New to D&D (starting group)

[Eternal Prosper]

Hello. Im starting my own D&D group in late August. I bought the DM manual and will buy the other core books soon (does a DM need the PC handbook?) The group will consist of 4 pc's. I was wondering if any of you have advice or extra stuff to buy. thank you for your time and i hope to be an active member here

 

[Chaos_Kitten]

Hello. Im starting my own D&D group in late August. I bought the DM manual and will buy the other core books soon (does a DM need the PC handbook?) The group will consist of 4 pc's. I was wondering if any of you have advice or extra stuff to buy. thank you for your time and i hope to be an active member here

Well make sure you have plenty of dice. You would be surprised how many people forget that detail. I would say definately get the Player's Handbook. Monster Manual is also pretty important.

 

[Greatwyrm]

The DM should have a copy of each of the 3 core books available. Also, and extra PHB floating around the table never hurts. Somebody always forgets theirs.

Other than that, I'd actually recommend NOT buying anything else until you've played for a while. Once you get a feel for the system and the kinds of games you want to run, you'll have a better idea of what additional books you'd like to invest in. Plus, if you decide that D&D isn't your cup of tea (perish the thought ) then you won't be out a small fortune.

One exception I'd make to this is buying a ready-made campaign setting. You may not have the time, experience, or desire to make up a whole world of your own. There are plenty of good ones. WotC's Forgotten Realms or Eberron, Fantasy Flight's Dawnforge and Midnight, or Sword and Sorcery's Scarred Lands would all be good choices.

 

[Zappo]

Hi! Welcome to the hobby and welcome to the boards.

Everyone needs the PHB (Player's Handbook), including the DM. It is the most important manual by far; very expert people can do a lot without anything else but the PHB is a must.

The DMG (Dungeon Master Guide), the book which you bought, is an additional guide for the DM. It contains lots of stuff that the other players don't need to know at the beginning, such as how to design a good adventure, or what damage the environment can do to you. Some stuff in the DMG becomes useful for players as the game progresses (prestige classes and magical items, mostly).

The MM (Monster Manual), the last core book, is simply a big bunch of monsters (plus some rules to make your own). Since D&D has a lot of weird creatures, they have been described in a separate book. The PHB only contains the races which the players can choose for their characters.

There's a lot of good advice you'll probably get here, I'll limit myself to: learn from your mistakes and you'll get good quickly.

 

[Gargoyle]

I'd recommend buying a copy of Dungeon magazine and consider getting a subscription. As a DM the most important thing you will do is design and run adventures, and Dungeon can give you a quick adventure when you don't have time to make up one, and some great examples of adventure design.

Edit: Also I would pick up a battlemat or a large tablet of graph paper. You can use it to draw combats, and can use dice or miniatures to represent characters. Your group may or may not want to continue doing this; some people think it's better to leave everything to the imagination. But I would try it. It can reduce confusion in combat and make things run much smoother.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Welcome.

I know not everyone agrees with me, but I would recommend picking up a decent pre-printed first level adventure to run. If you are just learning the game it will be easier and will help ensure you have a decently balanced game to start.

After that, have fun, be prepared to make mistakes and just move on learning as you go. You may find things moving slowly as you learn the mechanics of the game and it may be a bit frustrating, but you will get better and faster and it will become more fun.

Good Luck!

 

[Patlin]

I was wondering if any of you have advice or extra stuff to buy. thank you for your time and i hope to be an active member here

I don't know your age or income level, but one good (and reasonably cheap) thing to do is to take the battlemap out of the back of the DMG down to Kinko's. Have them laminate it. It's now protected, and suitable for both miniatures and dry-erase markers.

Be careful with purchased adventures (if you use them), as many of them leave out important bits. Read through them carefully and make sure you understand how they are supposed to work. They are great for a DM with limited time to prepare, but they only reduce preperation time, they don't eliminate it!

Always keep one thing foremost in your mind: the game is meant to be fun. Anything that increases the fun is good, anything that decreases it is bad. Keeping the game fun for your group is the only way to keep your group.

 

[kenobi65]

I know not everyone agrees with me, but I would recommend picking up a decent pre-printed first level adventure to run. If you are just learning the game it will be easier and will help ensure you have a decently balanced game to start.

I agree entirely; writing adventures that are appropriately challenging and interesting for your party is one of the biggest challenges for new DMs. Using pre-written adventures to start with will help you learn how to build a good adventure, and takes one less task (i.e., writing) off of your plate.

Dungeon Magazine's adventures are usually pretty good, but not every issue has an adventure for low-level characters. If you've got a hobby shop that has some back issues, you might want to take a look through the last few issues for one with a low-level adventure.

WotC released a series of pre-written adventures when 3rd Edition came out; the intent was that, by playing the entire series of adventures, you could take an adventuring party from 1st level to 20th level. The first adventure in that series was "The Sunless Citadel;" it's not the best adventure ever written, but it's not bad, either. It has two big problems now: (1) As it came out 3+ years ago, it might be tough to find, and (2) it's written for 3E, not 3.5, so some of the stats might not be quite right anymore.

 

[Pbartender]

Be sure to check the Wizard's of the Coast website (www.wizards.com).

The D&D section of the site has an archive of FREE downloadable original adventures and FREE downloadable maps... Many of them are quite good. "The Buring Plague", for example is a great 1st-level starter adventure for both beginning DMs and beginning adventurers.

 

[Kalendraf]

Also I would pick up a battlemat or a large tablet of graph paper. You can use it to draw combats, and can use dice or miniatures to represent characters. Your group may or may not want to continue doing this; some people think it's better to leave everything to the imagination. But I would try it. It can reduce confusion in combat and make things run much smoother.

I completely agree with this. 3rd edition D&D has a lot of combat-oriented feats and modifiers that are much easier to handle with a map. You can use tokens, figurines, dice or whatever to represent the characters and monsters. In the future, you can let the players get their own miniatures or pick a few up yourself.