Essential Reading for New DM's in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by dungeon fog dungeon fog's web-based map making platform is perfect for any dungeon master looking to create their own custom maps using dungeon fog you can create gorgeous homebrew battle maps from multi-level dungeons to natural environments and much much more you can export high res maps to print or use on a virtual tabletop or even send a fog of war version to a tv or projector a premium subscription includes over 3000 high resolution map making assets with dozens more added every month follow the links in the description below or visit dungeonfog.com to try it out for your next game and now on to this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesday and thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode if you're considering becoming a dungeon master and running your own games of dungeons and dragons one of the first pieces of advice you might have heard is that you need to read the rulebooks the three big core rulebooks players handbook dungeon master's guide and monster manual here you go kelly have fun reading 900 pages this is going to take me the better part of a couple months i'm a pretty slow reader so this is daunting and not something that i really want to get into if you're just getting started with d it can be really intimidating for somebody to say read these three books and try to memorize as much of it as possible reading the core rule books cover to cover is completely unnecessary for a new dungeon master or even an experienced dungeon master it can be a lot of fun as a thought experiment to read through some of the monster manuals some of the spells and dungeons and dragons and get lots of great inspiration but if you are setting out to run your very first dungeons and dragons campaign whether you are brand new to dnd at all or whether you are experienced with dnd and setting out to run a campaign for the first time taking up the mantle of dungeon master it's not necessary to read all the rules but it is a good idea to read some of them as you spend time as a dm and as years go past and you are learning the game more and more there's a good chance that in time you will absorb a lot of what these books have to offer but if you're setting out to just get started with dungeons and dragons and you're hoping to get a grasp of the rules that you need to know today we're going to talk about the sections of these books that we think are most important for you to understand before setting out on your dnd adventures most importantly we're going to be citing some of the page numbers in these books so you can follow along with your own bookmarks and mark these books up and know how to use them at the table when you need to reference something really really quickly it's often more important as a dungeon master while you're running the game to know where to find the rule that you're looking for to clarify something rather than having that perfectly memorized so as we go through the books today we're going to highlight what are the key sections that you should probably read and what you should bookmark so you've got that handy as a reference table during the game there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so let's kick things off with the most important book that you have at your disposal when getting into d d and that is the player's handbook you might be really tempted to read through all the player options in this book when you first pick it up as a dm reading over all the classes the races the spells and the feats and the truth of the matter is is that you probably want to just practice making a character on your own and then read over the spells classes and feats that your players have actually taken first something that can be a little bit misleading is you might think as a new dungeon master the first book you should read cover to cover is the dungeon masters guide but actually more information in the player's handbook is going to be useful even for new dms out there than what you might find in some of the other books even though it's called the player's handbook do not give it a pass because you think it doesn't have relevant information it is chock full of useful information for dms and there are some sections that are nearly essential for dms to understand if you are a new dungeon master setting up for the very first time you should read the introduction it's only four pages from page five to eight and it just has a really useful summary of the core gameplay loop of dungeons and dragons reminding you of how things like advantage and disadvantage work and what it means to ask for a dice roll the essence of what you need to know to play d d is all found in this introductory chapter but if you want to get to the meat of everything that we're talking about you can find most of that in chapter 7 of the player's handbook chapter 7 is from page 171-179 it's only about eight pages and it explains how ability scores work in dungeons and dragon's fifth edition ability scores being the core mechanic that make up all players in a dungeons and dragons game it's important that all the players and the dungeon master understand how they work and how they can be used at the table this chapter is really useful for understanding the difference between an ability check an attack role and a saving throw and it gives you great guidelines on how the ability scores actually work and play and when you should ask for that strength check or stealth check or that intelligence history check out this entire section you should bookmark page 174 which includes all of the dc's for ability checks that you're probably going to be using at the table right after chapter 7 you can jump right into chapter 8 which is page 181-186 this covers a lot of the rules for exploration and role-playing even though these rules are a little bit more loose and up to the imagination there are a lot of really important things in this chapter that are great to keep in mind when you're running a game of dnd afterwards though you will want to dive into the rules in chapter 9 which are the combat rules this is probably the meatiest section of the book and dnd is a game about combat it's a centerpiece of the experience this is the section of the book that is the most finicky and specific and deserves your closest read combat in general requires the most amount of rules in dungeons and dragons where a lot of the game is left up to imagination and interpretation the rules for combat are much more structured so this is a really important section for you to understand and memorize what you can before setting out for your games you will want to bookmark page 192 which explains the fundamental actions that you can take in combat oftentimes these actions that you can take in combat are summarized on great resources like dungeon master screens and there's tons of amazing handouts for these so i do encourage you to seek those out we'll have some useful links to some of those in the description below there's few things that a new dungeon master with a new group of players is going to reference more often than the summary of the actions players can take in combat as we jump into chapter 10 pages 201 to 205 this covers spell casting which is one of the more complex areas of the game similar to combat spellcasting has a lot