3-4 players looking for GM to run us through a fun beginner campaign in any ruleset.

We are familiar with tabletop gaming in general but unfamiliar with the rulesets apart from playing the D&D mmo or neverwinter nights games (one of our group has actually played but that was 20 years ago) Looking for a casual/relaxed atmosphere for learning. We pick things up quickly and roll20 seems very intuitive so I hope for good results. If interested please post your availability and we will try to make it work for everyone. P.S. To save time preset characters to select from would be helpful. EDIT: I realize now I was very vague, I meant for D&D rulesets specifically, or a similar homebrew system. I am getting some very kind offers from a few different people now, and I suppose we will start with standard 3.5e and branch out as we learn. I appreciate all your responses and look forward to more!

But part of the fun is rolling a character you want to play and how you want to play it. I am looking to start up some basic stuff, a learning experience for me as well as when I start it will only be my 2nd time. D&D 3.5 if you're interested.

Oh I agree highly, it's just difficult to build a scratch character when you don't really know what you are doing, lol. For our first time out I thought it would be helpful to focus more on gameplay mechanics than character building, and make it easier on the gm to design the world around the characters he chose for RP sake. Btw were you planning on gm'ing your game?

I guess I didn't make that clear. I have played a decent amount of D&D, enough to know many of the core rules and game mechanics. I have GM'd one game which was around 1 1/2hrs long (Average games usually being about 2hrs a session) and would be GMing this one.

That sounds great actually. If you can handle our novice level knowledge it would be great to know your schedule or the time of your next session. How many players do you plan on supporting and how many do you run with now? EDIT: Assuming you want us to create our own characters, do you know which would be the easiest character builder out there?

I can take on just the 3/4 of you if you want, haven't gotten anything solid set up on anything here yet. If you have a specific time you want to play I can see if I can do that. You may roll your own characters, or I can make some preset ones for you for the first couple of games if you wish. If you do roll up your own, you'll need the Players Handbook for D&D 3.5 as reference.

We have broad availability, it would be easier to hear when you're available and work around those times. Absolutely I think starting with preset characters to choose from would be helpful until my friends and I have more time to learn character creation and get the handbook. I will mull it around and see what role or classes we generally want to play and let you take it from there? I really appreciate this btw, it's great to find someone this quickly who is willing to take on our group :) Also is there an estimate on how long it will take you to build the adventure?

If I may suggest. Use the premades from Paizo.com designers of Pathfinder. You can get two free premade level 1 modules from Adventure A Week.com. Play through with your premades to get the feel for the game. Much of the Pathfinder Beginners Box is available direct from Paizo. I am going to do this for my son and a roll20 group here soon. Probably the quickest way to go.

I am free almost all times, except for sundays/mondays usually. I try not to make my adventures a train-track. If in a session we were to finish a dungeon we were doing experience etc would take time, and then I would ask you where you wanted to go, such as traveling somewhere else or the such. I would then build from there, so no time at all really.

Thanks for the suggestion Wil, I will look into that and see what they have. And sunday is my worst day as well, I will talk to my group and see what works.

I would also be willing to run something for you guys at some point--I would just need to know what kind of themes your group prefers to work with and how much crunch you like. I have a few homebrew systems as well for running fast low-rolling non-traditional games as well that I've one-shotted before. All sorts of goodies--I collect the really eccentric games.

Considering we are unfamiliar with the core of the game learning a homebrew system wouldn't be any different for us I suppose lol. I am up for anything, thanks again guys for all the positive responses! I would like to try a core campaign first, however to get a feel for it.

Also if anyone is in need of any images, maps etc for this I am willing to help out in any way I can. I also do decent photoshop work if you need something adjusted.

