May 16, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller"
]
Categories:
rpgs
Tags:
5e
dnd
learn-to-play
This is the second article of several to give some help and guidance to brand-new Dungeons and Dragons players.
In my opinion, nothing is easier than rounding up some friends, buying a few sets of inexpensive dice, and purchasing the 5E Starter Set for around $20.00. It provides dice, rules, characters, and a great story. The only thing it doesn’t provide are friends and a place to play.
I’m going to discuss below what you need at a bare minimum to play Dungeons & Dragons, and then return to the Starter Set. If you’re the impatient type, go order the Starter Set right now. This guide will still be here when you’re done. After I discuss the bare minimum requirements, I’ll return to the Starter Set.
To start playing Dungeons & Dragons, at a bare minimum you need the following:
a few friends who also want to play;
a place to play;
some dice;
some rules;
some characters; and
a story.
As far as friends go, you would want people who are equally enthusiastic and curious as you about Dungeons & Dragons. Even better, is if you have a friend who already plays and that would invite you to come play in their game or, even better, offers to DM for your first game.
Unfortunately, not all of us have the opportunity to join an existing game, whether due to resources, geography, social skills, or otherwise. Many of us have to “recruit” players from our friends and family to get a game going.
If you don’t have an existing player to lean on, no worries! All you need is at least three to five other friends who’ll put in a good-faith effort to play the game. They don’t even need to spend a dime of money if they don’t want to.
You’ll also come to find that finding players with good attitudes are important. There are many role-playing stereotypes out there, and some can be problem players. But, don’t let me discourage you. It’s no different than finding a group of friends to play basketball; not everyone will always get along or behave appropriately.
As far as a place to play, some people play on a large table. Some people play sitting in their living room, sometimes around a coffee table, sometimes with no table. My favorite way is on a dining room table with friends, snacks, and everybody’s favorite beverage.
Some people play online over Internet Relay Chat, Discord, web forums, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and countless other methods. I encourage that for your first few campaigns, that you stick to in-person games if you can. But, once you have learned the ropes, I encourage you to branch out to internet games if that appeals to you.
Everybody needs dice! The traditional dice used to play Dungeons & Dragons come in a set of seven dice: a four sided die (d4), a six-sided die (d6), an eight-sided die (d8), two ten-sided dice (d10) and when both rolled together function as a one-hundred-sided die (d100), a twelve-sided die (d12), and a twenty-sided die (d20).
As you play more, you may also want to have at least two twenty-sided dice as there are many situations where rolling both twenty-sided dice at the same time can speed up play. Also, as your PC gains experience and skill, more effects needs multiple six-sided dice, so many times players will also buy several more six-sided dice. But again, if the rules call for you to roll four six-sided dice, you can simply roll a single six-sided die four times in a row and add all the results.
You can purchase individual 7-dice sets from your friendly local game store or online. Chessex is one of the large brands and I enjoy their product. There are a multitude of other producers out there, and exotic metal or wooden dice can be purchased as well if you want to spend more money. But, there’s absolutely no need to purchase exotic or expensive dice. A plain old 7-dice set for around $10.00 a set is all you would need and will last for years.
Note: please pay attention to the color of the dice as compared to the color of the numbers on the dice. You want to be able to read your dice, without straining your eyes, from several feet away as you roll them on the table. For example, a red die with orange numbers may be quite difficult to read unless it’s directly in front of you, as opposed to a black die with white numbering.
Another way to buy dice is to purchase a large bag of random dice, such as Chessex’s Pound-O-Dice, which would give you much more than just 7 dice for around $25.00. The downside to buying a large bag of random dice, is that you’re not guaranteed to be able to match seven dice all in the same color. But again, the color of your dice is a personal preference and has no bearing on whether or not you’re able to use it to play DND. The big upside is that you will likely get enough dice to make around eight or more full seven-dice sets; they just won’t match in color. If this doesn’t bother you, this is the most cost effective way to buy dice for a whole group. Everybody splits the cost of the bag of dice and you split up the bag of dice purchased.
Another option is to download a dice-rolling app on your tablet or smart phone. There are several free and low-cost dice-rolling apps that let you roll. Make sure that’s going to be allowed by your DM though; some DMs disapprove of electronic dice rollers. For me, I like to roll physical dice; it’s part of the experience for me, whether I’m a player or a DM.
