After my group finishes Ghosts of Saltmarsh in a few sessions, I will be DMing my first legit campaign and the rest of the group decided on WD: Dragon Heist. I have Dmed one beginner campaign for some of my wife’s family, but it was mostly theater of the mind and messing around without much weight on strict rules. It also was fairly linear, because I was worried I’d mess something up by deviating too much from the story.
Anybody have tips on how to keep the game going smoothly without accidentally railroading? I have tweaked a few parts of the module to fit the groups play style and I think I have things set up to be a fun world, I am just worried about improvising if(when) the party undoubtedly tries some silly hoodrat nonsense.
If they don’t want to explicitly join them I still had the factions offer quests to them. Have the factions contact them on the reputation they gained from saving Renear neverember and helping Volo, as well as the incident at the Yawning Portal. Now that they own a tavern they are easy to find and contact too which is nice.
Chapter 2 basically only consists of faction quests and building the tavern, nothing else. So unless you want to skip the chapter then you gotta run some faction missions. Chapter 2 is some of the best parts of the adventure imo so I wouldn’t skip it unless you want to shorten the campaign a lot for time reasons.