Can You Play Dungeons and Dragons with only things found at the Dollar Store? 

I'm sure this will be in the comments already but a fun fact is that gary gygax actually made up a ton of the original dnd monsters based on having to pick out cheap dollar store toys to use for his games back before miniatures were common.

Honestly this brought me back to my high school and early collage days. Super cool reminder that you don't need leather dice boxes and expensive dice to have a great time!

Considering that the entire reason D&D has the bulette, carrion crawler, owlbear, rust monster, and umber hulk, is that Gygax bought a cheap bag of "Dinosaur Toys" at a dime store (which were actually knock-off, looks-close-enough Ultraman monsters from unlicensed third-party manufacturers in Japan, which then got imported to the US and rebranded), this is in keeping with a longstanding and fine tradition.

First campaign we used the back face of a sheet of packing paper that had a grid for cuting as a map and board game pieces as players, we roled the dice on an app and "acquired" a rulebook pdf, cost us literally nothing. There is 0 monetary barrier for dnd if you've got the spirit.

This is a great example of limitations driving the story. Using that squeezy dinosaur as an undead is a stroke of brilliance that most people probably wouldn't have had if they had access to whatever minis they wanted. Now you've got me wanting to know how the rolls turned out and how hard to fight actually was. So much for it being a "milk run" though. Thanks for the video Kohdok.

Halloween would probably be a good time to find cheap monster figures -- I know the dollar store around me always have super cheap packs of little skeletons/mummies with various weapons around that time of year.

I started using mini "tumbling tower" (Jenga) blocks from the dollar store to construct boundaries and walls over my grid map for my D&D game combat. No need to dry-erase afterward (My mat is already horribly stained anyway), and you can even build little doorways and other structures. The dollar store mini tumbling tower blocks are just the right size for it, if your store carries them.

Back in 1976 when I started playing D&D we used a checkerboard as a play mat , dominoes as dungeon walls and doors and ANYTHING as miniatures! When Heritage minatures came out with “ The Fellowship “ it was a source of humans , elves, hobbits, dwarves and wizards !

This is EXACTLY how we used to play! Borrowed rules, pen and paper, pennies for characters. Snacks a plenty and many many sleepless weekend marathon sessions. Ahhh you sir have your finger on the pulse of the “Spirit of Gaming” !!! Keep it up 👍

When I was like 5 I convinced my parents to get me the DMs Guide. I couldn't understand a lot of it but I was able to make some pretty sick dungeons out of cardboard and LEGOs for my brother.

Wrapping paper is easily the best hack for some budget dnd games. Great for drawing full maps ir adjusting terrain on tge fly with secondary cut-outs.

When I saw the title, my first tough was "of course you can!" And yet I still troughly enjoyed the video. Shame we don't have dollar stores here.

I love how creative this is. I want to try to play dnd but its not in my budget. But thanks to this video I now have an idea on how to play in a budget friendly way.

Dollar Tree often sells shelf paper, which is a vinyl sheet with an adhesive backing. The backing paper has the cutting grid on it just like that gift wrapping paper. The interesting part is that it is available in a clear version, and you can see the grid lines through it, so it is essentially "pre-laminated".

There is a certain charm to this that I love. I'm so used to custom minis, fancy modeled terrain, and customizable digital character sheets. It brings me back to the first time I played dnd we had a little white erase board, some hodgepodge of minis from various games, only the Player Handbook, and some poorly photos canned and printed character sheets from the back of the book...

Back in 1988 I collected each dice 1 or 2 at a time for $0.20 a piece at a local bookshop. I would carry them around in a crown royal bag my dad gave me. I never really saw a character sheet, it was just a well organized sheet of notebook paper inspired by an example in one of the 1st edition books we had. Between 8 kids we owned roughly 9 books and the rich kid owned 6 of those. We had no idea what a DM screen was and dreamed of miniatures which some of us collected when possible. D&D on a budget was how I grew up in middle school.

I love the wrapping paper battle map. One of the things you can do is pre-draw the maps you need for your sessions; that way, you can go the extra mile adding little details, which can add so much to the map. And it saves time at the table, because all you have to do is have the players clear a spot, then roll out the map all scroll-like, and watch the joy spread in your players' faces as they behold your masterfully rendered map! Oh! And! AND! You can draw on the map any changes to the site, like if a bomb blew up a section of the wall; and if the party ever revisits that location, you can roll out that same map, and it'll have all of the little changes! And if you don't revisit the site until the end of the campaign, it'd be awesome to see the old map, and reminisce about the time Dave spilt dew on that corner of the map, or Mike got cheeto finger prints all over the place! And if the location gets destroyed, you can rip it up in front of the players... then tape it back together, so you can use it as a surprise final battle, but all messed up and stuff! Oh my G, the possibilities are endless! And one roll of the stuff will make multiple maps! All for $1.25!

