First Time DM

Don't try anything grandiose tonight. DM takes prep, and you won't come up with anything good in just a few hours. Take this first session to carefully go over the character crestion process with your group, make sure everyone understands the basics of the game.
Go through the basic mechanics; after rolling characters, take then through a really basic adventure. Maybe they were hired by a village's sheriff to find the lair of a beast that has been terrorizing the farmers and slay said beast.
Make a very basic dungeon, a couple of rooms with some traps, minor treasure, some mooks and then the beast at the end.

>>48954429
>to keep the normies entertained and convinced them tabletop RPGs can actually be fun
D&D isn't really the right game for that task, especially if you're an inexperienced GM.

If your friends have no gaming experience whatsoever and considering your lack of time, Fiasco might be a better bet for you.

>>48954847

Fiasco is a good choice, but D&D isn't really that hard to get.

I'd also recommend Savage Worlds and FATE.

>>48954429
youre doing a campaign tonight and you havent starting prepping?

have they even rolled characters?
that alone will take several hours for newbies

how many people are gonna be playing?
if its all your first time, i wouldnt recommend more than 4 PCs

>>48954931
It's not hard to get, it's just hard to get right.
The two most popular incarnations of D&D are woefully directionless. So it takes the hand of an experienced DM to wrangle the desired experience out of the system, doubly so with new players.

And I don't know much about Savage Worlds and FATE, but if I am not mistaken, they are frameworks instead of full-fledged RPGs. You still need to adjust them to the concept of the campaign you want to run, so they also require experience to properly GM. And quite some time to set up.

Fiasco mostly works right out of the box, which is why I recommended it.

>>48954429
Ill toss in my 2 cents I hope it helps. Mind you I only have years experience as a DM 4 years playing. (Not a whole lot).

Try not to make it a Vida game. Your not playing Skyrim or Warcraft your playing DnD. You can get inspired by those games but don't try to force it or make you sessions become those games.

Don't force your players to do stuff. Do keep them in place and within the rules (you as a DM can change them for fun but j suggest avoid that) and try to guide them through your story but let them tell it. At that try not to pre set special events or fights. 90% chance the players will like or do it a different way. Just gotta work with them and make it fun (or punishing if they do something dumb).

The +2 bouse is basic so if a player dose something special to make him have a better chance at something he is rolling for (like using your hands as telescopes or using fake evidence in a bluff).

Make sure you don't rape,murder without reason, cheat without plot, or put in a character.

I also recommend for new players that you keep it simple. Use an inn kill some kobolds earn a little bit o loot.

And I found that players live good characters and a good BBEG. For low lvl players imps are good bad guys. They can talk n, know for deceit, and can easily run away in a fight and always serve a bigger BBEG that you reveal later. Also use slight accents on bar keeps and try to remember names. Make a character name one to remember.

You need to play a premade module with pregenerated characters at level 1. The module will do the work for you and you don't have to get bogged down in lengthy character creation rules and can just start playing.

For 5e I'd advice the Lost Mine of Phandelver Starter Set Adventure as it's genuinely very good and even as a one off has an action packed start to get going.

>>48955599
That's a great idea. And I recommend 10/10

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>>48954429

Come up with a single simple idea and build a session around that. One of the hardest things when you are first starting out is to get group doing stuff of their own volition without you trying to railroad them. for this to happen naturally you'll want to make it clear immediately whats going on and how the player characters are involved.

As for tips on how to make that happen, I would recommend...

1.) Don't focus on how the group met and don't do a 'meet up' scene. How the group decided to join up together usually doens't matter for new groups. It's much more important that you focus on the action. I would let them know ahead of time what the framework is for the group. Examples include "You're all part of an army's scouting group", " You've all been hired to protect a merchant's caravan", or " You're all part of the same mercenary company". These are just some simple frameworks to get the group working together.

2.) the concept of the adventure should be immediately understandable and everything that happens in the adventure should be related somehow to that basic concept. Think " You must escape a city that is under siege", " You must protect this caravan as it travels from point A to Point B", or " This Nobleman has hired you as his bodyguards. Protect him from assassins". Again, clarity of purpose will help your group out a lot. This also means for right now, I would avoid mysteries, unknown villians, or overarching plots.

3.) You shouldn't write and ending, but you should plan for the session to be done in one sitting. no matter what happens the session should have a beginning, middle and end. If some sort of conclusion doesn't happen it can feel like wasted time for your players. this shouldn't be the case for all sessions but when you are starting out having the players walk away having accomplished something is important.


I feel like I rambled and repeated myself there a few times, but I hope this helped.

>>48955894

You shouldn't write an* ending.

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>>48954429

Thought I'd come up with a little bit more advice because it looks like the thread died.

Simple visual aids can go a long way. Try Inkarnate and Heromachine 3. They're not amazing, but they can let you come up with simple maps and character portraits. Print them out and it'll really help draw the newbies into whats going on.

OP I wana ask what kinda set up you got?
My group uses white boards and magnets. We draw the map with dry erase markers (a whole new world opened up when we got colored markers) and we move the magents as miniatures.