Totally inexperienced Looking for help!! D&D 4e

Hello, my friends and I are really interested in, "Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition" however hahah we kinda have no clue on how to play it and cant experience it in person since we are all separated, but we are all reading and learning online and want to learn together. My friends asked me to be the DM for them however I have no idea how to set macros or how to properly make a character with all the stats. I was hoping that someone could teach me how to make a proper D&D 4e game on Roll20, or lead me to some website that can teach me.. Youtube only had peoples games on it which excited us more but there was no video on how to set everything. Thank you for taking your time to read this.

I would suggest making use of the character builder (whether you use the downloadable one floating around, or *suggested* having a subscription to the WoTC D&D Insider to make use of the online one). With this you can save your character sheets in an electronic format, and print them if you decide you want something physical in front of you. Once you have that information, creating a Roll20 character sheet is fairly simple. All you need to do is go to the journal tab and add a new character. Click "Edit" and fill out the information on the first page (name, who controls it, who sees it, etc..) and on the attributes and abilities page, you simply add an attribute for each stat you will want to use.. these will include things such as HP, AC, Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and so on. The macros are a little more complicated, but for that you can use this and this . That should be most of what you are looking to do. Finally, the last thing you should need for reference would be your D&D 4e books. There are PDF versions out there floating around, and you should also be able to purchase the beautiful hardcover versions at your local bookstore (and if they don't have them on hand, it is not difficult for them to order them.. they'll be happy to do that for you). The basic ones for a beginner DM would be the Dungeon Master's Guide (and DMG 2 if you want to delve deeper into it), Player's handbook (there's also a PHB 2 out there as well), and the Monster Manual (there are several of these). If you went the route of purchasing a DDI subscription, you'll have access to all of this information through the wizards D&D tools website. Hope that helps. Happy gaming young hero!

I know from personal experience that GM'ing without knowing the game very well already can be extremely frustrating for you and your players. Sometimes it works out wonderfully and everyone has a great time figuring things out, but it unfortunately does tend to be challenging without a guide. Above anything else I might mention, I strongly suggest you and/or your group find an existing GM who welcomes new players. Roll20 has a wonderful community of helpful people (like this forum) and I know of a number of people who go out of their way to run tutorial games to explain how things work. 4e combat is very condition-based (if these guys were hit last round and are at half-health then this attack does this extra effect), so it can be extremely tactics-centric but is usually clearly explained in a given character's power cards. For 4e character creation, if your budget allows, I would recommend at least one of your group getting a D&D Insider subscription. It gives you access to their character builder app and the compendium for looking up specific references. Wizards of the Coast is very tight with their material, so you won't find a whole lot of quality character builders or rule listings online. Purchasing the Player's Handbook, GM Guide, and probably Monster Manual can be a pricey introduction to D&D. The insider subscription will at least give you access to build characters and look up specific rules. It's definitely not equivalent to purchasing the actual materials, though. If you're not hard-set on fourth edition D&D, you will generally have an easier time finding resources, tutorials, and guides for the more open rule-sets such as Pathfinder, Runic, Shadowrun, etc. There's a huge world of RPG's out there beyond Dungeons and Dragons. It may be difficult to find, but the D&D NEXT (aka, 5th edition) beta materials from the October release contain everything you need to play the upcoming edition, and I personally find D&D Next to be more newcomer friendly.(even more so than 4e) I would also recommend Greg Stolze' "How to Play RolePlaying Games". it's a little 10-page PDF for folks completely new to RPG's. <a href="http://www.gregstolze.com/HowtoPlay.zip" rel="nofollow">http://www.gregstolze.com/HowtoPlay.zip</a>

Thank you Jared and Mark, those were both very helpful and resourceful links. I will definitly read and try out the tools.

Travis T. said: Thank you Jared and Mark, those were both very helpful and resourceful links. I will definitly read and try out the tools. When you start up a new RPG, there's always a learning period. Don't get discouraged by all the material out there. Just remember, as the GM you have the ability to, if you can't find the information, make it up! Feel free to house rule it until you can find the proper rules... or just set it up how it best works for you.

Here's something I wrote, gives good help with Macros. <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/User:215512" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/User:215512</a> Agree, it'll be tough running the game with no experience online. You might want to play things "solo" first, just play the roles of all monsters and players. If you got the time for that.