I feel that the best place to begin with playing any RPG is preparation. Getting any group of adults together and on the same page for any length of time is almost impossible. So, in the interest of everyone having fun and not wasting what could be precious game time, it's always good to be ready to go. This is accomplished two ways. First, etiquette. A few simple guidelines can make any evening of gaming run smoothly. I'll do a numbered list, because they are fun and I just figured out how to do them.
- Be Early- It takes a group a little while to settle down after getting to the venue. It usually takes a group about a half an hour to get to the table after arriving, so it never hurts to be a little early. It also gives your DM a chance to set up and prepare without being rushed
- Bring Your Gear- Nothing ruins a night faster than forgetting your dice. Or character sheet, rulebook or mini.
- Know Your Rules- You do not need to know every little rule, but it is always a good idea to be familiar with the rules that your character uses often. If you are a summoner wizard, read over the summoning rules. Do a lot of grappling? Mark your rule book on that page. A combat can grind to a screeching halt if someone has to go "I'm not sure, let me look that up" every time they use an encounter power. This particular piece of advice is a pet peeve of mine. In the past, as a DM, I have forbidden a player from playing certain classes because they refused to know the rules.
- Plan With Your Group- This last point is ensure everyone is going to have fun with their character. It's important during character creation that everyone discusses what they are playing and make sure everyone has all of their bases are covered. This is when you make sure you have a healer, and that you aren't stepping on someone else's character concept. This can be a really fun exercise for the group to do together.
The second thing is dice jargon. I know that seems odd, but one of the first thing everyone experiences as a new play is the confusion over the dice. Yes, there can be a lot of them, and yes, they are shaped weird. And reading the rules for how to role them can be like reading algebra if you've new to RPGs.
RPG dice are most often referred to as a polyhedral set. They come from manufacturers such as Crystal Caste and Chessex in sets of seven different dice per set. They are a four sided, six sided, eight sided, ten sided, twelve sided, twenty sided, and a special ten sided die called a percentile die. They all have special abbreviations to make writing them down much easier. They are as follows.
- d4 Four Sided
- d6 Six Sided
- d8 Eight sided
- d10 Ten Sided
- d12 Twelve Sided
- d20 Twenty Sided
- d100 or d% The percentile die and the d10 together
The next piece of the puzzle is rolling multiple dice. The way this usually represented is XdY. X represents the number of dice you need to roll and Y denotes which dice it is you need to roll. So, for example, 3d6 means roll three six-sided dice and add the results. It's that simple.
And that's it. That's the basics of preparation. Friday's post will be an overview of character creation, specifically aimed at D&D.
