Dungeons & Dragons - Fifth Edition
What’s the concept?
It’s the traditional fantasy RPG updated in 2014 with streamlined mechanics. Explore the titular dungeons and fight the titular dragons and much more besides.
The standard setup is for a group of adventurers to explore a story either from a pre-written adventure book or imagined by the Dungeon Master. Having been around for a long time though there are many ways that the rules have been modified by players to suit all sorts of styles of play. There is also a very active third party community releasing different settings and adventures that aren’t just high fantasy.
The game can be played with miniatures on a grid or entirely in the group’s collective imagination.
How does it work?
One player takes on the mantle of the Dungeon Master (DM) and runs the game. They play the parts of any monsters or NPCs. The other players each play the part of a single character with their own statistics, abilities and backstory. Players pick a fantasy species (race) to play and what type of adventurer they want to be (class). As they gain experience the characters level up, the DM picks more challenging encounters and the players can diversify their characters with subclasses or multi-classing.
In the most basic sense the DM will describe the scene to the players and they will take actions by rolling a d20 and adding the relevant modifier for their skill. In combat the players will roll another d20+modifier (initiative) to see what order they take their actions in and the DM will insert the monsters and NPCs at actions at the correct points. Other polyhedral dice are used for damage, spell effect or other things like random tables to help the DM.
What do I need to get started?
Rules
- At least one copy of the Player’s Handbook.
- The Dungeon Master will need a copy of the Monster Manual and would be well served by reading the Dungeon Master’s Guide too.
The Basic Rules is a free pdf that covers how the game works.
Dice
- At least one full set of polyhedral dice: d20, d12, 2 x d10, d8, d6, d4. Preferably per player.
How much will that cost?
The RRP for the 3 core books is $149.85 (physical)/$89.97 (digital) but you can find them cheaper than that in most book stores/online RPG stores. To test out the game you can play with the Basic Rules for free and there are many good sample adventures available online.
Dice can be as cheap as $5 for a simple plastic set. There are often packs sold in bulk. You can just ask Google to roll dice for you and there are a myriad of other digital tools available for free.