Episode 4
All You Truly Need to Play D&D
You look at the case of glass bottles. Cobwebs cover most of them. On a whim, you grab one of the bottles and look at its reflection in the fragment of the mirror you shattered in the great hall. Your whim paid off. In the reflection, the bottle is filled with an inky black substance. You remember the great hall with all the writing on the walls that could only be seen through the mirror’s reflection. This truly is a haunted place. You look at the rest of the bottles. Each one houses a liquid of a different color or shade. The room you are in is dusty and full of cobwebs. You uncork the bottle and, while looking in the mirror, poor some of it out on the floor. As the black liquid hits the floor, you feel a deep pain within yourself and feel some of your life force sucked out of your body. Your adventuring party attempts the same experiment with other colors of liquids. The same result happens. As one of your party pour one drop of a dark blue liquid, you all hear echoing laughter surrounding you. The laughter is gleeful and higher pitched.
“Come find me, ha ha ha ha….” The voice trails off. You all look at each other in apprehension.
“MMMMlet’s play a game ha ha ha and then haha I will tell you a tale….” You move to replace the bottles.
“Tell you the tale of Anandra…. Ha ha ha ha.” The echoing voice fades just as your wizard’s driftglobe exstinguishes and the only light in the room is your rogue’s dagger giving off a faint green glow.
What would you like to do?
Welcome back to the 4th episode of How to Be a Better DM. This is the show that helps you tell better stories as you and your friends play 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. You’re the DM and I’m going to help prepare you to craft amazing tales to both the delight and horror of your players.
A quick announcement: Special thanks goes out to @kahootaz for working on the audio for this show. He did amazing work and if you need audio help, reach out to him.
Now, let’s get to DMing.
As a new DM, you have so many options of things to buy, research or create that it can be somewhat difficult deciphering what you need to get started. Well this is the list of what you need.
- Understanding of the rules.
Simply put, you need to understand the rules by which you and your players will play. In its simplest form, you all can just say whatever the DM goes and then you just make stuff up. As this is hard to do, and it is rarely consistent, this is not what I would do. Instead, you should probably get your hands on a copy of The Player’s Handbook, or at least get a good understanding of it by watching Youtube videos and such. You can buy it or borrow it, it doesn’t matter. Just know some rules and be able to explain them to your players.
- Players
Obviously you need players. We talked about this last week, so if you need refresh yourself with episode 3.
- A story.
In its simplest form, DND is just a story that someone put rules to. In order to play, you can make up a story, adapt a story, or use a story someone else made. It doesn’t matter. So go buy an adventure sourcebook, or have your characters reenact The Lord of the Rings, or have your characters reenact your first day of kindergarten (hopefully with some major twists). Whatever you do, make a story and tell it well.
- Tools of the Rules
Otherwise known as dice, the tools of the rules are the methods by which the mechanics of the game will be satisfied. In DND 5e this means a set of dice. If your rules are much more loose you may not need these tools. Since you can download an app for free with dice on it, I’d recommend at least doing that and using those for more consistency and because, well, it is free.
- A place
Generally the game is played at a table (hence the name tabletop game), but you can play anywhere, even online. Just get all your players to some place together.
- Time
Playing the game takes time. I found that at least 3 hours is generally long enough for a good session, unless you have very few players, in which case, two hours should be good. You can choose what works for you.
That’s it.
Seriously.
That’s it.
That’s all you need to Play DND. I know I’ve oversimplified it, but that’s the point. All the add-ons are just that, add-ons. As long as you and your friends have fun it doesn’t matter.
I’m saying all this specifically to help you ease your fears of not being able to craft the perfect campaign. Keep trying, but don’t get confused about what really matters. If the basics are covered, then you’re doing it right.
Thanks for listening to today’s show. Reach out to me @geronimolevis on Instagram with any suggestions for future shows. We’ll see you next week. Until then, let’s roll initiative...
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