New DM? Here's What You Need

0:20 Hello Advent, Welcome to the next episode. I'm Jason Bertizo from Jim Crocker. I'm Joe McCall, and we talked about DANDIE topics, near and dear role players. Hearts today's episode. We are talking about new DM resources. If it's your first time dming or if you're a new DM, if you've got a few games under your belt, what do you need? What's what's going to get you from never dming before into being the next great And nobody is more uniquely qualified to chime in on this topic than Jim Crocker. Yeah, I've been dming for a long time and one of the principal things that we did at the store was trying to get new players interest in the game, and you know, after they'd been playing for a while, get them to DM because we needed we needed other dms into the store certainly, and that's also just you know, it's the natural progression, and we want to make sure everybody was well prepared and going to have a good time when they did it. So I see a lot of scribbled notes here that so I want to know, what what do you think new dms need to know, need to have what's your round level? Advice for getting started. One of the things that you talked about when we talked about when we did our first episode was that one of the reasons you like to run the games that you like to be a host. And so that's one of the things to keep in mind is that as the DM, you're essentially the host of that social activity that's that's going on. And so one of the things that I'll see people will sometimes kind of complain about, and like the Reddit threads and stuff

1:52 like that, is, you know, why players expect me to do this for them, expect me to do that for them, And there's actually a certain amount of stuff that it is very hole for the players to expect you to do for them, especially if they're new and they don't know what's going on with the game. And so there's some things that made We're going to say some things here that may seem real basic, but because we may be talking to people that have literally never run a game of D and D before, or even if you have, you might not have thought of this. We're just going to go kind of go down the whole list, and I think the first thing that we want to start with is if you are running D and D, you should own the three core books, the Players Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master's Guide. You should have actual physical copies of those that you can reference at the table and that you can hand around as you need to, that you can flip through as you need to. Ebooks are great having those in PDF. That's fantastic for you know, reading in between games. But I am a firm believer that it's not a great way to run the game at the table, especially if you're all I mean, it's one thing, and I guess the other thing we should say here is that we're talking about sitting around a table, face to face, physically playing a game in the same space, as opposed to being online where you can have you know, you can form a lot of that out to World twenty or whatever platform it is that you're using. To you very very fair distinction. Yes, yeah, if I could please, I would just say that the one advantage of the ebook or if you're using D and

3:23 D beyond, is that it's searchable. So if you have ineffable yeah, and so control affable for your Windows people out and also even on the app and search any of the books that you own. So that's the one advantage that didn't have. But I agree you should have the physical books as well. Yeah, you, and you can leave bookmarks on a PDF also, But there's something having something about having a physical hardcover with a bunch of post end note flags flapping off the side of it, color coded to whatever class you need or whatever being giving you the problems the most. But also because things happen with technology, right, how many times have I been like my computer's about to die and had to plug it? So every game, yes, every single one, I mean, And I think the single biggest advantage is, especially if you're the DM, there's a lot of stuff you're going to be referring to regularly that players aren't necessarily going to. If you know that that one player like has three spells that they always use but they never remember what they are, you can mark those in your book. And one of the things you can do with the physical book is you can hand it across the table to someone. You can say, Okay, while they're taking the turn, I'm going to have you read about this class feature and here it is. It's the book is open to you, and you know like I'm not saying, you know, don't have those resources available, but I do think that I mean, and the other problem of course with those devices is yeah, searchable, but then you have the whole rest of the Internet on that as well. Just just incredibly difficult, even for the most strong

4:58 wild players when it it's not their turn right to pay attention to what's going on in the game. And that's the most important thing that you can do, especially with new players, is to get them used to the idea that there's going to be times when it's not their turn, but that doesn't mean that they don't have to stay focused on the game, be attentive to the other players. Like one of the basics is teaching good gaming habits and knowing what those gaming habits are and you know, trying to kind of get those across. And I feel like having those paper copies of the game, not everybody needs to have them, you know, everybody at the table doesn't need to have the player stand book and stuff like that. But being able to, like I said, being able to hand it around that that's like, I feel like that's really important. That's a really good point. Yeah, yeah, I've known at least one or two the m's I think two that I know personally that in their travel bag have like five or six copies of players handbooks. You can totally do that. And they're they're like, if you don't mind getting like a used copy somewhere there, you can get them dirt cheap. Uh. Yeah, so they had them in paperback though, you know that. I will say something that is that is something that Pathfinder did really right is having like the pocket versions of it Essentials or whatever they were that they did. Yeah, like the twenty five dollars, like like the slightly yeah sorry, I mean but but they called it something like that.

6:19 But yeah, it was like it was like the smaller trim size, like yeah, yeah, Cobal Press is good about that too. But there's Home of Beasts. They'll do the pocket version. That's all same information as a small paperback group. But just again, just hey, you know, while it's these three other people's turns, why don't you read a little bit more about that thing that you're trying to Yeah? Uh, and you know, and and if you're going to run the game, and I know, and I understand that people have different economic situations and stuff like this, but like I said, you can find them used. You can find them, you know, you know, you can find somebody that's getting rid of theirs and you know, and and get it from them. But you really should have if you're going to run the game, the phis copies of what you're going to have, you know, of those books to have at the table for a game. That is like when you can start comparing this to like video, it's like, you know, I was, I was looking at buying a PlayStation last night. It's like five hundred dollars for the PlayStation, sixty bucks for the game. Let's let's forget the console for a second, but sixty bucks for the game. You know, a book that you can get used for like twenty thirty bucks or even less is a pretty low bar for entry. You amortize that over the total number of D and D games you run. That's it's an incredibly good value for your entertainment price per game.

