Anyone have any advice on stuff to buy for someone who is just starting to DM? I have the (awesome) Paizo Screen, a handful of PC-type mini's, and dice, obviously. Is there some sort of cheap starter pack of minis for all those random mooks you meet?
Ive always (meaning for the past year) played with friends where I could mooch, but now Im hoping to start hosting my own games with strangers at a game store...
Advice is appreciated, thanks!
I remember when I started, we played with Stratego pieces, shaped clay into monster-like blobs, even used extra dice. Minis and stuff are cool, but the main thing is to get people's imaginations going.
Anyone have any advice on stuff to buy for someone who is just starting to DM? I have the (awesome) Paizo Screen, a handful of PC-type mini's, and dice, obviously. Is there some sort of cheap starter pack of minis for all those random mooks you meet?
Ive always (meaning for the past year) played with friends where I could mooch, but now Im hoping to start hosting my own games with strangers at a game store...
Advice is appreciated, thanks!
A battlemat is nice:
And the magnetic combat pad is too (but it looks like the only ones in stock now are dinged, but discounted):
You're probably fine with just paper, pencils and what you already have, but a battlemat and the combat pad can make things go smoother.
Googledocs.
Use it to create a character sheet repository, campaign calendar, treasure inventory, house rule list, and anything else you want all of your players to be able to access easily.
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Googledocs.
Use it to create a character sheet repository, campaign calendar, treasure inventory, house rule list, and anything else you want all of your players to be able to access easily.
Pick up one of those "25/20/10" in one game sets, where it has checkers, chess, parchessi, etc... all in one box for really cheap.
You can use the pieces from that for NPCs/Monster. Best $10-$20 any GM that uses minis can ever invest in.
Then hit up your local Dollar store and pick up a pack of dinosaurs ( They actually end up being close to scale) and a pack of farm animals if you can find a good set. *** There is a chinese made dinosaur pack that incluseds a mini that is identical to the rustmonster from the 3.0 & 3.5 monster manuals***
Ok; make or get some DM screens; ask me why hehe.
a laptop can be very helpful to keep character sheets and details like initiative handy; otherwise lots of paper and pencils.
start looking at lots of pictures of jewelry and anythign that can be so called treasure; pc like a description of a fine peice of jewelry rather than 25 gp diamond studded gold necklase. Some people like a bit more.
I did some research on ancient foods and stuff; you can get from very old cookbooks or search around online; also; any cookbook of hunt and cook it and eat it; this will help give your Inns a better feel if they have some Oxtail soup or a plate of raccoon and taters with eel fritters on the side. Give your game some flavor.
all the old city books I, II and III and things like the old book of lairs and dungeon magazines are very good resources.
I also use a lot of dry erase markers and you can get a large board to draw on from Hobby Lobby or the like.
any permanent thing; use graph paper or draw it with any drawing program.
As an all purpose gaming board tool, I recommend these one inch plastic squares.
They are made of nice heavy plastic, are damned cheap, and can represent anything from mooks to terrain to spell effects to what have you. The fact that they're 1 inch square makes it easy to group them together to represent Large and larger creatures.
And as mentioned you'll probably want something you can use as a battle grid. I like the GameMastery flip maps, as they dry erase easily and fold up nicely. There's also Gaming Paper which looks pretty awesome. Or a red checkered vinyl tablecloth with 1 inch squares, or whatever.
What you really need is Imagination, some players, a gm; a pencil; several pieces of paper; and at least one set of dice; everything is cake after that; of course cake and other snacks are nice.
you probably want to codifiy some house rules as well; take your trash with you; set rules on language if you have any; tell your players to bathe if needed; toilet seat if needed; stuff like that; dont take anything for granted; remove ski mask and unload gun; stuff like that. Also; consider how peeps are gonna get there; do they all have their own ride; how are you going to handle when someone doesnt show up and what if that person drives others; what day your gonna play; what time the game ends for the night; when to call you to talk about the game (some people need strict calling rules believe it or not).
one think you want to check out is Lilith's npc database; there is a link around here somewhere and a thread on it; heck on that note; here are a couple very useful links for you.
http://www.crystalkeep.com/ just click on D&D d20 or any game..
http://www.dmtools.org/index.php
and to make fun of your players:
http://www.dorktower.com/
http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/index.htm
now if your a cool gm like me; hehe joking, more like can afford it, I bought all my players gaming tees from the dork tower site; since there your first players; maybe you want to comemorate it with a nice t shirt; like; "everything I ever need to know I learned from Gaming" or one of many others or maybe you want to wait for your One Year anniversary if your game is a success; also; you can get some really cool GM shirts there.
Always wear a very cool gaming related T shirt to run your game; also; I like to start before games with theme music or my patent line " As last we left off <modifier> adventurers were..." If then I use words like Interepid; Sniviling; Cowardly; noble; ect. Usually good for a laugh but more importantly; gets your players to stop the chit chat talk and pay attention.
oh; and roll dice mysteriously; dont need to mean anything; pick up random monster books and flip through them; players think your looking for wandering monsters and can get the cross talk cut down. Randomly ask for characters character sheets; stuff like that.
Oh; I always get a character sheet from every player and paper clip them to the inside of my gm screens so I can see everyone's sheets at once. I am not really into notebook computers; but am getting there.
you might want to be careful with miniatures; that can get out of hand pretty quick; but they can be helpful.
am curious; are you creating your own world; running one produced commercially; only doing dungeion adventures; thinking of a campaign; you have a lot of stuff to choose from.
Then hit up your local Dollar store and pick up a pack of dinosaurs ( They actually end up being close to scale) and a pack of farm animals if you can find a good set. *** There is a chinese made dinosaur pack that incluseds a mini that is identical to the rustmonster from the 3.0 & 3.5 monster manuals***
Neat little fact: Those chinese monster figures are where Gary Gygax got the idea for the rust monster in the first place.
am curious; are you creating your own world; running one produced commercially; only doing dungeion adventures; thinking of a campaign; you have a lot of stuff to choose from.
For now just Pathfinder Society, although I hope to run an AP and develop my own homebrew I've had in my head for a while eventually.
A plexiglass sheet from home depot, and a roll of gaming paper (http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/g/gamingPaper)
or a gamemastery flip mat (http://paizo.com/store/gameAids/gamingMats/steelSqwire/v5748btpy83yx&s ource=search).
It depends on how large your playing surface is.
A small metal dry erase board with magnetic tack pins (cheap at office supply) for player/round/combat tracker.
Any type of folder/binder for DM screen, and dry erase markers.
I recommend dry erase over wet erase.
Whatever you can afford or imagine to cover miniatures, altough paper miniatures from Steven Jackson games is a good start. If you can find them 25mm slotted plastic rounds bases can be used for the paper miniatures.