of rules and regulations that make it work at the table so it is really important to read this section and understand it there are at this point hundreds of spells and you don't need to read all of them what's more important here is to bookmark something like page 202 which includes things like concentration and casting times after chapter 10 you go into a massive section of the player's handbook that covers hundreds of spells which it's impossible to memorize them all i don't have them memorized and i know a lot of them but i don't have them memorized do you no no and i even get them wrong time and time again in my own games the key thing with spells is that when your players take them when they level up when they're making your new characters that is when you should read them the most difficult thing to manage as a new dungeon master are all the unexpected surprises that your players are going to pull out as they improvise actions the spells are a tricky thing because the spells are the players getting permission to do tricky things that might surprise you by the rules so that's why they're really worth reading but you only need to read the ones that your players are actually going to take or the ones your villains are going to use we've done a lot of videos covering the spells in dungeons and dragons 5th edition so you might want to check out our various playlists talking about those where we do discuss some of the more fun tricks that you can pull off with magic and d finally tucked away way at the back of the player's handbook on page 290 are the conditions this can be a little confusing because conditions are referenced all over the place but you don't actually know what they are until you get to the end of the book so we highly recommend looking at page 290 and understanding the different and various conditions that are available to dungeons and dragons how they work how they interact with each other so that when they come up and play you have a quick reference it's also really handy to bookmark this page as well it's also really handy to have a dungeon master screen because this will have a lot of the rules inside for the actions in combat and conditions instead of having to flip through the book to find them so that's our reading list for the players handbook specifically and our handy cheat sheet definitely worth having both of these things together but as we put down the players handbook let's pick up the dungeon masters guide and crack this one open because i think of all the core rule books how much of this a dm needs to read is perhaps the most unclear because this is definitely the book that you don't need to read cover to cover now before we jump into how little of this book you actually need to read we should be clear that the dungeon masters guide is still essential and there are a lot of optional rules variant rules there are a lot of tools in here for creating various homebrewed worlds or npcs villains magic items or other additional options for your dungeons and dragons games these are all really cool and useful tools but you're only going to need them if it's going to come up in your game if you're running a pre-written module like lost minds of fandalver or curse of strawd there's a lot of material in here that you probably won't need to reference what i like to recommend is that you crack open the book to the table of contents and look at the things like creating adventures and creating non-player characters well when you are actually going to make your own npcs read over that chapter it's actually a really useful how-to guide on what to do for that there are a few essential sections of this book that i think anyone should read much like before the introduction on page six specifically has a great section just reminding you that you gotta know your players you gotta know what they like and it's a great bit of advice to review over beyond that i would skip right ahead to chapter eight which is called running the game very appropriately this is probably the chapter that is most useful for a dungeon master to read because it goes over the core rules of dungeons and dragons from the dungeon masters perspective it's a perfect complement to chapter 7 8 and 9 from the player's handbook but from the dungeon master's point of view so it has great advice about when you should call for a strength check or how to decide whether it's a saving throw or an attack roll or an ability check that you need to roll this section spans from page 233 to 261 but there are some really important sections that you should consider bookmarking within this chapter on page 245 you're going to find the conversation dc's which is an excellent little section for running charisma based skill checks during social elements of a dnd game on page 246 is a truly indispensable section the object ac and hit points so when your players want to break down a door or smash a table or knock over a wall or do all those crazy improvised things that they always want to do here's how tough all the objects in the world are speaking of improvising page 249 includes tables for improvising damage and the damage severity by level so that you can properly estimate what sort of damage output you should be giving to your players based on the level they're at so that you don't outright murder them fortunately most of these tables are actually in the official dungeon master screen as well but if you haven't read these sections yet and seen how to actually use these tables there's great advice in here that will help you improvise and respond to the crazy things that your players decide to do as we move past page 252 you get into a bunch of optional rules for things like chases poisons diseases and madness these are really excellent tools if you're planning to use them in your campaign or if it starts to come up these might be good sections to read when it's appropriate now on page 81 of the dungeon master's guide till page 85 are the core rules for how to build a balanced combat encounter how to choose monsters and make sure that the monsters that you've chosen are a challenging or deadly or easy threat for your players unfortunately these rules are super draconian and i actually don't recommend using them instead i recommend you crack open xanathar's guide to everything to page 88 to 91. the rules in xgte for building encounters are much simpler easier to use and produce much better results in general there are several online tools that can help you build combat encounters many of these tools are built on the rules in the dungeon masters guide and aren't as good as the rules in xanthar's you should also consider looking at chapter 7 of the dmg which starts on page 135 this includes all of the rules for magic items and without a doubt this is the section of the dungeon masters guide that i use the most it's a really handy reference when i'm coming up with my game for the night what magic items am i going to award the players for completing the tasks they're setting out on the dungeon masters guide has these rules and they're great but you should also consider looking at the same page 135 in xanathar's guide to everything which has expanded on the rules for giving out magic items appropriately in your dungeons and dragons game combining these two together are really essential tools that a dungeon master needs to know to