7:30 And that's something that's something we we harp on in the board game world the other thing. So so let's kind of keep going down the list. A few other few things I recommend is, especially if you've got new players, have a couple of sets of dice for yourself and make sure that when you show up at the table, you have a set of dice for every layer. Some of them are gonna, you know, some of them are going to get super into it and have eight or nine sets of their own, like right from the jump. Some people are eight or nine. Those are rookie numbers. Yes, yeah, those numbers up son, Yeah, but uh, but some people are going to forget them. Some people are gonna, you know, be coming into the game straight from work and they're like, I didn't have time to get last last night. Last night forgot I will say now as somebody who is providing the game for everyone else, specially with new players who aren't sure they want to do it. You know what's really cheap to buy dice? Yes, so I keep with me.

8:20 I keep both of these things, and they're in my backpack right next to me. Like these are one hundred percent true things I keep in my bag. I not only have a huge bag. I forget who makes this bag. It's awesome. It's like it's divided into sections. I have them sectioned out by dice. There are forty full sets of dice in this bag. Yeah, and whoever needs them, grab it. If you're casting a fireball, got to get a handful. If if you're sneak attacking, grab a handful. Sometimes you just have the one set that you were, that you that you got, and you need a whole bunch. And I don't want to watch somebody roll the six in front of me eight times. Plus there's nothing more satisfied than that that that chuck alaka of eight dice in your and as a DM, terrifying your player bad amount of dice. Another thing that I got side note, I was able to I had a level three one shot that I was running and I quit on the inflict wounds against one of my players, and I had that handful of sixty ten. It was to the point where my other player took a video of me just making the little dull chuck a lucka sounds and yeah, I killed him. So but also so that's one thing I keep on me is that those were communal dice.

9:22 Anyone can borrow them, they go back. I also are very cheap. Bought a lot of maybe eight or ten complete sets with pouches, and I keep those in my bag and they didn't cost me much. I think, I think I spent maybe ten twelve dollars on these, and it's just just they sit aside. These are not my dice, These are not communal dice. I don't have a player who's playing for the first time and they had a good time. That's my gift to them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we talked on the first episode about creating that experience for new players and like, if I created experience for you, here's your souvenir. If you want to like get into the hobby, please let me gift you the most important part of that of that first hurdle and you are now at die Scotland and I'm sorry for ruining your life, but I love gifting people.

10:07 Sure, that's great, yea, yeah, yeah, two bucks. So one of the other things that you can do is make sure that you've got a big stack of preprinted character sheets ready to go for everybody. There may be like if somebody gets killed in the middle of adventure and you need to you know, and they need to do a new character having those handy ready critical perhaps if they took forty eight points from a inflict critical wounds, yes, but just to have like like and it's one of those things that you don't necessarily realize that you need until you need it, and just having those handy ready to go all the time. You know, I'm a believer in for new players to think about holding their character sheets for them at the end of the game, have them give the character sheets back to you, and you give them out with every game, because that prevents that problem of like I said, I just came from work, I forgot my character sheet.

11:03 I didn't. You know, it doesn't mean that like they can't work on them between games or something like that. Like if you trust them and we've kind of established that what's going on, you can do that. But but I really think that you know, taking those sheets, putting them in some sheet protectors have a little notebook, well, you know, where you keep all those characters in between games. For new players, that's a smart thing to do because then then you're going to make sure everybody's got their character and you don't run into that, oh we need to take a half hour while somebody recreates their character or they're like furiously scribbling in between other people's turns and stuff like that, which is, by the way, yes, and that was one of them. So my first game was a part of the starter set. We kept everything in the box, and we need to level up our characters at the end of the session or at the beginning of the next one. That time was always built in. Yeah, and and like, and that absolutely does not prevent people from doing that lonely fun thing of like pouring through the player sandbook determine what their next is going to be and stuff again, and they can jot stuff down and if they want to have their own second copy of that character sheet, that's great, totally do that.

12:05 A little bit of redundancy never a bad thing. But to hang on to those and to make sure you've got those extra blanks, that's just you know, that's kind of basic supplies of the game. And I mean this is super basic, but make sure you got enough pens and pencils for everybody at the table. Jim, you are now holding one of the pens that I keep aside just for d and d yes. That is add pen. And this is a Pilot G two, which is like one of the best only correct that anyone should ever buy. This podcast brought to you by Pilot. I wish I love these, Yeah that I bought a I bought a twelve pack of that exact pan. They're my favorite. Yeah, you get it on Amazon for like five bucks. Is the medium the medium size for the bold myself, but this is the medium bould or medium and then though it just needs to get this we can agree. I prefer both myself, but this is the medium. I bought the extra ten pack just to keep my bad pack just for D and D. Also, there were all the same.

13:00 I know their mind. I'll just grab them at the end. Blue ink not black is if we do a black and white photocopy, I want to know what is the original one? What is what has been written? Yeah, yes, that is. That's been my move for for years and years now, with all sorts of things pre dating D and D for my life, all always blue always, and then I keep a red pen for myself in the case I need to correct somebody's characters. Big ass stack of index cards. That's the other thing that I believe in that that comes from the to some extent, that comes from the indie gaming thing where where we do a lot of we lot to write a lot of stuff down on index cards, brought down on the table. If you've got you know, but you can use that for anything NPCs, You jot their name down, a couple of character traits, you throw it down in the middle of the table.

