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??? Like for inspiration?


For world building/city feels/flavor I like "Invisible Cities", which is a collection of tales from Marco Polo put together by Italo Calvino, translated from italian by William Weaver (here's a link I found on google for it)


For character creation, honestly read any fantasy. Wheel of Time has characters you can easily make character sheets for, excepting maybe Rand al'Thor. I also just read "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss, which was great for learning how a wizard/bard might work, as well as an innkeeper. Also, recorded book is boss.


But if you want to buy just one book, and you want something amazing and fast and simple I highly recommend "Table Fables" by Madeline Hale (it's on amazon for less than $11). This book has roll-to-make lists for almost everything, from PC and NPC creation to random loot, to monster attacks! This helps especially with random encounters and smoothing-over awkward "wait I have nothing planned for THAT direction"-moments, it's great! Here's a link to that too!.


Hope that helps, that's what I use, PM me if you need anymore help :) also, I think the more you read the more fun these games get

Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556346298/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_boZFAbZ9NMS62 a great starting book. The teachers you would understand your players as you go about designing your game. It help shape your world into something that your players will enjoy spending time in.

I recommend these if you are a tech free table: https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Spellbook-Cards-Druid/dp/B01MQU4K9U

For a wizard you could write a couple of the damaging cantrips on the front page along with their dagger or staff or whatever they have as a weapon (for attacks of opportunity). They should be spending most of their time looking at their spellcasting sheet but having a couple of low cost actions easily accessible is nice if their turn comes around and they aren't prepared.

Spell cards are nice for wizards too because there are just so many spells available but they don't keep track of spell slots and can be hard to manage once you get to higher levels and start to have more spells. If you go that route I would reccomend getting a pack of card pages to organize them into, that way you can go through them for spell selection fairly quickly and even have separate pages for spell list, spellbook and memorized spells.

Dungeon Master's Screen Reincarnated https://www.amazon.com/dp/078696619X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_PttUBb346TC84

I don't think you'll get much cheaper than buying the official one.

Is this what you’re talking about? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S1VKGKE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_tcISCbEPED2KH

The Player's Handbook is on sale right now for $21

If you're using online sources make sure you're using something official. Stick to the official System Reference Document, D&D Beyond, or the Roll20 Compendium.

Do not use sites like DANDWiki as they often have homeruled and custom content that is unbalanced or do a poor job of explaining which rules are official and from a book and which are custom and made by some random person.

Go dirt cheap.

Skeletons
Zombies
Monsters

Then just do some reaper bones or wizkids for "feature characters" and upgrade as you go along. Unfortunately good minis are almost always expensive. Finding an E-Bay score is always an option.

If your gamestore lacks options here's some links for you.

multi pack (non chessex):

• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M17NGIO/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_4_r
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZJ7F32?psc=1 (Note no percentage 00 die)
  
  chessex: https://www.amazon.com/Polyhedral-7-Die-Gemini-Chessex-Dice/dp/B00115YMWA/ref=sr_1_15?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1478124643&sr=1-15&keywords=polyhedral+dice