Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MadLordOfMilk" data-source="post: 4731434" data-attributes="member: 77691">What do you guys usually use when you have the sudden urge to play D&D or some other RPG, but are missing either some supplies or everything?I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been sitting around with some friends when suddenly someone says, "hey! let's play D&D!" without having everything on hand. Here are some of my suggestions...Missing Dice:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Use playing cards. A stack of 1-4 is a d4, 1-6 is a d6, etc. For d20s, just use one suit for single digits and another suit/color for the 10s (for example, make 1-10 clubs, and 1-10 of hearts mean 11-20)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Use d6s if you have them lying around from board games, etc. For a d4, just reroll on a 5 or 6. For a d10, 2d6-1 and either reroll on two 6s or just count it as a 10 works. Come up with similar stuff like that.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If you're just missing a specific die, try coming up with a combination of other dice to be it's rough equal. 2d4 is mathematically slightly better than a d8, but when you have no d8s, you might want to make due that way.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Computers. My friend has a dice rolling application on his iPhone, and Wizards has a page for dice <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm" target="_blank">here</a>. You can also get DiceTool from <a href="http://www.rptools.net/" target="_blank">here</a>, or find another similar application.</li> </ul>Missing Rulebooks:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For characters, you can always use premades if you can find them or have them on hand. For D&D 4e, the "official" ones from KotS can be found <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/charactersheets" target="_blank">here</a>.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Have a player with ridiculously good memory, or a hardened veteran of the system you're playing.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wing it. If you can roughly remember things like "well, elves in 4e have +2dex +2wis and 7 speed" you can pretty much work with that. The more details you remember, the better, but if you forget stuff you can always make up something relatively fitting, or go with what you remember.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For D&D 4e, if you have a DDI subscription you have access to the character builder and compendium, which covers all of that assuming you can get internet access.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Keep copies of the rules with you. My friend Sam has a few D&D pdfs on his iPhone for ready access, or so he's told me.</li> </ul>Missing minis/battlemat/tiles/etc:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Paper always works, but sketching out a grid on paper and ripping up sheets to use as counters can be a pain.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Print out counters. There are all kinds of links <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-gallery-cartography-miniatures-painting/225315-sources-images-use-tokens.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Use coins in place of minis.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">4e: The very back of the DMG has two gridded pages; they're basically stone dungeon-tile looking things. You could leave a book open and use that as the battle grid.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Run the layout of combat on someone's computer and have everyone look at the screen. A laptop on the gaming table, theoretically, should work well. If you're lucky, you might even have a projector hooked up to the computer, but for an impromptu game session that's not *too* likely. There are a number of applications that should let you handle this, though having no experience with it I'll leave it to others to link to these sorts of things.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Just don't use a battlemat. This depends a lot on your game system, but generally any of them can handle it. Yes, even 4e! If you want a rough tactical layout, just put some dice on the table to give a rough representation of where everything is, maybe with a sheet of paper under them giving a rough sketch of the layout, and have the DM rule whether you're close enough, how many targets AEs would hit, etc. As long as players are fine with this, it works great. Even if they're not a fan, it beats not playing, right?</li> </ul>Have nothing prepared/missing your notes on today's session:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wing it if the system allows it, and you're comfortable with it. For virtually any D&D system you can usually throw something together and just pick monsters out of the monster manual, for example.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Likely, you'll have to spend some time preparing. In this situation, quick thinking is generally the best asset you can have.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Find something online. There's bound to be something available for you to use.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">D&D 4e: Dungeon Delve tends to help a lot in this sort of situation.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">D&D 4e: If you have a D&DI subscription, pull something out of Dungeon, use the encounter/monster builder things, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">D&D 4e: In the back of the DMG, there's a guide to building random encounters. This could work fine.</li> </ul></blockquote>

Verification