13:46 Anytimes somebody says I need scratch paper or you're keeping track of you know, hit points for your monsters and stuff like that. I do initiative on the index cards. I just write the initiative number like everybody's I keep a stack of index cards that has that I keep kind of permanently that has a character the character's name on it, and then I just jot down the initiative number. I put them in order shuffle them around. If somebody decides that they're going to go later, I just move to the back of the stack and just you can use them for just about everything. I like to get the kind that are lined on one side and blank on the other. Oh yeah, And you can also get those in a pack where you get like five different colors, and then you can use those for you know, yellow for monsters, red, you know, blue for players, however you want to do that. But just having a stack of those in that bag along with those pens and pencils, and that's pretty much everything you need to kind of just like run the game at a basic level. The index cards is actually the first thing you mentioned so far that I don't have in my bag.

14:43 Yeah, I consider that dreessential. Yeah, I'm gonna by them like I'm a as soon as you guys see my house. I know a lot of people use them for initiative and even like if you if you use the screen right, I think like fold them in the put them in order, stuff like that, all that kind of thing. One of the things I like to do is to make sure that everybody has either a little like half full of index card as a table tent in front of them that has their character name on it, so that when you look around the table and a cute little drawing. Of course, you can put a cute little drawing if that's what you want, you know, but it might say, you know, whatever, what's your what's your barbarian? There? Corn Gar? You got corn Gar the blameless you know, human barbarian on your little table tent.

15:24 Or to literally get those hello my name is stickers and have people just slap them right on their teeth. Oh my god, that would really coming fantastic because I definitely stumble and these are people I play with all the time we used to do that. We would do so when we did big events at the store. It was a little different when we were doing the ongoing games and kind of people got to know who everybody's character was. But even then I made sure I did the table tents. But yeah, we did a big event where like it was a you know, like a book release, or we were doing one of our like you know, eight hour kind of mega games, we would just get to just get a stack of the those stickers and just hello, my name is you know that's going on my shopping list right now? Brilliant. Yeah, Well, we play on zooms.

16:07 It's so easy. Okay, everybody, just update your your zoom names to their character names. Because I am not memorizing your character names. I'm never going to call you by your real name. So get those updated please, to the point where it became my bult name for a while. So like I'm getting on like actual calls with clients, you're having a job interview. Who's Cobo? Yeah, And I've got that thing where because I play the multiple indie games online. I jumped into my Star Trek game the other day, but I had a you know, an Aliens Nostromo background. So I got crossing the streams. They kicked you out. I had the one where I was I was a d M and then get on a call with the client like why did I say dungeon daddy? I tell my players, think players, I am no longer dungeon daddy. I am your tabletop.

16:56 Yeah there you go, you go. Wow. I guess the only other thing that I would say for like like basic, basic, if you're not messing around with with miniatures, with maps, with any of that kind of you know that stuff that kind of bumps to, you know, your investment up to the next level. Something to roll dice in. It can be a fancy like like feltline dice tray, it can just be you know, a little cardboard box. What's something that the players can toss the dice in that will keep them from rolling off the table. And I guarantee you that will save you ten to fifteen minutes of game time catching Yeah exactly, and you know and oh man, it was twenty when it hit the ground, Like yeah, no counts on the table. Sorry that. But but to have a little something that people can roll dice into. I know you said you use one of those little dice dice drop towers. I have a large dice tower that I three D printed that looks awesome. Yeah, and if I can find the STL file for it, and maybe we'll linked in the show notes. I also have a much smaller dice tower that folds up pretty small. Yeah, and I like this one. It's magnetic, It puts itself together, it folds. You could fit a whole set of dice in it while it's closed, which I like. I would recommend a rubber band on if you're doing that. But I got this one because it's small.

18:14 Not only does it travel nicely, but when we play online, I could put a camera on it. And and because it's a small space, the dice really filled the screen. It looks great on camera because I had a larger dice tray for a while and the dice were so small in the frame that I wanted something smaller. And also the you mentioned the felt lines dice prays. I have the heck sagonal ones yeah together yeah, yeah, they are totally flat, all six of them stacked up takes a less than an interest space in my bag. Inexpense I bought. I bought a six pack I don't remember how much I spent on it, but it was not a lot. In fact, I've bought several six packs. We were playing the game once a couple of years ago, Joe. It was one of the first times you and I played together, and I bought a four pack and I just they were cheap enough. I'm like, hey, I'm going to give them to all the players, and this is just my my little hello on looking before we're playing with you guys, little gift. But it solves a number of problems because, like it keeps dice from rolling off the table.

19:06 It means dice get rolled in a place where everybody can see what the results of the role are. And one of the things that we found at the store, especially for those those dice towers that we're talking about, was anybody that's neurotypical that has trouble with you know, just kind of tossing the de to have it land in front of them where they wanted to for whatever reason, just powers make it a lot easier. We had a couple of kids that were on the autism spectrum that like that was the best thing that they could just drop the die in there. It would tumble down and they'd get a result, and like we didn't have to worry about anybody getting upset because they were throwing their dice off the table or anything like that. And so it's very very satisfying rattling sense. Even with one die. My brother's on a spectrum, it has a very bad sha hands shocking from that would be great for him. Just a quick search. Those are like between sixteen and twenty dollars for a six pack of those hexagonal I keep the six pack in my bag and when I run store games, they are snapped together, sitting at all the places with pens and paper and the communal dice dice bag in the middle, and by the time a single player walks in the table, looks like we are already The same thing also happens at our home games that you host. I'm a host, all right, So I guess if we start talking about the next level of investment, if you're going to be running games, and you're going to be regularly running games, don't be afraid.

