Let’s kick things off by dispelling some of the anxieties around the mother of roleplaying, Dungeons & Dragons, and take a look at Wizard of the Coast’s 5th edition core rulebooks. If my theater education has taught me anything, though, it’s to start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start). Hopefully it’ll inspire other aspiring roleplayers to overcome their fear while becoming a useful resource guide for RPG veterans to boot. Over the course of this column I’ll be using various RPG books as launching points to discuss my ongoing quest to become a better GM and to talk about roleplaying in general. It’s the publisher in me: If I like something, I have a really hard time keeping it to myself. I’ve dipped into a variety of games and play-styles now and emailed ENTROPY eager to share my findings with others. I knew books helped me GM better, love small press, and had no idea just how vibrant the roleplaying community is. The next thing I did was familiarize myself with the indie RPG publishing scene. And as an improviser, I found having a collection of prompts to start a narrative with was hugely helpful in getting a campaign off the ground and keeping it rolling when writer’s block inevitably struck. They’re less rulebooks and more resources. Once I actually read the books, I realized I’d been thinking about them all wrong. It’s also a lot, LOT less intimating that I thought it would be. It’s inspired me to write new plays and fiction for the first time in years, in part because it reminds me just how fun telling a story can be. It also scratches a serious writing itch I didn’t realize I’d been neglecting. We order pizza, drink beers, and just have fun. Now our play sessions are easily a highlight of my week. They had let me crash on their couch while looking for apartments my first month in the city, so as a gift I decided to go ahead and buy the damn books and run a game for them. His wife and her best friend were on board, and as a first-year New Yorker I was in desperate need of some weekly fun-friend-time to make the city feel a little less overwhelming.
The tipping point was when one of my best friends confessed he’d always wanted to play tabletop RPGs too. I was afraid that if I GM’d a campaign (or dungeon mastered if you’re playing D&D) I wouldn’t be able to come up with a plot that’d be fun or interesting in the first place. I can “yes and” until the cows come home, but I have serious issues when it comes to starting my own stories. I’m also an editor first and a writer second. I’m more of a words guy, and the thought of having to solve math problems every couple of minutes in order to get to the GOOD STUFF sounded more like work than fun.
#Dnd dmg 5e manual#
I work in theatre, so knew I loved storytelling and improv, but every time I picked up a player’s manual I got scared away by the tables upon tables of numbers.
I’d wanted to play tabletop roleplaying games for a while now, but it wasn’t until this year that I finally took the plunge. I’m Tyler Crumrine, your RPG concierge and game-master-in-training. Welcome to the first installment of Dungeons Mastered, a tabletop roleplaying column from someone still figuring this shit out.
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