You awake in the log cabin in which you’d taken shelter the night before. You look around at the warm crackling fire in the giant hearth. The large white bear that led you to the cabin lies at the foot of the fire. You and your companions slowly awake. You look around and notice one figure not of your company sitting at the large oak table in the corner. His feet are up and he sits smoking a slender pipe. You stand and draw your sword. “Who are you?” you ask.

“Well that’s a fine hello to someone who was gracious enough not to kill you in your sleep while you sleep in his bed,” the man retorts.

You pause, then stow your blade.

“That’s more like it.” The man says as he snuffs his pipe. He stands. “Welcome to my cabin. I am Lord Gelick Grayson of The Kingdom of the Golden Deer, but you may call me Judir Fiendirsen. I am your adopted uncle.”

What do you do?

Welcome back to the 15th episode of How to Be a Better DM. Together we will discuss tips for how to create more immersive stories for you and your friends as you dungeon master a session of Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

As always, I’m excited to hop into today’s show, but first off one announcement. I am working on getting new team members on the show. It’s looking pretty good, but if you want more people on the show, make sure you share the show with your cool DM friends to make sure we have enough support for the show.

Anyways, to today’s show.

With all the many books produced by Wizards ofthe Coast, it can be somewhat difficult knowing which books to read and which to buy and in what order. So here is my take on things. As a bonus, I’ll tell you whether to buy the book in print, or through DnDBeyond. Obviously, you’d want them both in physical format and in digital format, but my recommendations are assuming you will only buy one format (like most normal people).

First there is one caveat. If you are never planning on playing using DnDBeyond or having your players use DNDBeyond then obviously your buying choices will skew towards the physical format.

With that said, here are book recommendations.

Players Handbook

Every Dungeons and Dragons player should have access to a Player’s Handbook. It will teach you the basic rules as well as give you the basic gamut of character options. This is the first book any DM should buy. If you have this book you never need to have to depend on others in order to play D&D (aside from the fact you need others to be players in your world). This is also the first book you should read. This will help you know the rules and be able to guide your players through the game. As far as whether you should buy this in physical or digital format, I would say digital format all the way. This allows you the search the book for rules as well as give you the opportunity as a DM to have your players to use DND Beyond to make their their characters. It makes things way easier as a DM. Plus it is slightly cheaper.

The Monster Manual

This book is extremely helpful for knowing new and exciting monsters to pitch your players up against. Throwing your players in encounters of the same type of monsters over and over will get very boring. You’ll also be very bored as a DM unless you can find cool baddies to fit into the dastardly plans you make. Honestly, I am torn between whether you should buy the book digitally or physically. On one hand, i love looking at the pictures and reading the book. On the other hand having it digitally makes it so much easier to use the DNDBeyond Encounter builder because the stats for the monsters are provided in the encounters when you have the digital version of The Monster Manual. So really it depends on what you value. I think this one might be a both scenario.

The Dungeon’s Master Guide

Every DM should read this manual. There are many topics I’ve thought about covering on this show that I’ve held myself back simply because you can get the same content from the Dungeon’s Master Guide. You’ll learn how to really craft great stories and all the extra rules that will make it more fun. You also get access to tens of magical items that will make your campaign. I don’t see the tremendous need to have this book in digital format other than being able to use the magical items in conjunction with D&D Beyond (which you can add the items to your homebrew collection anyways) and the ability to search through rules and such. I don’t see it as particularly necessary to have it digitally.

Other Sourcebooks

This is the other category. Here basically spend your money buying books because you’ve gotten the previous 3. The exact books you get will depend on what types of campaigns you want to run as well as what character options/items you are looking for. For example, I was very interested in the artificer class and the Warforged race option so I bought Eberron: Rising from the Last War. Since I wanted those character options, I bought the book digitally so my players could use them too. This is where you’ll really build out your collection of dungeons and dragons sourcebooks.

There you have it. Let me also take this moment to say that I have no affiliate to D&DBeyond, it’s just a great tool. There are other tools out there, but this is the tool that I use right now.

Do you have any thoughts on which books to buy? Let me know your thoughts by sending a direct message on instagram to @geronimolevis .

Remember, keep supporting and sharing the show so we can add more people to the show and get you ever better content so you can create better stories while playing D&D.

We’ll be back next week, until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Always Have Your Sessions Prepared!

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