20:30 And this is a little kind of more general DM advice, don't be afraid to run pre published adventures, especially if it's your first campaign or series of games. Totally. You do not have to come up with some epic thing where you make it all up yourself. You can just do a little bit of connective tissue that help those pre published adventures run together. So get yourself a printed copy of it, even if you're running it off of a PDF or something like that, printed out so that you've got the monster stats there you and then grab that piner pencil market right the heck up. Don't worry about just like writing in it, cross things out, put your notes right in the margins, all that kind of stuff. Have that paper right in front of you. I think if you have the right kind of players, then you're running the game openly and everybody's collaborating. You don't need to have a DM screen. You can if you want to, but I think like if you if you want it, it should be because it's got information on it that you're going to refer to regularly. It's fairly easy if you want to, you know, conceal information to have a little We talked about having a little trade table off to the side or something like that. But for the most part, you know, if you're just kind of running and keeping the game going, you don't have to worry too too much about things being secret because that that screen can also I mean it's also a barrier and it takes up a lot of space on the tape. It does, it does, you totally can do it. But I just want to make sure everybody knows it's not like essential to running the game. It's not a thing you have. Yeah, it is nice for the information I use it, yeah, constantly, for the amount of branded screen that comes with the set

22:02 of three Core books. Has a lot of excellent information on the on the back of it that saves me from looking up a lot of things. There's a couple of things that I still have to look up that comes up pretty often, and I'm surprised not on there. I think I can't think of any of these post It's on there as well. Yeah, of course, and especially for things like past perception, I'll have the characters listed passive perceptions so I can have that at a glance. Yeah, that's character stuff. Yeah, I'm being mechanics stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I have a wooden DM screen that I had made. The back of it is totally blank, but it does have magnets on it. Yeah, so I can I can get I can print those specifically what I need, pin the magnet to it, sly flourish I think. Actually, yeah, offers those online. Yeah, and you can get the ones that's like three panels that you can slide and it half by eleven piece of paper into and stuff like that, and all of that is great, and if you're going to use the screen, then post it's become one of those essential office supplies that you want to.

22:51 Like, if you're using the screen, absolutely you should have your export de cards with tape and magnets, yeah, or some way to attach those index cards. The other thing that you can that are pretty great if you're going to be using stuff like that is colored paper clips. Color coded paper clips, either like little whatever, like little banana clips or like actual paper clips, because then you can you can make a little thing where you can make an initiative slider or you can have you know, use those to indicate conditions and things like that. If you're flipping through your index cards, you know, anybody that's got a green paper clip, that means they're paralyzed or you know, like yeah, that kind of stuff. Colored binder clips is good for that too. You can just go right to the top of your a DM screen if you're using one, or if you are printing out your PDF for that day's adventure, you can use them to make a binder out of it, a color coding them for the same reason. So you have your the index card with each character's ac passive perception on it and their name because I'm going to forget it. And then you can use the color codes for ever poison and its usion, etc. Or whatever else. And while we're talking about printing out PDFs, A big fan of spending a couple extra bucks to buy a few reams of free three whole punch paper that you can put into your printer. Which, again some of this stuff may sound very basic, but if you're not used to it or not familiar with it, you print out that PDF, you can throw it right into a three ring binder.

24:10 Then it's easy to flip through. You can take out the bits that you need, put in the bits that you need as you go. I instid, I just spent a couple of dollars on the three whole punch and you know, get it when I need it instead of having changed paper over. You can do that too, But either either one whereas or actually for the one shot of ventures, I just use the the plastic with the three rings on them by the paper, the paper sleeves. Oh yeah, yeah, Like page protectors do that too, Yeah, if you don't mind the work of sliding them in there, because the great thing about putting them in page protectors is then when they're in the page protectors, you can take notes using dry erase markers. Yes, and you know, and and and then you're not marking up that that document use again. Yeah, yeah, especially if you're running the same scenario over and over again. And this is kind of a lot you're gonna you're gonna find a lot of my advice is for like store level dos that are running the same thing over and over. Yeah, because I get I get a lot of mileage yet out of the one shots that I find. And if you don't mind spending a couple extra bucks on your index cards, you can go to Amazon or Staples or any of your office supply places and get laminated dry erase index cards which will have and the ones that I have are blank on one side with a grid on the other. Wow, which is real nice because then you can find the lap exactly. Yes, if that's what you want to do. But they're great because then you can, you know, you just like like I said, you throw them out on the table, you write down the name of that NPC, they leave the shop, you just wipe it off of there and you can reuse them as you do. That's great, that's cool. I didn't consider. Yeah, comes a little plastic case with a little you know,

25:42 dry race marker in there. Hello Adventurers, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, the absolute best thing you can do to support us is to subscribe so you'll be notified when new episodes are released. You can also leave us a review five stars. Of course, that will help us get seen by more D and D players and more than anything else, just tell your friends about us. If you like what we're doing here that there's a good chance that your DM or your players will enjoy it too. And you don't need to loop gold to do any of that. We appreciate your listening. Now back to the show. So if you're going to take it to the next level, and do you know maps minis that kind of stuff. It is very easy to spend an infinite amount of money, extremely easy and that's like just incredibly. I don't think infinite even begins to describe how much money you could drop on this. Yeah, you start buying like the blind box sets of minis and things like that, and they're amazing. It's fantastic and you have a lot of fun with it. Agree, But if you just want to have enough of the basics to run kind of whatever you want to run, what I recommend folks do is you get a single large battle map, like something you kind of unfold on your table.

