Tools of the Trade

As an addendum to the previous post; 

Players will need dice, either for rolling up their skills, rolling for tests, or determining damages. A "standard d20" set includes all the various types of die used in DnD, from the caltrop d4 up to the ubiquitous d20 itself. No one is under any obligation to pick these up - dozens of sets are available to use, but each player is welcome to bring their own. 

We'll be using a variety of maps, including regional maps for the overall setting, town maps as applicable, and battle maps broken up into one inch squares that equal five or ten feet of space, depending on the need. These are more abstractions than anything else - when using a battle map, for instance, there won't be a lot of line of sight debates, as it should be fairly obvious what is going on and really, it's just a way to see where things are in relation to other things. 

And since we're on the subject of battle maps - miniatures. Players can bring any brand of mini they want to represent their character, so long as the base size is equal to or less than the "standard" DnD description of 1" base on a medium size mini (most player races will be in the "medium" category). But like with dice, players aren't obligated to nor do they need to worry about bringing minis if they don't want to. There are many to choose from. The default brand recommendation for us is Wizkids Nolzur's Unpainted, Premium Painted, or Wizkids Icons of the Realms miniatures. Reaper Bones is also a low cost/wide selection brand, albeit scaled slightly off from the Wizkids minis. And if your mini isn't 100% spot on, that's fine too, since we proxy for monsters and whatnot as need be. Again, it's more an abstraction so if you're using a Dragonborn Paladin miniature to represent your Human Barbarian, no one is going to cry foul, since it's more for relaying position in battle than accuracy.

There are a couple of cell phone apps that I personally use, such as "Fifth Edition Character Sheet" which are free on the Apply and Google Play store, but to minimize cell usage during a game, I'd only recommend these for a way to track your character between sessions, or to do easy leveling/inventory tracking. Between sessions, I have a few DM apps that I use to write notes for things that I may want to add to an upcoming encounter or so I have a monster stat ready. 

Next post - Session Zero, finally!