3 ways to make D&D more newbie-friendly

[ghackotpony]

I've taught dozens of people how to play D&D over the years but color coded dice? That's friggin inspired. Well done.

[sunflowervibes]

The first time I ever played dnd, this really cute boy in the group sat with me and helped with EVERYTHING from equipping weapons to picking daily powers (4e.) Now the really cute boy is my husband and we still love dnd ☺️

[pallen]

I made my then 4-year-old daughter "action cards" for her fairie rogue. They're color coded red (actions) blue (bonus actions) and green (movement) and she knows she can do one of each every turn. They show exactly which dice are rolled and what the modifier is, and has illustrated in 5-foot squares how much movement she gets.

It's very simplified: obviously I didn't make a card for every action she could possibly take (and she's very creative) but those get her through combat well enough.

[jancatperson]

I’ve been playing for a few years now, and I keep a cheat sheet. It always helps to have everything listed on one page.

[Chaosm]

Ginny: Where did you learn about being a dice goblin?

Her parents: We learned it from watching you!

[graham]

Would love to see those cheat sheets as examples. I think this is great for new players

[wraith]

When I was younger and went to summer camp, one of the councilers found that a bunch of us were interested in D&D and made a simplified version. And by simplified, there were only 3 classes- "Warrior", the melee, "Mage", the magic user, and "Scout", a mix of both. He made custom short character sheets and custom background to match the simplified style of the game. It was a ton of fun!

[Martell]

While on the subject of color: The coordination between your hair, hairband and shirt looks absolutely amazing!

[danferrusquia]

I did this over Thanksgiving. My mom was very upset at her “ugly” mismatched dice set and demanded a matching set of pretty dice

[genmasj]

Hell, I make cheat sheet pdfs for my characters, and I've been playing since 1st edition. They're super handy for not having to haul around like 10 books.

[alalessia]

I love that your parents went for the pretty dice xD also when I played online with newbies the other week the rolling dice part was easy(ish) because we used DndBeyond for the character sheets ^^'

[moonbabescosplay]

WAIT. WHY HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF COLOR CODED DICE!??? IT WOULD MAKE TELLING THE d12/d20 and d10/d8 APPART SO MUCH EASIER!!! Also I love color coding, it makes my brain happy

[havable]

Another idea that has helped a lot with my current campaign is I've made spell cards. They're just index cards in an index card box (a spell box). I got the idea because the guy playing our cleric has never played a cleric and was pretty intimidated by all the spells under his thumb. But once I made him a "spell box" the info is all at his fingers instead of scattered through a dozen source-books. He's almost always ready to go on his turn. They're fairly easy to make but take a little time. What I did was make a "spell block" to list all the info in the spell description, which is on the left side of the card. A generally shortened version of the text is on the right side of the card. This works *so* much better than flipping through books. The books are still helpful for confusing spells, but for the most part the spell cards are working out very well. I've seen stuff like this manufactured but it usually only contains "core book" spells not the many, many published supplements. Also, if I want to use 3rd party stuff I don't wind up with all these factory prefab cards along with home-made ones which would be awkward and clumsy. The spells are color coded by school so a caster can tell at a glance which school of magic they're using. This has also been helpful for my players in understanding what makes one school differentiated from another school.

[epicmedic]

This is the most wholesome thing ever. As someone who is trying to introduce my family and girlfriend to DND, this is a super helpful idea.

[undeadf]

I did a quick homebrew 1 shot last Christmas with my 66 year old parents, brother and his wife and used your videos to help me dm them. I too created thier character sheets but the colored dice is brilliant. If I do something like that agian I am for sure going to do that

[ZoeBateman]

Honestly colour coded dice are such a good idea, especially for a beginner. Makes trying to locate a specific size instantly and visually so much easier than thinking “wait is this a d12 or d20?” and having to physically check and look for the biggest number because of my bad eyesight

[EnterThePocketDimension]

I run monthly one-shots for our patrons, and usually that includes a brand newbie or two. I've been creating their character sheets (with their weigh-in) for awhile, but your cheat sheets are GENIUS! Thanks for sharing!

[CamilaFulana]

I’m so glad stranger things got me hyped up about D&D, then BG3 made me understand it more and actually interested in playing it, and now I’m watching videos to start !! Onto the most thrilling part, creating characters and a universe so I can play with my friends 🥳 Thank you for your work !!

[yphre]

Making the characters for newbies is a good idea and with the newbie group I've put together I had quite a few moments where I wished I had done that... It certainly would have been a lot faster. I'm glad I didn't, though. I wanted them to have full control over who they play and they got really invested in the characters they made. They significantly surpassed my expectations with the amount of thought they put into them, unprompted! One even printed all the material I gave her, because she wanted to have it all ready to look things up on her own.
I think making things easier for newbies is a very individual thing that needs to be tailored to the specific people, but I also think it's good to have a variety of ideas from others to try/ pick from!

[lethalchicken]

You have no idea how timely this is for me. THANK YOU