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11 months ago ::
Aug 08, 2012 - 4:31PM
#241
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- VCL Emeritus
- The Inquisitor
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Welcome to the community and to D&D Shadow_Geist! :D
Quentin Small
WotC Online Community Coordinator
All around helpful simian
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7 months ago ::
Nov 27, 2012 - 10:13AM
#242
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Date Joined:
Nov 27, 2012
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I am completely new to D&D, and tried to find groups in my area [tried meetup.com etc]
I only have a couple of people who may play - no groups. So I may try and get it rolling by starting my own group.
They have either not played in years, or are not exactly experts, so please consider for this post that we are all newbies.
I have heard that 4e favours new players, PC and DM alike, so I am likely to go down that route.
My question is two-fold
1. Being realistic, what chances does a newbie have of DMing? Would it enough to read the books for a week or two, then play by trial and error?
2. What books to get? I am getting conflicting advice.
Most places say the 3 core books, which are apparently outdated due to errata etc.
So buy essentials / rules compendium. This doesn't seem as thorough though.
And an equal amount say get the Red Box, which seems good to get me started, but doesn't seem to have much in the way of rules?
Please help guide a newbie :D
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7 months ago ::
Nov 27, 2012 - 1:22PM
#243
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- VCL Emeritus
- The Inquisitor
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Welcome to D&D and the community TomTi89!
D&D 4th Edition is very friendly to new DMs and is often cited as being the easiest edition to DM.
Personally, I would recommened the Essentials line as a good entry point, specifically the DM's Kit, Monster Vault, Rules Compendium, and either of the "Heroes of" books (or both if you are so inclined).
That said, the Dungeon Master's Guide and Dungeon Master's Guide 2 contain excellent advice and tools for DMing and are a bit more errata-proof than the Player's Handbooks and Monster Manuals.
Hope that helps and good gaming to you. :D
Quentin Small
WotC Online Community Coordinator
All around helpful simian
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7 months ago ::
Nov 27, 2012 - 3:01PM
#244
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Date Joined:
Nov 27, 2012
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Thank you very much! I've just looked up the whole essentials on youtube, and you definitely get a lot for your money. It's still a fair amount overall though so I think I'll have to make sure I can definitely get players  I have one more question, just out of interest right now. How much flexibility do you have to change the levels of enemies? For example, lower-level enemies are orcs etc, and enemies for higher-level characters are dragons and the like. What if you wanted to make an orc that is super powerful? [it found an ancient artefact etc]. Do the rules allow for this?
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7 months ago ::
Nov 27, 2012 - 4:18PM
#245
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- VCL Emeritus
- The Inquisitor
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The Monster Vault presents a range of levels for most creatures. Orcs, for example, have stats for level 3 to level 6 with a range of roles and abilities. Its also relatively easy to "reflavor" a monster of higher or lower level. For example, you can take a Level 14 Arena-Trained Ogre and call it an Arena-Trained Orc. The only mechanical adjustments you really need to make are to reduce its size to Medium and give it the orc "Savage Demise" trait that all orcs possess.
Quentin Small
WotC Online Community Coordinator
All around helpful simian
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6 months ago ::
Dec 27, 2012 - 5:31PM
#246
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Date Joined:
Sep 14, 2012
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1. Being realistic, what chances does a newbie have of DMing? Would it enough to read the books for a week or two, then play by trial and error?
2. What books to get? I am getting conflicting advice.
My first experience playing DnD is literally DMing a group of six friends - it takes a lot of reading of the Rules Compendium and purchase of the Dungeon Master's Guide. We also bought a Red Box and started from there - we're almost up to level 6 now.
There are lots of resources out there: twitter (Sly Flourish comes to mind), blogs (dungeonsmaster.com)
Have your group help you - what they hope to get out of the game is a huge part of wether you're going to suceed in keeping them engaged and ultimately wanting to keep playing.
Learn together - it's not as hard as you think it might be. 
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6 months ago ::
Jan 14, 2013 - 6:34PM
#247
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Date Joined:
Jan 14, 2013
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Red Box rookie here! We have five adventurers plus myself as the fledgling Dungeon Master......
We are starting the first Red Box adventure this Friday after having created our characters per the solo adventure.
Human Cleric
Elven Rogue
Elven Wizard
Dwarven Fighter
Halfling Rogue
Before Friday I want to burn some money on a couple products / manuals to start. If you
had two items to buy following the Red Box what would they be?
Thanks!!
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6 months ago ::
Jan 14, 2013 - 9:42PM
#248
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DM Kit and Monster Vault. DM Kit has a more comprehensive rulebook plus a really good adventure in it and some nice poster maps and pogs. Monster Vault has more pogs, an adventure that (sort of) continues where the DM Kit adventure leaves off, and monsters to last your group into Epic tier. Your players will also want Heroes of the Fallen Lands in order to continue their characters once they're done with the Red Box.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 15, 2013 - 1:40AM
#249
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Date Joined:
Jun 19, 2004
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If I had money to spend on stuff. I would buy these: DM Cheat Sheet: slyflourish.com/master_dm_sheet.pdf (Free) DDI subscription Cheesex Dry-Erase Battlemat
Currently working on making a Dex based defender. Check it out hereSpoiler:
Show
Need a few pre-generated characters for a one-shot you are running? Want to get a baseline for what an effective build for a class you aren't familiar with? Check out the Pregen thread here
If ever you are interested what it sounds like to be at my table check out my blog and podcast here
Also, I've recently done an episode on "Refluffing". You can check that out here
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5 months ago ::
Jan 18, 2013 - 2:53PM
#250
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Date Joined:
Jan 14, 2013
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Thanks for the suggestions! I did buy the Dungeon Master's Kit and downloaded the cheatsheet. Will start the multiplayer Red Box Adventure tonight. Hoping for the best!
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