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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 6073840" data-attributes="member: 49017">Hi Thorburgh. Welcome to EnWorld.At the moment there are two widely available types of "D&D". One, D&D 4th edition published by Wizards of the Coast, has a starter set that really isn't very good. If you avoid that, your starting point would be either the line of Essentials products (Heroes of (Various Things), DM Kit, Monster Vault) or the more traditional Players Handbook, DM Guide, and I'd still by the Monster Vault. The alternative is Pathfinder published by Paizo, largely based on the 3rd edition of D&D. There the starting point is easier, the Pathfinder Core Rules containing the material from the PHB and DMG. Pathfinder also has a starter set, which apparently is very good and a much better starting point than the 4e version. And Paizo have a large line of adventures which might help a new GM.Having said that, if your interest was sparked by Skyrim then I'm not sure I'd pick either game. I don't think either game really would get the "feel" of Skyrim right. I could suggest several alternatives, but my first thought would be Legend from Mongoose Publishing. It's a pretty simple system that would get closer in many ways to the way Skyrim works, and it has the advantage of being pretty cheap with one book being all you need. It also has several supplements and is similar enough to several other games (Runequest and the rest of the BRP family) that supplements and adventures for those are very compatible. As for how to start, there's nothing that really beats doing it. I'd say a few things. Find out what your friends would like to play and use that as a starting point. Start small, even if you've got ideas for epic things later on. Doing your own thing is often a better way to learn than starting with someone else's material. As an example, this is the starting premise for a game I ran for some people new to tabletop RPing last year. The characters started off as young adults in a village in the hills, part of the clan that lived there. And that clan was feuding with the clan one valley over. So, let's go and steal some of their cattle. I had an idea about the people they could ask for advice (some of which was "Don't do it"), I gave them a rough map of the area's landmarks so they could plan a route, I had a couple of ideas for situations they might run into either on the way or on the way back, and I had a small group of young adults from the other clan who would be guarding the cattle they wanted to steal. Whatever happened, they were going to out of this with a reputation (good if they succeeded, bad if they didn't), rivals in the young people from the other clan, and some more knowledge of the area. Plus the two encounters they had gave out a couple of plot hooks for things they might choose to involve themselves in next time we played. To let you into a little secret, the people they fought from the other clan - I copied their character sheets when we made them the week before, changed a few cosmetic details, and used them. The two encounters they also had didn't need full stats and didn't get them. That greatly reduced my preparation time, allowing me more time to think about the problems they might have rather than generating enemies.</blockquote>

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