Dungeons & Dragons: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting Your Adventure
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) has experienced a resurgence in popularity, moving from niche circles to mainstream culture. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of how to get started playing D&D, covering everything from character creation to gameplay mechanics and valuable resources.
What is Dungeons & Dragons?
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a fantasy role-playing game set in an imaginary world inspired by medieval myths. Created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and first published in 1974, the game focuses on personalized battles with individual heroes and storytelling. The heart of D&D lies in collaborative storytelling, where the adventure is limited only by the imagination of the players.
The Roles: Dungeon Master and Players
The game involves a group of friends, with one player taking on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM). The DM is the primary storyteller and adventure creator, responsible for developing the setting, goals, and rewards. The DM's job is to create an adventure that is fun, exciting, and challenging. The other players create and control their individual characters, working together to overcome challenges presented by the DM.
Getting Started: The First Adventure
An adventure is essentially a pre-made book that contains a story with fictional characters and monsters. For a first adventure, it’s best to select a "one-shot," which can be completed in a single session, rather than a multi-day campaign. A D&D Starter Set is a good place to begin, containing pre-made characters, a rulebook, and dice. This short adventure provides an easy entry point into the game.
For a more immersive experience, consider finding a qualified Dungeon Master who can craft a customized adventure for the group. An experienced DM can provide extra help and a richer storytelling experience.
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Creating Your Hero
Before starting the adventure, players create their heroes. This involves selecting a race and a class for the character. Players fill out a character sheet to track the strengths and weaknesses of their hero, adding details about appearance, clothing, and unique quirks.
Character Race
The character race gives players different sets of advantages and special abilities. For example, a fighter could be a dwarf monster-slayer, an elf blade master, or a human gladiator. The character race affects abilities and powers and provides the first cues for building the character’s story.
Character Class
A hero’s class is the primary definition of what the character can do in the D&D world. A class is more than a profession; it is a character’s calling. A character’s capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses are largely defined by its class, determining their available skills and abilities. The key is to give each hero greater depth to make D&D more intriguing and engaging.
The Flow of the Game
The thickness of The Player’s Handbook can make D&D seem complicated, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating. The game progresses through a cycle of steps, taking the heroes on a legendary adventure. Each player’s decisions make the game unique and special, ensuring that no two campaigns are ever identical.
Finding a Group and Location
The best D&D players are not necessarily gamers. Role-playing games are generally accommodating to all types of people, and most games take on the group’s collective personality. Finding a suitable location to play Dungeons and Dragons can be somewhat of a challenge, but if you thrive on an exciting social atmosphere, extra-large RPG booths are perfect for your adventure.
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D&D Beyond: A Digital Companion
D&D Beyond helps manage your character, with no subscription required. It offers a guided builder for creating characters easily, and character sheets can be accessed in the browser or app. You can create and maintain up to six characters for free.
Taking Action
During adventures, players weave a story together with the Dungeon Master and other players. D&D Beyond's digital character sheet handles the busywork, allowing players to focus on the fun. It tracks Hit Points, spells, and key resources in one place and automatically calculates healing and damage. It also provides 3D dice that do the math for you.
Honing Your Power
With experience, your character will grow in knowledge and skill. D&D Beyond's digital Character Builder allows you to easily level up your character, make choices, and ensure you don't miss anything. It simplifies leveling up, offers choices for subclasses, feats, and spells, and unlocks additional options with digital supplements.
Running Your First Game
Running your first game doesn't have to mean spending hours learning how to play it. D&D Beyond provides tools that keep the session moving and the rules handled, allowing you to focus on describing the world and reacting to your players’ choices. You can run your games in the Maps VTT.
Tips for Running Your First Session
Every great game starts with a great first session. The easiest way to start is by playing with the D&D Starter Set.
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Key Elements of Gameplay
There are two primary things you can do as a player in D&D: be active and know your character. Your first session will probably be a little awkward, and there will be things that you don’t understand. Your DM will help answer your questions during the session. Make sure you ask questions!
Session Zero
Your DM may be interested in running through a “session zero” with you before you join the rest of the group. A session zero is a short adventure where the DM helps players develop part of their backstory and find a hook into the main narrative, explaining why they’re taking part in the larger adventure. This usually happens before the character meets the rest of their adventuring party.
Interacting with the World
Whether playing directly with your DM or with your DM and other players, there are a few types of things that happen during a session when it comes to your character. Your DM will present you with opportunities to problem-solve and interact with others as well as to take on creatures of various kinds. This is where the structure of the rules comes into play and why you have dice. Rolling the dice helps to determine if a particular plan or idea succeeds or not.
Role-Playing Conversations
A lot of D&D is about creative problem-solving, but it’s also about creating a full and vibrant world. Interacting with others inside the world allows you to do a bit of both. You and your party may need to gather information to understand something that’s going on in a particular town. Or, perhaps, you’re wanting to join friends in a tavern to celebrate a successful adventure. You might also need to persuade someone to help you or to reveal a secret. You can do all of these things and more with role-playing conversations between yourself, the DM, and the other players.
