How-To: Setup your Table for a Session of Dungeons and Dragons

what's up Dungeon Master's this is Nick and in this video I'm gonna be showing you how I set up my table to prepare for a session of Dungeons & Dragons we're gonna be taking a look at what's going on behind the dungeon master screen as well as doing a quick walk around the table to show what's out there for the players now this is what I like to have set up before the first person even walks through the door that way we can jump right into game play and not spend time sharpening pencils and searching for miniatures there are a few things that I'd like to have always available behind the screen and then others that I just kind of keep within arm's reach now the arms reach items are over here to the left you can see that I have the core rule books so there's the monster manual Dungeon Master's guide and on top as the players handbook and the way that I make these manageable for my session is I take a bunch of post-it sticky tabs and I label the important sections in the book that way if somebody has a you know a question on a spell or a question on a feat I can quickly flip to that section and get the answer over here I have some miniatures now if it's going to be a heavy role-playing session I may not have any or just one or two sitting behind the screen if it's going to be kind of a dungeon crawl hack-and-slash session then what I like to do is have all the miniatures that I think we're gonna use out and ready maybe if there's gonna be a couple of random encounters that I have planned I like to have all those ready that way I don't need to go down into the bins over there install a game right in the center is the meat of the operation you can see that I have the lost mine of fan delver module so whether you're running a premade or your own homebrew you're gonna want to have your notes right there dead center ready to go in this binder I have a bunch of just useful information printed out anything that I find myself referencing frequently I just print it out and put it in the binder that way I can just flip directly to it so right here I have weapons and armor here we have some monsters by challenge rating I also got a bunch of cool cool little maps in here you can see there's Neverwinter map over on this side as helms hold you don't have to copy this but you know whatever you find useful during your session just have that ready to go to the far right you can see that I have a trusty pencil and notepad you're going to want to have one of these obviously for just tracking stuff throughout the session maybe the players meet a new NPC just it maybe they give you a little piece of their backstory that you hadn't really had before so just keep that back here for notes that way you can quickly jot it down and use it to use it for the future sessions up here we have just a small collection of dice I have everything from a d4 up to a d20 as well as a critical hit body location dice which is super fun to use if you've never used that before and the way that we play that is if you roll a natural 20 you get to roll that crit hit body location dice if it's a headshot it's basically an insta-kill and the way the way that we like to do that is I also do that for the mobs or for the monsters it doesn't kill the players but it may knock them out break a leg any number of fun fun things can happen and the reason that I like to use that is I used to play this text-based scrolling game called Arctic mud and you could get these weapons that were called decap weapons decapitation weapons and it didn't matter how big and nasty that mob was if you D captain it was just it was just dead so kind of fun to use you may not want to do it for your big boss fights if you have a large battle sequence kind of planned out might be kind of a bummer but the players absolutely love it right here we have NPC portraits and this is from inkwell ideas check out my other video where I do a full review of this deck if you haven't used these before they are absolutely amazing as you're aware a lot of times the players will go off on a what I like to call random side quest and you may not have planned for it so let's say they're roaming around through Neverwinter wood and they stumble into a elder scout party what I do is just grab the deck flip through till I find an interesting elf and as I'm showing them who they're talking to I can flip it around to the back and all the hard stuff is or all the hard work has already been done for me you can see I already have a name to go off of there's personality strengths quirks and if you really decide to integrate this NPC into your game there's a little background section that you can use down there as well so you can change this around whoever you want kind of make it your own or just use the card the way it is but so we got a cool-looking elf here looks like a stone-cold dwarf cool-looking half work so again highly recommend these super fun to use in the campaign over here we have spell cards and Monster Cards and these ones are the ones directly from Wizards and these are really useful and helpful especially for new players not not everybody may necessarily know what an ogre is so as they stumble upon one you can just kind of you know poke it up over the DM screen everybody can see what they're what they're dealing with and then on the back side you have access to all the monsters stats there's AC hitpoints action it's basically just the miniature monster manual for that monster in addition we also have spell casting cards here so this monster the flame skull is a spell caster up on the top right corner of the card you can see the spell casting stats or information so he's got kin trips all the way through third level spells and what I like to do is I'll have my spell caster sitting back here and then I'll go through