How to Start Playing Dungeons and Dragons
So how do you start playing DnD?
To that question, there are many answers. However, playing D&D is rather easy, especially now with the fifth edition of the game, with many resources to get you started, videos to give you a basic understanding of the game, races, and classes. This post is for those that are still new and want a quick crash course to the game. This post can also help DMs (Dungeon Master) who can share this blog post with their new players to get started as fast as possible.
What is DnD?
Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game that was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson way baaack in the day of 1974, and yeah duh, but what I’m getting my self into? Philosophically, It’s a game where you take up a role among your friends or newly found group of strangers and collectively try to tell a compelling group story. Compared to a book, in D&D, you are one of the book characters, Dungeon Master is the entity that gives you the challenges, the world where you weave your stories and much, much more. Not only that, he is a person that governs the rules of the game, and his word most of the time is final. It’s a great hobby and activity that I got enthralled over the years. It’s fantastic, since D&D haves unlimited possibilities to tell an engaging story, have great fun, find something about your self through lenses of a character, and is a ground where the breading of inside jokes like no other hobby with our friends.
Sign me up, what do I need?
5E character sheet if you want to create a new character (Link), suggest using PDF named (DnD_5ECharacterSheet - Form Fillable)
Or, if you wish to dip your toes, you can download, already prepared and ready to play characters created by Wizards of The Coast(Link). (But, building your character is way more fun.)
If you have more time to spend before a game I recommend just reading the Basic rules, that are available by the Wizards of the Coast, this will get you a better understanding of the game and also help your DM to jump-start you to the game.
Get yourself a pencil, maybe some dice
And now the most crucial part of it - Find a group to play with.
That would be it for this post, however sometimes you can find some trouble of finding the most important thing - people with whom you can play with, but even then, there are ways of how effectively solve the problem.
How to Find a Group?
My favorite way to play the game is with my friends at somebodies house, if you lack a place to play D&D or friends that would join you in these hobbies, another way to find a group it’s game stores, that host tabletop RPG games.
Local game-store will help you to find a local group, tell you more merch and books that are necessary later for the game, show you dices and other things. The local game store is how I met my party with which I’m playing now for 3+ years for now. But where should I find a game store? That’s easy, just google it. But what if I don’t have a game store in my city/town/village/damn… my country or heck Antarctica? Well, that’s a little bit harder.
If there are no local game-stores or they are too far for casual game nights in another city, Meetup.com is a great resource to find a group. There are many of Tabletop Communities across the world that reside at Meetup.com. For this point I would like to illustrate that I had to leave my country for 4 months, flying off to Spain, I started to look for players for about two weeks prior to the date when I landed in Spain, I already had 6 players for my short campaign, which expanded to 8 in due time. D&D community is not exclusive, and if you want to play, you will find a group.
Another way to play D&D is through services like Roll20.net, Fantasy Grounds, Discord, and so on… But I’m way more of a fan when there are a real table and people that I could play the game. It’s the same as trying to lick jam, though a jam jar. Yet I understand the need for some people, sometimes you can’t make it to your game, using these services is a viable option, but if you can try to stick to a group that you can meet IRL, that will be way more fun, promise.
If all fails just bug your friends to try D&D till they give in to the idea, well probably you will need to become a DM, but it will be fun, I promise.
Okay, so I found a group, what is next for me?
First of all, congratulations, you got your character sheet, you got your group, and that is something if you are new to Dungeons and Dragons. If you want to start playing rather effectively at a game, my suggestion is first to understand a couple of basic principles of D&D and how to navigate your character sheet successfully.
How to effectively navigate your character sheet?
I teach this method that I made up to my new players because, after numerous different explanations, I needed to find a quick and fast way to teach the basics for the sake of my sanity when I’m DM’ing a game. So whenever I start my games, the first thing I teach about the game is learning to navigate the Character Sheet. For this, I invite you and your players if you are running a session to divide the character sheet into three subsections as follows:
1) Out of combat section (Most of the time)
2) Combat section (Most of the time)
3) Character Motivation and Features section.
