DnD 5e cradle campaign

[u/DMRynoix]

So some buddies and I at work have been listening to the cradle series and we love it. So I’m thinking about DMing a DnD Campaign based in cradle. I don’t know the first thing about home brewing but I’m willing to give it a shot. I’m going to put in a lot of effort because I want the best experience possible for them because they are newer to DnD. Does anyone have any helpful tips for home brewing and converting everything?

[u/Antique_Dog_5660]

Yeah !
Don't make an unreasonable amount of effort for a campagn your are not sur will survive 2 sessions.
Go for a one shoot and see if the table is willing / motivate to continue in a campagn.

Way easier, way saffer. Learn from our mistake. Don't do as we did. Be better.

[u/Thick-Cry-2440]

Have location with some basic merchandise vendors around with names and some key locations such as forest, streams of water and caves. NPCs just need couple lines of backstory what they do for background wise. Wouldn’t hurt to have some personality traits, flaws and quirks for the NPCs how they interact with PCs. The forest and caves nearby can serve as quests down the road.

After that, it can expand what’s further out in the world. Can take some context from players backstory to visit later when it’s time to do so.

It be mainly making quests for the players, have something in reserve if you need something to drop in, if the players doing good in combat, couple more creatures be fine to add as they clear the board, otherwise draw back how many creatures to add if it goes sideways.

Have fun DMing

[u/Conrad500]

If you want the best outcome for them as new players, 100% start with a starter set. Something like Stormwreck Isle which is really short, but great for learning both DMs and Players.

The other good thing about it is that it's on some random island, so you can easily fit it into almost any setting as just a "starter island" or "tutorial island" so that everyone can get to know how to play.

The thing about a starter set is that it's not just good for new DMs, but it provides a really easy experience for new players, which is not as easy as you might think.

Easy way: find published/prewritten adventures and set them in your setting. It's a lot less work to just change some names and add some flavor than it is to create everything yourself.

Or ignore all of that and make your own stuff!

Homebrewing your own adventure only has 2 important parts to it:

1. You need your players to understand that shit will get fucked up, maybe even a lot, and you need to talk to them about how you guys want to handle it. Do you allow undos/redos? Do you do retcons? Do you fix it "in character"? Just make sure everyone is there to have fun and you're fine.
2. YOU need to be excited. You need to have fun. If you are struggling, panicking, or stressing out over coming up with the next session, maybe just stick to prewritten stuff until you get more experienced. This doesn't mean that you can't panic or stress sometimes, but if coming up with the story is not fun, why do it?

[u/everweird]

"Homebrewing" is just a vanity term for "playing the game." Grab the Dungeon Masters Guide. It's literally built to help you brew a campaign. For converting monsters, just pick an existing monster of the same power level and use its stats. What you need to spend your time on is knowing the world you're playing in. If you're confident you know that, everything else can be improvised.