3 Encounters to Start YOUR Campaign! 

For those that were looking for the primer text, here it is. Apologies if someone already posted this here, but I didn't see it. Hankerin, maybe you can paste it in the video description, or pin this comment or something :) Prisoners of Molach - Gil was dead when I awoke. His jerkin was torn to tatters, and his face bent in horror. From this i recoiled, but made no sound, for the empty-eyed ghouls that guarded our cages were hellishly close. Before I could breathe, they brought some other poor soul from a like confinement, and by the ankle dangled her above a drop at the room's edge. She was released with a wet plop heard below, screams, and silence. The ghouls, bare lipless teeth gleaming beneath corroded helms, turned to retrieve another. Time was short indeed... A Burning at New Haven - That the folk of Newhaven were prone to burn witches was known, but how far the practice had gone, and WHY remained a well-guarded secret. All this, though dire, remained hidden from royal eyes for decades. But barbarians are terrible liars, and the whole mess was about to burst open like a den of snakes. Onto this we walked that afternoon, unaware of the boiling doom beneath our feet... The Road to Westburg - Another humdrum wagon escort awaited our troop, but this time we walked with a cart marked in Kingly colors. We asked no questions, and took no peeks, but all four of us were on edge. The roadway to Westburg is mostly smooth-cobbled path, but there is one place where our gold would be earned: Shadow Crags. That narrow fissure is littered with forgotten skeletons, and provides a perfect vantage for unsavory types. So off we went, grim and ready to fight our way to a week's pay.

My players saved every damn NPC they encountered and now they have all sorts of connections around the city. They even decided to help out the main villain get rid of his curse completely fucking up the story. I love my players.

I pretty much completely stole your "Yeah, you guys are prisoners"-opening, reskinned it as a "Yeah, you guys are prisoners in cocoons"-opening, with drone-men and big beetle-dudes hauling off other prisoners to god knows where, named the adventure "Prisoners of the Grub Witch" and just went with that. It worked sooo well. Not only did we not have to determine starting equipment or any of that bogus, we could also completely skip the boring "How do you know each other"-step. Now the player characters have bonded together since they survived and escaped the clutches of the big, fat, larvae-looking Witch-monstrosity. Next session they will have to try to survive the terrible leech-ridden jungles just outside of the Grub Witches keep. Good times!

Just ran my C&C game last night with some new players (my wife, my 2 teenage kids and my eldest daughter and her fiance-- both mid 20's) NONE of them really played RPG's and my Teens wanted to try RPG'ing on family gamenight (usually we play boardgames like Talisman/King of Tokyo/Lords of Waterdeep/Elder signs/Arkham Horror). Ran the First scenario shown here, had the players make their characters on index cards with basic concepts of what person they were, and a few bonuses for rolls based on their skills... really simple. Worked out quite well, and lots of beer and wine was consumed... the kids saw a new side of their Mom (she is a huge fan of the Walking Dead TV show and enjoyed the dread/zombie/ghoul theme). Thanks for sharing the concepts Hank, they are all raring to go on another session.

I was playing D&D with my little sister, new to DMing & running a pathfinder game, I set up a game & she surprised me when she started throwing goblins off of a cliff.

Thanks so much for these starter encounters. We do family board game night every Sunday, so I got a game going with my wife (doesn't get it), my son (8yro) and daughter (6yro). Not having done D&D before, we started with the prison encounter leading onto the burning encounter and then kept going with a longer term campaign. The witch turned out to be linked to a prophecy and will be key to holding back a demon lord. It's still going strong 5 months later, but your encounters showed me the simple model I need to work with to keep the young kids going - along with a linear and simple campaign arc. The kids have even created and DM'd a couple of non-plot line encounters. Brilliant, cheers

"Hey guys, heres the first encounter. Lets play it." That delivery just earned you a sub.

I actually used the prisoners of moloch as inspiration for my own starting adventure, where the players have to escape from prison cells and then get out what turns out to be the basement of their town temple, which has been taken over by cultist.

This was INVALUABLE for a new group! I know the video is years old, but thank you 😊

Still one of my favorite Runehammer vids! I use all three of these for one-shots to get new people hooked on D&D at my gamestore. Was also inspired to craft because of you. Love it!