26:56 Chessix makes them. There's a whole lot of generic companies that make them on the chessis one I see all the time, Amazon and stuff like that. And typically those are going to be like, if it's a vinyl rollout mat, it's going to be wet for race markers that you use on that. If it's something that is like laminated paper, you can use wet ord dryer race markers on that. But you get yourself a big mat that is kind of the basic thing that you can use all the time, or you can get I mean, if you've got room and you're hosting at your house, you can get kind of easel pad sized one by one inch square like big pads that will either tear off or I mean some of them actually come with the like the post it sticky across the top, which means you can draw your map out in advance and then slap it up on the wall so that people can see what's going on with it, whether and then whether you're going to add to it, you know, you know, right on it as you go or not. That's the thing you can do. But you can also just lay that down on the draw on it as you go.

28:02 And then I recommend you know, you've got your set of pens that you can use, get it in you know, like four or five colors, so we can have you know, blue as the water and red as the lava, and you know green is where the forest is, stuff like that. And then I really recommend just from Watsa. Watsa does three dungeon pile sets and you can find those fairly cheap. But yeah, I have a few things like that. There's the oaks from books from Lake battle Mats that have like all the battle mass built into them. There's a dry erase, they're all dry erasable. There is a plank white grid on there that you can use for really anything and draw it out as you need. But that's that's kind of getting a little more. Yeah. I have other battle mats though, they'll sometimes they'll be blank, or they'll be like forest on one side, yeah, like ice on the other or something like that. So they'll give you a yeah, two different things. The other thing too was it doesn't have the one by one grid, but I've seen it used.

28:57 It's just a dry erase or that. You can totally do that with just kind of draw to show you in relation kind of where you are and if you're not as worried about the specifics of it. Yeah, the life fact that I heard go to the dollar store, get yourself from wrapping paper and a lot of wrapping paper has the one grid on the back. Flip it over. Sure, Yeah, that totally works. The butt to draw, I guess not with a mark Yeah, you have to be with a marker. But this is like if you're like experimenting with minis and you're not really sure there's a direction you want to go if you want if you're not sure, if you want to stick with theater the mind or not. This is a very cheap way to try it. And this is where if you're lucky enough to have a fancy dining room table that has a glass top, you can lift the glass top, put the grid underneath it, and then and then move the minis around and stuff like that. Just remember Jim Crocker, do that with your parents house. You don't you don't want to actually draw on the glass tabletop. This is your map is already ready to go.

29:57 If you're going to do that piece of christ make sure that they're dry erase markers. Yeah, but you start getting emails about people with their sharpiets. No, no, that coup parents. But you can also do that with a like a cheap piece of Plexi on your regular table as well. I mean, and this is this is like advanced level stuff. But I'm a big fan of those tiles because the tiles are a big set of like dungeon features, like dungeon corridors and you know, town squares and wilderness settings and stuff like that. They're modular, so you got like a little cup hoops of trees or something like that. Those battle matt books are okay, but a lot of times you're going to look at that map and you're going to go, that's super cool. I'm going to use it twice in the entire campaign. But those modular tile sets you can kind of do whatever you want with them, arrange them however you want. And like when I ran in the store, I ran for ten years on a basic battle mat and the three tile sets, the wilderness set, the city set, and the dungeon set, and that was all I needed because you know, and then you supplement it with a little you know, if you have a really weird ship, Pa've just draw it in and you mix and match and and that is all the terrain that you will ever need, you know, I mean, And of course again if you want to start getting into like you know, actual molded three D resins set, you know, like you said, aunt,

31:30 yeah, but like like you can do a battle map, you can do a battle map and find those three tile sets for you know, maybe fifty sixty bucks if you're lucky, certainly under one hundred all three of them together. Yes, oh yeah, yeah, they're they're about twenty dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so like twenty bucks a throw. But that is all you will ever, that's all you will ever need, yes, yeah, yeah, if you've got you've got a map and some If you've got a basic battle map and and something right with, that's fine, that's all you need, and your players are going to fill in everything else in the end with you know, with their imaginations. So for minis, that is another place where if you want to, like that can turn into a whole separate hobby, if you want to do that, if you want to get them and paint them and all that kind of thing. But just for the basics of playing the game. Every now and then, we're going to talk a little bit about Pathfinder. One of the things that PISO does really really well is providing supplemental materials for playing, you know, for playing Pathfinder with and for Pathfinder you can get humongous sets of for Pathfinder, you can get these token sets and you can get hundreds and hundreds of tokens, and what they are is it's going to be a little cardboard standee about the size of mini to slap a little plastic base on the bottom of it, and if you get there, you know, their best cherry set, get like a thousand tokens in there, and it's going to have characters. It's going to have all kinds of monsters, and they're going to look like the proprietary Pizo version of it. But you know, like a big token of a

33:01 dragon is a big token of a dragon, or and a token you know, half a dozen little goblin tokens are are recognizably goblins. And that's a great way to get a full set of everything you need to start doing maps and minis in a basic kind of way, and you can probably score those pretty cheaply online you know, secondary market and you know, and just you know, through Amazon and stuff like this in a way that's going to get you what amounts to a complete minis collection for what you know, like through three four of those blind boxes that you would get from WATSI the have the pre painted minis that you know that come in there. You don't need Joe Manjanello's basement, Like if you've ever seen this miniature collection, it's insane and I'm sure it's worth a million dollars, Like, yeah, it's all And if you do decide you want to get into that stuff, then you should not feel shame about playing with unpainted minis and eBay, you know, like like online market places. Because of the way those blind boxes work, people will open lots of them to get the rares well as a magic player, you know, if all you want is a bunch of orcs and goblins and basic you know characters and stuff like rogues and whatever, you can find very cheap sets of the big bags of those common minis. And then if you want to have one special dragon for that big fight, you can get that one special dragon for that big fight and have that be a thing that you know, you plunk it down on the table, everybody oos an os,

