![QLFfQRc[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/ItJsFwn.png "QLFfQRc[1].png")
Sup /tg/, What are some good 1st level quests my players can do in D&D?
I thought about having them clear out a nest of drakes in a mage tower, because fuck killing rats.
Is this a good one?
>>45869098
No. Make them deliver packages and dodge bandits.
Look at OSR modules. Make the dungeon more about the dungeon rather than the monsters, award XP for goals besides killing kobolds or goblins.
Being prostitutes.
>>45869098
Clean up duty in the Orc Cave after a level 10 adventurer party has just cruised through it. Players have to finish off the wounded Orcs, kill the Orc females and babies, gather up scraps of low-tier loot, etc.
>>45869461
While they're there, they discover the legend of a 20th-level adventurer who inhabited the cave centuries ago.
The best way to make players feel like their characters matter is to belittle them with higher-level characters.
>>45869098
>be first level
>want have a comfy time killing goblins, rats, and bandits
>gm throws some bullshit world saving plot at us, no explanation why the town guard can't handle it
>have to fight "drakes" with massively nerfed stats
Fucking stop. Don't do this. Nerfing monster stats so that players can feel "cool" by killing "death knights" in the first session is gay and destroys any sense of danger or believability the world has. Your adventures become hollow.
Either start your players at higher than 1st level or fucking play ball with the kind of threats 1st level characters can handle: Goblins. Rats. Bandits.
We started off investigating a death temple, guarded by an illusion that made the place look like a dense forest. Enemies included bat demons summoned by a magical device and a wraith of some variety. No idea what stats the GM used; he doesn't tell us what the monsters are in the rulebooks. He just uses the stat blocks and then changes the fluff so there's the veneer of it being a fully original world.
>>45869726
This anon knows what's up. Start them higher level or throw them a fight they can win (or, conversely, that they CAN'T POSSIBLY WIN--and see if they take the hint and bug out).
Case of the Haunted Vagina is good shit though.
>>45869726
>HotDQ
>begins with a fucking DRAGON and a well-armed militia attacking a town (and doing a good job at it)
Why would a 1st-level character NOT run away? It's not heroic to rush in, it's just suicidal. And as a player playing a WotC-published module, you know the dragon isn't going to be a serious threat. Even if you get into a fight with it, there'll be an out.
Smaller-scale threats are exciting at early levels. Put new twists on it, sure, but saving a village from a goblin attack or clearing out a kobold warren can be fun and exciting. And the excitement comes from the genuine challenges your character faces, not the dragon who exists to create set pieces in the background.
I played the first half-hour of Skyrim and I hated this shit. Sure, it looked cool that a dragon attacked the village, but then you were hand-held through a tutorial that told you exactly what to do. I stopped caring about that dragon immediately. Give me a Morrowind cave of bandits that can actually (and quite easily) kick my ass. Or the first Daggerfall dungeon where I have to actually explore and imps will wreck my shit. Please.
>>45869726
but spiretop drakes are level 1, that's the ones I plan on using.
OP here, sorry I wasn't very clear on my goals here, I don't want my party to take on bigger challenges, I want simple easy quests that are appropriate level for level 1 characters, but I want something fun, something more than the usual fantasy staples of killing rats in a basement, something with a nice reason to it, something more creative, that gives characters chances to interact.
I came to /tg/ because I know you guys can deliver, and I wanted to know if my idea was a good one.
>>45870241
Read The Lazy Dungeon Master, prepare three separate quests, leave them open enough so that you can tie them to the player characters. e.g. don't flesh out the mage whose tower it is, since a PC's backstory might have the perfect character to work into it.
>>45870241
Level 1 is boring. If these aren't absolutely new players, they've seen it all before and there's no reason not to start at a higher level.
>>45870168
>there's a level 1 drake
???
I didn't know this. Proceed as planned then, I guess.
>>45870295
they are new players and I'm a new DM, so I came to /tg/ to reap it's blessings and guidance
>>45870291
thanlks, will do
any chance of you having a copy that you can post here?
