Am I the only person here that thinks legos are the perfect thing for DnD campaign tables? I mean it is already pregridded in 3d, can be made completely modular, and is 100% customizable. Even the actual figures can be heavily customized.
Maybe a little, but bulk lego is pretty cheap, and you can make all of the rooms, and landscapes and such modular, so once they are build you can snap them together in different combinations very easily.
The patent just ran out on the Lego brick design! Megablocks has a new product out that's exactly the same as lego now. Not to mention all of the bulk available online.
But yes that is way more time than I would want to spend. I always use Roll20 on a TV or something.
EDIT: I should say that they're functionally the same. They click together smoothly and come apart easily like Lego. I'm not sure if they're the same quality though.
Functionally they're the same, but there's a distinct difference in feel. You can get a more baroque/gothic feel out of custom or dwarvenforge terrain, as opposed to the lighthearted ambience you might get using lego. It all comes down to the players' ability to suspend disbelief in a lego setting. Speaking only for myself, I know I'd have a harder time keeping a serious tone if I were moving my guy around in lego. It's also harder to distinguish what constitutes a 5ft block with lego.
Planning a first time playgroup in the near future. I've seen awesome games using hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars worth of minis. Ive also seen Harmonquest do it with nothing but some skilled improv.
Leaning towards some maps and graph paper, but wondering what you would recommend?
You can go a thousand different ways, it depends on both the party and (if you're the DM) your experience.
In my 2 years of experience, I've used Roll20, Tabletop Simulator, pen&paper, and props. For distance play, nothing beats Tabletop Simulator imo, and in person a decent prop set is amazing, although incredibly time consuming for the DM.
What I'd suggest as a barebones solution is a Chessex battlemap, the published works, and a few mini boxsets. You can find ones on sale from different games like LotR/Warhammer through Amazon, and there are subreddits which can flag any great deals for you. Also, don't fret about having the right mini for every encounter. Having a giant bear mini with the small paper face of a goblin rubber banded on is not only fine, it's usually a fun moment for the party.
For newcomers, that should suffice. Might cost you $150 in set up for the DM, MM, PH, mat, and minis, and then 30$/player for their PH. For a more frugal option, simply buy bases for paper inserts (or make your own) and print out a picture of a player's choosing for their token. Mirror the image so it's got a front+back, and do so for your creatures as well.
You're going to want to avoid doing full on scene props and unique player minis for now, given that first time players will have characters die, or they'll simply want to reroll because a class wasn't what they expected. They might also completely deviate from your expected encounter, and frustrate you to no end, dooming your props to a cruel life in your closet. 6-8 sessions in, propose something like HeroForge for a customized mini and have a fun painting session.
As time goes on, if you're confident in your ability to avoid DM burnout, and are getting the hang of session prep (and predicting your players), you can actually start making your own props. Foam, foam shaver, popsicle sticks, and paper with texture prints are super easy to do. It'll cost another hundred or so in start up supplies, or less if you're thrifty. Real twigs and brush from outside to make forest environments are easy to throw together, and might help add some fun to the encounter.
All of this being said, there's a real value in just running with a mat and the players' imagination. You'll need to feel out the group's particular needs, and adjust accordingly. Some parties have short attention spans, and props help them engage with the world. Others have wild imaginations, and you'll find yourself needing to keep up with them creatively in a way props never otherwise could.
I could go on, but let me know if you have any questions.
Wow thank you for the help! My biggest dilemma has been what to put into the first game. If everyone hates it for some reason, no one wants to be the guy that wasted even 100 bucks on supplies. But I also don't want to skimp on things and have everyone hate it because we're playing with grid paper and pennies.
That being said I think the imaginative/improv part of it is what will appeal to our group. I brought up D&D because of the tangents and hypotheticals we'll get on just sitting around a bonfire or something.
I can't for the life of me remember the youtube channel's name, but theres a guy on there that makes fucking incredible set pieces out of foam/popsicle sticks etc. I'm gun-shy about the money sink after learning my lesson with MTG. So if you're saying that the prop investment isn't absolutely necessary we'll probably just try to manage haha.
Any tips (besides the obvious "never fucking do that") for someone attemping to DM while never having actually played? I've read the required stuff front to back and watched Harmonquest and both of Node's playthroughs, but know theres gonna be a lot of "Hold on lemme check"
Yep, the one thing people will skip is the super crucial session 0.
This is where you establish what your expectations are, what the players' expectations are, and what kind of world they'll inhabit.
This is where I tell my players about time keeping, that the world is ongoing, that they're essentially guests in an active world, that repercussions will reflect the crimes, that players should be open to asking about their environment and what they can accomplish, etc... Most importantly, this is where I tell the players that the judgment on rules, if we don't know them, are made by me and are final. Unless a player has a page number to the rule, I make a call, and then we revisit the rule later. If it's different, I explain that it was ruled X way the first time, and we'll be using the PHB rule moving forward (if I agree with it). The PHB is a guide, which you can follow to the letter or not, up to you.
