do any of you play dungeons and dragons? are you a player, dm, or mix of both? lgbt related because i'm trans and i'm considering running a campaign for the first time but i'm scared ): i guess post letters and talk about your experiences dming or any advice you have.
>>43638254I used to when I was younger. I was introduced to it in 5th grade. I played somewhat regularly throughout middle school, but as I grew older voice dysphoria made it really hard for me and I also had I guess OCD about not wanting to introduce my friends to any of my parents, in part driven by the fact that I often made friends with girls and didn't want to hear a hundred comments about girlfriends and stuff when I was increasingly uncomfortable with being in the role of a teenage boy. Now that I'm a legal adult I have Non-24 hour sleep wake disorder, which makes me feel hopeless about scheduling anything. As for advice, my main one would be to read the rulebooks. A lot of people will excitedly tell you that you don't need to memorize all the rules to get started. While this is technically true, in my experience it leads to people never reading the rulebooks, being unfamiliar with most of the rules, and the game slows to a crawl as a result. Player 1 doesn't know exactly how their ability works so they have to stop the game to look at the rules, which causes Player 2 to zone out due to boredom and not know what to do on their turn, which causes Player 3 to do the same, and so forth. For the same reason beware of recruiting too many players (most people find 6 or more to be too many). You don't need to *memorize* the whole rulebook, but especially as the DM at some point you must read through all relevant ones at least once. In 5e most of the rules are concentrated in Part 2 of the Player's Handbook, which takes up like 20 to 30 pages. Players should make themselves very familiar with those rules. The rest of the book is mostly options for individual characters. Players should write down ver batim the entire text of their character specific abilities. Even if they do not need their own reference due to having all of their own rulebooks this will help their memory. The standard character sheets are inadequate for this.
I have always wished I had friends to play D&D with. Closest I got was playing a campaign witj ChatGPT.
Too dumb to play DND. I've played a few times but never been part of a long-term group. Best time I ever had playing I was stoned out of my mind playing a dragonborn barbarian a trans guy friend of mine used to use (everyone was too stoned to roll up new characters). I was caveman-stupid stoned which really helped get in character. The DM was some random cis guy I'd never met before that previously-mentioned trans guy friend roped in to run this one session. No idea what he thought about all the stoned trannies playing.
I'm a bishit trans women and I hate fulfilling those stereotypes but I really love d&d and have been very interested in it since I was like 13. I'm a player in a campaign rn but I'll probably be dming my first real campaign soon. My best advice is to be very comfortable with the rules if you'll be dming. The way I did this was by spending a lot of time watching actual plays. I feel like this also gives you a rough sense of some of the basics of writing cohesive stories and arca for your players(obviously understand that the expectations for performance are very different). Also involve your players in your story as much as possible! Thinking about what parts of your world would connect to characters backstories, personalities, and players interests is the best way to make sure they are interested. I really like to have some sense of characters before the details of the story or even world are completely ironed out, so I can collaborate with players in world and story creation, to an extent that doesn't break immersion or spoil the story.
Trans.I used to play dnd and vtm but i also dmed cyberpunk and shadowrun and my own homebrew ttrpg.