So, today I played D&D 3.5 Prisoners of Moloc with my 13y/o and 7y/o. The settings was exactly as you described. I only used the names of the starter set and the fact that the wizard had some Daze and Magic Missile. Nothing more. No weapons other then what you described. I played the a Cleric and a Rogue as NPC. They .. barely .. made... it :) Man did we have a blast. I let them try all kinds of things. My 7 y/o had a bit of trouble getting into the fantasy mode but gradually started describing his actions (allbeit with terms used in Dragoballz, nevertheless the beserk mode with a natural 20 was clear). I lloved this scene, this story, the simplicity of it. We only had 1 stat. Everyone is a AC12, and we use the hitpoints which is on the starterset. I had skeleton miniatures with a AC12 and HP12. Please please please do not stop making these kinds of videos. It was awesome ...AWESOME!!

One of them must have the key... it was the one that fell into the cube, wasn't it?

I'm commenting on an old video I know but it seemed the most appropriate place. Just wanted to thank you for the excellent videos with awesome ideas. I havn't played in 25+ years but bought my oldest kid the starter set for XMas mostly to try to get him away from the computer for a bit, now I find myself running a campaign for my three kids (10yrs old to 17yrs old) and wife (instant built in gaming group and a fun family activity). Your videos have helped me immensely get things rolling again and brought my family closer together (sniff, ). Used your Molog scenario to kick things off, they had a blase. Thank you very much and keep up the great work!

Love the low, high, dark format. You should consider making this episodic. Wonderful tips!

This man is the Chuck Liddell of D&D

I've started to dm for the first time, and it was all just to get my dad into dnd, (keep in mind, I've only played dnd once) long story short, at the end of the first night he almost conquered mount Sundread and all of the undead sun cultists only to be killed in one hit by Shuzara the "Sun god" (which the next night he learned that it was just a champion of the sun), then the following night he was recruited by Munara the moon goddess, to be the 7th moon champion!(one champion for every day and night of the week) and for a twist, he's going to have to kill the other 6 champions of the moon, because only the TRUE champion can kill the sun god! Not to bad for coming up with the story on my own!

I have to say I was a DM for the first time tonight. I ran slight variants of your encounters and everyone was super stoked. The low fantasy dark thematic settings really had my group engaged. Thank you so much!!

Man as a first time DM gearing up my first campaign run with my buddies, this has helped me tremendously. I was trying so hard to figure out how to introduce my player's characters to each other in story, but simply having them awaken within a cell in a dungeon and having to fight their way out is just brilliant, simple and the most effective thing ever. Thank you sir!

I **really** like the second scenario. As someone who's DM'd for well over 12 years at this point... I seriously think that may be the start to the Greyhawk campaign I plan on running later this year.

Hey Hankerin great advice and springboard encounters for new DM's. You gotta keep it simple. Tone plus a parcel of descriptions that engage the players and a new DM is off and running....a DM is simply "talking" a story that they want others to contribute to (use Hankerin's 3 T's...threat, treat and timer and you can't go wrong!).

Finally ran the "Burning in New Haven." It was a hit. My group was 2nd lvl so I had them unarmed to spice things up even more--Force to give up their weapons and shields at the town gate. In an ironic twist of fate the players caught the head Witch hunter on fire during the combat. also recommend throwing in "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." bible quote for flavor during combat.

favorite low level newbie encounter: one owlbear. trust me. there is no other encounter that gets people as excited for the ridiculousness of the world they are about to enter. (I'm joking, but it freaking killed at my table the other night)

good opening tempo. you had me interested and ready to get involved up to the point where you say "roll initiative". that one step destroys the mood faster than a teleport spell! you already know the characters. playing without initiative is simple. you know the dex of all the participants. that's your turn order. now you don't need to pause the energy you've built up. just look to the appropriate player and give them some options/ideas and let them decide. yes, attacking is an option. roll the D20 and keep the story rolling. I've watched (and played in) enough games that you can see the distinct difference with the players, by having the GM say "roll initiative". all practical role-playing ends as the players start preparing only tactical options. these are role-playing games, why don't you role-play the combat as well?

Just started up a D&D group and this video helped massively! I used a slightly modified prisoners of Moloch (Lovingly re-titled 'Lair of the mud-men) for my groups first session yesterday and it went great!

So glad I found your channel. You describe things very simply, and your topics are super helpful so far. Binge-watch time!

The prisoners of Molag gives me brilliant souls game vibes, the hollows in a tutorial zone and the amazing feeling at finding a simple item

I'm prepping a revamped Thunder Rift campaign. Straight up ripping that "Prisoners of Molok" encounter with some minor tweaking and relabeling it "Escape from Zanzer's Dungeon Revamped". Not a new DM by any stretch, but that just seems like the perfect Zanzer's Dungeon kick off to a TR campaign introducing players to the game. Thanks!

