Tales from the Yawning Portal. It's probably the best dungeon I could recommend for a new party, if only because it accounts for multiple possible solutions, multiple avoidable combats, and educates the DM effectively on what things to consider when building a dungeon.

[pr4wn]

I'd strongly recommend Sunless Citadel, from Tales from the Yawning Portal. It's probably the best dungeon I could recommend for a new party, if only because it accounts for multiple possible solutions, multiple avoidable combats, and educates the DM effectively on what things to consider when building a dungeon.

I strongly second Sunless Citadel.

If you are looking for something that is a little less of a dungeon crawl, I would also look at the Essentials Kit's Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure. It is broken into small bite size chunks that make it very easy for a DM to prep for. If you follow the milestone leveling, it moves along fairly quickly and will get the players into their character archetypes.

I've run Dragon of Icespire Peak for new players as well as seasoned players (started with AD&D) and they have all had a blast. I have also run Sunless Citadel for both 3.5 and 5e and it is a solid adventure. It requires a little more prep and read-through on the DMs part before you begin, but it does a good job of giving you the information you need.


-pr4wn

[heavyfuel]

Storm King's Thunder is open ended, but the sheer number of easily accessible FR resources out there would probably help a lot with prep. It's not a terrible adventure, for newbies or experienced players, and while it may not be the lowest prep, it's probably one of the best "campaign experiences" on this list.

As someone who has just finished DMing SKT, I'm going to say the lack of detail on some stuff really bothered me. It was like.. why did I even bother buying this book if it gives me no information on stuff and I still have to create? Kinda defeats the purpose of a published adventure.

Also, the literally gigantic battle maps made it very tough for the melee characters to be effective. (It's hard to be effective when you're spending 3 rounds dashing to reach a giant that's throwing high damage boulders at you.)

[Varen_Tai]

As someone who has just finished DMing SKT, I'm going to say the lack of detail on some stuff really bothered me. It was like.. why did I even bother buying this book if it gives me no information on stuff and I still have to create? Kinda defeats the purpose of a published adventure.

Also, the literally gigantic battle maps made it very tough for the melee characters to be effective. (It's hard to be effective when you're spending 3 rounds dashing to reach a giant that's throwing high damage boulders at you.)

Oooo, that's good input. What kinds of pieces did you have to come up with? I was leaning towards this one because it was a complete campaign-in-a-book. I'm hesitant to get the others because they seem a little short for a campaign and seem more like a single module.

My married step-son had the Ravenloft book, but this is definitely not the group for a gothic horror campaign. I really want something more traditionally fantasy and also fully self-contained.

[Keravath]

I've run Dragon of Ice Spire Peak and am running Sunless Citadel at the moment. I've also played the adventures from the Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

I recently started a campaign mashing together Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales from the Yawning Portal to give the characters some choices in terms of what they want to do. Sunless Citadel is a pretty straight forward dungeon crawl but can go sideways if you have a group of players that wants to kill everything (at level 1 or 2, their chances of surviving trying to kill all the kobolds and goblins are pretty small ... however, most of these encounters can be resolved via negotiation but that tends to be more dependent on the players and their preferred approach). However, I like the combination of GoS and TfYP since it offers up a town as a base and a reasonable set of adventures that could be set in the area and can probably take the characters from 1-12+.

I've also generally heard pretty good things about Lost Mines of Phandelver. The first encounters can be problematic but this is true with any adventure with characters at first level. A crit at the wrong time with high damage can often be sufficient to instantly kill a first level character. The best solution is to not leave the characters at level 1 for too long and to avoid challenging encounters ... especially for players just learning the game. Keeping that in mind LMoP is probably not bad.

Dragon of Ice Spire Peak is in the Essentials Kit and is also aimed at new players. However, here also, the set of tasks they could have at level 1 can also involve some risk if the characters aren't alert to the dangers or choose the wrong tactic.


1) One low level encounter involves facing off against a Manticore and getting them to leave the apothecary alone. The apothecary lives in a tower outside town. The Manticore is hurt as is their mate due to the dragon and they are looking for food though can also be convinced to be peaceful if offered a healing potion or something else to help them or their mate. However, as a combat encounter it can be deadly for first level characters.

