If you’re new to Dungeons & Dragons, or you want to introduce the game to newcomers, using the new starter set, Heroes of the Borderlands, is a great way to introduce them. Along with many things, the set contains three mini-adventures: Caves of Chaos, Keep on the Borderlands, and Wilderness.
Each of these adventures focuses on one of the pillars of D&D: combat, roleplaying, and exploration. Once they’re all done, the party will ideally reach level three, where things start to get interesting, as subclasses will come into play. Why stop them? If everyone had a great time, you can get this same group and start another adventure. Which adventure is a great option to continue though?
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Lost Mine Of Phandelver
Or Phandelver And Below: The Shattered Obelisk
Okay, so there aren’t many adventures that start at level three, and most will require some rebalancing. Still, because the starter set has many common-esque monsters for beginners, you can continue the trend by starting Lost Mine of Phandelver, or its longer version, Phandelver and Below.
You can skip the first mission and do a seamless transition as they reach Phandalin, or you can even use monsters they faced in Heroes of the Borderlands and have them transition to Phandalin, so you can escalate the threat as you go.
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Dragon Of Icespire Peak
Another Option For Phandalin
You can keep the goblins and criminals in Dragon of Icespire Peak when you transition your players here. However, instead of goblins and criminals, you can have your players facing down a dragon. Coupled with whatever creatures are a problem for the city because of the dragon, and you’ve got a great next step for the party to tackle.
This adventure goes from levels one to six, so your players will be a bit stronger when they begin at level three. Still, that’s a perfect excuse to do side activities on a map that is good for it, or just increase the number or difficulty of the enemies until they’re on par with the intended level.
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When A Star Falls
From Quests From The Infinite Staircase
When A Star Falls is an adventure that is a bit heavier on exploration, and it starts at level four, so you can even toss some extra dangers and give your players an extra level up in between stories. It’s from the anthology book Quests From The Infinite Staircase.
This adaptation of an older adventure is a great choice if your players enjoyed the exploration aspects of D&D and want to go deeper with them. It also allows them to explore without tuning the difficulty up too much, as you would with a larger adventure—baby steps before the big adventures.
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The Winged God
From 2024’s Dungeon Master’s Guide
The 2024’s Dungeon Master’s Guide has a few short samples of adventures, mostly to teach newer DMs how to DM. If that’s your case, running these sounds great. If not, you can still use some of them in between adventures as you see fit, to help your players gain a quick level after Heroes of the Borderlands.
For instance, if you want to run an adventure that starts at level four (like the previous one), you can run this adventure as a one-shot and level them up. We’re recommending the Winged God because it’s a level three adventure, but you can pick other adventures as well.
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The Forge Of Fury
From Tales Of The Yawning Portal
Tales of the Yawning Portal is another anthology book with interesting stories. Normally, we’d recommend the Sunless Citadel just for how good it is, but it’s a level one to three adventure, so you’d need to rebalance things.
Thus, we’ll suggest another great pick from the book that starts at level three, The Forge of Fury. If your players are enjoying the options from the Yawning Portal, you can run the other adventures from this book afterward to keep hte campaign going.
5
Curse Of Strahd
A Great Spooky Campaign
Admittedly, going from Heroes of the Borderlands to Curse of Strahd is a massive tone shift, so instead of just doing it, we recommend suggesting the idea first and seeing if your players are invested in a darker story.
So, why are we recommending an adventure with such a shift? Two reasons. First, it’s often considered the best-designed D&D adventure, and with good reason. Second, its starting level is three, so you can actually go from one to another with ease.
4
Vecna: Nest Of The Eldritch Eye
Another In-Between Adventure
This one is another short adventure that starts and ends at level three, so it can also work as a bridge between Borderlands and a higher-level adventure. It’s simple and straight to the point, so it won’t require a lot of commitment from beginners, either.
Still, the main reason why we’re suggesting this one is that it’s a perfect way to introduce the mere concept of Vecna. He doesn’t show up here, which is fair considering the party’s level, but you can introduce his followers, working as a starting point to potentially introduce him as a high-level villain once your players are strong enough.
3
Candlekeep Mysteries
Fun And Easy To Get Into
As stated previously, anthologies are an easy solution for your situation, as you can just get one whose level matches the party and run it. Thus, Candlekeep Mysteries is another great option for you.
You can pick the third-level adventure, the Book of Raven, and adapt it to your world. Alternatively, picking a level two or four adventure isn’t the worst thing, as a one-level difference isn’t going to be that tough (or that easy) for the players.
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Keys From The Golden Vault
Heist Time
Here is the same idea, as we’ve got another anthology collection for you, so you can just get the adventure that is on their level (Reach for The Stars, in this case) and run with it.
However, what makes this adventure (and the others from this book) worth checking is how they operate. Here, the adventures are heists, which is something very unique you can pull during a D&D game and offer some variety.
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Ghosts Of Saltmarsh
A Pirate’s Life For Me
This adventure is also a good one for exploration, as you’ll give the party a ship and let them go to different places with it. Sadly, this one doesn’t focus on naval combat despite the topic, but you can find easy homebrew ideas to implement that online, should you want to.
Regardless, it’s easy to connect your level-three party here by having them deal with the smugglers straight away and get access to the ship quickly. They might be overpowered at the beginning, but it won’t be a big issue.
By giving them this ship, you can even make them travel to locations from other anthology adventures, even if that requires you to adapt their location a bit. Then, you can make an epic series of adventures solely based on anthology stories, or you can elaborate on an overarching story that connects all these events.
- Original Release Date
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1974
- Player Count
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2+
- Length per Game
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From 60 minutes to hours on end.
- Age Recommendation
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12+ (though younger can play and enjoy)
- Franchise Name
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Dungeons & Dragons
- Publishing Co
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Wizards of the Coast