award the players properly without risking breaking their game overpowering the characters or giving them things that they might not need or use instead of using the random magic item tables in the dungeon masters guide the xgte tables are much more clear-cut and will help you give an appropriate number of magic items that won't overpower your players beyond these essential sections chapter one of the dungeon masters guide particularly page nine has some great discussion of the core assumptions of dungeons and dragons 5th edition particularly when it comes to world building and creating your campaign world itself so after i read these essential sections i would point you towards chapter 1 of the dmg that said when it comes to setting expectations there's one set of expectations that you need to set not with the rules of the game but with your players before anything else and to do that you need to have a session zero which is not a concept the dungeon master's guide talks about at all inside the book tasha's cauldron of everything on page 139 there is an extremely handy section on running a session zero running session zero we believe is something that should be essential for starting a dnd game it allows everybody to have an understanding of the game that they're about to play everybody can get on the same page with expectations and then move forward into a game that will be more fun and benefit a lot from the collaborative journey that you're about to set out on together these rules were a little late to the game and we do think that they would have been better placed in the dungeon masters guide so if you are looking for rules on how to set up a session zero grab tasha's cauldron of everything or you can also check out a video that we made about session zero which you can find right up there now once you've made your way through the dungeon masters guide the last book that you will want to pick up and go through is the monster manual fortunately this is the one that is best organized as a table reference tool because all the monsters are in alphabetical order for the most part and they're pretty easy to find and run right out of the book i love reading the monster manual just in my spare time to get inspiration and i've ever hit writer's block when i'm planning an adventure i just crack this open to a random page and try to find a monster that i've either never used before or haven't used in a very long time and say well what if this monster showed up in the adventures tonight something that i feel is very underrated about the monster manual is no you do not need to read every monster but if you're struggling to come up with an idea for your adventure reading those little paragraphs of lore about a monster that you're interested in could inspire an entire an adventure or even an entire campaign there's a lot of great tools that you can find just by reading about what environments the monsters inhabit what their layers might look like what they like to do it could inspire many things in your dnd games the most important part though about this is reading the section on how to understand monster stat blocks fortunately that's right at the beginning of the book and the really finicky rules like legendary actions and recharge rules all those things are found on page 10 and 11. it's a good part to bookmark if you need to remind yourself how legendary monsters work just read over that first section at the beginning that's the only bit of required reading that i would say is necessary for the monster manual the only thing that's really handy to bookmark in the monster manual is on page 304 appendix v non-player characters this is a section of generic non-player character stat blocks and i will say that 95 or more of the npcs i use in my game use a stat block out of this section of the book absolutely all you need is this and a name which you can get from the random names in the player's handbook or xanathar's guide to everything and a couple adjectives to help roleplay and you basically have everything you need to run an npc so between these three books there is actually less reading that you need to do than you may have expected when you first saw the 900 pages of information set up before you yeah about 35 pages from the player's handbook another 30 or so from the dungeon masters guide and maybe another 10 or 15 in other places of the other books that's actually a lot more forgiving than my english 101 class in my first year of university yeah it's much easier to jump into dungeons and dragons when you know what you need to know and up on screen right now here are the sections that we recommended from the player's handbook with a list of the page numbers associated with those sections and highlighting the sections that we think that you should bookmark now here we see the dungeon masters guide with the same information laid out for you so take a look at that that has all of the pages that we think are most relevant from the dungeon masters guide and finally we have the monster manual this has a few sections here that we think are essential reading but keep in mind that the monster manual can be a great place to go for inspiration for your dnd games finally here's a couple of the supplemental page sections from tasha's culture of everything and xanathar's guide to everything that we mentioned in this episode and for all of you that want something that you can print out or look at we've prepared an useful google doc in the links below that you can download that has our full reading list completely summarized for you as well so the next time someone tells you or another dungeon master that you need to read all the rules remember that that's not entirely true i have never sat down and dedicated in a dedicated way read all these rules cover to cover i've read them in piecemeal in bits and pieces starting with the most important pieces of information hopefully this is a great starting point for you as a new dungeon master on what you actually need to read and beyond that hopefully some of our videos here on youtube will give you help and context as well as you start out running your first campaign so this has been a look at our essential reading guide for new dungeon masters in dungeons and dragons 5th edition if you feel like we missed an essential section please let us know in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on youtube please consider joining our community by following the links in the description below if you are a fan of our work you might be interested in hearing that we are creating a book for 2021 we've partnered with ghostfire games to kickstart an upcoming campaign module based on our live play series dungeons of drakenheim you can find all the information regarding this by following the link in the description if you're interested in seeing what drakenheim is all about you can check out our live play which airs tuesday nights at 6pm eastern at twitch.tv dungeon underscore dudes and you can find all the previous episodes of that campaign right up over here and we've got plenty more great advice for new dungeon masters and experienced ones in our playlist right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 159,393

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: Lx8tEAYB5Q0

Length: 22min 25sec (1345 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020