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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dracorat" data-source="post: 3090137" data-attributes="member: 40170">Bleh. (On True20)But as for suggestions, index cards work fine for initiative. When someone delays, flip it upright. For monsters, record their HPs directly on the card. Otherwise, you just rotate through the cards for initiative.If the game table and miniatures is a sticky point, how many of you have a laptop? Can you geek it out on a laptop? If so, consider looking in to a table top mapper for the computer, like MapTable. I run an every-other-Saturday game over the Internet using MapTable and MapTable works like a charm.Just an option.If it's not an option, at least get one of the Chessex battle mats. Then, go to Wal*Mart (or similar if you are a WM hater) and find some dry erase markers. I recommend "Vis-a-Vis" brand. The battle mats should be available at your local hobby store. You wipe off the marker with water or with windex. I recommend Windex. Get that lemmon-smell stuff. Great times.Whoops! I digress....For miniatures, force your players to use nickels with their names written on it. Then, tell them to buy their own minis for their characters and they can stop using the nickels. You'll be surprised how fast they find three bucks lying around to buy their own minis. As a DM, you are going to be responsible for the other minis. That's sort of the territorry of being the DM. But that doesn't mean you have to go overboard. Get one or two boxed sets of the D&D plastic collectable minis. Then, if your party is fighting an orc and there is no orc in your mini collection, well then that devil mini will work just fine in a pinch.Other suggestions to help out. If your players buy their minis, encourage them to all paint the bases the same color, and not black. It will make it easy for them to see where their own minis are.Character generation - PCGen is wonderful, but you will have to plan on spending an hour or two learning the program before you can use it. I recommend recreating some of the static characters in the PHB in PCGen for practice. Also, its ability to output as PDF can be invaluable if only one person in the group has a printer (like in my group)Dice - If you have players on a really tight budget, the following are the absolute minimum: 1 - D20 / 1 - D10 / 1 - D8 / 1 - D6For a D12, they can roll 2D6. Sure, the result is 2 to 12, but the fact they can't roll a 1 will be exascerbated by the fact that most of their rolls will center around the 6 to 7 range statistically. Getting a 12 will be more rare this way as well.For a D4, roll a D8. 1&2 = 1, 3&4 = 2, etc.For a D100, roll the D10 twice. First time is tens digit, second is ones.And finally, as for experience with how to move around the board, etc. Don't worry about it. Start with the basic stuff. Get the minis on the board. Move as far as your movement, do your attacks.Once you are comfortable with that, read the combat section of the PHB and pick out a max of two rules you haven't yet used. Like maybe, Attacks of Opportunity.Next game, use those rules. Focus on them. Get everyone familiar with them.Now, before the next session, pick out one or two more. Etc.Keep doing this until you feel good about it.Then, read the combat section again. You will see even more you missed.To this day, with having been a DM for 3E and 3.5 since the day they were released, I still find rules I have missed. I just learned for example, that using a spell-like ability requires no V S or M components. And you'd think I would know that already. But even us vets find we have things yet to learn.Do not be discouraged.</blockquote>

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