I homebrewed a heist one-shot for my friends who'd never played D&D — here's what designing for total beginners taught me
A few months ago I wanted to run a one-shot for a group of friends who had zero D&D experience. Everything I found online was either too mechanically dense or just didn't fit the vibe I was going for, so I ended up homebrewing my own adventure.
The main thing I focused on was removing complicated aspects for new players, instead of standard character sheets I made "Heist Dossiers" with built-in improvisation prompts, a simplified how-to-play section, and flavor text that gives each character an instant personality. The adventure itself is a prison break across 4 phases with a recurring villain who taunts the players via intercom throughout.
Since I knew that this would be my friends' first experience with anything to do with TTRPG's, running it in a way that prioritized fun was my number one goal, and it worked great.
Everyone had a blast and I've since cleaned it up into a proper product. Happy to answer any questions about designing for beginners! it's a genuinely interesting design challenge.
[Free download in comments]