As someone new to Dungeons and Dragons, one of the largest barriers to starting in the hobby is figuring out what you do when you play the game. Even if you have read about the game and have friends willing to play with out, it can feel intimidating on where to start. Having started up a home group with nothing but new players, after a 10+ year break, here is my advice.
Learn by watching others playing it! D&D has its own official twitch channel or try Critical Roll on Twitch or Youtube or as a podcast. There are many other Actual Play podcasts to learn from too. Try learning by doing with your friends or a local Organized Play game.
If you and your friends are truly new to playing Dungeons and Dragons, then I do not recommend starting with their three core rule books: the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, or the Monster Manual. Instead, I strongly recommend picking up either of the two boxed sets for new players: The Starter Set or The Essentials Kit. For links to any of these products, please visit my Resources Page!
Either of these two boxed sets are perfect for new players and Dungeon Masters alike! They present a simplified rule set that will not overwhelm new players, that is further supported by Dungeon and Dragon’s free Basic Rules if you want to add a little more complexity. These sets also have good adventures to run your players through as you all learn how to play.
The Starter Set Versus The Essentials Kit
If I had to pick between The Starter Set or The Essentials Kit, I would pick the Starter Set. This is the box that was released when Dungeons and Dragons released its current ruleset, called 5th Edition. So it was designed from the beginning to teach everyone how to play Dungeons and Dragons.
Also, the included adventure: The Lost Mines of Phandelver starts everyone off simply and easily. The players are given a task: deliver supplies to the mountain town of Phandalin and help a dwarf find a lost mine. With no risk of spoilers, within 10 minutes or less of starting, the party is ambushed by goblins! The adventure ramps of the complexity of the story and the game slowly and steadily.
Now the Essentials Kit is not a bad choice. It is the 1b to the Starter Set’s 1a. Instead of starting with an ambush, the players are let loose in the town of Phandalin. They can talk to townsfolks, learn some rumors, but eventually they will make their way to a job board outside the Mayor’s house. They can pick one of three jobs and off they go!
This opening scene is very open, compared to the on-the-rails opener of the Starter Set. New players may not know what they can or should do. This can lead to serious analysis paralysis. However, this can be easily cured by just starting all of the player characters in front of the job board.
Also, these introductory quests have a few pitfalls that may make it a touch difficult for a new Dungeon Master to navigate. A little research for advice on how to run Dragon of Icespire Peak, the included adventure, will help.
Where the Essentials Kit shines is if you don’t have a full group of 5 (1 Dungeon Master and 4 Players), because it includes rules for playing one-to-one. These side-kick rules could still be used for any sized party, but are likely necessary for a group with three or fewer players.
Or even if you have more than enough players, sometimes real world events make it difficult for all of your players to attend every game session. The sidekick rules can be used when you have three or fewer players show up for the session.
What is a Dungeon Master?
If you’re new enough to Dungeons and Dragons, I have probably already used a term that you are not familiar with: Dungeon Master. The Dungeon Master is the player who is the head story teller, the narrator, and describer of what happens. Being the Dungeon Master is both a responsibility and fun.
It is the Dungeon Master who will read the Starter Adventure front to back. They act out or run the various townfolk in Phandalin. The Dungeon Master is the one deciding whether the goblins running the ambush are brave or cowardly. They react and have to adapt the story with the players zag when they “should” have zigged.
In every game there must be a Dungeon Master. Without one, then you’re just playing a board game. By the way, there are some really good Dungeons and Dragons board games.
Dice?
The other great thing about getting either the Starter Set or the Essentials Kit is they come with a set of dice. Now in most established groups, each player has their own dice set. But if you’re just dipping your toe in the water, nothing wrong with sharing the dice from the beginner boxes.
What Does Playing Dungeons and Dragons Actually Mean?
Very roughly speaking, there are two types of gameplay in Dungeons and Dragons. But regardless of whether its intrigue in the King’s Court, getting lost in the ancient forest, or clearing a crypt of undead the Dungeon Master sets the scene or stage for the Players. The Players, through their characters, then react to the scene.
If the player’s reactions/actions are probably going to succeed, then they do without the need for any dice rolls. But if a player is trying to persuade the Seneschal to let them talk to the King, but their characters are new to court, then a persuasion roll is necessary. If only the elite get to talk to the King, then the player may have roll a 15 or higher. If the King likes mixing it up with his subjects, the player may only need to roll an 11 or 12.
Regardless, that is how the game plays. A scene is set. The players react and act in that scene with the other Non-Player Characters (NPC) controlled by the Dungeon Master. Those NPCs react and act to the choices and die rolls of the players. Everyone then sees where events lead.
It is the interactive storytelling that sets Dungeons and Dragons apart from novel writing. While the Dungeon Master is certainly doing the heavy lifting in setting the scene and motivations of the NPCs, she must cede control to the players. Being a good Dungeon Master means preparing to improvise.
With combat scenes, play is more structured and less free form. Every player, NPC, and monster involved in the combat must determine their turn order. This means making an initiative roll (a d20 plus your dexterity bonus (or penalty)). The higher the number, the earlier you act in Combat.
As new players, you are most likely going to run combat in a Theatre of the Mind method. This means there is not a 1″ gridded map on the table with miniatures representing the monsters and players. Instead, the Dungeon Master must describe the scene and the relative position of everyone.
Then as players move around the battlefield, the Dungeon Master must make some judgment calls. Is the goblin closer or farther away from the fighter than 30′ (most players can only move 30′ in a turn and still attack)? How many goblins are standing within 20 feet of the wizard who just cast Burning Hands?
