So I am planing on introducing some friends of to tabletop rpgs and was thinking of running a 4e campaign for them...

So I am planing on introducing some friends of to tabletop rpgs and was thinking of running a 4e campaign for them where they start out as level 0 characters. Problem is, I am a poor student and don't have any mini's or battle maps that I could use for the game. What advice do you have?

Take eraser, pen and paper and imagine shit. Literally how everyone has been D&D-ing for the past 50 years.

Miniatures and maps are supplements.

Coins and grid paper. You can buy it/print it super cheap.

>thinking of running a 4e campaign
KYS

don't play with minis, play with dice as minis, play a game that doesn't focus on mini-combat

>telling people to stop having badwrongfun
how does them playing 4e affect you?
point on this doll to me, where 4e touched you

Don't run D&D.
The rules are harder than you might have heard, it encourages roleplaying-less grinding (especially 4e), breeds meta thinking in new players and is generally an MMO-flavored optimization race which works as a wargame in the best of cases.
I will be shouted down, but I started with oWoD and I think it's a good game for new players to start with. It has relatability, which is the most important thing - the players can superimpose their knowledge of the real world on the game, making for much more engaging characters and roleplaying because the players aren't thinking in MMO terms.
The setting has PCs with cool powers, but they have limits and need to be used intelligently and sparingly. There are plenty of guidelines and inspirational materials for roleplaying, and character creation creates well-rounded characters with motivations, flaws and histories out the box.
New players tend to understand it much faster than D&D, understand that the rules of logic apply within this universe and actually develop affection and interest in their characters, because they understand the way the real world works and can thus relate better to both their own characters and the world.
They're more likely to learn to play around non-combat challenges and solve problems through roleplaying, as well as accepting a lot faster that there are things they cannot do and things that they can do but will get them killed.
This is just my experience, though.

>go to drivethru RPG
>browse all the free shit
>download maps and print
>buy dice

it's that fucking simple

4e is just a shit game and teaches newbies awful habits.

Not in 4e, really. The tactical combat is the main draw.

OP, you can make paper minis, maybe. Getting something to use as a gridmap shouldn't be TOO difficult, just get a big sheet of paper and draw the grid yourself if you have to.

But honestly, you're better off playing a system that isn't shit for roleplaying if you want your friends to actually get into that. If you just want to play a wargame or a boardgame then do that.

>Running 4e at all
>Running 4e without miniatures
Shit, nigger, what are you doing?

that's totally, like, you're opinion, man

WoTC miniatures sales guys, please fuck off.

OP, play absolutely without miniatures.

I roar with laughter at people who are incapable of playing RPGs because they didn't do it by the official rules. The sad, pathetic state of them.

Oi, I wasn't shilling miniatures, I was telling him to make paper stands or whatever the fuck, which is inexpensive and can look good if you know what you're doing.

4e has literally nothing to offer if you don't use the tactical combat, so why the fuck would he even stick with it?

Op here, well, my other thoughts were to use ether GURPS or AD&D 2e to run the fantasy campaign I had planned, but GURPS requires so much prepwork and I still have my studies to focus on.

Should I rather do what suggests and run owod or CoD? I was also thinking of perhaps introducing them using unknown armies 2e, would that be a better option?

4e is a board game my guy. You need a map and minis or the whole system is pointless. Try pathfinder everything is free online and is a better system.

>free

>genuinely recommending pathfinder

Listen, OP, your choices aren't what I'd personally suggest (these ones I mean), but they're infinitely better than pathfinder, so take heart.

what would your recommendations be, I am quite open to some other systems so please share.

Do cardboard cut out style minis

Find a character picture you like

Size it reeeeeeeeally small
Print them all out, and glue em to a cardboard base

Why would anyone play Ad&d when 3.5 is an overall improvement?

You could do it like we did in yellow olde times, making drawings on graph paper.
Or you can buy a sheet of cardboard, square it, and use poker chips and stuff. I usually make little drawn tokens for the PCs, but for monsters anything goes.

It would depend on what you're trying to run, really. If you were looking at WoD and UA2e for horror I'd personally go without a complex system for a oneshot. Even if you did go with a real system, you shouldn't let your players have their character sheets.