I saw those polyhedral dice once at my local Dollar Store two years ago, and they sold out within a few days and haven't been able to restock them since. This INFURIATES me, as my inner dice Goblin MUST collect all the various colors they offer, just to say I have them!

I would've looked a bit more in the stationary section before making due with the wrapping paper, i have seen grid poster boards on sale before. I don't know if it would've been the exact same size needed though

With me and my friends being highschoolers, this is almost exactly our setup, lol You don't have to spend a lot of money to have fun

My dad bought me a set of dice from the dollar store like those, but more of a bronze color, and the first day I used them I rolled 2 nat 20s in a row, followed by 2 nat 17s

Seeing a hand written character sheet hit me with so much nostalgia. Awesome!

This is incredibly charming and creative. I see those wrapping paper squares all the time but never would have thought about using them for a map grid.

Cheap plastic poster frames are large enough and dry erase marker friendly. I framed wrapping paper and used that for a long time!

This is one of the things i love about dnd. Its nice to have minis and things to be a closer representation for what they are in game, but i remeber the first campaign i ran for minis it was whatever could fit in the 1x1 square and easily be identifiable as the player. I had people use bottlecaps, cool rocks, a tiny shell, or boardgame pieces. This is very inspiring i love the dm screen art

More than once while at the dollar store I have asked myself the same question. It always seemed totally possible to create a D&D experience with the many wares available there.

I will say, the DM Screen is my favorite part of this.

Yes you can make anything while spending less than 99.9% on it’s original price, rule applies for anything and everything all of the time.. nice art btw

I'd love to see a group of players doing a full campaign with dollar store stuff.

Finally, D&D as it was meant to be, an affordable hobby for all who learn the rules

I have those glass beads you put in vases that I use for large groups of enemies. Anything works if you are creative. Skeleton army? Bunch of oozes? Rats? Works great. Cost me a dollar.

This is actually so helpful! As a broke college kid who wants to get into DMing so I can play D&D with my friends, I have been STRESSING about how expensive everything is, but this really puts into perspective how a bit of creativity can do a lot even with cheap materials! I didn't even know there was a free online rulebook! I was planning on investing in the three core rulebooks, but if I can't get my hands on them right away, having that available is sick!

An alternative to the lamination: Buying another one of those foldable poster boards you got for the DM screen and taping the wrapping paper to it for the board. Not as versatile as being able to use dry erase markers, but easier to get in one dollar store run. Great video! I adored the DM screen decorating.

I've watched students at my school play a simplified version of DnD where the DM told the story and the players just rolled a D20 to see if they would hit and another die for the amount of damage. It was literally a notebook and a set of dice.

In the earliest days of DnD miniatures had to be done this way. We had a few 25mm metal ranges like Minifigs Middle Earth and Hyperboria, which could be supplemented with medievals. Anything else had to be improvised. 54 mm plastic figures made good giants. Dinosaurs appeared occasionally; I still have a giant sabre tooth tiger that I painted up. My favorites were my Hell Hounds, which were modified Britains sheep dogs!

Now the hard part; finding friends...can you get those at the dollar store?...😭

I've never actually played D&D but I have been creating and playing my own tabletop RPGs for a couple years. It's honestly pretty fun to be cheap and create it yourself. I've played it with friends for hours.

I love this so much. It captures all the unbridled excitement and imagination that brought so many of us to DnD. It's just sheer joy.

I had a blast watching this video! Kid in a candy store kind of excitement when you revealed everything and told your story! You have such a creative imagination and I really wanted to be at that table. Well done sir!

Damn, I did not know about the wrapping paper grids!! That DM screen though, the coolest thing I have seen in a long time no lie.

I wanna shout out the channels Blandco, Dungeon Miser and Miniature Mashup who all have a lot of content on using affordable options or making your own. Excellent videos and great dudes!

I just thought of this, So A While back Nerds (The Candy) did a Collab with Wizards of the Coast doing 6 mini 1 player Campaigns and one giant 6-player campaign coming with Pre made characters and enemies. I wonder if that woulda counted towards The Dollar Store Thing even if you have to upload a pic of your Receipt 7 times to access it. It DOES only cost like a Dollar for each box of Nerds to unlock said content. Just something to consider

If you want to limit yourself to just the dollar store most of them sell clear drawer liner you can use to laminate your grid paper. In highschool we would make dungeon tiles but cutting out squares of graph paper and then putting the drawer liner on top of it. Another option is that a lot of dollar stores sell very cheap checkers sets that will land you a grid and a bunch of tokens you can mark with stickers to make goblins or whatever.

