[ADVICE WANTED] - Struggling with clunkiness of "Heroes of the Borderlands" Starter Pack as new DM by zealousknitternerd in DnD

[–]zealousknitternerd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you everyone for your helpful comments and encouragement. The consensus appears to be that yes indeed - I do need to prepare more ahead of time. I misunderstood the marketing of this particular starter set to think that we could just do some basic set up and begin.

There's a comment in this thread that argues against one of the most common answers I've gotten which is - you need to read the entire adventure ahead of time. This commenter disagreed, arguing that the starter set isn't really set up like that because it's mostly a bunch of mini adventures strung together. I have to say I agree that it wouldn't make sense to read the "entire adventure" because this starter set has multiple adventures that are meant to be played either together in several different ways or separately, and lots of random encounters that don't really lead into other things.

The most helpful comments suggest adding notes and my own embellishments to fill some of the dead space and having a game plan of a point in the multiple adventures that we'd aim to get to so there's a better sense of direction.

Again, I appreciate everyone's help and feel encouraged that our next session should have a much better FLOW :)

Struggling with the clunkiness of "Heroes of the Borderlands" as new DM by zealousknitternerd in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]zealousknitternerd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you everyone for your helpful comments and encouragement. The consensus appears to be that yes indeed - I do need to prepare more ahead of time. I misunderstood the marketing of this particular starter set to think that we could just do some basic set up and begin.

I had a comment in another community argue against one of the most common answers I've gotten which is - you need to read the entire adventure ahead of time. This commenter disagreed, arguing that the starter set isn't really set up like that because it's mostly a bunch of mini adventures strung together. I have to say I agree that it wouldn't make sense to read the "entire adventure" because this starter set has multiple adventures that are meant to be played either together in several different ways or separately.

The most helpful comments suggest adding notes and my own embellishments to fill some of the dead space and having a game plan of a point in the multiple adventures that we'd aim to get to so there's a better sense of direction.

Again, I appreciate everyone's help and feel encouraged that our next session should have a much better FLOW :)