34:32 they fight the dragon, and maybe you don't use it again, you know, anytime soon. But that's a cool thing you can put on your shelf with your gaming books and have it be a fun thing that you own. But you don't have to have, you know, a mini for every thing that the characters are are coming up against in that game. And those the tokens are great. They look fantastic. You know, if you really want to, you can just print that out, you know, rapital around a little piece of hardboard, or do a little thing where you make a little tent out of it. But we used to do, i mean what we used to do back in college when we were playing our superhero game and they didn't have any Superhero minis was we would print them in the right size and then fold them, put a little penny in the bottom to give it a weight, so that we had like a little triangle with you know, with that weight on the bottom. And that is what we used for our minis mom around and stuff like that. There's all kinds of creative solutions you can come up with for very cheap. I found that one inch wooden coins in a bag of like two hundred, Yeah, and to bind that with a printable one inch round label sheet. Sure, and just throw my work on it in the photoshop or whatever and print them all up and then just stick them all there. Yeah, that's great because you can get you can certainly get pads of stickers one inch stickers where you can you know, run those through your printer and print those out on And that's another way to do it if you don't mind those like those flat tokens. But those pizo tokens are actually they actually stand up to the hype of a regular mini and I think they work great. I mean beyond that, just you know, listen to

36:02 podcasts like this one maybe uh, you know, like I hesitate to recommend a lot of aps because you want to make sure that you are listening to things that are helping you learn how to run the game. And some of those aps are more kind of performance oriented, that may not be the thing that you need. So I think listening to those knowing that, yeah, I think it is still helpfulk I learned a ton and got the confidence to run my first couple of games from listening to those shows. And also, you know, I know that they cut out a lot of the a lot of the math, and like you don't really know what all their modifiers are, and like, because that's because that's boring radio. Meanwhile, I is aspiring DM. I'd be like, but I won't know how he got that, Like how do you roll thirty two? I mean it's it's it's boring radio for some people. But if what you want is to learn the game, yeah, then then that Actually, you know, some interesting shows are better than others about cutting out or were more so leaving in their die rolls and stuff like that. So find when that works for you if that's your list. Jim, I've got a couple of my own. I think I think that's that's the basics, that's the stuff. Yeah, like those things that I listed were the things I always had with me when I ran at the store, and when kids would say what do I need? I don't have a fortune to spend, I'd go this, this, and this, and it's pretty much those things that I'd listed that I would use to get them started. What would you say based on exactly you just said? What would you say would be like the first let's say four or five things in in what even say in order that a new DM should be looking for?

37:36 I mean, like I think in the order that we went, you want the three core books. You want the character sheets for everybody. You want everybody to have dice, pens, pencils, index cards. If you've got those you can play. Yeah, that's totally fair. So I made a list too, It's not it goes in a slightly different directions, so I'll just I'll just go through it quickly for things that we've already talked about. Number one is your official sources. Start with your Core trio. That's your players Handbook, your Dunge Master's Guide, and your Monster Manual. I also added the supplemental Trio, which Wizards has as Atasha's Squadron of Everything Santa Thar's guides everything and either and they kind of way one kind of replaced the other. You got more than conans and monsters in the multiverse. Monsters multi use kind of replaced more than conans, which replaced the Volos guds, which replaced Volos. Yeah, so Atasha's and Santa Tars do add a lot of excellent information to supplement the core trio. But like that's that's later. But if you're going to get those are the first things the players are going to harass you about wanting to take things exactly. Tasha's adds a lot of subclasses and some like some some alternate rules and the optional rules, the class features like optional class features and and background and stuff, would just to say stuff that beginning dms don't necessarily need. Yeah, and if you're a new DM and all you have is the Court Trio and a player says, hey, I want to do this thing at Tasha's, you say, hey, I'm not there yet. I gotta we gotta stick to players handbook stuff. And if they raise us, think about it, they can go find another DM.

39:01 It's not worth your time. So that's I would say, get the Court trio first. Learn them, know them, love them, and then start. I would get the supplemental books after that as your first for outside of the court, and then you can do your campaign books. So really whenever you're ready to run that campaign, if you want to run the book campaign. Strata is A is a fantastic one everon is Jim Sandasy was his favorite. I love the ones that are like the connected one shot types. I think they're fantastic for new dms. Campo Keep Mysteries is a book of connected one shots, so you run them as part of a larger campaign, depending what level you're at. You just pick the one that's already and you know, and you can just run one right after the other and just go through the Cambic Keep books. There's a few books like that. I believe Strick Shaven is also like that. I don't know that for sure. There's a Strixaban has that thing where players that are new to D and D who are Harry Potters how those stories work, and it's a real good way to kind of then get them into gaming because you can run the sort of story because not everybody who starts playing D and D has read the Tolkien and the other you know whatever in the Fritz liber that's kind of the original source material for D and D or whatever, you know, or played Dragon Age or something like that. I'm one of those people Game of Thrones. But yeah, but if you start with strict saban then like you know, kids that like they know that Harry Potter structure and the kinds of stories to expect, and it's a great way to kind of you know, ease them into that other

