The Dungeon Master

The Dungeon Master has the most that they need, and even that isn’t all that much. As the Dungeon Master there are two books that you need, plus a few other things. The two books are Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook and Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. There are a lot more books, but those are the two books that you need.

The Player’s Handbook is going to have all the options for your players as to how they can build their characters, or at least what they need to know for starting out in a very first game. There are additional books with more options, but those are just options, and you don’t need all of them to start, or really ever. The Monster Manual is going to give you a ton of things for your players to fight against and to build a campaign around. It’s really a great way to figure out what you are going to do in your campaign by just flipping through the book.

The last thing that only the Dungeon Master needs to provide, in my opinion, is character sheets. Now, not filled out ones, but ones for filling out for session 0. This doesn’t meant that they don’t need more, but it’s stuff that everyone will need. The character sheets are important because I’m not going to recommend that players have the Player’s Handbook, for me that is not an essential thing. So as the Dungeon Master, that person will have a copy of the character sheet they can make photocopies of, or you can find it easily online and print them.

What Does Everyone Need

I thought that I was going to split this between the players and the dungeon master, but really, the dungeon master just has more that they need to have before starting a game. So what do you recommend that everyone has?

Firstly, everyone should have their own set of dice. Personally, I probably have enough dice sets for 15 people comfortably, but that’s just me and a lot of other players who have been playing longer. When you start out, a single set of dice (should be 7 dice) is all that you need. It should have a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20, and percentile die in it (D4 = four sided die, D6 = six sided, etc). While you might need to roll some of the dice multiple times for things, you don’t truly need more than one set.

Next I think everyone should have a pencil, which you need for making your character, but also a notebook. The notebook, or paper, is for taking notes. It’ll be handy for character creation, but also for during the campaign remembering everything that is going on. For the players, they should be jotting down what they find interesting, what seems to be important plot points, etc. For the dungeon master, you’d be using it for keeping track of NPC’s, plot points you’re creating, and general recaps of what the players have done.

And really that’s about it that everyone needs to get going on a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

What I skipped

So, I do think it’ll be useful to talk about some of the things that I skipped as well and why I skipped them.

Why not the Player’s Handbook for the players or everyone?

I don’t think that the players really need the players handbook. It is nice to have at least an extra copy around for character creation and leveling up, but it isn’t needed. So if someone wants to spend the money on it they can, but you really just need one copy. Also, for new players, they often get stuck in the rule book looking something up during the game and not paying attention. So for a lot of people it detracts from the game instead of enhances it having their own copy.

And the Dungeon Master’s Guide for the Dungeon Master, why not that?

While the Dungeon Master’s Guide contains a lot of useful information, it can be overwhelming. What magical items are out there is interesting, but is a lot. How to create an NPC or a bad guy also interesting, but also can be done without it. I think personally it’d have been too much for me at the start. The information is really good, but it could lead to delays in starting playing because of trying to get your campaign “right”.

Finally, these are the physical things that are essential for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Things like being willing to try it, having a good attitude, having fun, and everyone else having fun, those are important as well. And I will talk about those coming up because they are important, in fact more important. Without what is above, you can play something close to Dungeons and Dragons, but your experience won’t be as full as if you started with all of those. Thankfully, you can make it a pretty cheap hobby with cheap dice and those few books.

What do you consider to be essential for starting playing Dungeons and Dragons?

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So, how do you pick what you want to use in a way that doesn’t make it seem like you’re just picking from the book at random or what looks like it’s the coolest?

One helpful tool is that in the Dungeon Master’s Guide they have different monsters and creatures split out by habitat, so you can go ahead and pick out what works for the area that you are in. If you are in the jungle, you’re probably not going to see a frost giant, if you are in a freezing cold mountain and there’s a dragon, it’s probably a white dragon. That’s one way to help keep things focused in, but what if you really want to pick crazy monsters from the book?

My suggestion there would be, instead of having an obvious story reaching over everything, be a group of big game hunters who are paid to go around and find these wild and exotic creatures. You could need to bring them back alive, or maybe someone really want to have the horns of a minitaur, the shell of a flail snail and the beak of a owlbear for their collection. It would be an interesting game to play, and if you have a group where sometimes people miss, it would be easy because you don’t need everyone there to play, you just need enough people to kill the beast (hopefully) and birng it back.

But what if you’re already in a game and you’ve bounced around the world and you have a big story going, but you want to bring in something that wouldn’t make sense?

You have a few options, maybe you have the creature get loose form a cargo ship or a zoo. You can try and fit the monster into your story some way, there are a ton of different options. For example, in Dungeons and Flagons, the group has faced off against human pirates, Yuan-Ti, goblins, hobgoblins, a red dragon, elementals, devils and/or demons, and are now facing off against a beholder. They’ve been hopping somewhat all over the globe, but each of the monsters had their part to play, including the hobgoblins who were mainly there to be a distraction.

Finally, what do you do but the monster is too powerful or too weak?

Goblins are puny, if any of the characters in Dungeons and Flagons were to attack a goblin, it would either be killed a single sho or they would use their second attack on a turn ot kill it. How do you make your goblins scarier? You bring them in large numbers. When each player has four goblins attacking them, that is scary, even if they can dispatch one per turn, they’ll still get attacked a minimum of six times. Or maybe you don’t think that would be that much fun, well, maybe you have the goblins be a scouting party and signal another group of goblins who are a distance away, after the adventuring party has finished off that first group and is starting to think about looting the goblins bodies, you bring in that second group.

But sometimes you really want them to face off against that one really strong boss, and that boss is supposed to be a goblin, but the toughest goblin in the book isn’t tough enough. My first option would be to have other goblins with him, but sometimes that doens’t work or that isn’t what makes sense for your story. The second option would be to find a creature that makes more sense to face off against the characters (aka. is stronger) and call it a goblin. They have, in the back of both monster books NPC stat blocks for different types of people. There is a necromancer back there, it doesn’t say that it’s a goblin necromancer, but you’re in charge of your game, so you get to decide. Grab that harder bad guy and pu them in front of the players. Then instead of describing your necromancer as a pale human with a guant face who is wearing dark robes, describe it as a goblin who has a staff and who has raised the zombie horde that you saw in the courtyard. He has dark tattoos of demonic symbols across his body, roll initiative. And there you have two characters who would be the same stat block, have the same skills, and might even have the same evil plan, but ones a goblin.

That’s an easy conversion, but sometimes conversions make less sense. You want a really strong brawler to come up and challenge your group of adventurers and take a swing at them in a bar but you don’t like any of the options in the back of the book. Well, depending on what level they are, look at an owlbear or bugbear or some other creature. Sure an Owlbear is a bear body with an owl head and has a bite attack, but just don’t use the bite attack, use the claw attack and call it punches. Simply by reflavoring the attacks and calling them something different, you can take on creature and make it into another.