and I'll pull the spell cards that I would think that that monster would use or that I want it to use or that I think would be fun and I'll just pull those spells out and have them ready to go that way I don't have to go look it up or write it down I just have the spell card waiting for me now if you're a DM and you are gonna you don't have any of these but you're thinking of getting some cards I would recommend starting with the Arcana ones because they include wizard warlock and sorcerer and a lot of the monsters that cast spells seem to have those spells available to them so again if you're gonna if you're just gonna go and start buying these I would start with the Arkana ones and you don't need to pull every spell that the monster can use because as you saw in that list it can get there was quite a few there so if it's a high-level caster you might be pulling a lot of spells just pull the ones that you think you're gonna use or just have the ones that you're gonna use sitting on the card and then have the other ones on standby in case you do need to look them up right here our magic item cards now these do come in the red border as well but I purchased the essentials kit and I haven't actually bought the magic item cards themselves yet so I'm just using these in the meantime so as the players are discovering magic items finding loot just pass these out and in addition to their character sheet it's not something else to reference if they have questions on what their item does recommend getting a small hourglass there is nothing more fun for me anyways then giving the players just some crazy scenario or a situation and then just as they're starting to talk about it and figure things out I'll just slam that down on the table just watch their eyes pop out as they realize they only have minutes to figure it out right here we have the DM screen we don't really need to go over that my initiative tracker and be sure to check out my other video where I go into depth on why I have chosen this method for tracking initiative those are also a couple of other things that I like to use that for so be sure to check that out and let me know if you have any questions and that is everything that I got going on behind the screen let's go ahead and take a quick walk around the table so first thing you probably noticed is that I have a large battle grid mat this is roughly four feet by three feet and I believe this is from chess X and if we take a closer look you can see it's divided into one inch squares on the reverse side it's got little hex a little hex grid so what I'll do is whatever location that I think they're probably going to go to I like to draw that out on the main side with the one-inch squares and then any secondary locations all sketched out on the back now we don't always use a battle grid but my players really seem to like it just kind of helps them visualize where they're at and what their what their character is doing in relation to the monsters and I actually I don't mind using either I started started with fourth edition where it was kind of more grid-based and it's just kind of stuck with me I also like to have the players characters out here on the mat ready for them to go you can see I have a little compass four-point compass Rowe was drawn here I would recommend sketching that out on the grid if you are going to use one because let's say that godfist here comes to a fork in the road so your as you as you come to the fork in the path you see to the northwest there is a dark hallway covered in cobwebs leading into the darkness to the north is a well-lit path that leads to a large stone door and to the northeast you can see the a trail leading into the darkness the ground is covered with slime and water so that's all good and great but ok which directions north which way is north west north east so if you have that out on the map it makes it super useful for the characters over here we have just a bunch of random dice I like to get too little compartmentalized dice holder it's all broken down from d4 up to D 20 I got the D tens and the percentile dice in the same slot that way players can just grab exactly what they need as it comes up most of them bring their own but I like to have a large collection here just kind of an standby I've got a bunch of extra pencils and dry erase markers in case I need to quickly sketch something out on the map or the players do make sure you have all your pencil sharpened and ready to go you can see that the grid is covered in a bunch of just printer paper and the reason that I do that is to just cut down on the metagaming I don't want the characters to see a room or the players to see a room and say oh there's probably going to be a boss there we should probably rest before we go in you just kind of cuts down on the metagaming so that's why I use the white sheets of paper over the map and then if you have any players that leave their character sheets just make sure you have that set out and ready to go most of mine bring theirs home but if they do leave them make sure it's out there and ready to go and that is pretty much it so if you have any Shinzon anything that we've discussed here just go ahead and throw it down in the comments I am always more than happy to answer questions if you have any feedback please let me know if there is something that I left out of my arsenal that I absolutely need to have at the table go ahead and throw that in the comments as well otherwise I appreciate you taking the time to watch the video and happy gaming

Channel: Guiding Bolt

Views: 7,783

Rating: 4.9742765 out of 5

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, 5E, Dungeon Master, DM, Session, Campaign, LMoP, Module, Initiative, NPC, d20, dice, monster, monster manual

Id: enLmcawO9x8

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 05 2019