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A few of my mates want to play D&D 3.5. I have played before and understand the key concepts, but could do with some suggestions on first adventures. There will be 4 player characters using the pre-built characters in the player guide (saves on time) and one DM (possibly me or another who has played before).

I usually create all the dungeon tiles (I have lots) and paint all the minis, so I'm looking for an adventure with lots of dungeon and small enemies (rats, bats, snakes, reptiles, spiders etc).

Any suggestions appreciated

Look around for a compatible Keep on the borderlands adventure for the edition you are trying to run. It's the most well know, and basic adventure out there. It shows them everything basic.

Cheers for the reply, I'll check it out

A simple little task from like a bartender to go into the basement to see why his alchol is going missing or why its makeing people sick and then when they go in they find a hole which leads them into like a colony of goblins or something

See if you can get Mysteries of the Moonsea, I quite enjoyed that one.

Clearing out a kobold den can be quite fun for a 1st level party, also just clearing a sewer out of various nasties works as well. Just remember a first level if an enemy scores a critical hit things can end quite baddly(hence why all my campaigns start at 3rd level)

Are you entertaining the idea of developing into a full campaign?

If the answer is "No", you may benefit from simply playing Castle Ravenloft or another pre-made game.

Keep your first dungeon fairly simple, but dont use too many bugs / vermin. A few orcs or skeletons can be an interesting challenge for newer players.
The first boxed D&D set contained a module called in search of the unknown. It was good for several adventures worth for noobs.

That is why I suggested Mysteries of the Moonsea for a starting 3.5 game, it is a decent mix for beginners and those that have a bit of experience, and you really do not want anything other than the PHB classes, I have played through portions of that book a couple of times and I still find the story fun.

If you're looking for something fun and lighthearted, I think it might be a second level adventure, but see if you can stumble upon a copy of Something's Cooking. I think that WOTC released it on their website for download years ago, but nowadays, I'm sure it's buried under the 4E kludge, if even still there.

Edit: Here's the link. Can't check it from work.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/Cooking.pdf

daedalus wrote:If you're looking for something fun and lighthearted, I think it might be a second level adventure, but see if you can stumble upon a copy of Something's Cooking. I think that WOTC released it on their website for download years ago, but nowadays, I'm sure it's buried under the 4E kludge, if even still there.

Edit: Here's the link. Can't check it from work.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/Cooking.pdf

However, if you start out with something silly, don't be surprised if the players expect and contribute silliness. Nothing wrong with jokes, but the first impression for a campaign sets the tone for the entire campaign.

(The campaign-starter-adventure I want to do but haven't yet is to run a one-off "Learn the system" adventure with pre-gen characters and have the final fight be a massive battle against some horrible setting-appropriate creature. The pre-gens die horribly. The 'real' player characters then have to build up and take out this creature, which is probably a lieutenant of the big campaign villain.)

Balance wrote:
However, if you start out with something silly, don't be surprised if the players expect and contribute silliness. Nothing wrong with jokes, but the first impression for a campaign sets the tone for the entire campaign.

Ah yes, probably a good point. We've always had a bit of silliness in our games. Sort of like something from a Discworld book or perhaps Hitchhiker's Guide.

(The campaign-starter-adventure I want to do but haven't yet is to run a one-off "Learn the system" adventure with pre-gen characters and have the final fight be a massive battle against some horrible setting-appropriate creature. The pre-gens die horribly. The 'real' player characters then have to build up and take out this creature, which is probably a lieutenant of the big campaign villain.)

This sounds fun.

Something similar I did to this was give the two PCs who kicked off the game a vision of them trying to stop a woman from being sacrificed, and then she and they die horribly. They then were given reason to assume that, unless things were changed, that was their eventual outcome. The thing is that I didn't tell them that it was a vision. I made them actually play it out up until they both died.

I couldn't run completely serious, myself. I ran Deadlands for a while and while not always successful, I feel I learned a lot as a GM from the experience (even the parts I screwed up, and there were several).

The Deadlands RPG mixes cowboy schtick with horror, and doesn't take itself too seriously. However, the author wrote a bunch of tips in one book on building a horror 'mood' in a game. Two items I remember were to avoid joining in on the group's jokes, and to not stress out over 'true' horror as it's really difficult to carry the mood for too long.

My idea was partially intended to give players and the GM a chance to learn the system. For some RPGs, you could accidentally forget a key skill and really build a useless character. Some time with pre-gens can give everyone a comfort level in the rules that can carry over to 'real' characters.

We've put together a basic outline of a campaign to play through, using a variation of the Wreck Ashore Adventure to begin. So just finished painting up the Lizardmen. Actually, I may even do a thread on the campaign. It's looking pretty cool.

The DM has hand drawn a map of the start region, and the new players have written loads of background fluff, have completed their own stat sheets and have even read through the players manual.

