I’m planning to run the starter set adventure because it’s a great adventure to introduce the game of D&D to new players and it won’t take months to play through it, so if people decide it’s not for them then it’s not a total disaster. If it goes well, and if everyone wants to keep playing, then we could progress into one of the hardback adventures either with the characters from this campaign, or everyone can roll new characters now that they’ve got a sense of what it’s like as a player and are more able to decide what they’d like to play as.
I’m happy for you to roll your own Level 1 character for this adventure if you want to. If you’d rather the simplicity of a pregen, these are the ones included with the starter set.
https://media.wizards.com/downloads/dnd ... acters.pdfThese character sheets are great for first time players because they include instructions on how to level up when the time comes and also have backstory and story hooks related to places, people and events that you might come across during the adventure.
If you want to roll your own character, a great guide is available on DnDBeyond here:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/essentials/cr ... -characterI’m happy to help with any questions you need answered as you go through that.
Alternatively, if you find the character creation process a bit overwhelming (I did for ages, it takes a bit of time but there’s loads of guidance online) but you have a rough idea of what you want them to be like, I could build them for you and then share the character sheet to you. Just let me know in here!
To play, you’ll need a computer/laptop/iPad able to connect to a zoom meeting, a webcam and speakers and mic. You’ll need either a set of polyhedral dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20). If you store your character sheet on DnDBeyond, you can use their electronic dice. You just click the ability you are testing and it rolls a dice on screen, shows the result on the die face and also shows you your total based on stat adjustments, item bonuses, advantages etc. Useful, but it always more fund rolling real dice!
I’m still figuring out if we’ll do ‘theatre of the mind’ for combat or if I’ll get electronic maps and if so, how I’ll share them.
Someone said earlier (I think it was Squirt) that it’s better to have a diverse party and I agree. For it to be a fun game for everyone, as a player you should try to have something that’s your thing, be it healing, checking for traps, being the tank in battle etc. That way there’s a chance for you to shine.
D&D is pretty easy to get into. How it plays depends on the DM and party but it can be funny, silly, serious, role play heavy, zero role play and combat heavy, with character voices, without, whatever you want.