Troll Lord Games

My friends who can barely grasp the concept of an RPG and who have never played anything like D&D before heard me talking about it the other day. After I described it, they were piqued and asked if I would run an adventure for them. Now let's describe the group: 2 jocks, a jock/dork, the 2 jocks' girlfriends, and the jock/dork's wife. Needless to say my eyeballs almost fell out of my head when they said that it sounded "cool" and were enthused about me running an adventure.

I was assailed with questions like, "Are there wizards?", "Can I be a princess?", "What's a cleric?", "So you use dice to figure things out?", "Do you use a board to play on?", etc. I think you get the idea now. So now I get to run an adventure for the newbest of newbies. So what classic D&D adventure should I run them through? Since I've never played any of the old D&D classic modules, I'd like your opinions. I'm looking for something with a fair bit of action but also puzzle solving. A nice dungeoncrawl with the aforementioned would be nice. Any suggestions? I can make my own if need be, but it'd just be easier with a module. Suggestions?

Keep on the Borderlands is the most frequent answer I see to your question. Or TLG's A1 Assault on Blacktooth Ridge, or their free adventure downloads on their website, "Lion in the Ropes" and "Rising Knight."

I cannot recommend "The Rising Knight" enough, which you can get for free from TLG's website as Treebore mentioned. "Keep of the Borderlands" was my first D&D adventure and I highly recommend it too, if you can get your hands on it.

Both contain my preferred style of module: town, important inhabitants, surroundings w/dungeon and problems. They don't follow a rigid timeline of events, so there's no reason at all to railroad the players and it gives them a wide berth regarding their own actions.

And of course you could always ask them what module sounds most appealing to them, after you describe them.

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I cannot recommend "The Rising Knight" enough, which you can get for free from TLG's website as Treebore mentioned. "Keep of the Borderlands" was my first D&D adventure and I highly recommend it too, if you can get your hands on it.

Both contain my preferred style of module: town, important inhabitants, surroundings w/dungeon and problems. They don't follow a rigid timeline of events, so there's no reason at all to railroad the players and it gives them a wide berth regarding their own actions.

Hmm...that's an idea. I could always describe them and ask them what they'd like I guess. If not, then they'll probably be getting Keep on the Borderlands. Always a classic, or so I've heard. Thanks for the suggestions.

Good luck and you can't go wrong if you use Rising Knight or Keep on the Borderlands.
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CK the CK
"My goddess touched me at an early age."

-Grikis Valmorgen, Paladin

The beginnings of my homebrew campaign world and info for my play by chat game:
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True but since they never never never played or heard about it before.. you might not want to go with something too big or long.

How about the Beacon of Enon Tor? Free, SIMPLE, and short enough for them to grasp the concept and see if they want to play again. You might not want to prep too much if you don't know if they'll like it!

My two copper.

You might want to try out Voices of the Three.

R-
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Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

The One and All wrote:
True but since they never never never played or heard about it before.. you might not want to go with something too big or long.

That's actually a good point. One should probably give new players an immediate sense of accomplishment.

DaveyB, you should run The Orc and the Pie!

Rigon wrote:
You might want to try out Voices of the Three.

R-

I'm actually running that one next weekend. One of the players will be a newbie to C&C but played 2nd edition for years. It seems like a good intro.

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DaveyB, you should run The Orc and the Pie!

To Funny!

DavyB good luck with introducing new gamers to the hobby!
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

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my problem with starting a brand new player, for his very first game out with level 1 characters, or low level characters for that matter is how weak they are.

now, don't get me wrong, it's fun as all hell playing a level 1 mage, but is having only 2 first level spells for a complete noob a good thing for the first time wizard to be? Possibly not.

here's my suggestion.

pre-gen a bunch of 4th level characters (as a minimum) so that they all have at least a bit of power, and possibly some cool bennies in the way of activatable magic items. let them really get a feel for how the game 'works' with all the gizmo's and widgets that are available.

a great one shot adventure for 4th to 6th level characters in the C&C world is the Mortality of Green. it can be played in 1 night. good encounters, a forest chase, good role playing, good villians...

From what I understand, Mortality has been used as 1 shots by the Trolls for years.

Anyway, something to think about. but having someone sit there, wondering what to do after his one and only single magic missle has been fired isn't nearly as fun as the same someone walking around invisible, then firing their magic missle...

hope this helps.

cheers,

J.

One can never go wrong with anything having the Caves of Chaos within...

Give them some 4th level characters and run castle amber.

Great dungeon for beginners.

Brian Miller
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"The adventure continues"

I like either Rising Knight or Keep on the Borderlands, both are great mods for new players and if things catch on, they are a great starting point for a campaign.
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Give them some 4th level characters and run castle amber.

Great dungeon for beginners.

I just remembered a game years back where I had a mixed group 3 who had played before & 2 that were completely new. I let everyone make up 4 level characters, with extra to the new guys if they had a great background story, but they didn't know how many xp they had, so as they were getting into the game & playing better I'd tell them to add the requesit bennies for uping a level. When they were completly good to go, everything went back to just giving them XP & letting them do the uping. It worked fairly well, with one of the new guys being the "best" role player out of the group...
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

Knight Errant & Humble C&C Society Contributor
C&C Society