Skills
You don't need to know which skill does what or when you’re supposed to use them. Your DM will ask you for the roll. You’ll notice pluses with little numbers next to these skills. Each character is going to be good at different types of things. Some people may be very persuasive, whereas others may be extremely strong.
It’s the DM’s job to say which skill they want a player to use when. “I want to jump on the monster and pin it to the ground” is fine. Your DM will then tell you what to roll (likely strength or athletics, not acrobatics in this case), and you’ll roll the d20 (the biggest dice) and report the score to them. The DM will then help narrate the level of success or failure of your grapple attempt.
It’s your job to come up with a cool thing you’d like to do and communicate that to your DM and other players. You can try skills even if your character isn’t proficient.
Dice
With dice, the number refers to how many sides a particular dice has. Again, almost always, when your DM asks you for a roll, you will pick up the d20 and roll it. You will then add a modifier to the roll. A modifier is going to be the +_ or -_ next to one of your skills or abilities. It is not the above 10 number under Intelligence (for example) on your sheet.
Combat
When you cannot solve a problem with words or tricksy plans, you may need to fight something or someone. Combat generally takes place in turns after everyone rolls “initiative,” which determines the order of turns taken. There will be a box at the top center of your character sheet that is labeled initiative that will tell you what to add to your d20 roll (+3, for example). If you are using a simplified character sheet, add your dexterity modifier to your d20 roll.
Once everyone has reported their numbers to the DM, you will enter “initiative order,” which just means that people are taking turns and not all participating at once. Your DM will let you know when you are in or out of initiative order. The rest of the time, you can usually collaborate with your party members in no particular order.
Combat takes place in rounds, when you move from the top to the bottom of the initiative order. Once everyone has taken their turn, you move on to the next round. On each turn, you have a few things you can use: action, bonus action, movement. You can do these in any order you like. You also get a reaction each round.
Actions
This will depend on your character class, but most simply, you can take the “attack” action and attack something with one of your weapons, or you can cast a spell. Sometimes you may need to use your action to break out of or away from a spell effect or other creature. Your DM will tell you what to roll on your turn when that’s the case. You can also dash, hide, disengage, or help, among a few other options, including special things your particular class allows you to do.
Dash allows you to move up to your movement speed in a direction you choose. Hide allows you to attempt to slip out of sight; your DM will ask you to make a roll to determine your success. Disengage allows you to move out of melee range (usually 5 ft) of an opponent without taking an attack of opportunity, which we’ll discuss in the reaction section. Help permits one of your allies to roll with advantage (roll the d20 twice and take the highest number) on something they’re attempting that you’re assisting them with.
Bonus Actions
Some spells, like healing word, take a bonus action rather than an action to cast. In each case, they’ll be labeled as such. Generally, this means they’re faster to cast and can be done more quickly. If you cast a spell as your bonus action, you cannot cast another spell besides a Cantrip on your turn this round. You may also be able to make an offhand attack as a bonus action, which means using a second weapon as long as you’re not holding your weapon with both hands (it will be marked as 2-handed). This can only happen if you are holding a light melee weapon. And, like your action, some classes have special options for a bonus action.
Movement
This basically determines how quickly your character is able to move on a given turn/round. This will be listed next to your initiative on your character sheet at the top. There are special situations where you may need to stand up from being prone (on the ground), which would use half your movement. Or perhaps you need to use a special type of movement, like climbing. Remember, you don’t have to use all three of these-action, bonus action, movement-on each turn, but they are options available to you each time.
Reactions
Each round, you also have one reaction. This can be used to attack an opponent if they move out of your melee range (the attack of opportunity we mentioned earlier), and there are also certain spells that can be cast as a reaction. Some classes also have fighting styles, like protection, that let them help protect an ally who is within 5 ft as their reaction. But remember, you only get one reaction per round. This resets if you don’t use it.
Attack Rolls and Armor Class
Assuming you’re making a weapon attack, you will add your attack modifier (usually your proficiency bonus [top left of your sheet] and your strength or dexterity modifier) to your d20 roll. What the DM and your dice are determining at that point is if your roll is higher than the creature or character’s Armor Class [AC]. This is a score that expresses how dexterous and well-protected this target is, or, in other words, how easy or difficult they are to hit and hurt with a weapon attack.
If your attack roll (your number rolled on the d20 plus your attack modifier or, sometimes, you spell attack modifier) is equal to or higher than the creature’s AC, the attack hits, and the DM will narrate the success of the attack you attempted. If the number is lower, the DM will describe your miss.