>>45870537
Sure.
>>45870694
Thanks man
>>45869911
>Give me a Morrowind cave of bandits that can actually (and quite easily) kick my ass. Or the first Daggerfall dungeon where I have to actually explore and imps will wreck my shit. Please.
When normies don't immediately know what to do at any point in a game, or if they ever lose/die, they consider that game broken. If it happens frequently, they stop playing.
There's a financial incentive to make modern games as brainless and easy as possible.
>>45871271
Well in a computer game I can understand wowing you with some "shit, this is exciting!" factor or easing you into the game, but it should work the opposite way in role-playing games. You can do whatever you want. Talk to the tavern bartender, refuse the job from the shifty stranger, just stay there and get drunk. "Tell the GM: 'I TALK TO THE BARTENDER' to talk to the bartender!" doesn't work in an RPG, you have to think outside-in rather than inside-out.
So it does feel kind of bullshit when you have these scenarios where the player actions don't matter because scene 32 is going to happen anyway, and then scene 32 is going to affect what the players have to do (or even can do) next.
Meanwhile if you have a straight-up dungeon crawl where 20 goblins have taken over an abandoned mine, everything the PCs do will matter on a mechanical level. Kill the bugbear leader? Turn the rival kobold tribe against them? Block the entrance and leave them to starve? These are very functional actions that NECESSITATE some kind of response, even if you boil it down to the strictest game mechanics or simply what is possible.
>>45869098
>What are some good 1st level quests my players can do in D&D?
try The Haunted Vagina.
>>45871638
Post module?
>>45869500
>>45869461
I like this, a lot.
>"I-I'll show you, *sniff* I'll be the best damn adventurer you'll ever see..."
I love that most about RPGs than the roleplaying.
>>45871658
it's on Amazon and you can use the Look Inside feature to see what it's like before buying.
>>45869098
>Look inside
>Flip to back
... my sides
>>45869283
By "dodge bandits" we mean the bandit corpses being hurled by the laughing troll from atop his cliffside den.
>>45869098
At lower levels when PCs are fragile I like to stick them in a group of NPC goons.
The baron sends his knights and some mercenaries (the pcs) to punish an asshole middling-level wizard /necromancer/bard/orc warlord on the frontier.
The party gets hired with some local thugs to retrieve some item from an abandoned armory in some long-abandoned keep.
Or something that justifies a couple of fodder NPCs so they can meet a more interesting challenge than killing rats or goblins.
>>45869726
It's one thing if they happen to run across a wounded monster coming back from a fight or its a young one they have a chance against. But it also irks me when a monster normally beyond the group is watered down with no explanation -just- so they can kill it for artificial badass points or whatever.
I much prefer to work up to the real deal. That way I feel like I earned it when I beat it or at least a worthy opponent has beaten me if I lose.
>>45869098
Haunted or not, I'd fuck that demon on the cover.
>>45873352
>>45869098
>the paladin does not smite, believing that am ugly, mishap end face like that is enough punishment for it.smites anyways because fuck anime.
>>45869098
I'm sure one of you guys are capable of making a proper reaction image out of this.
>>45869098
Quick question, are these shitty amazon books really the new form of Harliquinn novels?
Also, good 1st level quest is go fuck up the Kolbald's shit.
>>45873642
>Quick question, are these shitty amazon books really the new form of Harliquinn novels?
Short answer: sort of. There was a huge short fic bubble that Amazon popped a year and a half or so back, and before that people were cranking out shit erotica/romance/mystery stories and making bank for it. You can still make money writing it, but it's not as easy to do as it once was.
>>45873642
They're not particularly new, shitty fan fiction tier romances pretty much usurped paper ones ever since amazon started outselling the entire print market years ago. Amazon was already full of stuff like 50 Shades of Gray before it was even a Twilight fan fic.
>>45869726
Drakes in D&D aren't dragons. They're. depending on the edition, either raptors with a different name or mindless vaguely dragon-looking animals
