So one of my players (who also is one of my co-workers) who is in my main Tuesday D&D game I run... his wife has two brother, and he himself has a brother, all of whom had been interested in playing D&D, but never have, knew nothing about it, etc. One thing they all had in common is they were familiar with the Dragonlance (
Chronicles tribology specifically) - and Dragonlance is a hair behind The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, for me, in favorites. So I asked if they'd be interested in me running a Dragonlance campaign that would take place, the same time frame the first Chronicles book takes place (
Dragons of Autumn Twilight). My thinking was, if they're all interested in the books and familiar - this will allow them to have some foundation. They wouldn't have to, for example, understand how my own D&D World (Kne'Urth) works.
After they created their character, selected traits and such, I wrote backgrounds for all of their characters:
https://sites.google.com/view/dragonlan ... authuser=0
We had a first session, last Saturday - and by the time it was over - everyone new to D&D was suddenly on Amazon looking to purchase their own dice (I'd brought my bag that has like 30 sets of dice). One of them even bought the Player's Handbook and a dice tray as well.
Because they all love Dragonlance, I took the session and wrote it out as a story (I injected a lot, a LOT of dialogue that didn't actually get said during the game) to make it flow and feel like a story. But my plan was two fold - when I let them see the story segment of that session - it gave them even more ideas how to talk and banter with one another and step more into character.
For anyone interested, it's here:
https://sites.google.com/view/dragonlan ... authuser=0