When my oldest son was in highschool, I bought him and his brother a heroscape beginning set for Christmas. Of course they came out with expansion sets and new minis. I couldn't afford to buy all the expansions, but the kids were ok with that. They would go through their toy box and invent their own new character sets. Any figures that would fit the playing tiles was fair game. It was never boring. They're both grown men now and have found their way to D&D.

This is great and I love it. But I always have to say that your arts and crafts, as well as your illustration skills, are amazing. Love it.

I've been making my own tokens using these small wooden letter tiles (from Michaels) with color printed paper on top. It looks REALLY good and is dirt cheap. I made 80 3/4" tokens for about 10$.

I love this so much. Speaking as a now EX dollar tree Assistant manager I love videos showing off the cool and weird stuff the stores sell. There's a ton of crap in those stores but also a ton of gold if you know where to look!

Totally running my campaign this way, and your wrapping paper idea has saved me so much time with the combat maps. I salute you because i couldnt find anything with the right sized grid quite yet until now

ive been thinking of how to set up a dnd game with lego, the system from the heroica theme is a promising start, it was like baby’s first ttrpg

I just use m&ms for monster minis and whoever kills it, eats it. That way i dont need snacks either

Quick tip for the battle mat that I used for the first few years when I started. Clear packaging tape works as dry erase, so just cover the back of the wrapping paper with it and you've got a dry erase battle mat for cheap

This handmade rpg set is awesome!!! I’ve started playing D&D in ‘94-‘95 with my classmates with no rulebook at all, no miniatures, nothing but a piece of paper sheet compiled by our master with some stats like fighting, wounds and something else. He was also the only who used only a D6 to take all decisions. Fighting with monsters was simply “I attack that cobold!”, the master rolled the d6 in secret and “ok you stab him to death” or “you miss it!” We had a lot of fun in those days, without spending no money at all, but living great adventures in our fantastical realms!

and I now have no more excuses to avoid DMing and building myself an in-person D&D group damn it. Sigh, well thank you Kohdok, you've given me the kick I need to kickstart my DMing career, I just hope I don't make too many mistakes at the start.

You can play with just the basic rules, a set of dice, a pencil and a pad of paper. That's how we did it when we walked uphill both ways in the snow.

Bro, I am absolutely in love with the idea of Dollar Store DND.

The wrapping paper thing was worth the price of admission. Genius.

Everything in this video is great - your creativity, your engaged but not maniacal delivery, the comprehensive handling of the setup, etc. The fun encounter at the end was the cherry on top. One of the most enjoyable tabletop crafting videos I have seen in a while. Subbed. I can't wait to see what's next!

This is amazing. I think plenty of people have asked themselves how to get into this game cheaply and I will be sharing this video to those individuals.

I thought this was going to be dumb, but the wrapping paper game mat is ingenious. You don’t have to laminate it. Just draw right on it, & when you’re done with the adventure, you still have a roll of wrapping paper you can use later.

This makes me so nostalgic for the first D&D game I ever experienced. I was the DM and was in high school so everything had to be super cheap and DIY. We used hand drawn graph paper, old children’s toys and things like legos and funny bones. All of our materials were printed at the school library. There’s so much charm for this kind of thing.

A nice flash back to my starting play, and I really love the panache of the big dice for stats!

I've only really noticed people standardly use battle maps in D&D pretty recently. Even though I usually play 5th edition I still never use battle maps, which is notice is pretty strange now.

15:05 I love what you were able to pull off, and I was genuinely invested in the little snippet of story at the end. Well done.

I'm a huge fan of minimalism in games and this really shows how a little know-how can minimise the entry barriers! Cracking video Kohdok :D

This is so charming! Makes me wish I'd had friends to play with as a young teen who still had ideas and serotonin lol

Over the years, I have bought more than enough plastic plants from our local equivalent of dollar stores (Tedi and Kik mostly) to cover two entire gaming tables in jungle terrain. 😅

Oh my god is that Etrian Odyssey music! This is one of my favourite dnd videos I've seen in a long time, amazing effort and work put into this!

I bought the various "village" sets from the dollar tree and regular use the buildings from the garden and halloween sets at props in my games. I also use the christmas sets with the trees and walls to add various stuff. The spooky sets give a lot of "monsters" to use like zombies, mummies and werewolves, and gargoyles...