That's some enthusiastic first time players!

Anyway, it's good to know that some people on here are interested in D&D

Seems like a promising start, please do post how things go!

Wardragoon wrote:Clearing out a kobold den can be quite fun for a 1st level party, also just clearing a sewer out of various nasties works as well. Just remember a first level if an enemy scores a critical hit things can end quite baddly(hence why all my campaigns start at 3rd level)

Or, if the enemy scores a hit... just pretend he didn't. DM license means you can skew things to make the game flow smoothly and advane the plot as needed. No need to kill a PC if it doesn't advance the plot. Just wound/maim him or knock him out.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Local town children have been disappearing, as has a family of Gnomes traveling through town.
Some folk think it's the old undertaker. He's a necromance in disguise and is using them to create unholy undead abominations and for sacrifices to his dark gods. One of the local priestess' kids was taken. Clearly, SHE will be the sacrifice.
Other townsfolk have other ideas - adapt as suits your needs.

In reality, it's a small band of Goblins. They've kidnapped the kids for sacrifice to their Spider Totem. When they eventually find the Goblin lair (they probably don't realize it's goblins at this point), the party discovers that the Gnomes are dead because... Well, they're gnomes. Goblins don't like gnomes. Of course, the party doesn't know that's why their dead, either. They just know they found 4 gnome corpses that look as if they were stripped of non-organic materials (i.e. treasure) and eaten raw... probably alive (in reality, they were flayed and roughly chopped to pieces [maybe some sort of check to notice that there are no teeth marks or signs of actual chewing on the remains?], THEN the pieces were cooked and eaten by the goblins - Hey! they're goblins! Why not?).

It can be a relatively small band of Goblins (10 to 12) with the Goblin Priest being level 3 or so. Give him the ability to communicate with/control Arachnids. Who cares HOW he does it. Maybe it was a psychic ability or sorcerer-like special ability? Maybe it's a magic item?

This will give you the little gribblies you want (spiders), and a REASON that they're there en masse. It also gives you a meatier encounter (priest and his guards - who should be max HP and possibly better armored/armed) for an "end scene" in the Altar room, where the children are drugged/poisoned (comatose, not dead), coccooned in spider webs, and hanging along various spots on the walls/ceiling of the cavern chamber.

Hmm... I like that idea. I'm thinking I'll adapt that for my AD&D 2e 4th - 6th level campaign.

Eric

MagickalMemories wrote:

Wardragoon wrote:Clearing out a kobold den can be quite fun for a 1st level party, also just clearing a sewer out of various nasties works as well. Just remember a first level if an enemy scores a critical hit things can end quite baddly(hence why all my campaigns start at 3rd level)

Or, if the enemy scores a hit... just pretend he didn't. DM license means you can skew things to make the game flow smoothly and advane the plot as needed. No need to kill a PC if it doesn't advance the plot. Just wound/maim him or knock him out.

We use something called the Critical Hit Deck. Paizo (the Pathfinder guys) makes it, and it's pretty awesome. Instead of rolling additional damage, you draw a card from the deck, then the card is always something along the lines of "Deal standard damage and 1d6 Dex damage, target moves at half speed until healed". There's a few gotchas in there, I think there's still some 'deal double/triple damage' cards and I think there's maybe one "Save or die" card, but overall, it makes for a much more interesting game, and scales down the overall mortality of combat without making critical hits useless.

daedalus wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:

Wardragoon wrote:Clearing out a kobold den can be quite fun for a 1st level party, also just clearing a sewer out of various nasties works as well. Just remember a first level if an enemy scores a critical hit things can end quite baddly(hence why all my campaigns start at 3rd level)

Or, if the enemy scores a hit... just pretend he didn't. DM license means you can skew things to make the game flow smoothly and advane the plot as needed. No need to kill a PC if it doesn't advance the plot. Just wound/maim him or knock him out.

We use something called the Critical Hit Deck. Paizo (the Pathfinder guys) makes it, and it's pretty awesome. Instead of rolling additional damage, you draw a card from the deck, then the card is always something along the lines of "Deal standard damage and 1d6 Dex damage, target moves at half speed until healed". There's a few gotchas in there, I think there's still some 'deal double/triple damage' cards and I think there's maybe one "Save or die" card, but overall, it makes for a much more interesting game, and scales down the overall mortality of combat without making critical hits useless.

There's a fumble deck as well, isn't there? Have you tried that out?

Our DM got it a few weeks back, however, the way we handle critical fails you have to 'confirm' the fail by failing to hit after rolling the '1', so it hasn't really come up yet.

daedalus wrote:Our DM got it a few weeks back, however, the way we handle critical fails you have to 'confirm' the fail by failing to hit after rolling the '1', so it hasn't really come up yet.

