Regular DMs. Answer these questions 3!

[jasper]

DDAL Regular DMs. Answer these questions 3!
This for gamers who regularly play Adventure League and DM (55%+ of the time). Thanks #cooperjer for the idea.
1. What is your current load out when you go to DM? If doing it at home, just list your regular stuff you use. What could you drop and still think you could run a pickup game?
2. What was the cost? You could just list a season’s cost. Could you cut cost?
3. Have you gotten paid? YES or NO. If YES give more information. Paid can mean. Store credit. Someone else bought the hardcover/module. REAL CASH which your wife took to go to Starbucks. J. This does NOT INCLUDE food, drinks, someone drove to the site, free admission to con for x hours, and etc.
You can also ask “What do use that?”

1. My current load out is Olympia 33 luggage to hold most of the following: 2 banker boxes, adventure/hardcover, 2 players hand books, sword coast book, dungeon master guide, Volo’s, monster manual, Xanathar’s Guide. Small notebook page white board. My dice box which include the plastic soda RINGS OF DOOM, my current mini, and poker chips. Plastic skull. DM hat. Various folders for dming including 40+ pregen characters for handouts. 2 shoe boxes for monsters/pcs minis. 12 tact-tiles in a box. Clip board. Throw blanket. Courtesy dice. Bag of props. 3 section makeup bag I use for markers and etc. 36 by 40 inch white board. Collapsible stand for board. 36 by 40 Map of Chult. Tube for map.
What could I drop? The white boards, stand, map, 1 shoe box, replace all minis with cardboard tokens, RINGS OF DOOM, 1 PHB is gone, dm hat, all folders gone but pregens, and 6 tact-tiles. And that allows me to drop 1 banker box.
2. This season is $82. But I spend extra on props and the Chult map. If I cut to a mini. Whatever the hardcover or module collection cost.
3. YES. I was given various modules. No store credit ever. The big white board I currently using.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Blue. No, Yelloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...!!!!


Yeah, haven't DM'd AL yet, but carry much of what you have listed loaded up in my shoulder bag to our FLGS for a homebrew campaign. I keep minis to a...um... minimum... just chess pieces and old Skylanders which make for good monster representations... when we're not doing TotM... which is more and more of late. One small whiteboard for initiative order. Love the idea of courtesy dice - assuming you give these away to new players, yes?

 

[aco175]

I recently DMd a few AL adventures over the last few weeks. I have my home group that played a few parts of In Volo's Wake before going to a convention. At the convention I had an empty slot that could not get 5e for and ended up running a pair of modules about the Marsh of Chelimber with my group and a few others from the con in the same boat.

For my home games I usually bring some old maps from 3/4e and the old dungeon tiles, PHB, LMoP and some folders with basic sheets and such. Another player brings minis. At the con I brought the maps and tiles thinking I may need to DM. The modules had stat blocks in them so no monster book needed. The other player brought his paper minis in a binder so that worked great. I'm not sure the convention people knew two tables started up a game without them. although I was given an envelope to hand out prize tokens to a player by a random staff member. I did not or sought not to be compensated. I think the convention had free admission for a certain amount of hours as the DM, but I did not look into it since we were there for only one day. I'm not sure on the local shop and how AL runs there.

 

[Iolo Morganwg]

1. What is your current load out when you go to DM?
I run a Wednesday night ToA game at my FLGS. I bring my dice (7 matching-color pairs of 20s, and lots of the others that I use a lot. I don't bring a d12 at all,) the ToA hardcover, the MM, a tablet to keep my notes on, wet erase map, dry-erase folding board-thing that WOTC released a while ago, minis. This stuff fits into my backpack and a shoebox-sized plastic box. I rely on the players to have the PHB/DMG/et al between them. Oh, I do have surrogate characters sheets, just in case.

For cons, it's much the same, though I'll draw out all my maps on wrapping paper before hand, just to save time.

2. What was the cost? You could just list a season’s cost. Could you cut cost?
ToA purchase at FLGS at discount, I've picked up 4-5 season 7 mods on the DM's Guild. I do print out certs for my players in color on cardstock. I had a CCC that I wrote premier last October and printed a bunch of certs for it, for the con. For all of season 7, I think I'm sitting at $100. That will rise to probably $150 for sure before the season is over, (that new Mordakeinen book, more certs, etc.)


