I bought the D&D 5e Starter Box from Amazon, and it didn't come with any character pieces or board. Is this normal? Can I buy them separately?
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\$\begingroup\$ An easy option, if you want to do tactical combat, is to simply use the board and pieces from a chess, checkers, or similar board game. Chess has more variation in pieces, but any grid board will work fine. You can also mix a checkers board with pieces from another type of board game so each character can have a unique piece. The scale will be a bit odd, but if you find visualization difficult, it works. \$\endgroup\$– zeelCommented Nov 19, 2019 at 2:10
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2 Answers
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Yes, this is normal
The Starter Set you bought has everything you need to play: a short rulebook, a short adventure (with excellent pointers in it as to which rules will come into play), premade characters, and a single set of dice.
But there's no board!
Many people play D&D purely in the imagination, so-called "theater of the mind." The GM evocatively describes locations, players add on to those descriptions as they narrate their character's actions. For example...
GM: the tavern is open, and as you walk into the clean, well-furnished common room the smell of Otik's famous potatoes wafts from the kitchen.
Player: I'll grab a seat at the table closest to the fire, and resume studying my night-blue spellbooks.
The player added the (reasonable) detail that this common room would have a fire going, and play continues.
Others prefer to play with a laid-out map/board, engaging people's tactile-play impulses, too. They may use a battlemat and draw on it with wet-erase markers, or a large sheet of butcher's or packing paper, or just sheets of graph paper. One of my current GMs has printed table-sized color maps of the Realms from digital sources and laminated them for use with wet-erase markers: he's an overachiever =)
And no pieces!
Ditto above. If you'd like to purchase miniatures a quick search for "RPG miniatures" or "RPG minis" should get you started. We have some questions about finding minis which might also help. (Personally, I'm a fan of Reaper Miniatures, so I'll give them a shout-out.)
P.S. Dice
You'll probably find, quickly, that you'd like to have more dice hanging around. Rolling 5d8 with only one d8 in hand gets old, quick. Make notes of which dice you tend to find yourself wishing for more of and plan to drop another $10 bolstering your collection. (Personally, I grab two sets of {2d20, d12, d10, 2d8, 2d6, d4} to have at the table when running the Starter Set with my son and his friends. A "player's set" and a "GM set," if you will.)
answered Dec 10, 2016 at 16:55
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1\$\begingroup\$ Thanks for the response. I'll try playing the game as is, and decide if I want to invest in other things to add another dimension to the game. \$\endgroup\$– jcvampCommented Dec 10, 2016 at 17:01
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2\$\begingroup\$ Glad it helped, and welcome to the game and to the site! I'll note you've accepted my answer quickly; more answers may come along later and if you find one helps you even more than mine, it's totally encouraged to "unaccept" mine and accept that other one. \$\endgroup\$– nitsua60Commented Dec 10, 2016 at 17:10
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\$\begingroup\$ For those inclined towards using maps, an alternative is to buy the Starter Set on roll20.net. With a large TV or projector, you can display the virtual tabletop for all players to see. \$\endgroup\$– DovalCommented Dec 12, 2016 at 1:17
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Yes
The box should include:
- Lost Mine of Phandelver Adventure Booklet
- Starter Set Rulebook
- Adventurer's League Poster
- 5 Character Sheets
- Blue Polyhedral Dice
The box does not include boards, maps, pieces, tokens, or any other playing aids. This is because the default mode of combat, as explained in the rulebook, is 'theatre of mind'. This is when the DM simply describes a situation to the players, without the aid of a map, and the players respond accordingly, the whole scene playing out in the collective imagination, rather than on the table in front of you.
