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Pencil and paper
And idk, I'm probably gonna autistically compare editions and see which one makes the most sense to me
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
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And idk, I'm probably gonna autistically compare editions and see which one makes the most sense to me
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
This is a tough question to answer. I basically jumped in at the deep end, but I had a background in board games and video games.
As much as I want to start throwing recommendations at you for alternative systems or adventures, if Strahd is what you want, go for it. Have fun.
However, I will recommend the Lazy Dungeon Master series by Sly Flourish. A book, blog, and YouTube channel. It's all the same content. Basically some ideas of how to reduce the preparation involved and some handy advice. Such as having a default difficulty scale and just using that for everything. Another bit of often repeated advice is "just use bears", which is the general advice that the bear state block is handy if you want a monster.
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
You only really need the PHB, so that you're all on base for how the game works. New fans and tourists alike overemphasize how much you really need to run a campaign.
If you are very unsure on your ability to improv or think you need more resources, I'd probably get one of the monster manuals as a quick guide on how to stat out beasties, and at least one adventure module.
The former can also be found online as well, especially for older editions. As for the best splats? I tend to not play them, but one I'd recommend since you can go from one to the next is Barrow of the Forgotten King. It's part of a three part splat and can also be run by itself.
Keep on the Borderlands or White Plume Mountain are also solid classics IMO.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
Multiple versions of 1e aka "B/X" exist online. OSE is a good one, but there are others. https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Main_Page
I'm not sure of SRD state for AD&D, or 2e AD&D, but 3.5 also has a nearly complete SRD. As well does 5e. https://www.d20srd.org/
basically you can play D&D with publicly available resources without giving Woketards of the Coast a single cent. And that's before you get into just pirating the PDFs.
As a new GM I'd recommend going with some splats till you get your bearings. 4e's starter box was exceedingly solid value - starter adventure with a wide variety of enemies and challenges, and everything was reusable with multiple ways to use it.
I can't speak to the 5e start box, but maybe?
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
The starting module, Lost Mine of Phandelver, is apparently pretty damn good. It was made by a good and experienced writer who worked for TSR, having a lot of other good shit on hand. It's shortish, efficient, simple, and allows for a lot of modification in its design.
That writer? Richard Baker. Who also wrote Birthright's setting as well as a shitload of 2e splats for a bunch of other settings.
The dark irony is Wizards tried to kill his career. How? They tapped him to write Gamma World 7e. Yeah, they used that book to specifically give a reason to purge a lot of TSR alumni.
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- Joined
- Oct 10, 2014
Old Dungeon magazines have some fun modules and there's enough of them that you can find an adventure that will fit into whatever campaign turns out to be. The first module I ever ran was Mad God's Key from Dungeon 114. It's sort of the start to an unfinished adventure path and there's a bunch of stuff the party might want to cling to. In fact they might ignore the second half of the module entirely which is perfectly fine. Starts off with a cool chase with custom mechanics and a big thieves hideout that the party will pick at and want to talk to NPCs. If they decide they're a lot more interested in taking over the thieves guild or something like that than just roll with it, you'll have until the next time you run to figure out what that is.
If you're running 5e, which you probably are, it's easy enough to replace the NPCs in the module with the ones in the back of the monster manual. You don't need to buy a monster manual unless you like to collect stuff, just use https://5e.tools/bestiary.html In fact you can use 5e.tools for most stuff, I think they've shoved entire adventures on it at this point.
Other advice I can offer:
Focus on stuff the party will actually see and do. It might be fun and sit and write the legacy of kings for 10 generations but get the real work done first. You can still design every detail of every district of your favorite city later.
Reskin monsters into whatever you want. Is the party fighting two halfling rogues who are also twins that use curtains to pretend they can teleport? Take a goblin, give it a few extra hitpoints, toss on a d6 sneak attack and you're done. Just describe it as a halfling.
Don't worry too much about the rules. Learn the game of course but there might be a time when you don't know how something works. Don't spend a half hour or let one of your players force the group into spending a half hour looking for a rule. Make a call, if someone gets pissy about it tell them to look it up after game and let you know. This is important because...
You want to maintain momentum. One of the best things I've seen a DM do is when stuff starts getting bogged down he'll go around a table and ask each player what they're doing. This forces people to actually play the game and not sit on their phone or them being too nervous to take action. It also stops an active player from taking the spotlight because the previously mentioned players are sitting and doing nothing.
Finally, you're probably doing better than you think. No one is paying you to do this shit so don't worry about it too much.
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
Well shit, guess I'll get a second hand copy of the gamemastery guide or an unrelated artbook to sate my craving for physical books.
As for the furfag, I think that's Shemeshka, an arcanaloth that appeared all the way back in AD&D's version of planescape but saw a surge in popularity these past few years due her appearence in some of these streamed campaigns and 5e's planescape adventure (which SUCKED in so many ways). That guy adopted Shemeshka as an online alias.
