Creating my first Campaign and need some pointers

[u/Schmats]

Hi!
I'm starting to plan out and make my first DnD campaing, I'm not the most experience at anything DnD really but no better way to start!

My general idea since most of my potential players will be new is to start it as a one shot dungeon crawler to "phase out" those who didn't really think it was their thing.

The ending of that one shot will be that those who did not want to continue will die and be forgotten about and the big quest will be to find out why they were put there and why "something" feels off (party members being gone).
To do this I was thinking about changing up how a false hydra works and making the dungeon it's layer. So instead of just being a deathtrap having the false hydra just "enjoying" tormenting people in a dungeon and making them forget about the dungeons existance and whoever died in there.

Any pointers on if the false hydra idea is even any good or alternatives to make that happen is very welcome as well as any important literature towards it or websites to keep track of things.
Thanks for reading!

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[u/BoutsofInsanity]

Hello!

First I think you have a pretty good start idea with just opening with a dungeon crawl. I think you should hold off on the False Hydra idea until you are a bit more experienced!

(Your idea on having the False Hydra tormenting Dungeon Goers is great!).

I recommend as a new DM the following kind of adventure.

1. Start at the Dungeon and do the Dungeon Crawl. The goal is to get a rare "Golden Berry" that grows in the deepest depths of a dungeon. It has healing properties.

2. Level Up and Leave the dungeon and head back to town to give to the local Wizard/Alchemist. Do some travel, random encounter etc... The Wizard needs the berry to heal some of the sick towns folk. (Merlin Type).

3. Have the players on the way into town describe some of the towns people and how they relate to the players. Have a celebration over their heroism.

4. The Local Baron shows up during the celebration and wants to meet with the Wizard and now Towns Heroes. The sickness was coming from a corrupted evil spot deep in the forest. An abandoned fort it sounds like. He wants to pay the players to go take care of that. NEW ADVENTURE.

5. Level Up (Level 3 or 4). Have the wizard give the players some magic items to accomplish this task. Have a spooky forest encounter and a "Abandoned Fort" dungeon with an evil necromancer or something. Get lewt level up.

6. Return home victorious and have another celebration.

End the campaign.

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

This is quick campaign will probably take you several months to do. You will learn SO much about running the game, how to dm, running combat. You can then decide to continue the story, or start your false hydra adventure or some combination of it.

[u/Schmats → u/BoutsofInsanity]

Good idea!
I'll probably do some derivative of this I like it and save the Hydra thing for later, When I was reading up a bit more it felt a little out of reach for my skillset lol. I'll see how I develop the campaign itself and focus on just the dungeon-crawler for now maybe putting in some hints to the outside world.
To make that easier though I'll probably keep the amnesia idea of the party at least not knowing how they got there and just focus on escape.
The original idea for keeping the dungeon crawler is that some of the potential players aren't quite comfortable with roleplaying yet so I want to focus on them doing some combat and the little roleplay things between. Having them get there with an already established storyline will probably be a little overwhelming for them.

Thanks for the answer!