Ideally, each player would have his own set of dice or electronic way to roll to help speed up play; however, some tables do share dice and pass the set around the table as players need to roll dice.
The publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast, has been so kind as to put abridged versions of the rules online in PDF form for absolutely free. These are called the Basic Rules.
The Basic Rules include a limited selection of races and classes, spells, monsters, and how to play. But, the rules they do contain are the exact same as in the other Dungeons & Dragons products. They simply just don’t contain all the rules. There is a PDF geared towards players and a PDF geared toward DMs.
From the publisher’s website:
The Basic Rules runs from levels 1 to 20 and covers the cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, presenting what we view as the essential subclass for each. It also provides the dwarf, elf, halfling, and human as race options; in addition, the rules contain 120 spells, 5 backgrounds, and character sheets. But the best part? The Basic Rules is a free PDF. Anyone can download it from our website. We want to put D&D in as many hands as possible, and a free, digital file is the best way to do that.
Yes, you read that right. You can, right now, get online and start reading the rules without spending a single penny!
Eventually, you’ll likely want to dive into all the other rules out there. We discuss all the other first-party publications in a later section of the guide, to help you prioritize your hard-earned money for books.
Since you are new to Dungeons & Dragons, I strongly encourage you to use pre-generated characters for your first few times playing. They have taken care of the math and much of the rules issues. The publisher of Dungeons & Dragons has kindly provided several pre-made characters on their website.
As you learn more about the game, I encourage you to read the rules and learn how to make your own character from scratch, using nothing but the rule books, a paper character sheet, and a pencil.
Too many new players (and veterans) rely on computers to generate their characters for them. But they’re missing out on a major part of the game. To be a good player means you need to know all the ins-and-outs of your PC. It’s my opinion that relying on character-generating software leads to players who don’t know their PC’s character sheet well enough.
If you’re the DM, you’re going to need a story. There are three main options to acquire a story:
Purchase a commercial adventure and run it as is;
Create your own adventure from scratch (called homebrew); and
Purchase a commercial adventure, and pick and choose the parts you like, and homebrew the rest.
I tend to fall into the third option; I like to purchase commercial adventures, but then remix them to fit my players and my ideas. However, many DMs purchase a commercial adventure and run it as is. And many DMs will use 100% homebrew for their games, where they take great pride and joy in the creative aspect of the game.
For beginners, I recommend purchasing commercial adventures geared towards new players and new DMs and then running that adventure as is. You’ll be able to get your “sea legs” soon, and then you can think about branching out into homebrew.
And the story that I recommend for beginners is included in the 5E Starter Set.
Available new for around $20.00 (sometimes as little as $12 with Prime shipping), the 5E Starter Set comes with literally all you need for around twenty hours of Dungeons & Dragons fun! It comes with a single set of dice, a set of abridged rules, several pre-generated characters, and a fantastic adventure called the Lost Mine of Phandelver. The adventure easily has fifteen hours of entertainment and even more if the players like chasing down and completing every side quest.
More importantly, the adventure has a lot of information on how to play the game, more particularly, on how to DM the game. It handholds the DM on how to run combat encounters, how to act during a game, how to award experience, and so on. It introduces layers of the game slowly over the beginning so as to not overwhelm a new DM. It’s aimed at new DMs and Wizards of the Coast did a superb job on writing it for new DMs.
I have been both a player as well as DM in the adventure mutiple times; while I don’t think it’s the best adventure ever, I think it is a great introduction to Dungeons & Dragons, and I think it is a great teaching tool for a first-time DM. I’ve had a ridiculous amount of fun each time I’ve been through the adventure, and I highly recommend it.
I recommend buying at least one extra set of dice, so that the DM can have her own set, and the players can share a second set. This is to help speed up the game. If another $10.00 for a set of dice is out of your budget, you can still use the set included with the game as the only dice set; it will just slow down dice rolls a touch at the table.
Ideally, your new players will like the game so much that they’ll run out and buy their own dice shortly thereafter.
Stay tuned for my next article, which will discuss how to to be a first-time DM.