Huh. For a moment, I was very confused as to what you meant by "Core" when you were talking about it. You mean core as in D&D? If so, I've been playing D&D over 20 years and the jargon is new to me, although we did used to refer to the 3.0 books as the 'core books'. So are you looking to play blue book, 1st edition, 2nd edit', advanced 2nd edit', 3rd edit', 3.5 edit', 4th edit', NeXt, or Pathfinder? Or any of the above? It mostly comes down to genre, too. Because if you've played fantasy MMOs, you'd probably enjoy most of the fantasy systems. Palladium is very similar to advanced 2nd edition D&D in its way, as is Rifts (which is both sci-fi and fantasy) based on the same system. There are probably a half dozen other systems with similar base mechanics. Main perk to learning a homebrew to get into pen'n'paper roleplaying would be not having to buy the materials to learn from, or chancing getting cited for internet piracy by hunting for and downloading the books from a honeypot server or baited torrent. Which is happening more and more these days. Main reason I ask is that I have just about all of the varieties, and my significant other is in the Next betas (but I haven't been terribly thrilled by it myself yet). Then I have about fifty games you've probably never heard of. I'm willing--for the sake of fun and helping new players out--to run just about anything.

I am focusing purely on D&D rulesets at this point, and I meant the core of 3.5, as that is what Aaron specified as his edition of choice. I actually had planned on starting at 4 as that was the easiest (or so I have heard) but I wanted to keep this thread broad for better results at finding someone willing to get involved. I figure 3.5 to be the most popular thing that people run on here and I already found the 3.5 player handbooks, dm handbook and monster manuals so no issues there. I heard pathfinder was good, but unless I am mistaken it seems more advanced than the core of 3.5, sort of an additive to the rules rather than an alteration, so it seems odd to begin there. I don't see anyone playing anything below 3.5 on here so I didn't consider them relevant...of course I could be mistaken. Homebrew is a different matter, I have looked into a lot of homebrew races and classes and am quite fond of the vast selection available, even within 4e. Once again though I want to pick a base point to build off of. As we get rolling I am sure our tastes will evolve, but I can't honestly tell you exactly what I prefer or even am looking for until I get some experience under my belt. Any help or advice in the matter would be highly appreciated!

I am free almost all times, except for sundays/mondays usually. I try not to make my adventures a train-track. If in a session we were to finish a dungeon we were doing experience etc would take time, and then I would ask you where you wanted to go, such as traveling somewhere else or the such. I would then build from there, so no time at all really. Would you be available for a trial run tomorrow evening?

That would be fine, give me a time and timezone (Of course that's needed with so many people all over on here)

We are in EST. Time of 9pm would be fine I think. If you want class specifics we would prefer a half-elf ranger, a half-orc barbarian, and (I know this isn't core but hopefully is ok, he was very specific lol) a goblin druid who wields spears. EDIT: Also a half-elf rogue, found another party member further in the thread.

Hey just a suggestion, it's not a D&D game, but there's an old game called Tunnels & Trolls that's great for just a starting RPG. Me and 8 other people late last year hit on the idea of trying to get a D&D game started, but it didn't really go that well. First of all our first two DMs had no idea what they were doing... but that's another story. D&D, 4th edition in particular, is not the best place to start, and T&T is really easy to get into. Only me and one other person in the group of 9 of us have ever played an RPG before but everyone is really understanding T&T pretty quickly. So that's my long-winded advertising pitch for Tunnels and Trolls. Try to get the 5th edition, it's what I use and there are a good amount of resources for it.

Hey thanks for the suggestion, I haven't heard of that game before. That is one thing I have issue with when it comes to d&d, it's hard to find a good compendium of information online, the wiki is oversaturated with homebrew content and hard to filter out, and other sources seem limited.

Yeah is a problem with 3.5, maybe try finding a cheap copy of the actual rulebook somewhere and just order it?

I actually did find a pdf copy, it's just tough delving through all of it. Would much prefer a wiki entry or somesuch lol

Hahahahaha yeah you gotta take the time and effort to go through the rules though, part of getting to the fun :P But yeah hope you guys can get into it. Don't get frustrated and give up like some people do, we could use some more people playing RPGs

I don't wish to be intruding, but would you be ok with letting a noob such as myself into this trial run? I've never been able to get into a D&D game and would really like to try and play a game or two. If not could I spectate to see how everything goes down?

Absolutely Michael, would love to have one more. Post up what general character you want or whatever. Still waiting on Aaron to see if he is cool with the time we set however.

I don't know much about the character building process but something like a Elf or Half-elf Rouge or Ranger would be my preference, or whatever would be good for a first timer.