A beginner’s guide to playing Dungeons and Dragons

polygon.com:

Samantha Nelson is a freelance journalist who has been covering tabletop RPGs and board games for nearly 10 years for numerous outlets. She also regularly reviews TV and movies, with a focus on science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, and generally all things nerdy. An unrepentant min-maxer, she has played and run games on the Critical Hit podcast .

The story of Dungeons & Dragons, the iconic tabletop role-playing game, began in 1974. Since then, it’s served as the inspiration for countless daring adventures — and, arguably, entire genres in the video game industry. It’s the game that gave birth to actual play, a format that inspired the likes of Dimension 20, The Adventure Zone, and Critical Role and its The Legend of Vox Machinaanimated series. It provided the language and the lore for Netflix’s Stranger Things, inspired the mystery at the heart of the novel Ready Player One, and was adapted into the major motion picture Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

But while stories of flawed heroes coming together in the face of terrible odds makes for great media, the best way to truly experience D&D is to play it yourself. The game’s long history and books full of rules might seem intimidating, but its popularity makes it easier than ever to get an adventure going. Polygon’s guide is designed to help get you started.

The first thing you need to play D&D is people to play with. Most will take on the roles of player characters with their own abilities and motivations that will drive their decisions and determine what actions they can take during the course of the game. Four to five is usually the ideal number of players, though you can have more or less with some modifications to ensure that the challenges don’t