>>43639054Forgot to addMy advice to dm is don't stop the players when they seem to be having fun and come prepared. Have at least 5-10 backup npcs, scenarios, and levels at any given time to be prepared for things to not go how you expected
>>43638254I played a little in hs but the group was kinda weird, there was this one tranny that would constantly talk about her sex toys and also had the worst most annoying character ("insane" dragonborn that was constantly going off to do his own thing taking up the DM's time and energy) I ended up dropping out because i didnt like playing with her and the sessions were keeping me from spending time with my bf but eventually the DM tried to create a country entirely controlled by women which got very misogynistic very fast from what ive heard, men in the group defended it, the women were obviously pissed and left and then the whole thing just kinda fell apart and fucked up the friendships that those people previously had
>>43638969I have a few more bits of advice for you regarding the physical stuff about the game: dice, miniatures, etc.While all editions of D&D *can* be played played without minis, i.e. in theatre of the mind, the specific distances and measures for everything mean the game was made primarily with miniatures in mind. If you try to do theatre of the mind you'll likely end up sorting things into zones and rounding distances to them.If you take a 1 by 2 inch piece of paper and fold it in half you can draw a symbol or monster on it and have a very cheap and easy miniature. A lot of people like washable vinyl battlemats. They have a grid, a blank background, and you use them with wet-erase markers. Get a pack with a lot of variety, but beware that some cheaper brands won't wash off easily. Another alternative is gaming paper, which is the same idea but disposable and non-washable. Depending on how glossy the paper is you'll be able to use a wider variety of materials on it. Gaming paper is also less restricted in its size.If you want to get into printing out a lot of colored stuff for your games, figure out how to jailbreak your printer or whatever so you can get cheap Chinese ink instead of spending loads of money on monopoly-priced official ink. For black-and-white stuff a laser printer might be better. Also, there's special sheets you can buy which will let you iron printed-out designs onto normal fabric. You could make a cloth map.You might get into 3d printing for cheap minatures. Another, lesser-known method of obtaining miniatures is metal casting, a few companies such as Prince August sell molds for casting pewter miniatures. This is generally a little more expensive than buying plastic miniatures, but might be cost-effective if you specifically want metal miniatures or if you want to swap from like 20 orcs one week to 30 dwarfs the next. However, a lot of the easier metals to work with either aren't that much durable than plastic or contain lead.
>>43639131The dangers of imagination
>>43639160While there are a few situations where theatre of the mind has advantages, such as running encounters over great distances, I haven't played in a group which used them. Most of the time it just becomes final fantasy style combat. While the DMs I've played with didn't run grid-and-miniature combat much more creatively, the baseline for it at least gives you some sort of extra interaction with optimal positioning and distances.
>>43638969>>43639160this is all really helpful (: thank you! ironically, i'm the newest player in my friend group, they've been playing for like a decade while i'm coming up on the three year mark. so the fear i have is mostly about being a new DM with veteran players/DMs. they're all my friends and want me to run something, they got me a copy of momster of the week for my birthday a couple years ago but i've been too scared to try it (i'm very self conscious about my creativity and whatnot.) i'm very nervous about letting them down or disappointing them, though logically i know they won't judge me or be mean. a few of them are currently dming and im in all their campaigns, they're all great dms and i worry i won't live up to them, yanno? in our campaigns, we have a tv that we lay flat and project a battle map onto, it'a very fun.>>43639131goodness, that sucks ): i hope you can find a more sane group to play with.>>43639052my friends are all really into story and roleplay, so i definitely will be consulting them about what they're looking to play before i flesh any sort of hard set world building up. my main character in one campaign's backstory is so entangled in the main plot that i never saw coming, i have an amazing dm. i wanna bring that kinda energy to my players>>43639054>>43639064yeah ive learned as a player that railroading can be a buzzkill.. though i will say it IS needed sometimes, if your players all have adhd or are indecisive lol.
>>43639564Might be worth trying a module to start, pre-written adventures can help you grab some instincts that don't come up until you've got experience. There are lots of moments that stick with people because of a solid improvised line or event, but plenty of dm's get caught trying to run everything without an outline and things can steadily devolve into every check and setting becoming an ambiguous blob. A module might help get you in the habit of looking out for those places where your players stay on track, and learning when the improv is a bonus that enhances things vs when it's a crutch that only makes things harder to keep in line.the option for a full transcription of a session is entirely there now, it might be better than finding someone to take notes if nobody in the party feels like it. Especially when you're just starting, having the whole history of the campaign right there on the record can really help keep things moving forward and coherent at the same time.
>>43638254>do any of you play dungeons and dragons? are you a player, dm, or mix of both? lgbt related because i'm trans and i'm considering running a campaign for the first time but i'm scared ): i guess post letters and talk about your experiences dming or any advice you have.i used to, i work too much now though