If you're just looking for something to get them into RPGs with, I'd go with Beyond the Wall. It's OSR (with a grain of salt) except it has some good modern design stuff for it, like playbooks and such. Each playbook has a backstory generation set of tables, and the basic assumption is all the PCs are young people from the same village. The prompts are great for teaching players to improvise answers on the spot and it gives you good a good base for roleplaying. It's also compatible with most OSR modules with some tweaking, and by that token, compatible with older DnD modules.

Try B/X or Labyrinth Lord (or any OSR retroclone really) instead

>I want to play 4e
>*Autistic screeching*

They say 4rries have a persecution complex but good God are you haters obnoxious. Keep to your generals and leave us neurotypical folks alone.

I don't personally hate 4e, but you have to admit playing it without the RAW combat would make it pretty worthless, in the sense that there's better options available for free.

Beyond the Wall is in the OSR general trove, btw.

There are solutions to do RAW combat without needing to spend money on minis and battle mats.

Beyond the wall sounds quite good, I actually have the pdfs but only glanced through them briefly after I got them.
Is it possible to generate the village prior to the session 0 that the game encourages for character gen? Any advice for running it, I am reading through the rules again right now.
Also how difficult is it to convert AD&D content to beyond the wall? Any advice in that regard?

I love Beyond the Wall and recommend it for new players, but please, don't get memed away from trying 4e. It's a good game.

I know, but how to get the minis and battle maps on the cheap. I do have a dark elf army for Warhammer and some undead but they are literally on the other side of the world right now and I can't go and collect them for 6 months. That still doesn't resolve what I should use for battle maps.

One concern that I have is that I intend to run quite a long running game, in 4e that would take the characters to level 30 and one of the things that draws me to the system is its potential to go from a small scale to an epic scope.
Is that same potential there in beyond the wall? Is it at least like AD&D where wizards get to build a tower and fighters get a keep at 9th level?

All you need is a mat with squares, erasable pens, and anything you want to denote characters.

Back when I started D&D my friends and I were using pennies and chess pieces and stuff as minis, and it worked fine, because it's all an abstraction - the real action is going on in the mind's eye. In fact, I'd say that starting like this is better than starting with real minis, as it prevents newer players from latching on to the appearance of the models themselves.

Use dice in stead of minis. Seriously. If you need smaller minis (if you don't have a big battlemap and must use paper), just buy tiny, tiny dice.

Just specify the dice that are used as player markers beforehand.

Another interesting possibility is thumb tacks. Buy a cork board and draw the map in. Then just give each player a different colored thumb tack to use, and possibly mark the thumb tack colors to their sheets in case they forget. Of course, if you don't want your maps to be decimated, this might not be the best way.

Working on a budget is not that difficult.

Draw the map onto some copy paper*

Look, I bought a vynil mat from chessex when I was a student, so I could afford it. Before that we used a squared chipboard my DM had built, and before that we just drew maps on graph paper.
For minis I use *anything*. Glass beads, old boardgame pieces, toy soldiers, printed tokens, cut-out magic cards, change, and a few actual minis. A while ago I started making OOTS-style minis for the PCs to make them more recognizable. But the point is, the grid is for spatial reference, not for making dioramas.

BtW is more of a low fantasy game. You can definitely get numerically strong, but things stay grounded for the most part and even the spell lists are toned down from what you'd expect from DnD.

To be fair, you can always homebrew stronger options/magic items/let your players grab new class features as you approach end game territory if you think they're too weak.

Generating the village with your players is part of the educational part, though. I wouldn't get rid of that. If it's just a matter of not doing a session 0 just coordinate to do it before the game over text.

Well, the climax of the campaign I have planned is for the PC's to fight lolth, using the stats from queen of the demonweb pits. Would that still be within the scope of Beyond the Wall?

Generating the village I will do with the players, but generating the details of the surrounding world I was thinking of doing myself, just to have some more stuff prepared and to be able to better integrate it into the campaign I have laid out.

Play 5e man. WoD is shit, 4e is shit, shitfinder is shit. I would recommend B/X but you’ll be able to find 5e more easily.

I have rules compendium would that work, or should I stick with beyond the wall?
5e is a bit too reliant on magic for my tastes, every single class has it so from a world building perspective I don't much care for it.
Also would unknown armies make a good alternative for running a modern campaign instead of fantasy?

Take a look at how 13th Age does combat. There's a free SRD to check out. You could lift the movement and spacing (which is abstracted and loose) and bolt it onto 4e, I'm betting with minimal issues.

This is the post of someone who doesn't actually play games and only parrots stale memes.