Alacrity, brisk and cheerful readiness. I love that word. What about Low Dark Fantasy.... is that Call of Cthulhu.... Whoa guys, we don't know why that girl is being burned, she could be a demon, a murderer, or worse, a litterbug, I am not helping her, we don't know the situation... Who wants a beer, enters the tavern.

My first encounter was a bandit captain in his tent outside the bandit camp 1. Timer: the group can't handle all the other bandits 2. Threat: the Bandit captain It wasn't great but the players thought it was great

Classic Hankerin in this video. Jailbreak is such a great staple. Legions of video games start in some form of prison from Wolfenstein until now. Fallout called it a vault, Half-Life called it a lab, but they're all prison breaks.

These are great setups for DMs/GMs. Forget being new these would be great for any DM to use. Thanks for abother great video, keep it up man!

I designed my first encounter to be a team death match in a gladiatorial arena. 3 teams (1 was the PCs team. They were locked up in a dungeon not knowing what happened and then a Hulking dude with an iron mask gave them some weapons to choose and told them to kill the rest). The NPC´s had almost PC stats so scary. After some NPCs died the crowd got bored so the King from his little alcove on overseeing the battle ordered his minions to realease the beasts to add some flavour to the mix (1d4 rounds). An unholy noise, of roaring and thrashing and smashing was overheard. My players rolled to see if they could get a truce with the remaining 4 NPCs which they manage to do. The beasts come out. Only they came running and went right past them (lions, tigers, bears and of the sort) escaping apparently. Then some undead Keepers and beasts come from within the same door and a bloodied man screams "MY KING, MY KING! WHAT KIND OF CURSE HAS BEFALLEN US ALL?" As he proceeds to fall on his face. Panic ensues. The PCs along with the NPCs fight against this fiends as the non undead beasts escape from the arena and into the bleachers where the spectators had no other choice but tu run for their lives. Also drawing in some guards to put some order there. With heavy loses the PCs manage to defeat the undead and go into the only place they could. The door from which all those abominations came....

Longtime DM, BUT how do I introduce my 11-year-old niece? You da man, Hank. You da man.

I just subscribed and I am glad I found your videos. I respect your dedication to the craft of storytelling and your love of terrain and props. I began DMing last year after a fifteen year hiatus from all things D&D. I use a fun centered playing style bolstered by the OSRIC rules book PDF. I employ masking tape lines for walls and boundries (positive space), with corks, little plastic junk, etc for props, and our miniatures are old army-man scale figures from various 80's D&D knock-off toys, like Dragonriders of the Styx. Thanks for your positive energy and enthusiasm!

Love these encounters, man! Using the High Fantasy one in my first Pathfinder campaign. The next room in the dungeon has a sleeping Crystal Lizard with a beautiful longsword sticking out of its back!

The most electrifying move is table top entertainment: The Elbow of Alacrity!! Very helpful Hank. Really getting close to making my first DM experience a reality. Now to recruit some lumpy heads!

Gotta love this guy

Don't forget these can be combined, ive used a besieged town on a group before. "You awaken passed out in a gutter after a night of heavy drinking to the sound of a crashing cannonball through wooden timbers. Roll initiative."

Excellent! Thanks.

whoa. I've been watching tons of videos for new dms but I'm pretty sure this was the most practical, simple and straight forward. great baby steps. thanks!

Have a buddy getting into DMing for the first time. I steered him toward these videos and I forgot how much I love these videos.

Thank you so much man I was going wayyyyy overboard! For my first game thank you!

Thank you for doing this. I'm just getting started and your enthusiasm and general badassery is inspiring. A few streams I've come across reek of an air of fantasy snobbery about "how it should be done". They're not actually saying it...but you can tell. Your down to earth approach and attitude is pretty awesome. Thanks!

Hey Hank, I know its been years since this video but just to let you know that your practical encounters enabled me to DM for my first time. Since then ive watched tonnes of videos on good storytelling but starting its not helpful as much but this video is the best, its imidediately usable and easy to convert to make it ones own!

This is gold man, thank you!

Great video with a lot of useful tips thanks for posting it. Love that it's in a different style than most people who post on D&D. Totally agree start with something fun and quick especially if it's people that are new to D & D.