The reason why we do this is for a player to focus on which area of the character sheet he should be paying attention to the most. If you are strolling through town, buying and negotiating prices on a health potion, performing a poem at the inn - that’s going to be Section 1), your skills, your attributes. If you’re are start a fight - Section 2) your weapon, your weapon's damages damage, your armor class(If you get hit or not) initiative, etc. And in the end, since it’s a roleplaying game - Section 3), where you can guide your created characters' actions through selected beliefs, bonds, and flaws, things that will make your character stand different from the crowd.
Section 1) Out of combat section (Most of the time)
This is a section that determines what can your character do, how he should behave and look like(Attributes), and what advantages and flaws he should have while playing(Skills) and how well he can deal with given obstacles(Saving Throws).
Skills - Are probably the most looked at the place of out of combat, so what I say to my players is don’t even look at it if you are deciding to do something, naturally say what you want to do. I will probably give you a skill check, Only then you should look at the Skill area of the sheet and add the modifier to you 20 sided dice, giving DM the total.
Saving Throws - Saving throws is a force that is trying to affect your character, mostly it’s traps, charming effects, your constitution to withstand poisons, and so on. Saving Throws are also quite an important thing to happen, and most of the time, when it’s out of combat, you can tell that it’s coming. However, this part also is present during combat. So if you hear a saving throw look at that part.
“You are traveling through a forest, for quite some time, Nylog, make a Dexterity Saving Throw” - DM
“8. - Says Nylog.”
“You see as the wandering Goblin in the unbeknownst forest steps on a hidden bear trap in the leaves, it traps you, causing you three piercing damage.”
Attributes - This is the First thing you will probably need to roll - your stats, most of the time it’s done by rolling 4 six-sided dice(or 4d6) and subtracting the lowest one, doing this 6 more times for your attributes will leave you having six numbers that you will decide where to put up. However, the reason I mention this section is that these numbers tell you and the world how does your character interacts with the world. Having 18 strength would mean that you are a specimen of might, equivalent to the power of a strongman having 6 or 8 would indicate your character more or less a feeble one. Keep in mind when you are playing the game and start role-playing the stats that you have that will make you a better role player.
Section 2) In Combat Section
When there is a situation where a dungeon master says “Initiative,” that’s an indication that combat will start, so the first thing is to look at Initiative Modifier, and give the DM the result when he asks for your initiative total.
Speed is rather simple for every 5 feet you can move, that is represented as one square or hexagon on the battle mat, if your DM doesn’t use a battle mat, well that will only mean counting the distance in your head, of which I’m not a big fan.
Attacks and Spellcasting, is where combat is at the offense — trying to kick some Kobold's butt? You will probably be going to use your weapon to make the attack, which would mean first looking at attack modifier, which determines whether or not you fail and succeed. If DM tells you that you do - roll the damage die that varies from 1 four-sided(1d4) dice till 12 sided dice(1d12) plus your modifier used with the weapon like strength or dexterity. That is if you are playing a melee/range focused class like rogue, fighter or barbarian, monk(I recommend first time playing choosing a little more simple classes). An extra tip is whenever you’re playing a spellcaster. I, I encourage you to put the most used offensive cantrips to this subsection for ease of use like firebolt, eldritch blast, and others. Also, indicate the range and damage for your first-time play.
The second part is the Hitpoints or HP for short. - if DM tells you the number of damage, that is the time where you look and subtract from the number on the sheet.
If you get a drop to 0, it’s time to roll Death Saves. Make three rolls above 10(Success) in three rounds - and you get back up, roll three less than 10(Failures), and it’s time to roll a new character sheet. And yes, natural one will give you two fails, yet natural 20 going to bring you back up to 1HP, evading the grips of death.
Hit Dice is a dice that you use on the short rests you take, you can use the number of hit dice, till long rest. It’s a way to get your health back up if your party got a little bit of a beating on the last encounter.
And to be honest, there is a small chance that temporary hit points for your first time play will occur. If you hear that somebody gives an amount of them, write it down on the sheet.
The equipment and gold subsections are okay if you’re solving maybe some puzzles or trying to solve combat creatively, but don’t give so much attention to it.
Section 3) Character Motivation and Features section.