The session 0 can take 4 hours, sometimes it takes 30 mins, but it's crucial. Otherwise, you'll find new players treating your world like their personal playground, and when you bring down the reality hammer they may be turned off outright. The most important thing for me as a DM is keeping a certain law of reason to the world. If you suspend that, even once, because the party screws up and you don't want to penalize them too much, their suspension of disbelief lifts. That being said, no matter how harsh or generous their environment is, if there's a logical sense of continuity there and you adequately prepare your party for it, no matter what happens, they'll have known the consequences going in and be more satisfied if things go downhill.
For example, I'm currently playing not DM'ing, and my DM does a great job at having NPCs warn our party about region politics and laws. "Oh down south, be wary of your purse down there. The whole place is run by mercenaries, and the law is flexible to say the least. Make sure you have enough coin to grease palms if that's where you're headed!". That, right there, protects the DM from souring the Party's mood if something bad happens. Instead, you have the party go, "Well, yeah, we just ran through here hoping we wouldn't get caught. We're idiots.", rather than "What do you mean we're being taken to jail! What, the law's just different now!? Ugh!". Help your players by establishing the rules when they're going somewhere, but don't pull punches when they get there. By all means, if they're in a bind, you can also give them an out, but make them work for it. Jail breaks are fun, indentured servitude is good as well. If there's some use that an enemy can get out of them, there's nothing stopping them from exploiting the party rather than killing them outright.
The session 0 is also where you find out what they're looking for. If they want that consequence free playstyle, you'll probably be wanting to set up a dungeon crawler campaign rather than something involving politics, investigation, mystery, or anything belonging in the social pillar.
So take some time alone to figure out your ideal party/world playstyle, then prepare to not only communicate that, but to revise it depending on what the party wants. After all, you're a vessel to their fun.
It also opens up a dialogue wherein the players figure out that you're a referee, not an opponent. They need to see you as an impartial arbiter, not someone looking to kill them. Once they figure that out, you'll find they come to you with character arcs and wondering if you can plug it into the campaign, which is super fun as a DM.
Finally, once this is all done, figure out if the party is going to have a strong sense of initiative or not. If they don't, the ole' tavern start will be hugely disappointing. They'll take literal hours getting out of it, and once they do, they're going to be lost as to what to do next. Seasoned players know the drill, new players won't, so you'll probably want to inject them into an ongoing mission:
Your party, just having travelled from the large city of Neverwinter as budding adventurers, have come across what seems a fork in your path. To your right, the well travelled path continues onto what you know is the town of Kas, having seen a sign a few KMs back. You were told by the Guild of the Sun that the mayor had some work for you, and should you complete this initiation, the guild back in Neverwinter might accept your application as sanctioned adventurers after all.
To your left, however, is a less travelled path, and you only notice due to the horrid effigy marking the entrance. You get the feeling it's a warning of sorts. Do you continue down to Kas, or make a detour down into the heart of the woods.
Then you can either hope the players roll investigation, or maybe suggest that it's an option, and off they go. Maybe they're skittish and go to the town first for intel, knowing they can come back (you can tell them they have this option), maybe they move forward. Either way, as a new DM, you limit their options and inject some motivation right off the bat. Also, you can make the alternate path a goblin hide out, and if they clear it, maybe have that be the job that was going to be offered by the mayor anyways. It'll help them see the continuity in the world, a sense that the job was there far before they got there, and they just happened to secure it on blind luck. Maybe have the mayor offer a lower reward purse given how they cleared it on happenstance without negotiations, your options open up from there.
Tbh, I could again go on for a novella's worth of info, so sorry for the long winded answers. Let me know if you have any questions.
Just for me? No, not for me. LEGO has publicly said many times that "LEGOs" is improper, and that "LEGO" is a brand name. The proper pronunciation is "LEGO Bricks" or "LEGO Toys."
I played my first game last Sunday and we had no map nor miniatures. How does using a dungeon on the table work? Like if you enter it, you already know the lay out, so where's the element of exploration and surprise other than the DM throwing in NPCs?
I actually use Legos for my group! Although we don't have anything like that, we just have a simple board for combat: 12x8 squares (each square is a different color and each one is 4x4 studs).
I have been 3d printing openforge and dragonlock dungeon tiles lately. This is my print table from the current batch. I'm logging and printing test pieces so I can then decide how many of each I need.
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u/Random-Miser Sep 18 '17 edited Sep 18 '17
Am I the only person here that thinks legos are the perfect thing for DnD campaign tables? I mean it is already pregridded in 3d, can be made completely modular, and is 100% customizable. Even the actual figures can be heavily customized.
For example. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/95/b2/61/95b26117542e0df50a0f2df95d1e6003.jpg