Hi all,

If you’re new to Garry’s Mod, you might be feeling a bit intimidated by all the choices. Since Garry’s Mod doesn’t have any goals of its own, new players might be confused as to where they should start. Let’s fix that. Note that this is a basic guide covering what I think you need to know in order to get started. If you want to know more about a specific subject, please search for a guide on that subject.

To get started, you need to buy Garry’s Mod

The most fundamental game mode for Garry’s Mod is the Sandbox. This is just what it sounds like, a place to play around.

The default controls, most of which are shared by other game modes, are:
W, A, S, D: movement forward, back, left, and right
Shift: sprint
Ctrl: crouch
Space: jump
Space + Ctrl: jump and crouch (useful for getting over obstacles)
Alt: walk
V: no-clip mode (essentially removes your ability to collide with anything, so you can move through objects)
Mouse: look around / change facing
Left Mouse Button: use whatever is in your hand
Right Mouse Button: secondary use for whatever’s in your hand (depends on item, some have no secondary)
Mouse Wheel: scroll through equipped weapons/tools
E: interact (pick something up, sit in a chair, open a door, etc)
R: reload (or unfreeze props)
Q: open the Spawn Menu (for creating things)
C: open Context Menu (for changing things)
Z: undo (delete something after you have spawned it)
F: flashlight
Y: chat
U: team chat
~: console

So let’s enter a Sandbox game and get started. Open up Steam and start up Garry’s Mod. In the lower right hand corner you’ll see a box that says Sandbox by default. This is your game mode, and you can change it but for now let’s leave it at Sandbox. Click on Start New Game, click on a map, leave it at Single Player, and start that game.

Move around a bit (WASD), scroll through some guns (Mouse Wheel), and jump (Space). Open the Context Menu (hold down C), and in the upper left you will see an icon that lets you change your playermodel. Pick another model and equip your RPG launcher (Mouse Wheel to it), and shoot at your feet to kill yourself and respawn as the new character.

Now open the Spawn Menu (hold down Q) and you will see a ton of props. Clicking on one will cause it to spawn at the center of your screen. So if you just spawned something at the other end of the map, let go of Q, look somewhere closer, and try it again. As a side note, if you want a chair that you can actually sit in (using E) then you have to go to the Vehicles Tab of the Spawn Menu.

Now get out your Physics Gun (Mouse Wheel to it) and you can pick up the spawned object with Left Mouse. While you’re holding the object with the Physics Gun, the Mouse Wheel will move it closer and further away from you. Holding E will allow you to rotate the object. Shift + E will rotate while aligning it. Right Mouse will freeze the object in the air until you move it again.

Open the Spawn Menu again (hold down Q) and on the right side you should see a bunch of tools, like the Weld tool, the Wheel tool, Thruster tool, etc. Usually when you have a tool equipped, there will be instructions in the upper left part of the screen telling you what you need to do. If it’s not clear, I suggest playing around with the tools and/or watching youtube videos to see them in use.

The console, accessible through pressing ~ (tilde/tiddle), can be very useful. You can use the console to change various game settings. This is an entire language unto itself and basic gameplay does not require mastery of the console. If you want to know more about console commands, check out a dedicated guide on them such as this one. For now, just press ~ and type “act dance” without the quotes. Hit Enter and exit out of the console. Haha, watch yourself dance!

That covers the basics of single-player Sandbox. The mode is there for you to explore.

You can get more models, props, tools, vehicles, and even game modes through Addons. Because Garry’s Mod doesn’t currently have a great interface for Addons, I suggest just going to the Garry’s Mod Workshop. You can search for whatever you want, probably maps to start. My personal favorite game mode is Prop Hunt (you can see my Prop Hunt guide here)

If you’re unsure where to begin, you’re more than welcome to use my gaming group’s collection. You can click Subscribe to All and Steam will automatically start downloading the Addons in that collection.

If you have problems with textures, these will usually manifest as purple checkerboards on your maps. This probably means that the map creator used textures not found in Garry’s Mod by default. The usual culprit is Counter Strike: Source (CS:S), but it could also be any number of Valve games, or even custom textures. Either go without that map, buy the pertinent game (hopefully the map’s creator said which non-standard textures they used), or google “Garry’s Mod textures” for general fixes.

Garry’s Mod is LAN party gold. You’ll get the most out of this silly game if you play with friends. If you and your friends are on the same network, hosting a game by creating a listen/non-dedicated server is very straightforward. Just open Garry’s Mod, click Start New Game, and in the upper right hand corner choose the number of players and a memorable name for your game. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeazy. Keep in mind that any Addons you have will need to be downloaded by the other players, so either disable any Addons you’re not going to use, or start up a collection of Addons so all your friends have the same Addons. If they have to download it while joining a game, you’ll all just be sitting there waiting and they may need to restart Garry’s Mod in order for the Addons to work anyway.

Playing with friends is a lot more fun with voice chat. Feel free to read my voice chat guide here.

If you want to play with friends outside of your network, it’s a bit more work. I’ll be telling you how to forward a port for easy non-dedicated server creation, but some people prefer creating dedicated servers. There are numerous guides for that, so feel free to use them.

1) If on Windows, go to Start | cmd | ipconfig. If not on Windows, rather than copy some other guide I’m going to just suggest that you google “port forwarding” + your operating system.

2) You just got a whole list of data from ipconfig. Scroll to the group labeled “Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection” or similar. It will be the group with numbers on the right like 123.45.678.90. Open a browser and enter the Default Gateway number into the address bar. This will take you to your router’s settings.

3) Enter your router's username and password. The default username is usually “admin” (no quotes). The default password is usually one of the following: admin, password, password123. If none of those work, you’ll have to ask your ISP or google your router’s model number.

4) Get your computer’s IP address. Go to Start | cmd | ipconfig again and find the line labeled IPv4 Address. The number to the right is the one you want. Optional: this number can change unless you set your IP address to be static. Go ahead and google “static ip address” if you want, or just be prepared to update your forwarded ports on occasion.

5) I’m going to describe what I did with my router. If yours isn’t the same, don’t sweat it. Go to portforward[portforward.com] and look up your router. That being said, most are similar.
Go to WAN | Virtual Servers/Port Forwarding
You need to add the following port:
Service Name: Steam (doesn’t actually matter)
Port Range: 27015
Local IP: your computer’s IP address from the previous step
Local Port: 27015
Protocol: TCP&UDP (might be listed as “Both”)
Then click on whatever +/Add button actually adds your listing to the settings, and then Apply.

6) Huzzah! Now when you create a multiplayer game, your friends can find it under Garry’s Mod | Find Multiplayer Game.

7) Optional but highly recommended: enter the console (~) and enter
sv_password xyz
where zyx is anything easy to remember but hard to guess. This will set a password on your server so only your friends can join.

Other people want to have fun too. Play nice. However, because it’s been shown time and again that 99% of the online world has no idea what that means, I suggest just playing with your friends.