How to Start Playing Dungeons and Dragons for Beginners

Dungeons & Dragons is one of my favorite things and if you clicked on this article I think that you'll love it too. I know it can be intimidating to get started with D&D, but I'm here to tell you that you don't need to memorize a textbook worth of rules, dress up in a costume, or spend a penny to play. All you need is a character sheet and some dice. Oh, and some people to play with.

A D&D character sheet is where your characters skills, strengths, and abilities are recorded. It's also going to be where you keep track of your stuff, so if you earn some gold or find a sweet magic sword, you're going to add it to your character sheet. I like having a physical piece of paper, but there are plenty of digital versions as well.

Making a character sheet is a great way to learn a lot about D&D, and there are videos on my YouTube channel where I show you how to do it, but it is definitely simpler and easier to use one that's already filled out your first time. There are a bunch of options available on the official website for free. Characters are described by their race (which is more like their species) and their class. Your class is the most defining part of how your character operates in the world and in the game, particularly in a fight. Feel free to judge a book by its cover and just take one with cool art.

It might look like at lot a first but this is simply for reference, and in a game that's welcoming to new players people will be happy to help you find your strength saving throw or your perception check. These are all essentially what you are adding or subtracting to your dice rolls. Don't worry, we're not dealing with big numbers, especially at early levels. You might be adding three or four to your d20 roll.

A d20 is the main die of D&D, and it has twenty sides. If you don't want to go full nerd just yet and invest in one of these bad boys, don't worry, there are free apps or you can just Google “Roll Dice.” When you attempt to do a thing it's a D20, if you succeed and stuff happens like damage or healing, that's when you might go reaching for the other dice. D4, D6 that you are probably most familiar with, d8, d10, d12. Don't panic, it will say right on your character sheet when to use each one.

Great, we've got a character sheet and dice covered, now we just need some people to play the game with us. In a perfect world we want four to six people. We can ask our friends and family, go down to our friendly, neighborhood, game shop, or we can go virtual. Reddit, Discord, Facebook groups, there are many places to find games online.

Now, most of the people at the table are going to be considered “players” and they will control the character on their character sheet, but we need one person to be the Dungeon Master.

The Dungeon Master is in control of all of the other characters in the world, including the baddies. They also act as the referee and the narrator. Typically the Dungeon Master, or DM, is the person in your group who knows the game well, but sometimes no one has played before. And that is OK, when I started looking for friends to play Dungeons and Dragons, I found a lot of interested people but no one with experience. So I taught myself how to be a Dungeon Master and we had an amazing time. We still do, pretty much once a week for years now, on and off.

It is definitely alright to play the game just once, in a single session often called a one shot, but if you enjoy it a lot of D&D games become campaigns, following the same characters as they advance through connected stories. Again, you can play and decide that the game, or maybe just that particular group, is not a good fit for you. But a consistent game night, be it once a week or once a month, is a great thing to look forward to, and personally helps me make time to have fun with my friends. That's no easy feat as an adult in this uncertain world.

Character sheet, dice, people, that's all you need to start. If you can't find a Dungeon Master, you may be the hero you are looking for. The Starter Set is a great way to begin running a game, and you can pick this up for very cheap. We’re in the middle of a series where I help you prepare to run the awesome adventure inside that box, if you are ready to spread your DM wings, that’s a great place to start.

Some of these articles become scripts for YouTube videos, others start life as transcriptions. You can view this one here