Welcome to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a classic, one of the very first Mini-Campaigns that new DM's run. Heck, it's part of the starter set after all! The issue though, as with many other modules, is that it doesn't describe the best way to transform the contents of the book into an actual session. The Book-to-session conversion can be difficult. Between figuring out when things should happen, understanding motivations and even balancing encounters.

Well fortunately for you 99% of that work is done! Only a few things are really left:

  1. Consider the needs of your group. As you've heard or are about to hear a million times, every table is different. If you plan on combining this with a campaign you'll have to make tweaks here and there. (Bonus points if you include your players' backstory)
  2. These notes aren't meant to be end-all-be-all. Tweak to your heart's content and don't consider any of what's written to be set in stone. For me, having notes like this helps give me the confidence to go off the rails and follow along with what my players want. It helps me understand where things were meant to go and why. Having that understanding allows me to guide the players and create other new and interesting stories. These are all things that will come with experience though, so don't freak out and enjoy the journey!

Included in my posts are:

  • A Word document for each part of the LMoP with detailed notes for running a perfect session including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
  • Special PDFs for every encounter. This includes all the enemies' stat blocks organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
  • Additional PDFs for allies and commoners
  • A variety of maps for each part of the campaign
  • Spell lists for all relevant fights
  • Handouts for various spell scrolls throughout the campaign
  • A playlist for each part of the Mini-Campaign!

Without further ado:

Index:

The Lost Mine of Phandelver Index

Over 5 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,

Advent

  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Is this really a normal amount of prep for 5e? With Paizo adventures I've only ever read the adventure in advance, collated some bits of information that are spread through the adventure so I can forshadow them, and made some brief notes on NPC accents. I can't imagine a group of players for whom prewritten dialogue would help me in the game, and I just use the book/pdf for actually running rooms and events. This is closer to the level of prep I do for adding in extra content or doing entirely homebrewed adventures.