How to Play Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game that is part improvisation and part chance. In a fantasy setting, you create a character, and then role-play that character through adventures created by another player. Whether your character dies an agonizing death or achieves fame and wealth, is up to how clever you can be and a roll of the dice. It’s easy to get started playing. All you need is a book, some dice, a few friends and an imagination.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Dungeons and Dragon’s books
• Variety of dice (from 4-sided to 20-sided)
• Paper
• Pencils

1. The one book absolutely necessary for a new Dungeon’s and Dragons (D&D) player to have is “The Player’s Handbook.” It will provide you with all you need to get started playing the game: an overview, the rules and everything you need to create and play a character, such as attributes, race, class, clothing, supplies and magic spells. There are many other D&D books you can eventually get. The “Dungeon Master’s Guide” provides information for the Dungeon Master (DM), who is the person that creates the adventure for the players. There is also the “Monster Manual,” which gives details of all creatures, natural and supernatural, good and evil, that can be encountered on an adventure. In addition, there are many modules, pre-made adventures, and accessory books with additional detailed information on various aspects to the game. For a beginner, however, these can all come later as your interest grows. Master the handbook first.

2. 
   assorted dice

   Dice are also necessary because all of your character’s abilities and attempts to do things will be determined by a roll of the dice. To play, you’ll need a variety of different types of special gaming dice: 4-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided, 12-sided and 20-sided, not to mention a handful of standard 6-sided. Your character’s strength, intelligence, age, success or failure to pick a lock, whether he get’s hit by an arrow shot at him, and whether he survives the blow are all decided by dice rolling. D&D books use statistics and probability to determine outcomes and provide charts for various situations so that your DM can interpret the dice roll fairly; for example, your strong character might naturally have a good chance at defeating a weaker character in hand-to-hand combat, but if the weaker character has magical armor or casts a tripping spell on your character, it will even out (or reverse) the odds. On the other hand, like in life when sometimes chance brings about the absolute luckiest (or unluckiest) outcome, so do dice. No matter how dire the situation for a character, she might just hit that perfect roll and succeed. Easy to use charts and guides for calculations based on just about every conceivable scenario can be found in D&D books.

3. D&D is not a solitary game. To play, you will need at least two people, so that one can create the adventure and the other person can play it. Ideally, a group of three or more is best, so that your character will have companions on his journey. Being new to the game, it is best to join in with experienced players, or at least an experienced DM. It’s not hard to find a game by looking for a local group on the Internet, or putting up a note seeking gamers at a library, college or book store. Simply post that you are looking to join and game and leave your name and number. Gamers are always looking for new groups to begin adventures.

4. When you join a game, the first thing you will have to do is create a character. This can take an hour to two or three, depending on how detailed you would like to get. Some things about your character will be rolled--usually things that would be unfair to let people decide for themselves. After all, it’s just too tempting to want to make your character strong, smart, rich and have a lot of hit points (life points, which, when all gone, mean your character is dead). Instead, you will roll the dice for such things and let fate decide. Other things you will be able to choose include your character’s race, name, gender, class (trade or occupation), or whether he is good, evil, or somewhere in between. In addition, there are details that you can add to flesh out your character so it will help you visualize her in your mind and play her accordingly. For example, is your character blond or brunette? A penny-pinching tightwad, or wasteful and careless? A quiet observer, or boasting bore? A more developed character is a lot more fun to play than just probabilities on paper and dice rolls. That’s why it’s called a role-playing game, instead of a dice-rolling game. Get into it.

5. When the adventure begins, the DM will give you scenarios and narrate the action going on around you. Your character is free to do anything of your choosing--within reason, of course. You cannot tell the DM you’ve beaten all the monsters with your magic sword--you’d first have to come by the sword, the monsters and roll the dice to see if you defeat them. You can’t tell the DM you’re going fishing in the ocean if she’s told you that you’re in the middle of the desert. Instead, you have freedom to dictate your character’s actions based on the scenario. For example, if the DM tells you that you’ve come to a town and describes it, you can decide to visit a pub for a drink, or to start a fight there if you prefer, or you can go shopping for a horse at the livery stables, or sit in the center of town and start making fun of locals. What you do is up to you; how that works out is up to what the DM knows that you don’t and the dice rolls.

6. As your character solves mysteries, fights enemies and triumphs over challenges, he will gain experience, allowing you to gain hit points, become more skilled and adept at his class, amass wealth and gather more supplies. Relax and have fun in your adventures, and eventually you might find yourself ready to begin creating adventures of your own for your friends to enjoy.

Resources

• Dungeons and Dragons official homepage