d&d campaign ideas for beginners

“Sir, you and your companions are the only guests who are here completely by chance. That is why you four must be in charge of the investigation. Even I myself, as a servant of the house, must be placed under suspicion. Since you showed up as the murder was supposedly taking place, it can be assumed that none of you were responsible. Add to that the fact that you all arrived in town not but 2 hours ago, never having journeyed here nor making the acquaintance of Sir Merrimont. I feel therefore reasonably comfortable trusting this investigation to you.”

The old gnome butler bows gracefully and excuses himself to see to other duties. It is then that you and your companions return to the dining hall to see the other dinner guests. You’d come here seeking a favor from Sir Merrimont to help in another quest you were engaged in. When you arrived at the manor you were invited in and were waiting for about 30 minutes before screams were heard and the bloody body of Sir Merrimont discovered.

The great hall is a resplendent room with beautiful tiled floors and amazing reliefs on the walls. The room is taken up by a beautiful table set for 8 guests. All the chairs are filled but one, that of Sir Merrimont. The guests look at each other nervously. You look at your companions and shrug.

What would you like to do?

Welcome back to the 18th episode of the How to Be a Better DM Show. I’m your host Justin Lewis and we’re here to help you create better, more immersive stories for yourself and your friends as you DM a session of Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

As we all know, creating a new campaign is hard. It gets much easier when you have a great idea that is simple enough to start with relatively little worry or complication. So here are a few D&D campaign ideas for beginners.

Rescue a damsel in distress

This is a classic trope. A specific damsel has been stolen and a specific group has stolen her. You get to choose who the damsel is (and even the form of the damsel) and the group that stole her (or if she was stolen by one nemesis). You can draw this campaign idea out as long as you want or make it a single session storyline. Makes it real simple for a novice DM.

Recover an artifact

It’s the classic Indiana Jones switching a bag of rocks for an artifact story. General idea of the story is this: a powerful magical (or non-magical) artifact is somewhere and needs to be brought somewhere else. Whether the artifact was originally stolen is up to you. Whether the artifact is guarded by enemies is up to you. How far away the artifact is is up to you. You can make this as complicated or simple as you want. You can also connect this storyline with others within your campaign or leave it as a standalone storyline.

Carry a message

Get your adventurers to take a message from one place to another. You can add in as many difficulties as you’d like. Maybe the message needs to be taken behind enemy lines during a major war engagement. Perhaps the message needs to get to and convince a leader who is malignant towards the adventurers. You can spice this up easily by connecting the message to one of your adventurers’ backstories.

Beast Hunter

This one is simple. There is a beast. There are people who want the beast to be no more. There is a reason the adventurers would be ok getting rid of the beast. In most situations there will either need to be a reward or intense moral connection for the adventurers to have a reason to care about whether or not the beast exists. Again, this scenario works for all levels and can be made more complicated as desired.

On the Hunt for Lore

Rather than hunting a beast, this scenario sends the adventurers to hunt for information. You can make the task easier by identifying the place the knowledge must be acquired. Add in adversaries who want the knowledge to remain hidden to make it more difficult.

Interception

A nice simple start to a campaign is sending your players to intercept something that is traveling somewhere for some reason. They could intercept a messenger, hunting party, dragon or whatever else. You can make the intercept location basically anywhere that makes your story more interesting. You could even make the intercept location a place where the plot complicates much more and turns your story on its head.

Survive the Waves

Another simple story start is having your players start somewhere that is under threat, and the characters will have to survive waves of enemies. This could be in a war situation, or maybe a village is under attack from a tribe of raiders. Whatever it is, the players will have to use their wits to keep themselves alive. Help may or may not be coming, depending on your story, but survival seems doubtful.

The formula.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, a simple formula you can use for a lot of story campaign ideas is the player characters need to travel to point B to do some specific action (kill, protect, convince, intercept, find) that affects a third party who is contrary to the desire of the group. Here’s the simple formula.

The group must go to Blank to Do Blank so Opposing Group Blank can’t do Blank.

You can use that formula to start many many stories and weave incredible tales for yourself and your friends.

As always, it’s been a pleasure to hang out with you guys. If you liked today’s show or have suggestions about it or other episodes, reach out to me on Instagram @geronimolevis where we can continue the conversation.

Make sure you follow the show and leave a rating and review. That would be very awesome of you. Last, of all, come back next week for another great show.

Until then, let’s roll initiative.

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