3. Have you gotten paid?
Yes. Store credit by way of discounted product

 

[Li Shenron]

1. What is your current load out when you go to DM? If doing it at home, just list your regular stuff you use. What could you drop and still think you could run a pickup game?

I strive for minimizing the stuff at the table.

First of all, no books. As the DM, I currently use a tablet to check the SRD. I encourage players to print out their spells (or special abilities) descriptions, so that each player would only ever need her few character sheets + a few extra pages of full spells/abilities description.

I add a BT speaker to that tablet in order to have background music from Spotify.

Currently I play most sessions TotM, but sometimes we use Lego minifigures and a bunch of bricks-made environmental objects (most commonly to represent sources of cover) when battles are more complex and tactical. I provide the Lego stuff and prepare it beforehand, it takes no more than a cookie box to carry it around.

Dice, of course. We normally share use of my own bag, there's just maybe 30 of them.

2. What was the cost? You could just list a season’s cost. Could you cut cost?

Average one book per year, I've had the Lego and the dice for a long time, and the tablet and speaker were definitely not bought for gaming, I would have had them anyway as they are just part of the house's digital equipment So I'd say the budget is less than 50e per year.

3. Have you gotten paid? YES or NO. If YES give more information. Paid can mean. Store credit. Someone else bought the hardcover/module. REAL CASH which your wife took to go to Starbucks. J. This does NOT INCLUDE food, drinks, someone drove to the site, free admission to con for x hours, and etc.
You can also ask “What do use that?”

No.

 

[jasper]

Blue. No, Yelloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...!!!!


Yeah, haven't DM'd AL yet, but carry much of what you have listed loaded up in my shoulder bag to our FLGS for a homebrew campaign. I keep minis to a...um... minimum... just chess pieces and old Skylanders which make for good monster representations... when we're not doing TotM... which is more and more of late. One small whiteboard for initiative order. Love the idea of courtesy dice - assuming you give these away to new players, yes?

Yes courtesy dice are for new players. Now the complete set is 3d6 from a brick 100d6, the what is now a normal set. But the colors don't match. I say this because the last time I bought a bundle of dice. One reviewer was mad because he only got one complete color match out of 102 dice. Hey Some times, I throw in my old dice from the 80s to round out a set. Total cost last time was $1.07 to include the cheap pouch.

 

[jasper]

Update. I did get paid in swag Sunday. One of my players went to Pensacon and got a cert from a raffle which allows a goblin to break the +1. He got naming right. Now I have to stat up Goblin George of the jungle um Chult.

 

[DRF]

DDAL Regular DMs. Answer these questions 3!
1. What is your current load out when you go to DM? If doing it at home, just list your regular stuff you use. What could you drop and still think you could run a pickup game?

I run games both at home and at my FLGS. My campaign is at my home, and one-shots at the FLGS. I always carry the PHB and MM. My campaign is Tomb of Annihilation, so obviously I have that book close. I rarely use the PHB during play.

I carry a dice pouch, pen & paper, DM screen, chalk, battlemap, and miniatures. I also often have printed-out notes and occasionally I'll spend a lot of time on particular maps (such as when I ran Death House).
I have quite a few minis; I grew up with Warhammer and enjoy some cool minis, but they're very expensive. I've bought Massive Darkness and Wrath of Ashardalon just for the minis, and then I shop second-hand. My players don't appreciate it.

I could easily run TotM-games and can see the advantages of doing it that way. Sometimes I feel like my games can get too board game-y when players focus on the minis and map too much.

2. What was the cost? You could just list a season’s cost. Could you cut cost?

I definitely spend much more than my players. Again, they don't really appreciate it. Now that I have the core books, though, my only real expense is minis. I don't need anything more than I have right now.

3. Have you gotten paid? YES or NO. If YES give more information. Paid can mean. Store credit. Someone else bought the hardcover/module. REAL CASH which your wife took to go to Starbucks. J. This does NOT INCLUDE food, drinks, someone drove to the site, free admission to con for x hours, and etc.

No. Though I do think many players should DM so they could learn what it actually takes just in terms of time investment.