Putting Together a “DM Kit” - A Perpetual Work in Progress? A Snapshot in Time

This all started when I decided to look at what things people were using as DM, and so began an almost year long, stationery-heavy buying spree because this is new ground and I can only properly figure things out by trial-and-error and tasting and feeling for fit.

I think it’s important to define something here. The label “DM Kit”, it’s just the Internet buzz word for the things you or someone else uses to DM their games. There’s nothing special or magical about it, trust me on this, I’m a lich. But people love a label so “DM Kit” it is.

When I first actually started playing D&D with my kids (there were a few false starts) we played using the Old School Essentials (OSE) ruleset which is based on BX and AD&D. If you’re interested in playing a TTRPG for the first time I highly suggest OSE due to it being rules light and forgiving with its “rulings over rules” mindset, this is a fancy way of saying make it up and work it out later as is great preparation for other rulesets. It also doesn’t require much in the way of gear. All you need are the free rules, character sheets…or any reasonable sized sheet of paper, a pencil and eraser, one set of dice. Grab any free level 1 adventure you can find or have a go at making one up. And fire up your imagination. Oh and at least one other person to play with is helpful but not actually needed if you’re planning on solo RPG’ing. There’s your DM kit and it’s all you need for OSE or D&D and likely any other D&D-like TTRPG you could play for as many sessions and players and whatever level your characters get to, that’s all you need and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Here’s my DM kit sans rulebooks:

• DM screen.
• Spare character sheets.
• Mechanical pencil plus spare erasers and leads (2B).
• Tokens.
• Chessex battlemat.
• Wet erase markers (black, blue and red).
• Inspiration tokens.
• Clipboard folder.
• Notepad.
• Dice.

For the longest time I thought this was so much stuff when I packed it into my backpack until I wrote it out as a list (don’t ask). And turns out it’s not much more than my original OSE kit. In fact, the inspiration tokens are probably the only real extra thing. I attribute thinking I have tons of gear to the bulk of the rulebooks and that I also have my kids character things in there as well.

I’ll eventually get around to going through my backpack items one-by-one complete with delicious, delicious pictures. By then the extra bits I’m evaluating should have been tested out a few times and added or discarded. But I stand by what I consider to be the basic/essential kit list, the cost is minimal and it’ll get you pretty far with OSE rules. If you go with the D&D 2014 Basic Rules, D&D 5.5e SRD, or D&D 5.5e Basic Rules from D&D Beyond (free) you won’t come across too many limits and none of them soon.