I don’t know if this counts but, I DMed the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle beginner campaign for my wife and some members of her family. None of them had played any kind of ttrpg and most of them weren’t super familiar with fantasy stuff in general, but everybody wanted to give it a try. They all made costumes, did a ton of research before playing, and got SUPER into roleplaying their characters. It was really cool to see new players get so into it, plus it made my first time running a game so much fun.

Classic Barb. Sounds super fun!

Thanks! Quick question about the factions. Is it crucial to have the PCs join a faction? It seems like a convenient way to filter information to them and add some flavor the game, but knowing the dinguses I play with they might end up avoiding joining any groups all together. Appreciate all the insight.

Right? I never understood the fun in lying in DnD.

We had a guy in our group who would find any and every reason to bail or show up late or leave a session early. When he would show up, he would just goes rogue (usually playing a rogue) and do his best to ruin the game for everyone else. There was a campaign a while back where I was playing a changeling and he/his PC knew. We were sneaking through a dungeon, my character changed into a goblin or whatever the enemies were to do some recon. He knew what clothes I was wearing and we had agreed on a signal. Also, most dungeon goblins aren’t wearing cool sparkly robes. He proceeded to sneak and kill my character saying “There was no way of knowing which was which”. It brought the whole good down. The DM said I could just bring the same character back, bla bla bla, but it just soured the game for me. I never understood why he acted like that, because it never seemed like he was having fun and it’s not like the rest of us were.

The other “that guy” that I know has gotten better, but he had a really bad habit of taking advantage of homebrew material and hiding or fudging stats/rules. He’d always argue that he could do this or that and would fight with the DM over how much damage he could do. It was just weird, because I never got the mindset of cheating in dnd. We’re all supposed to be playing the same game, chill out my dude.

Wow! Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. I actually bought the Alexandrian Remix and ended up getting more intimidated than I was before, so it’s comforting to know that it might be too much.

I’ve been on the fence between running Xanathar or the Casselanters as the villain and I think you might have pushed me towards the Casselanters. I really like the story flavor that you described. Also, the sheer amount of villains/factions have been bogging me down quite a bit and it’s nice to know that I don’t need to deal with all of them. That seemed way too cumbersome.

Either way, I really appreciate the advice. Thanks!