I'm tired of sitting around and thinking about how rad it would be to get my D&D on, but I don't know any DMs. But them I realized that I could be the DM. But it'd help if I had some books and supplies. And knew how to play. So I looked at the site and shit's expensive. Like $35 for the DM's manual? Plus someone (probably me, if I'm going to be putting together a group of people that may have never played themselves) needs to grab the player's handbook which is another $35. Then I'd guess you'd also need the monster manual for ANOTHER $35; I don't think the dungeons would be too great without the dragons. Plus I guess there's multiple versions of all of these books? I'm not spending that much (looks like $100 at the minimum just to get started) at once on something that I may not even be able to get going.
I saw there's the D&D Insider thing which gets you a ton of stuff for a $10 a month subscription, but am I right in saying that it just pretty much just gives me access to all of the printed classes and abilities and stuff and I still need to buy the actual rules?
I was looking at the D&D Essentials red box was seems like a pretty good deal. About $20 for what looks like the bare essentials (ololo) needed to get a game going; rules, 4 basic classes, some monster, an adventure or two, tiles, minis, dice and so on. But I've read that the Essentials series has different (stripped down) rules compared to "normal" 4th edition, how different is it? If I were to grab the red box and a D&D Insider subscription, would some/many of the stuff I find online be incompatible with the essentials rules? Or are they close enough that it wouldn't be a problem?
What do you guys recommend for someone looking to start out on a budget?
Topic: 4th edition D&D nerds, I require your assistance (Read 436 times)