40:34 kind of storytelling them. And that's to say that there's that there's going to be a book in a in a setting, in a style that should hook really any fantasy. Yeah. So if their Hiper Potter kids get run stricks Saving, if they are into horror, run strad. I mean you can go down the list like this. So those they're magic players, you can run rafn cut. Yeah. Yeah, that almost got me. So that's for official sources. I have some third party books that I think new dms should absolutely own that any of the Tooma Beast books from Cobol Press. I those are just really expansions on a monster manual. If you want to throw some monsters in there that the players might not expect or have just been like kind of really tailored to be interesting. That's just I think that is the next supplemental series to get. There's three of them out at the time of this recording, and I will never stop championing this book for new dms, get the Keith of Mont series. The monsters know what they're doing, knowing what a monster is capable of doing, versus how a monster would fight if you were that monster. This is this is like one oh one on how to DM that particular monster type. And I like new DMS running a Monster of the Week style campaign where you just like pick a monster or pick a type of monster, and your whole little one shot is based on those things.

41:46 They come across. The players come across a little one, and then a couple of them, and then like a couple more, and then a big version of it at the end, and they almost write themselves. And all you got to do is just read Monsters know what they're doing for a one monster fifteen minutes to learn to have it learning, and it's super easy to get started, like the Perfect Bathroom book. Honestly, yeah, they're great. I have some further reading if you want to improve your dming skills. I have had to be a great DM by Guys Glanders. How to write Adventure modules that don't suck by Goodman Games, Great excellent buckget him. You got me hooked on that book. And also it looks awesome. Yeah, it's got the classic like composition, like like black and white splatter cover with his gold foiling on. It is such a cool book that even if you just even just buy keep on your shelf and just leave it there, you should read it. But I mean, like if for different enough to else, it looks awesome. And yes, I'm absolutely judging your book by its cover. The Low Adventures podcast at gmail dot com tell me how that's a bad thing. So and I'm a lazy DM guy by slife flourish once you get a couple of games under your belt. Lazy DM Guide is not necessarily for new dms, but it is it will get you from your first couple of games into preparing better. I see a looking give me. I think I have a hot take on that. Mike himself in the book says this is not this is not for your first time I can I can disagree with that, please, and here's why for your first time you obviously should you know you have to be comfortable with the core material, with the rules.

43:10 However, I think that prep can be really intimidating to a new DM, and this really kind of dumbs it down, for lack of a better term, like, hey, you don't have to be so intimidated by this, streamlines it, and he has changed his tune between the first printing of Lazy DMTN, subsequent ones of like and even now like on his podcast where he says like, well, Okay, maybe maybe fifteen minutes to thirty minutes isn't enough prep, And I probably tend to agree with that, but he really kind of streamlines that process and gets you thinking about, okay, like what are the really important parts of what I do? As I think I mentioned in one of our previous episodes was that I like the improv aspect that that kind of leads leaves it open. So for me, I did read that kind of early on and it helped me relax in my prep and like, Okay, I don't need to prep for every Sure, I kind of have some big ideas and some some story beats that I know I want to hit and how we get there doesn't really matter, because you guys don't know what's in the next town over. Yeah, And I would say I got that book very early on as one of the first third party books that I owned that I might have even been based on your suggestion, and a lot of it didn't make sense to me as a new DM because I didn't know what I was streamlining and what I was shortcutting. Right, So I think I think it's also worth making the distinction here between if you are a new DM who has played some and then you're going to DM as opposed to let's

44:45 all play D and D we've never played it before. I guess I'm the dungeon master. Yeah, you're right, different kinds of advice, that's yeah. So I'll say that that is that is very good further reading, but I wouldn't start with it. Yeah. The last thing I have here is I have a title campaign Ideas, and it's a less campaigns, a little bit more towards I kind of lean towards one shots for new dms at least that you get your feet wet until you start doing something longer. So the the resources I have here, there is a document called one page one shots that I found on dms Guild for very cheap, and it's a page full of I'm not gonna say fully fleshed out, but mostly fleshed out one shots that all fits on one page uses a canography to to kind of get the idea of it. What kind of campaign is this? What levels and what type of player should you be? Is this going to be a loop thinger?

45:36 Is this going to be like a story thing? And stuff like that. And then there's another document on how to write your own one page one shot that I've been using a lot recently. And also along with that one page one shots also pulls from this other book that I also got on DM's guild. They kind of like, I don't know if it's the same authors. I don't have them in front of me. I apologize, but they one page one shots uses tactics from this book called the Five Room Dungeon. Five Room Dungeon is a great design excel Yeah, excellent both Yeah, and it's just a quick, cool light like two page. Oh no, I actually know this one. This one, it's a very long book because the parts where it teaches you how to build them is like ten twelve pages, and then it's hundreds of pages of ones that they built for you, so totally worth dollars. Absolutely go get the five Room Dungeon one page one shots will do either five room dungeons or a play in three acts. Is how they is how they frame all their one shots. And I think there's actually two of these books and there's like a well a dozen in each one.