You remind me of a younger Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Finally watched one of your vids, after having it come up in my suggested videos. And wow, this really inspired me to look into building up my own campaign some more. Not just with encounters like what you've suggested, but with crafting new board pieces inspired by your own. Sköl!

Hell YES!!!! Creating my players characters with them tomorrow, totally going to work one of these into my campaign.

Man, I gotta say thank you. I'm creating a campaign for some guys that are very new, and I was having some serious "writers block". Your ideas really helped get the creative juices flowing! Thumbs up.

My dnd group session is somewhere between Dark and High Fantasy. The cliff hanger part is true, our DM always leaves the session on some sort of cliff hanger that makes us crave more.

So uh, I did the New Haven thing, and my players started a Coup. They now have taken over the city

I just picked up D&D and I had been interested for a while and I have finally been able to get a group of friends together to play with me and this is freaking perfect because I'm going to be DMing for them. Thanks so much!

Simple but really interesting encounters ! Thanks !

Out of all of the videos, this guy is the best.

When I heard "Dark Fantasy," I thought of _Warhammer Fantasy,_ where, like 40kilo, in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war/*In the grimdark future of the grimdark grimdark, there is only grimdark.*

Awesome ideas hank!

I'd rather make the girl an actual witch so freeing her gets you an ally in the combat and gives her some power and agency as a person instead of just being somebody's prize. The "make your party like the 12 year old girl because she's so hot and Aryan" was a little fucking weird, man, but overall it's a good encounter. These kind of bite-size encounters are GREAT to have in your back pocket as a DM, whether at the beginning, or whenever there's a lull, or the players have thrown your for a loop. I couldn't call it Newhaven though, I'm from New England, so that's a perfectly normal-sounding town name. Maybe Oldhaven. Or just Haven. Some of the comments about players who would let a child burn at the stake made reaffirmed my lack of faith in humanity a little bit, but I think the overall point is that if you're going to use a hostage situation, create a hostage YOUR GROUP would care about rescuing - or if you know your group is a bunch of empathy-deficient sociopaths, don't bother using that type of motivator. Any encounter someone creates for you to use (on RU-vid, published in a book, online, whatever), you're free to tailor it to your own group.

This guy burped while speaking, and now I want to be his friend.

I had already started planning out an opening, but this has given me so many ideas to beef up the scene, I can't wait to use them!

This was very helpful thank you

I know I'm little late to the party when it comes to commenting on a 4 month old video, but I like the in Medias Res approach you present to encounters. Get the players doing something first, worry about everything else later. Get the game going with a bang, as it were.

I've been trying to think up a good hook to start my Ravenloft style game. I have all kinds of ideas for what might happen, but until I saw the "Burning at Newhaven" I really wasn't sure how I was going to get the ball rolling. My twist though is, one of the players is already an Inquisitor, coming to the region to investigate witches and the like, BUUUUT I had already outlined that the deities of the big human religion in the world forbade execution as a punishment for crimes, or even heresy. So when the PCs show up in "Newhaven" and see the TOWNSFOLK trying to burn a Witch, I KNOW they're going to jump into action! Thank you so much for this solid idea!

I'm running a campaign that has several themes depending on the continent. In the eastern part of the world there is Amos, a high fantasy area, and along with it Lympe, the same only with low magic. Farther to the west you have the dark lands of Manalca in the center of the world. Going to the north, you have the infinite icy wastelands of Rumien. To the west of Manalca, you have the mostly northern lands of Tahas, a primitive forest lands that contains Arctic tundras to the north. The farthest south is Drudos, a land based off of real life eastern civilization that has a strong connection with the inner planes, the spiritual & elemental planes. In between these two is Gadun, a land that is technologically & magically advanced land that is mostly like Eberon.

I am happy that you have made ICRPG and are enjoying that challenge, but I miss you making these videos. They were awesome... still are.

you are the opposite to the DND stereotype.

3.30 reminds me of the E1M1 sound track from doom.

"None of that crap. Roll initiative" ... vs random dork ghouls. Prisoners of Molek--the West in the 21st century. If you are going to start with high fantasy, might as well be a reference to child sacrifice. I could not wait to see what you call dark fantasy ... more child sacrifice! A time for Herobeus the Mightiish from that Other Place indeed. Great stuff in this video. You could run a virtual encounter or two with just a bit more work than you did here.

