Hey there r/DnD! I've been playing D&D for a few years now (4e over the summer of 2009, 3.5 silly campaign 2009-2010, and mostly-serious 3.5 2011-2013), and am finally making my own 3.5e campaign!

However, I have a small fear when it comes to DMing: immersion. I've considered using ambient music and, perhaps in some cases, voice changer software (if I can find software of decent quality), but am looking for more ideas! I especially want to do a quality job, because as far as I know, only one of my players in my campaign (I have 2 confirmed players, one on the fence, and I'm hoping to get a 4th or more) has any D&D experience (and a very limited amount at that), and would love to give my new players a wonderful introduction to tabletop RPGs.

Any stories, suggestions, ideas, or more that you have to share would be magnificent, as my creativity is being drained heavily by world construction, deity generation, and storyline making!

Edit: Wow, thank you for all the awesome suggestions guys! :D I am going to be investing in a battlemat and minis when I get the chance (Nothing like a pre-made grid to put my maps on, and distinct units), and some of these personal-touch ideas are things I'd never even thought to try! I must admit, I'm a tad jealous I didn't think of these ideas myself :P

No worries about me getting too focused on immersion though, guys; my core concern when setting up for any campaign's meet-up week will, of course, be providing all the material I need - core storyline progression stuff to cover two meetings-worth (you never know when the players could accidentally bypass a chunk of story), maps for any of that, a few random encounters just-in-case, monster stats, etc. This happened to be a problem of our last DM - he didn't prepare for random events terribly well, such as our swashbuckler picking a fight with a renowned duelist our DM made the name up of on-the-fly, and, as a consequence, the entire character sheet of; rather not be that guy, if it can be helped.

Simply put, though, when I sought immersion tips, I was mostly seeking ideas like the battlemat, the poetry (could be VERY useful for wandering bards as tales of my party spread - recognition brings a smile to many faces!), the sound effects....Generalized things that can be useful in a wide variety of situations, rather than for this one very specific moment at this particular time, y'know? It's why I had the voice changer idea - a generic spectral or demonic voice has plenty of use in a campaign where one deity consorts with demons and another happens to run the undead capital of the world.

Still, thank you so much for the help, all of you! If anybody else has ideas, please, fire away! I'll be throwing some replies in a sec with some specifics on peoples' ideas!