As a Dungeon Master, you want to be fair, but not be a pushover every combat. You want to present tactically challenging scenarios, but not have your players feel that you’ve set an impossible trap. Players hate having their agency taken away from them!
Actual Plays
If you still don’t quite understand what it means to play Dungeons and Dragons though, you’re very much in luck. We are in a literal golden age for Dungeons and Dragons media. There is an avalanche of streamed Dungeons and Dragons content on the interwebs.
Twitch has become the center of live D&D streams and content. There is a wealth of content that gives you windows into how a wide range of Dungeon Masters and players you can watch. Each has their own style and approach to playing the game.
Many if not most of the video actual plays are also converted into a podcast. Personally, I prefer listening to Actual Plays in a podcast format. I do not have a job that allows me to split my attention between a video feed in one window and my work in another. At home, I just don’t find myself sitting at my computer for hours watching these feeds. Instead, I listen while commuting, doing grocery shopping etc.
However, one exception to this general rule has become Critical Role. I started late in my Critical Role fandom, soon-ish after they started their second season or campaign. Given my general preference to podcasts, that is where I started. But who-boy is there a lot of Critical Role content. I started speeding up the playback speed to get through that content.
However, their intros, ads, and live performances (yes people pay good money for tickets to live shows of Critical Role and other actual play shows) have a fair amount of visual gags. I found myself going to my computer and looking up that episode and watching. I loved seeing the interactions between the cast (who are all friends in real life), I used my free Amazon Prime Twitch subscription to watch the recordings (at 1.25 to 1.5 speed).
A lot of virtual ink has been spilled about Critical Role, so I will not spend a lot of it here. In short Critical Role started off has a home game of a bunch of voice actors (cartoons, anime, and video games). A friend of theirs, Felicia Day (actress and founder of Geek and Sundry) invited them to literally do their next home game in a studio (of sorts) and stream it live.
The home group agreed to try it for a few sessions, believing it will never work. It did. If you decide to start at the beginning (because you are a dirty completionist like me), those first few episodes are rough. The sound quality is poor, the video quality is not great, and you have very little context for the game: it literally starts in the middle of an ongoing campaign. This is why I suggest just starting at the beginning of Season/Campaign 2.
But I Can Never Run A Game As Well As …..
Impostor Syndrome is a real thing. As a new player and Dungeon Master, it is all too easy to think: I can never be as good of a player or a Dungeon Master as these guys! That is ok, because suffering from a little Impostor Syndrome is better than having an incurable case of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
You are probably not a professional voice actor or an actor. That is ok. You do not have a $1,000 per episode production budget either to buy a complete set of Dwarven Forge Terrain. That is ok too.
Frankly, it is better to start simple and start small. Dungeons and Dragons can be played at very wide levels of commitment. That is what I love about the beginner boxes: they start the players out simple and small. Even Tolkien started simple and small: There once was a Hobbit who lived in a hole . . . .
World Building
Even more virtual ink has been spilled on Tolkien-esque world building. He had this whole mythology and history that he built out based upon a language he invented. He then told a story set a millenia or three after the foundational events hinted to in the Lord of the Rings…. blah blah blah.
I am a huge Tolkien Nerd (if you are too listen to the Tolkien Professor). What he did was a lifetime of work and commitment. You want to see if you can enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons (heavily influenced by Tolkien’s work) over one or two play sessions. By the way, if you want to know how long that’ll take, go here.
There is no specific need to engage in a massive world-building exercise before your first session. The beginner boxes are set in a Tolkien-esque fantasy world called The Forgotten Realms (also a labor of a lifetime by one Ed Greenwood). But even so, do not feel like you need mastery of that world to play.
The whole point of Dungeons and Dragons is to make the game world yours. What happens at your table (or virtual table) is the canon. Unless you’re doing Organized Play, it is not a shared world. It is you and your player’s world.
If you choose not to use the beginner boxes or choose not to use one of the many published, hardcover adventures (which all start you at level one), then you are creating your own world! Bravo! These are sometimes called “homebrew worlds.”
Again start simple and start small. Like Phandalin, start your players in a small town. In that town there is a General Goods store (adventuring supplies), a black smith (simple armors and weapons), an Inn (a source of rumors and jobs), a shrine or temple (a source of healing and jobs), and maybe a local mage (a source of lore, common magic items, and jobs).
There is also some form of local political leadership: a mayor, a sheriff, or minor local nobility (a baroness, a knight, or simply a lord (or lady)). Your starting adventure is some sort of external threat to that town, for which there is some reason why the local political leader and their retainers cannot solve or fix. Therefore, you and your friends (the player characters) volunteer, are drafted, or are paid to deal with.
The threat maybe bandits or orcs or goblins preventing travelling merchants from bringing needed supplies. It maybe local monstrous fauna coming out of the dark forest that the main road goes through to reach your town. The threat may be undead attacking the town from ….. somewhere. Or outlying farmsteads are being attacked: bodies and blood everywhere!
Right there, you have everything you need to get your characters up through 3rd level. You have villagers, named villagers, a cosmology (who is the local shrine dedicated too?), a political system, and a reason for your characters to leave the town. As play develops, you can add to your “map” of the world, flesh it out. Just let it happen organically.
If you want to read more of my posts about Dungeons and Dragons, then click away here! If you want to start to learn on how to paint miniatures, click already! Or maybe you want to explore the wilder (and wider) world of tabletop roleplaying games!
