Learn D&D or enjoy a solo session with this official browser game
If you learned to play Dungeons & Dragons back in 1983 or thereabouts you may well have done so with the D&D Basic Set, a red box that included a solo choose-your-own-adventure to introduce the basics of the Basic rules. That adventure's star NPCs, Aleena the cleric and Bargle the Infamous, are still fondly remembered (and hated, in Bargle's case) by an entire generation of roleplayers today.
Wizards of the Coast has created a new pick-a-path introduction to D&D called Before the Storm(opens in new tab), no relation to the Life is Strange prequel, which you can play in a browser. You get to select a character from five options—human paladin, hill dwarf cleric, lightfoot halfling rogue, high elf wizard, or wood elf fighter—and play through a story that introduces the rules of D&D's 5th edition.
Those rules are taught simply enough, each character described with a handful of ability scores given as bonuses to die rolls (the paladin, for instance, has a Strength of +3), a list of skills they're proficient in, and a hit point total. Details like name and gender are left to your imagination, but each character has a different background and gets to go on a separate quest in the city of Neverwinter.
While the rogue practices stealth and infiltration as a member of the local thieves guild, the cleric struggles against corruption within the city watch, the paladin intervenes in a street crime, and so on. Ability checks and attack rolls result in a d20 tumbling across the screen, and a combination of awful rolls and deliberately choosing terrible options because they sounded like fun meant my fighter playthrough devolved into absolutely chaotic scenes. At one point I hid in a barrel while watching a shark I was sort of
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