It has taken a couple of weeks, but I have nearly everything I need to play a game of D&D with my Wilderness tiles that my partner bought for me at Barnes & Noble. When he first bought me the Wilderness tiles, I thought that it was a starter set because it said on the back

“For use with these Dungeons & Dragons products:

Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game Starter Set

Dungeon Master’s Kit

Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures

Other Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Tiles sets.”

I guess I just misunderstood because I thought it came with all those things, I guess I just wasn’t thinking. Oh well. At any rate, I have bought a few things on that list. I went to Amazon and bought the Starter set which came with the starter set rulebook you see in the picture along with the blue dice and another book called Lost Mine of Phandelver, which is a walkthrough quest with maps that I can scan and add to an app on my Nook called 3D Virtual Tabletop. It’s just easier to do that since the maps aren’t very big to play on in the booklet. The starter set also came with some character sheets which I actually printed last year and put in my notebook. Yes, I have a notebook with line and graph paper that I printed since my printer offers that option.

 

The miniatures that I bought aren’t all miniature, even though they say they are on Amazon and even on the packaging. Some of the green and grey ones are heroes and some are monsters, and oddly enough some are cavemen lol. The skeletons are a bit smaller and I’ll probably get more use out of those. I also bought from Michaels a set called “Knights and Dragons.” It comes with 4 knights with a red and gold flag and shields and 4 knights with a blue and gold flag and shields. They are all wearing silver armor and 1 of each has a guy sitting on a horse. Oh and it comes with a catapult and a little dragon lol.

I also bought a D&D Lego guy. I thought I was getting a set of 12, because that’s what the picture showed, but I guess I was wrong because I only got 1. He’s called a fighter and has a sword. I think what I’ll do is say he’s my main tank and the guys in the silver armor are the other characters. I also have a Lego Minecraft Steve and zombie as well as a Lego Robin from Batman and Robin. That one is a keychain, so of course I’ll have to remove that.

The wizard that I bought on Amazon isn’t exactly what I was looking for, but he does fit and he does look cool, so I guess I did good. I was looking for a gnome wizard, actually I was looking for anything in gnome size, but all I saw were miniature garden gnomes. That’s not exactly what I had in mind. This guy is actually a hell wizard named Damien lol. He even has a demon tail. He’s all white because he is meant to be painted. Yeah, that’s never going to happen. I don’t exactly have steady hands. His eyes will be way off if I tried. He’ll look either cross-eyed, or one eye will be looking up and the other will be looking to the left. Either way, I’m fine with him being all white. It would be cool if his coat and staff were brown and his base was green. I wish I had more patience and a steady hand.

I’m not quite ready to play yet because I still have to finish the starter set rule book and then I want to start reading the Lost Mine of Phandelver book and play according to the directions. I also want to read the Players Handbook because the Starter Set rule book didn’t give me ALL the information I think I need to start playing. I like to be thorough. Also, I’m having a hard time getting started, not just as the DM since I’m playing by myself, but also as a person who is playing 5 characters lol.

It would be awesome if I had some people to play with. I have an app on my Nook called 3D Virtual Tabletop, and that allows me to use existing characters and existing places (like a tavern or house) or I can upload my own pictures, which I did. I scanned all the maps from the Lost Mine of Phandelver book and imported them into the app. 1 square = 5 feet, so I had to put a 5×5 grid into each square. I asked someone if that is right and they said yes.

I saw on the character sheets that each character has 5 or 10 gold, so I figured it would be easier to keep track of who has how much gold by actually having gold in a little pouch, so I looked online for days for pictures of gold and silver coins to print so I could glue them onto cardboard, but then I thought about play coins, so I Googled plastic gold coins and found them at Party City, so I went and bought a pack of 144 gold coins and a pack of 72 silver coins. I was looking for Gold Doubloons, but they only had gold casino coins with dollar signs on them. The silver coins have pirate ships on them, so those are at least a little more authentic. I was also looking for copper, but they didn’t have any of those. I figure I’ll just sand some of the gold coins to create copper since they are gold painted on black plastic. Maybe I can buy some copper paint.

I hate that it has taken me this long to want to learn to play the game. When I was 15 years old and my step father kicked me out of the house (aka trailer), I moved in with a schoolmate who lived with his older brother who worked. One day they were playing D&D and asked if I wanted to play, but I didn’t know how because I’d never played before, and I didn’t want to play because I already had a target on my back for being gay, I didn’t want the target to get bigger because I was playing D&D, which everyone thought at the time (1985) that it was a satanic game and that players were all in satanic cults and were killing animals for sacrifice for their game. I really wish I had more of a back bone and was able to stand up to the bullies, but that’s all in the past and better late than never.

This is going to be fun learning and playing and I hope I can get a lot out of this game so I can use it to write my fantasy fiction novel. Writing fiction was a dream I’ve had since I was a kid, so I hope this works to get me started with my writing.