That aside, When I first saw it I thought it was some D&D e-celeb's fursona but, just some obscure character from the 90's that got appropiated by trannies and furries.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
I can't imagine there being a GW 7e, and don't even want to think about how utterly pozzed it must be.
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
It uses DnD 4e as a skeleton, which sounds good right? Haha wrong. Because it also forces you to buy cards and booster packs for you to run it, since you have no classes, and your powers are random based on drawing cards. Oh and also you need them because your base attack is shit by comparison. It also is filled with lolrandom garbage humor.
It's so bad I genuinely can't believe Baker wrote it.
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
I also suggest Lost Mine of Phandelver but if you want something even shorter I would suggest Sunless citadel which can be found already converted in Tales from the Yawning Portal. Both adventures are great starting points.
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2021
I too will vouch for Lost Mine of Phandelver, I DMed it for me and my friend groups first experience in DND. We continued with a homebrew campaign building off of it and still going strong a year later. I liked the buildup of the villain, and his fight was pretty climactic with the players falling into a trap. Now I very much envy those days when the party could be challenged by a handful of giant spiders.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
The one issue with Lost Mine of Phandelver in the present day is that the Starter Set with that adventure is no longer sold, WotC having replaced it with a new adventure a couple years ago, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. I don't have any experience with that adventure so I can't speak to its quality, but the old Starter Sets are pretty hard to find, so that's all you're likely to get. LMoP was reprinted in that more recent adventure book Phandelver and Below, along with a followup adventure that runs to level 12, though I've heard mixed things about that followup.
The Essentials Kit is another possibility if your players want a bit more freedom in what they start off with. While the Starter Set has a few premade character sheets, the Essentials Kit has blank sheets and an assortment of races/classes/backgrounds they can choose from, simplified for low-level play. It also has extra goodies like a full set of 11 dice, item and quest cards, initiative and status effect tokens, a map of the area, and a DM screen. It also has a coupon for three followup adventures that will take the party through level 12, though you can also just look those up on 5etools. All that for basically the same price as the Starter Set. It's what my group started with, and we had a blast (until the DM ended up throwing us into a half-baked homebrew, but that's another story).
The Essentials Kit is another possibility if your players want a bit more freedom in what they start off with. While the Starter Set has a few premade character sheets, the Essentials Kit has blank sheets and an assortment of races/classes/backgrounds they can choose from, simplified for low-level play. It also has extra goodies like a full set of 11 dice, item and quest cards, initiative and status effect tokens, a map of the area, and a DM screen. It also has a coupon for three followup adventures that will take the party through level 12, though you can also just look those up on 5etools. All that for basically the same price as the Starter Set. It's what my group started with, and we had a blast (until the DM ended up throwing us into a half-baked homebrew, but that's another story).
Friedrich Hayek's Ghost
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2022
A buddy wants to do a Mass Effect campaign, but he's trying to wrangle 5e into handling something it's really not designed to. I've been thinking about just reskinning Cyberpunk, since it already handles things like automatic weapons, ground and flying vehicles, and cybernetic augmentations. I've looked through the core rules for Cyberpunk, and haven't seen anything that obviously looks like it won't work, but I'm also a fucking retard. Does anyone know of anything I'm missing? His only other suggestion is Starfinder.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
Multiple ways to help you here.
First, look up Star Wars 5e. Is a free PDF that reskins 5e to Star Wars. Could easily be used as a base for Mass Effect.
For Cyberpunk, the generic rules are called Fuzion (or something like that) so that might help.
Starfinder could work.
Savage Worlds is an option, but you'll have to homebrew ship combat. I heard good things about Star Without Number, but I've never played it. If a one shot, Tiny Frontiers is good. Just go with the original instead of revised, or get the fan made Star Wars conversion which again, is free.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2020
You could take a look at traveler. Should have everything you need out of the box with not a whole lot of homebrew needed.
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2021
There are 6 gorillion Star Wars RPGs that could be adapted, e.g. West End Games, Saga Edition, FFG.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2020
Y'all motherfuckers need to stop cramming the 5e square into round holes.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
Yeah worth re-rupping this immediately just to point out that somehow, the madlads on 5e.tools have everything on there. It's shocking and I am flabbergasted the site hasn't been nuked from orbit by Hasbro. For example, if you wanted to, there's a Foundry plugin that basically lets you just download the entire book's worth of material (maps, tokens, monsters, NPCs etc.) and integrate into your world and run it as if it were designed for that purpose. It's wild.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
Starfinder won't really work. It's just D&D in space, complete with a heavy dependency on spells and magic items to work as written. Cyberpunk and Traveller are your best bets.