That's an interesting idea. Seems more fair that way.

Temple of Elemental Evil is a goodie and an oldie.

Doctadeth wrote:Temple of Elemental Evil is a goodie and an oldie.

I have been playing D&D for 5-6 years, and I have not played ToEE

Wardragoon wrote:

Doctadeth wrote:Temple of Elemental Evil is a goodie and an oldie.

I have been playing D&D for 5-6 years, and I have not played ToEE

The first version dates back to the 80s.

Balance wrote:

Wardragoon wrote:

Doctadeth wrote:Temple of Elemental Evil is a goodie and an oldie.

I have been playing D&D for 5-6 years, and I have not played ToEE

The first version dates back to the 80s.

Oh I know that, just I have neither played it or Return to temple


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hell I havent played ravenloft though i really want to

daedalus wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:

Wardragoon wrote:Clearing out a kobold den can be quite fun for a 1st level party, also just clearing a sewer out of various nasties works as well. Just remember a first level if an enemy scores a critical hit things can end quite baddly(hence why all my campaigns start at 3rd level)

r
Or, if the enemy scores a hit... just pretend he didn't. DM license means you can skew things to make the game flow smoothly and advane the plot as needed. No need to kill a PC if it doesn't advance the plot. Just wound/maim him or knock him out.

We use something called the Critical Hit Deck. Paizo (the Pathfinder guys) makes it, and it's pretty awesome. Instead of rolling additional damage, you draw a card from the deck, then the card is always something along the lines of "Deal standard damage and 1d6 Dex damage, target moves at half speed until healed". There's a few gotchas in there, I think there's still some 'deal double/triple damage' cards and I think there's maybe one "Save or die" card, but overall, it makes for a much more interesting game, and scales down the overall mortality of combat without making critical hits useless.

My groups have always had issues with those critical decks, one or two people genuinely want to use it, others, like me, have no intention of doing of involving that in a single game. I saw the deck, I read a few cards, and said no. We ended up coming up with a houserule for it, if you want to use either deck then the DM gets to use the decks against you against you, so those who want to play without the randomness of drawing a card can just play as normal.

With beginners I would not suggest using the critical hit/fumble decks, but your milage may vary. Instant death at level three because you rolled a natural one to hit a goblin is not fun from what I have seen.

Of course, as a group, you could always choose to remove any cards you don't want to use. Right?

Eric

btemple0 wrote:
My groups have always had issues with those critical decks, one or two people genuinely want to use it, others, like me, have no intention of doing of involving that in a single game. I saw the deck, I read a few cards, and said no. We ended up coming up with a houserule for it, if you want to use either deck then the DM gets to use the decks against you against you, so those who want to play without the randomness of drawing a card can just play as normal.

With beginners I would not suggest using the critical hit/fumble decks, but your milage may vary. Instant death at level three because you rolled a natural one to hit a goblin is not fun from what I have seen.

Honestly, we've not pulled the 'save or die' card yet, but there's really no reason why you couldn't just remove it. Frankly, for a 1-3 level character, I see it being much more likely to die from the x2 or even x3 damage than from the typical "normal damage and bleed" or "normal damage and 1d3 ability damage". Sure, that sucks too, but at least then you have options before you're just dead.

daedalus wrote:

btemple0 wrote:
My groups have always had issues with those critical decks, one or two people genuinely want to use it, others, like me, have no intention of doing of involving that in a single game. I saw the deck, I read a few cards, and said no. We ended up coming up with a houserule for it, if you want to use either deck then the DM gets to use the decks against you against you, so those who want to play without the randomness of drawing a card can just play as normal.

With beginners I would not suggest using the critical hit/fumble decks, but your milage may vary. Instant death at level three because you rolled a natural one to hit a goblin is not fun from what I have seen.

Honestly, we've not pulled the 'save or die' card yet, but there's really no reason why you couldn't just remove it. Frankly, for a 1-3 level character, I see it being much more likely to die from the x2 or even x3 damage than from the typical "normal damage and bleed" or "normal damage and 1d3 ability damage". Sure, that sucks too, but at least then you have options before you're just dead.

My issue was not the "save or die" it is the guy showing up with a graphing claculator trying to do the math for the damage, who had no idea how to role play his character too well. The highlight of that game was my druid reincarnating that character. Start up as a half-orc barbarian, and end up as a halfling barbarian, funny part is that the DM made me roll to see if his character changed gender and told him he had to role play all of that.

For anybody that is interested, the campaign background and outcome of our first adventure can be read here http://solutionhole.wordpress.com/

It was a very simple little adventure, which turned out to be very amusing. I had never used spells before, and my Gnome Illusionist cast some great spells in the game. Much trickery indeed!

"Page not found" error message at your link.


Eric