2) One of the other encounters involves a couple of oozes that are very nasty. However, they are slow and don't have a ranged attack so it is easy to kite them with ranged attacks ... but the players need to realize the need for the strategy before too many are knocked unconscious or killed trying to fight the oozes in melee.

These problems mostly go away if the characters are level 2 or higher when they run into them. Level 1 is just very luck dependent in 5e (pretty much similar to other versions of the game).



The rest of DoIP is pretty good offering a number of "quests" for the adventurers to do for the town that are posted on a notice board outside the town hall. How it turns out is mostly up to how you want to run it but it does build up to a fight with a young dragon. It will take quite a few sessions to get through though, with experienced players it took about 7 sessions running about 5 hours each.



P.S. If you are new to running 5e, I strongly recommend just playing the rules as written until you get a good feel for how it all fits together. Qutie a number of experienced DMs can react negatively to the spike damage possible with sneak attack or paladin smite or how powerful a moon druid can be for a couple of levels in tier 1. Other popular sticking points are the Lucky feat or the spell Hypnotic Pattern. None of these are "overpowered" or "break the game". They generally work pretty well but can feel pretty powerful when first encountered.

There is a similar issue with the balance between long and short rest classes. If a party only fights one battle a day, the long rest classes will certainly appear stronger than the short rest ones and long rest based features will also feel stronger since the characters are being allowed to spend all their resources for an entire adventuring day on a single encounter. A longer adventuring day with a few varied encounters and a short rest or two tends to even these out.

[heavyfuel]

Oooo, that's good input. What kinds of pieces did you have to come up with? I was leaning towards this one because it was a complete campaign-in-a-book. I'm hesitant to get the others because they seem a little short for a campaign and seem more like a single module.

My married step-son had the Ravenloft book, but this is definitely not the group for a gothic horror campaign. I really want something more traditionally fantasy and also fully self-contained.

Minor spoilers for SKT:

Starting from Chap 3, the book basically tells characters to walk around the world until they stumble upon this specific giant who serves as a guide for the start of Chap 4. So you have this huge map with dozens of locations, but you get like two short paragraph's worth of description for each location. It's almost as if the writers took it for granted that everyone knows details about these locations just because it's a Forgotten Realms book. As someone who wasn't (and still isn't) familiar with the Realms, it felt very lacking.

This problem persists throughout the book, but is especially problematic in Chap 11, where players are given every reason in the world to visit this place called Purple Rock, and then you get no information about that place except that it has two kings. Note that while players never have to visit Purple Rock to progress the story, the way it's presented, it seems like a super obvious next location.

Also, players are expected to care about this giant Harshnag from Chap 4 for some reason. They are only accompanied by him for a couple weeks until they reach their destination, and then the big bad dragon shows up out of nowehere and kills him. It's supposed to be a big shock to players, but at this point, they spent maybe a total of one real-life hour with this Giant NPC who's all gloom and doesn't like to talk. My players just didn't care at all. In the last chapter he returns through a Deus Ex Machina and the players were even less impressed.

Speaking of the last chapter, by this point the players have already stopped the giants from attacking and are on the hunt for the Dragon that caused the giants to attack and also "killed" Harshnag. But the players have met this Dragon once. The dragon appears to the players basically in order to kill Harshnag and give them motivation, but the players don't care about Harshnag, and care even less now that they know he's not dead. So players have no motivation to go and kill the main villain because everything is already sorted out.

Edit: Completely forgot one of the worst parts.

So, in the middle of Chapter 4 they find this spirit of a giant who was murdered by his father. The spirit promisses his magical armor to the players if they bring his father's head. This is supposed to be a sidequest of sorts, and the players can easily discover where the giant's father is.

Only when you read about that location in the SKT book, it just straigh up tells you look for details about the father in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen book!!! There's no other information like "in case you don't have the other book, do this instead". It's literally "give us more money if you want to do this sidequest".