It's the start to a brand new year. What better time to start a
campaign? You've never run a campaign before or maybe even played a
tabletop session before? That's fine too. You have to start sometime
and somewhere. Alright, there isn't a bad time to start a new
campaign but it can be quite challenge at first. I really do
recommend it though. It's something special, it involves interaction
and your imagination is the limit. No need to wait for an expansion
or something. You've got a grand adventure waiting next session. I also realized that by now I've written quite a bit on
the topic. Some of it is more helpful than others but I thought this
would be a good time to compile everything into one spot for those of
us who are getting into it for the first time.
Which System?
I'd personally recommend grabbing the basic rules for the current
edition of D&D and running with it. There is enough there for
different kinds of characters, your Dungeon Master can come up with
new feats or abilities to expand things farther, and it's rather
nicely streamlined in my opinion while still having complexity. Go
get it here (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules).
You can also get more monsters and everything else in the
SRD(http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-document-srd).
First Adventure
Well, it depends what you like. I've been using the adventure Death House
as an introduction adventure for a little bit. It's quite a deadly
adventure so you might want to adjust it a little bit for a new
players. You can also run straight into Curse of Strahd
afterwards. It's a bit harder to coherently run it into something
else but you can use the event to gain some group's adventure (maybe
an adventurer's guild?) which can run into your own campaign. It's
just not as clean this way. It's also a pretty good place to steal some elements such as encounters, ideas and maps.
My Own Work
As I mentioned earlier, I've had the chance to write quite a bit of
stuff over the years I've been writing for this blog. Those of you
who read it, thank you for the attention. I hope you got something
out of it. Out of those, I believe the following are probably the
most useful to new players:
Don't take them as the law. They are meant to inspire and help you.
Also feel free to have a look around. Maybe you'll find something
else you'll like.
Small Words of Advice
There are a few things I want to say to those of you who are getting
into tabletop role-playing or running campaigns for the first time.
- Do what's fun for both your players and yourself
- Know what your players like
- Remember, the rules are there to assist you. If they hinder you, you can play by ear instead
- Have a general, very high level idea of what you do and what will happen without player involvement. Then let your players mix it up.
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