Cool boards. Look easy enough to make and your making this DMing stuff sound easy! Thanks for taking a bit of fear out of the game for someone who's been looking to play for about 20years! O O

rewatched this old video to support. Did laugh when you said up to 1 minute per turn for possibly new players. Oh Hank.....how I wish moderately experienced players, let alone new ones could take turns in only a minute.

I made on about a crazed dwarf who was researching how strangers will work together in a life or death situation. Basically they have to go through a cave with three doors per room, each door has some sort of an encounter. Its sort if a mini adventure, my play group is new, so i tried to make something​ easy before​ we go into lost mines.

You need to start this channel up again! I'm sure there are many people who would want to hear your take on D&D.

Great videos mate. Recently found your channel and been watching loads of them. Not played D&D for over 20 years.. you've inspired me to try and get back into it. So my 5e DMG and MM are winging their way to me. Cheers !

Soo much Usefull information, thank you for this wonderful content!!!

I'd buy the beer and pizza to play in a group run by you. Great tips!

Skeletor t-shirt! You have class, man. class. Thumbs up.

That's a good spot to store a couple of rolls of toilet paper

Love your work.. can't wait to watch more of your videos..

Great ideas and perspectives in this video--thanks for sharing!

Ok dude, I'm DM'ing this THURSDAY! And...we're all brand new to D&D. Yikes! Wish us luck brother!

"Barely older than twelve but strangely beautiful" Beg pardon? Rest of it is great stuff and should be a must see for new DMs/GMs looking to be great at what they do.

This was some really good advice, and you presented it well for new GMs.

I did my own version of the first one where they were burning a witch After they decided to just watch her burn the wind stopped (smoke blew straight up and the screaming stopped) Later they had to go clear out a cave with the reward of 50gp per witch head At the end (after having seen no witches) they see the same little girl and she begins screaming at them for not helping her then she sommoned 3 fire elementals (nerfed a little and there were 5 players) It was fun one gut kept using an ice blast on his friend to put out the fires

OMG these sound like so much fun! I didn't really want to DM 32 minutes ago and now I think I might have to. The stories that could come out of those quest openers would be so fun to explore. PS, my group has pretty much disbanded and we have been looking for a new DM thinking it would be a huge challenge for a first timer with only a few months experience as a player. However, the way you frame your advice makes me think I can do this and be good at it. Thanks a lot for videos like this one. And love the Moral Imperative video also!

Epic on sooooo many levels! :D I keep coming back to this video. One question about your green outdoor board? Can you share what colors you used for this one? Looks amazing, also did you sponge it same way like the other one. Looks like a few different green tones and grey? Thanks brother, favorite channel gibbedygibbedy!!

Man, I love your video, brother! The books made me so confused on how to run encounters as I never played Dnd before, but it seems like its easier than I thought! Thanks a lot!

Cool video! These are great encounters to start out with. I like the dark fantasy one a lot.

That was really good... Even took some notes.

Sees closed door smashes it

Great tips, man ---about to start a new game over the summer and this is very timely!

As a new dm, i ran my first ever session which lasted about 9 hours so it was more like 3 sessions. All of my four players are new and also friends but are all into acting and rp. I decided to try and run the witch encounter but due to things happening in my world the pc are escorting a caravan full of treasures. The encounter to me was supposed to take one session to teach everyone rping and combat but i love improv so i let things naturally flow, this had led to the shady town being a place full of corruption where the higher nobles are using witchunting to get rid of competition and claim their money, this was all completely unplanned but i enjoy improv so it was great fun, atm in the 9 hours there has been the arrest of the witchhunters but the mayor has yet to be arrested as there is little evidence of the mayor actually doing this, so i would imagine the next session will be the overunning of the mayor, sorry for the essay lol, but what i found from this is that having a basic encounter can turn to anything due to the actions of the players, and i think thats really cool ☺ Also great video

Getting ready to start a new campaign, thank you for the ideas!

Great stuff!

Very awesome adventures, I am a huge fan of Dark and Low fantasy types, Everything inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, Its fantastic. Definitely going to use the town of Newhaven scenario in a coming D&D session. You're awesome, Keep the awesome up my dude

Witch hunters are my favorite villains. Great for creating moral dilemmas. Burning a little girl!? Great hook. 😱

Elegant. Timer, threat, treat.

Man I loved this video. So many good Ideas. Keep up the great work!

Your videos are fantastic and help quite a lot!

Love this.

That flickering campfire.... you swanky son of a bitch.