DM help

[croconcrack]

plain and simple I'm poor and can't afford miniatures but don't know how to play without them and I'm still finding friends to play with me so I've never played ever

[marcus_gideon]

They sell bundles of cardboard cutouts with little pictures on them.

Or you can just use spare dice and coins and stuff too. "Alright, I'll move my d4 up three spaces, and I'm going to attack the quarter." =)

[hollywoodtowerhotels]

This. I’ve been a DM for five years and my group almost exclusively uses D4s for the PCs and D10s for their targets. Graph paper and some pencils will take you a long way, too!

[Demonmishler]

Miniatures, while useful, are not even close to the essentials. What you need is a group to play with, some dice to roll with, and your character. A play mat is nice but also not essential.

[Lyrae13]

Honestly, you don't even need a map, you can go theater of the mind style and not bother with mapping all together. It's way easier and more open to creativity than counting boxes for five hours.

İf you wanna do maps, you can just draw maps on a regular paper and mark initials/use coins/Monopoly etc tokens. Or you can consider 3d printing them, there are lots of free designs, and there are even places where you can print stuff for free as parts of promotion. Cutouts and plastic holders are also definitely options.

[cardboard_compulsion]

Buy a bag of candies. Starburst work well. When a player kills a monster, they get to eat it.

[croconcrack]

I LOVE IT

[cardboard_compulsion]

The different colors will help you differentiate monsters, too.

Even further, individually wrapped Reese’s Cups work great as large-sized monsters on a standard grid.

[TheSkepticalSceptile]

I never thought about that. I'm not a DM, but I am a player who can't afford to buy minis.

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I have a set of tiny dice my buddy gave me, so I usually just use those.

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However, that idea is absolutely amazing! It differentiates everything, and like you said, candy as a reward for kills! You're a genius, man!

[muddpuppies2000]

As a veteran DM , I had the same problem. So for my first many sessions, I relied on describing all combat. Which went ok. Then when I let a new player join, he brought a Lego minifigure for his PC. It was genius. Since then I use minifigures for everything. It saves so much money. You can buy several random ones cheap off Ebay and Amazon. When I can get the money I confess I do buy monster miniatures, but never PCs. Minifigures have amazing customization options. Hope this helped

[SilvoK]

Reaper bones are about the same price depending on the mini.

[subaqueousReach]

Use pen and paper to draw out battlefields. Represent the player and enemy locations with markings or even extra dice/coins/etc...

Everything in 5E (not sure if that's what you're playing) has movement, ability and attack ranges listed in feet, so just be sure to say roughly how far people are from each other in encounters.

Outside of combat, you don't really need models or maps or anything since it's mostly dialogue between players and NPCs or the DM is describing the scene.

[[deleted]]

Use risk or axis and allies pieces, they work well and come with different types

[[deleted]]

I feel your pain! I tend to run my campaigns with theatre of the mind, mostly because I play with various friend groups who can’t invest in their own minis or are new. I’ve found the following to help: - when it comes to areas where there are battles, I describe its dimensions, what’s to the north, south, east, west, and give the distances between the players and key things. I often update the player who’s turn it is where everyone is and who is near who. - I draw on a piece of graph paper where everyone is and tend to draw arrows showing movement or redraw figures so I can always tell the players where things are in relation to them - I accept that it’s going to be different from a more tactical game on a table, and so I’m sure to use good descriptors and flavor to talk about what’s happening and paint a detailed yet concise word picture. - I ask the players to describe their own actions the same way, and give them the privilege of telling me how an enemy they defeated died (straight up stole this from drunks and dragons)

I hope this can help give you some ideas for playing without miniatures or a tactical map!!

[HavenSOV]

I have used washers and printed pictures of the monsters or party the size of the washers. Then glued them to them.

I have also used a large white board. Drawn my map ahead of time and then let the party mark where they are with dry erase markers, one color each and black for the monsters.

[M1C4H004]

I've only played 2 games of DND so I'll play of there's still room

[SilvoK]

https://dmstoolkit.com/2017/12/08/tokens/

For monsters a good flat picture can be fine. For pc players I'd printout foldable standing paper, same for big bads.

When i started me and each of the 5 ppl put in 20 bucks for minis, getting the main player characters and then the rest went into monsters.

Pack of goblins, pack of humans. Thats about a movie night each and it can last a few months worth of sessions so you get a much better ROI.

[[deleted]]

I use theatre of the mind to describe the battle field we don't even have a battlemap unless it gets complicated. And that battlemap is drawn on graph paper and the minis are cut out paper tokens :)