Critical Hits and Failures
The top and bottom 5% possibilities on a d20, the 1 and the 20, take on special significance in combat. Rolling a natural one (nat 1) is a critical fail (or critical failure), and rolling a natural twenty is a critical hit (occasionally called critical success). If you roll one of these numbers “unnaturally” (reaching them with a modifier and not solely on your d20), you’ll proceed as though you’ve rolled a normal hit.
With a critical failure, it is likely that something you didn’t intend will happen. You might accidentally strike someone you weren’t aiming for, like an ally or someone you’re trying to help, or perhaps your weapon breaks.
A critical hit, on the other hand, means that you were incredibly successful in injuring the target. When this happens, you’ll double the dice damage rolled. You will not double the number of dice, and you will not add any modifying damage to this roll. So if you’re supposed to roll 3d6 (the regular-looking dice with six sides), you will either roll one three times or roll three of them. Then, you double those numbers added together (2+4+5=11 on a regular hit, on a critical, you’ll double the 11, making it 22 plus any additional damage points, such as if you have 3d6 + 4 piercing damage; you won’t double the 4). This brings us to the other dice.
You’ll then report this number to the DM, and they’ll reduce the creature’s hit points [hp] by that number. Depending on the size and strength of a particular creature, they may take a while to kill. Even if your DM says “your blade goes through their forehead and they scream,” they may still be totally capable of continuing to fight.
Essential Resources for Players and DMs
The line between DM and player resources is often blurred. Here are some essential resources for playing and running D&D 5th Edition (D&D 5e).
Character Sheets
You can download all of the character sheets Wizards has designed for the game. There are a few alternatives and some that are form fillable for those that like to keep their character sheets digital.
Dice Rollers
While it is absolutely satisfying to have a physical set of dice to roll there are plenty of digital options. Some of the resources I will mention later even contain their own digital dice rollers. Both Android and Apple have free dice roller options.
D&D Beyond
If you prefer the PDF version of every book you get, then this is your only legal option. All of the source books are on this service and at a discount from their hard cover counterparts. This service also contains a character creation tool but is limited in the number of characters you can create. It is possible to run an entire campaign through the service. Their online tools are useful but they do come at a cost.
Dungeon Master's Screen
A screen can make magic happen. The dungeon master has the screen just like the Wizard of Oz has the curtain, to maintain the illusion of the game. Also to have some rules easily accessible. The sound of a DM rolling dice without the players being able to see the result is one of the more panic inducing events that can occur. It creates tension and allows the DM to modify things behind the scenes without making the players feel cheated to create a better experience. You can either purchase one or create your own.
DM's Guild
Wizards of the Coast has allowed amateur creators to develop and sell their own D&D content through the DM's Guild. Most all of the content on this site contains homebrewed content, some of it is free, some are not. You can find new content ranging from adventures, to new races, and new classes and subclasses.
Fantasy Name Generators
Over time you will get tired of trying to come up with the names of NPCs or creating a town map for Generic Town #34. This has numerous generators for helping you flush out your world. If you always wanted an easier way to look through the list of magic items available in the Basic Rules, then this is the place to come. Seriously just take some time to look at what tools are available and you can lose yourself for hours here. Heck this is a great tool for any amount of roleplaying you are doing, not just D&D or tabletop games. If you need a character name chances are this site has a generator just for that. Even if you don't like one of the names that comes up, you can take names that you like the gist of and modify it to how you want.
Map Generators
If you aren't a cartographer then you might need a tool to give you a helping hand. While the tool is fairly basic it’s got some good customization options. If you have something specific in mind then this tool might not help you too much. While it might not be for 5e, this generator has a ton of customizability. It even generates a wandering monsters table.
D&D's OGL and SRD
If you are going to publish anything D&D related you will first need to look at this. Not because its useful, but because this is legally required in order for you to do so. This contains all of the information you should need starting out when even thinking about your new product.
Homebrew Tools
If you aren't really looking into publishing your content for sale but just want to make something nice looking quick for you and the internet, then this tool is a quick way to accomplish it. It requires a bit of understanding of Markdown, but overall I have used this to create many a homebrew project.
Critical Role
Their lineup of shows has something for everyone in the tabletop gaming community.
Unearthed Arcana
This series of articles put out by Wizards is the site I probably visit the most. Their articles are on the latest content that Wizards is publicly playtesting. Many of the subclasses that appeared in Xanathar's appeared first in Unearthed Arcana. If you are unsatisfied by the amount of class and race options, this is another place to go.
Sage Advice
As the lead designer of D&D 5e, he puts out a series of articles answering the most asked rules questions he receives. He even keeps a document publicly available for all the questions he has answered. Often you will need to cut through the persona he has created to get the valuable information he presents. More often than not he has led me to question my own use of a set of rules or systems and how to use them better (or not use them at all). I really do suggest reading his work with a grain of salt.
Tribality
The numerous individuals over at Tribality have had their hand in designing games and settings for some time. Many of them play D&D and create their own content for the game. The site is filled with professionally made and designed homebrewed content.
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