Haha this was like watching my own life. I buy my fair share of Nolzurs at the hobby shop, but I have almost all of those Disney/He Man toys that you used. I just bought a Rex and an armored Batman to use for a T Rex and Shield Guardian. Those paint supplies are no joke, either. I'm looking for a reason to use the little jars. And the fairy garden stuff! 🏡 I have ALL the ones you pictured! Just used the little crops and the clock when I did a battle in the Abbey garden of CoS.

$30 for an amazing opening session, this is genius.

The gift wrap was a clever idea

That wrapping paper grid hack is an incredible tip! Never would have thought of that.

Man does this bring me back! I would use heroscape figures in tandem with knights and dinosaurs to create all kinds of adventures! Never had D&D until after I graduated high school, it was banned in my good Christian household. Thankfully I lived in close proximity to a comic shop that had everything I needed for D&D! RIP Infinite Monkeys and thanks for the memories.

Theoretically, you could play D&D for the staggering price of just a couple of dice sets. Just use pen and paper, the free Basic Rules, said dice sets and theater of the mind. If you need miniatures, just use toys, paper cut-outs, pieces from other board games you may have, or the dice themselves.

Love this! I have literally played tons of on the fly rpg sessions using basically notebook paper, pens and even soda caps for minis and a simplified "coin flip" system for dice, great ideas, loved the undead Dino!

At my dollar store I actually found a pack of five _official_ D&D die-cast figurines for $5. They're about 40mm tall, so a bit bigger than normal minis, but still! They also had a couple of plastic figurines from Kong vs. Godzilla that were just the right size. I got a warbat and a hellhawk.

Wonder if you can see this campaign all the way through? What are those mystical rabbits going to do. How are they going to take out the mutated melting raptor / T-Rex monstrosity.

now that is way cool. I live in NZ and we have $2 stores and other similar stores around. never noticed a full set of dice though. but def alot of good useable stuff for terrain and props.

Wow, very creative & gave into the experience everything you did in creating this.

This video was way bigger than it should be. In a good way. It's fantastic. Good shit man.

I've always maintained that D&D and TTRPGs in general are exactly as expensive as you choose for them to be. You can play for nearly nothing, or spend thousands on the hobby. This video is an excellent exemplar of that.

Basements & Lizards

I've been trying to get into D&D for a while, but due to my limited budget I've had a hard time. This is exactly the video I've been looking for. You have earned my subscription.

This is great! My favorite part is your illustration on the DM screen 😄

Considering one can play D&D entirely with one's imagination...

The energy of your videos is very friendly and wholesome, I wish for only the best things for you

Yooo that DM screen is absolutely mwah!!! (chef’s kiss)

Love this! I saw that they had the three main books at Walmart yesterday and was like “This is how you know that this is the top TTRPG”.

You are very resourceful! Thumb up for the warping paper hack alone!

Thank you for this!! I'm just starting my DM journey and have close to nothing. I'm taking breaks from reading to make my set up and this was insanely helpful.

I found multicolored 1-inch wide binder clips at a dollar store. Those became card stands as all of my miniatures are 1×2 inch cards I print out myself. I eventually upgraded to proper 1-inch card stands I found on Amazon, but I still save a lot of time, money, and space by using card print-outs instead of buying and painting official miniatures for every kind of enemy the party may encounter.

I love that you used the same theme that RLM uses for Half in the Bag lol. Cool video!

Another tip if you don’t have access to a laminator, a lot of art stores have thin clear plastic or cellophane sheets as well as graph paper of all sizes for pretty cheap. If you just tape the graph paper to the back of the plastic then you have a dry erasable surface at whatever size you want! This is how I made my combat map being a broke teen and so far it works really well!

I liked this video EXCLUSIVELY for that wrapping paper hack. My family always plays when drunk or high, so we never thought of that and I’m figuring out how big of a laminator I can find in town. You are a genius

Dude. This was amazing for just what you spent. I mean, that could have even been a start to a great campaing setting ya know. This was amazing.

About 20 years ago I purchased a checkered table cloth (1"X1") at a dollar store. That grid still gets used today in our campaigns.

I just found this video, and I've been using wrapping paper for several years now, for conventions that I attend as GM. Best trick I've ever heard from one of my gaming friends. I'm just glad to see someone else sharing the map hack!

Not from the dollar store. But I found an $8 chess set at Walgreens. The board is dry erase friendly. The squares are the right side. Use of colored sharpie to dueenate pieces. Use the pawns for the monsters and the other pieces for the PCs

A lot of clever tips! Definitely lifted some blind spots for me! Thanks for the vid!

Great DM screen! Really love this set-up!