Now the character Ideals, Bonds, Personality Traits, and Flaws is what makes your character tick. Superman is a bland character with no obstacles(Let’s be frank, please), Clark Kent is a more interesting one. A small difference - Clark Kent has a Flaw. Since you are playing not yourself, but a character I believe this is the most overlooked aspect of the character sheet when starting out playing Dungeons and Dragons. And even when this section doesn’t require a constant focus to add or subtract numbers, I encourage people to not gloss over them when making a decision that can impact a story (Like whether or not to let an enemy, doing good/or terrible acts as your character). To be able to know your role and how he thinks, acts is way better for the flow of the game than perfecting an accent or a one-liner that you give the character. Huh...Maybe I’m getting my self ahead to much, but yes in a great DnD group, this is one of the best things you can do with your character, trust me on this.
Of course, the idea of the character's motivations will change over time; nothing should be set in stone. However, you still control the narrative of the character you are playing, and if you are playing the first time, don’t skip the part of the character motivations, play a role, rather than yourself. It will make all the difference.
Now the Features and Traits are also could be used to enhance your role-playing, but it’s a perfect spot to put the majority of the things you get from your class/race/background to keep always present.
In general, if you know where to focus at a given time, this method will make you spend less time looking around the sheet, asking more questions than playing the game, and in the end, the quicker you are navigating your character sheet, the better the player you will be.
The Essential Principles of first time DnD
So, you know now how to navigate the character sheet? Great, but the second part I tell my players to get started is are just a bunch of essential principles of DnD that you should know.
Respect the DM’s rule - His ruling is just and final, at least at the table you are sitting at. Maybe you got ideas from this Blog, but the DM has an Ultimate say in things that regards his game. Of course, you can disagree with him, quote a rule from a book, but still, he has the final word. If you don’t have fun because of the DM’ing style or stepping on personal boundaries, it’s just better to find a better DM or/and group rather than spending your time not having fun. And sometimes DMs are like TV series or movies. Some DMs like to run their games like Game of Thrones type of DnD( Unless they saw the last seasons). Others want more strange and unfamiliar settings like Dark Crystal vibes, another maybe wants more Horror-ish Dracula type of a game, and every type of game is excellent. Still, it depends on you, and which you like and enjoy and some groups are just not compatible, trust me.
Your combat turn is made up of three things - Action, Bonus Action, and Reaction. On action you can attack, on bonus maybe cast a small spell or ability, open the doors or something that takes not that much time, and reaction - you can say one word, two words if you are not using a spell-like Shield.
Give me a D20, 2D12 d….. - D20 is a short term of Dice 20. Whenever DM asks you for 1d20, 2d6 or whatever D he wants from you, that indicates how many dice(Example: Nylog, roll 2d6 - Translation from old French - “Nylog roll me two six-sided dice and give me a number”) and which kind of dice he wants you to roll (for example dice 20 is - d20, 12 is d12 and so on.)
Feel free to do anything in the game - you don’t want to go to the necromancer's evil lair and instead be in a tavern chatting the barkeeper for the rest of the campaign. And great, you can do that, yet I don’t know whether or not it would be a good campaign, but you can do anything in Dungeons and Dragons. BUT keep in mind other players and their fun.
You are not in the world that DM presents to you and the group - Your character is. So imagine this character which you created or got to play, what decisions will he make, what is this character motivations and goals, fears, and desires how he reacts to adversity and challenges.
Dungeon and Dragons is a storytelling game - You all tell a story that is bound by some rules, but if you feel like action will create a better story, it’s an indication to do so.
Oh, and most importantly, have fun, it’s a fantastic game, BUT keep in mind other players and their FUN. The joy of Dungeons and Dragons is sharing the fun with players that are sitting next to you.
Conclusion
Dungeons and Dragons 5e is simple. The game has its complexities at first glance, but starting, one of the best ways to master this hobby is to understand how to navigate your character sheet and how to find a group to play with. That’s all you need to get your self quickly started with the game. Grab some dice now, and it’s time to venture forward and create your new character, or if you’re a fresh new Dungeon Master, it’s time to start creating a brand new campaign. I welcome you to this truly fantastic game and be sure to comment on what made starting out playing Dungeons and Dragons easier.
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