If you are expected to bring a character you should definitely bring that. If you're going to make a character there you should come with an idea about the following things (but remain flexible, you idea may not be exactly what you end up with).
- Character name
- Character race (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling)
- Character archetype (loyal knight, scheming wizard, back-stabbing rogue, etc)
As far as rules knowledge, the Players Handbook (PHB) helps but it will speed things along greatly if you know these few simple rules.
- For most things you will attempt (including attacks) you roll a d20 (that is a twenty sided die), add a modifier, and compare it to a target number. If your total equals or exceeds the target you succeed (hit, pick the lock, whatever).
- You have abilities. Some you can use all the time, these are called
At Will. Some you can use only at intervals. These will be Encounter or Daily.
- You have hit points and healing surges. These represent how alive/tough you are. If you run out of hit points you start dying. You can use healing surges to regain your hit points in certain situations. A healing surge usually regains one quarter (1/4) of your total hitpoints, rounded down.
- We refer to dice by the number of sides they have, preceded with a d. A d4 means a four sided die. 3d6 means three six sided dice.
- When in doubt round down.
- The DM overrules the rules.
Most of all, remember you're there to have fun! The other players and DM should be willing and able to help you with the details
I think you'll want to go with the Chaos Scar series. This is a DDI set of adventures for low level characters that should get you through levels 1-5. It's not a campaign per se, more of a sandbox, but should be no problem to string together if you're an experienced DM. I ran some of it with my newbie group, before that group ended, I had planned to run all of it.
I started with the D&D Encounters Keep on the Borderlands adventure; however, the adventure as written is just combat encounter after combat encounter, so I stretched it out and chopped it up a bit. You may have to find it on ebay if you want a print copy, I ran mine from a PDF.
Interspersed in that adventure I ran other side adventures from the Chaos Scar series, of which there are 15 for levels 1-4, which you can find here (DDI Subscription Required): Chaos Scar
1A Stick in the Mud
1B Den of the Slave-Takers
1C The Brothers Gray
1D Death in the Pincers
1E The Tainted Spiral
1F The Lost Library
1G A Chance Encounter
1H Eyes in the Forest
1I Elves of the Valley
2A Sliver's Call
2B The Shrine of Glass-Spire Forest
2C Dead by Dawn
2D The Hammer Falls
3A The Crawling Fane
3B The Splintered Spring
4A Glowstone Caverns
The characters were based out of Restwell Keep, which is detailed here (DDI Subscription Required)
The map of the Chaos Scar is great and can be found here (Free, as a .jpg)
There are two good resources for Chaos Scar info, both D&D Groups are old and outdated, but good info is here and here (Free)
I really liked the background of all the adventures that I ran and those that I read. I was hoping to use more of them but we stopped after 2 levels unfortunately. If I ever run another newb group I would probably use this series again.
After what's listed in the first link there are the following adventures:
LVL Dungeon# Name
- 4 178 The Crawling Fane Chaos Scar
- 4 180 The Pillar Of Eyes Chaos Scar
- 4 182 Vanguard Tower Chaos Scar
- 5 181 The Slaver's Stone Chaos Scar
- 5-7 192 Scarred for Life Chaos Scar
- 6 183 The Radiant Morn Chaos Scar
- 6-8 193 Rumble in the Valley Chaos Scar
- 7 184 Head in the Clouds Chaos Scar
- 7 196 Reflections of Ruin Chaos Scar
- 7-9 189 Scarblade Chaos Scar
- 8-10 186 The Runecutter's Ruin Chaos Scar
- 8-10 190 Pit of Delirium Chaos Scar
- 8-10 197 Heart of the Scar Chaos Scar
I hope this helps!
Best Answer
Given the following assumptions:
My recommendation is to not actually start out with an adventure. It sounds like your primary intent here is to learn the combat system. In the back of the DMG, there are descriptions of how to build a random dungeon and how to build random encounters. If you and four of your friends can create an adventuring party, you may learn the combat system (in quite an entertaining way, I must say, having done so myself) through a random dungeon and random encounters in said dungeon. Someone may choose to control the monsters every round, and it's worthwhile to have the duty of controlling them rotate around the people who are willing: that way everyone can start modelling in their head how monsters think and operate.
Once you've gotten a handle on the monsters and combat, then is the time to run adventures. My recommendation would be to use the chaos scar adventures and encounters from DDI, as they represent much later adventure design and this design will be similiar to that run in D&D Encounters at a game shop. Once you've run through those, test your skills with a fourthcore run of the "FourthCore Weekly Grind" which can teach you really important lessons about manipulating and using your environment that can be quite applicable in an Encounters game.