Heya! Been taking a long break from tabletop DMing but some of my coworkers have expressed wanting to follow through on the idea of playing D&D so I want to give it another shot. Only thing is, 2/4 people interested have never played before, and the other two have done maybe 2 sessions so they're very new. As a newer DM without a *ton* of experience, I'm a bit worried about making the campaign accessible for them and teaching them when I honestly don't understand everything myself haha. With all that said, anyone have any good tips for helping new players get their bearings? Are there certain things you do with veterans as opposed to newbies? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Hi everyone! I am working on an idea for a quick campaign and need some help populating it. The players are starting at lvl 3. The premise is that they are scattered about and meet each other because they receive a letter. Someone has seen great potential in them and are inviting them to an exclusive training camp. My camp is based on botanical garden layouts. I want there to be several areas. The first area I have for them is a warm up. They will be battling some infernal chickens and a gelatinous cube. The second is dexterity based and will involve pixie wrangling. I'm not very experienced at world building so I am looking for suggestions. I have a desert scene, and a sort of dark forested area that I would like to underdark creatures for. Like most botanical gardens, I hope to have a water feature as well. That is as far as I've gotten. Along the way they will pick up skills, items, ect that will help them when they face their BBEG. I do have they/them. I would like to work on the desert scene next and go from there. Looking for someone who would like to help.

I have about eight possible players for my next game and am trying to find the core group. I asked the players about systems they might like to explore in some one-shots to learn how we play together. One player suggested running Vignettes instead of a proper one-shot. This is a reference back to the start of the current campaign where we roleplayed key events from the backstories / character webs on how the players first met one another (4 45-min vignettes in a session). What she was essentially suggesting is some player-player roleplay scenes with no rolling or system. Essentailly take the crutch away and see if they could just jump into the story. It seems like an interesting idea and has me thinking of little scenes that might be interesting to play out with strangers. I think I might do my information gap task clue type idea to seed the RP. Anyway, I could use some ideas. As I am brainstorming ideas, they keep looking like campaign starts. 1. Next to each other in a line to get in through the town gates. 2. Bucked together in a hostel during a snowstorm. 3. Sharing a compartment on a train. 4. Assigned the same bunk on a starship/submarine. 5. ???

In my 5e game I have 4 different types of note takers, the traditional minutes taker, the a bag full of memos note taker, a journalist (mix of sketching and writing) and a scrapbooker. I want to add in things that are relevant for each style of notes. The writen note takers are easy to accommodate for as I'm used to the minetes and memo styles. It's the more creative notes I have ideas for. My ideas are: picture puzzle clue rewards for my scrapbooker Symbols and marks for the journalist to sketch down Is there any idea you guys have?

Trying to figure out how to adapt a concept to proactive games ... Edariad just pitched six steps for a great campaign (link) based around the concept of a Seed Question. This is a question is not about the plot, but about how the world works or people work. His example is "who gets to decide what the world looks like". He argues that reasonable people need to be able to disagree about it, and that the villian and PCs all need to have a personal connection with it. The idea really resonates with me and feels compatible with the central conflicts concept. Where I am stuck is his suggestion that it is important that you don't come out and tell the players, but that it is the question they start talking about after the first session without recognizing it. That it looses value and impact if they players are thinking from that lens initially. I see the point of it being a hidden force, but feel like it would need to be part of the discussion of theme and character creation in a proactive game. Anyway, I would appreciate others' opinions...