46:30 Super worth it. I would start here. But there's also some creators that will do nothing but just pumped out one shots. And I'm not gonna do nothing, but they make a lot of one shot material. My favorite is DM Dave. I'm a follower on his patreon. A lot of the games that I run at the store have come from his. He does a lot of like free Monster the Week type of stuff. He even put out a poll to his patrons to see, you know, which are these monsters you want to see next? And of course I vote Mimic every time, and that's how I ran the Mimic Museum, which is still my fa Actually got the Unicorn Islands was my favorite ones that was just awesome. Excellent creator and that he works with. A map maker would be a fantasy cartographer would be it'll be the job title who makes excellent maps that get put in these bs also, which I then put into I'll print out and use it on a table. And if you're a DM looking for your first one shot and you've never done it before and you want something easy and fun, I cannot recommend enough the Wild Sheep Chase. I have run this one shot no less than ten times at this point with all new players every time, even players who have played it before, like a player that's new to me and they've played it with other people before. Everyone just got their own little flavor on it.

47:43 And it's not uncommon for a player to have come across this before. It's fun. There's a very just creative twist in the last act. And this was my first time ever dming anything. Oh wow, that's was the first thing I ever ran. Joe is unavailable one night and we want to play any So I ran this game for everyone while we were still locked up from covid D. I've been dming ever since because this was just it was just put out just so accessible for someone who's never Yeah, and that's a thing that especially for new dms like this is a thing that I learned was that have that go to adventure so that if you find yourself in a situation where just for whatever reason, people like like you've got a group of people they want to play D and D and you know, have that adventure ready to go, have five pre printed character sheets and just hand to them, you know. I mean, if you're serious about it and you really want to be, you know, ready to run at any time. That that's another thing you can carry around with you as a stack of pre printed character sheets ready to go. So just hand them out the people, run it and go. So Wizards of the Coast has officially made yeah, premier characters, like for every levels. It's at least one of every class and levels one through ten. Yeah. Wow, Yeah, they're available out there.

49:00 Yeah, print them out and I have all the pdf saved so anytime I can spect. Okay, here here they are, send it to. If we're just hanging around, just send it to a friend's printer. I have a tiny set of dice that I keep on my keys. Yeah, and I know there's I'm just ready to go. And I also want to make the case for no kidding, if you are new to the game, then you are running for the first time, you absolutely can do much worse. I mean like, like all of these third party things are great, but you can get a really good, full, complete campaign out of any of the pre published mega adventures. You know, you can just throw down Cursustrade and you've got a couple of years of gaming, if you know, kidding, go all the way through that thing. You know, Dragons of Ice, Dragons of Ice, fire peet, any of those and they'll work right, you know, the the Eborn book, the strict Saban book, They're like that material is all there. You don't have to go searching for this stuff. No, if you just want to run it right out of the book, there's plenty there to do that way. And the starter sets too, you know as somebody that the first my first time playing D and D was one of the starter sets. Like they're they're great. They give you a great kind of overview of the game and things that you're going to need and upgraating your character and everything else. So and from a DM perspective, they give you a lot of good tips. And I guess this is this is another place to say where if you're new kidding listening to this for the first time with like no idea about what's going on with D and D.

50:27 That twenty twenty five dollars basic set is an amazing introduction to D and D. It is a great place to start just to see if you like it because it's got everything you need to you know, to run like a couple of three levels worth. And if you decide you love it, yeah, then you can invest the money in a but boy as a as a sampler. It's less than taking a friend to the movies to get that basic set and just you know, get only other thing to need this dice. Yep. So I think this is a great place to end it here. We've got a ton of information out there, so let's just like real quick just to recap all the recommendations we made. So if you are a brand new DM, never DN before, Jim, just quickly have things that you recommended, physical copies of the three core books, blank character sheets enough for everybody at the table, set a dice for you and everyone else at the table, pens and pencils for everybody that might be their big stack index cards.

51:20 That's everything you need to run D and D without any of the extra bells and whistles. If you want to keep going out from there, the supplemental trio. Tasha's Aatars and of the Multiverse is great to go from there the Keitha mon Books and the Tomophoes you're looking for more interesting monsters. How to Be Agree with the MP by Guys Clanders as far. Also how to Write Adventure Modules that Don't Suck by Goodman Games and the Lazy dms got by slid Flourish are all excellent third party books to think about better DM once you get started. If you're looking for quick one shot ideas just to get people playing one page one shots Patreon creators such as DM Dave and of course The Wild Sheep Chase. If you run the Wild Sheep Chase, or if you run it because you heard of it here. I want to know how that game went. Shoot us an email, Hello Adventurers Podcast at email dot com.

52:04 Let me know how it ended up. There's a tough decision the players have to make right at the end. I want to know what your players did. I've run this game, I think ten times now, and I've had players successfully complete the task and I don't want to spoil anything, and I've had players set fire to the room and walk away and everything in between. It's just such a cool one. I want to know how your a wild sheet chase game went. Please tell me this against Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com or leave us a voicemail about it. Do that too, that's a helloadventures podcast dot com slash voice. Send us a voicemail let us know how your first one shot went. Any party words, guys, no, good luck. Like, the more dms the better because more DMS means more players, which means more people that might listen to this show. So get out there and run some games and have fun. Yeah, oh yeah yeah.

52:52 My final gift to new DMS is I'm going to give you this phrase. Write it down, learn it, know it tattooed on your forehead. Do whatever you got to do, certainly try Are you sure? Are you sure? Start learning? You're scary for I had a game the other day where they're like, Okay, we're gonna go through the Door'm like, oh, you're touching the door, Like yes, okay, nothing, go through door. Okay. Guys, thanks so much for listening to Hello Adventurers. We are your host Jason Portizo, Jim Crocker and Throw McCall. Producer, editor Antonineer Jason Portiso. Our music is by Nick Spurrier, artwork by Kristin Roderick, and H listener is by you, whoever's listening to us right now. Good on you, and with nothing else to say, goodbye,