A family that can put up with each other ' s bullshit . <| sep |> Nowadays , pretty much any tap to the hands , no matter how weak , will be called . <| sep |> No it ' s not nearly that difficult . Grab the PHB , read the ten pages of combat rules and some of the character gen stuff . Read about how magic works , then get to running a game . When you don ' t know what to do , figure out an ability check and keep the game going . Then come back to the handbook and dmg after the session and maybe pick up another rule or two , or a bit of advice , and integrate that into your game . The published adventures are pretty good , but there ' s no reason to try to run something that complicated for your first few sessions . Crib some ideas from it and make your own maybe . Run Curse of Strahd as your introduction to DM ' ing , without even the advice of the DMG being absorbed first ? That ' s just silly .