Dorian's Start Guide

Most of D&D seems much easier when you’re playing. I reckon there are only a couple of things that need attention before the first session.

First, check out the introduction to the The Player’s Handbook (PHB). That’ll give the basic idea of how a game goes and what’s involved.

Second, you want to create a character. This’ll take a while and a bit of brain-power, because your character largely determines the game for you, but it doesn’t need to be too overwhelming. Chapters 1-5 of the PHB guide you through the process. But I personally reckon, pick a race and a class that appeals to you as a starting point, and everything else sort of comes together around that. Do you want to run around hitting things? Barbarian might be for you, or Fighter. Fond of the Hobbit as a kid? Pick halfling as a race. A tiny, violent halfling girl with a massive greataxe is already 90% of a gloriously role-playable character, and most of the rest of your choices are going to pick themselves. What you don’t want to do is worry about getting every little detail right. You’ll understand everything better when you start playing and, assuming you have a reasonable game master, you can always change things when you get a better feel for what would work better with your and your party’s play style.

One place that’s quite nice to check out is the RPGBOT Character Optimisations. There, you can see a bit of logic behind character planning, to give you a feel for how the mechanics of characters might look in play. Though of course, many people prefer to roll dice to determine their characters randomly as described in the PHB, because role-playing your character is more fun for some than optimising for mechanical efficiency. I suspect most people do a mix of the two: optimising but fitting roleplay around the margins. Another place that’s nice to check out is the D&D Beyond character builder, which can be helpful as a click-through step-by-step builder (although you’re limited to free options, which are a smaller set than that in the PHB, unless you buy the official books off the website). It makes the technical side of character creation much easier, but of course you’ll understand less how your stats and whatnot come together as much of that is automated.

Three final points. First, consider your party, when you’re choosing a class. You generally want a healing-type character (Cleric, Druid, or Paladin and Bard at a stretch) so no one dies (which can happen, and is pretty irreversible at early levels). You probably want a tanky-type character (Barbarian, Paladin, Fighter, and Ranger at a stretch) to hold the attention of the scarier baddies. You might want a damage-dealer (Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock) to help end encounters quickly. You also have support-types that help buff and improve and protect everyone (Clerics, Bards, Druids), crowd-controllers that impede or manipulate enemies (Wizards, Druids), and skill-monkeys that do lots of useful stuff (Rogues, Bards). Having a balance usually makes things easier and more fun, though a confident game master might feel happy to balance stuff for an unbalanced party.

The last two concern your backstory. This is mostly for your role-playing delight, so it can be as simple or as detailed as you like. But, you probably want at least enough to motivate your character. You’ll often find that the most fun comes from figuring out what your character would do in a situation, rather than what you would do. Maybe our violent halfing girl is amnesic because of a bar fight, and is trying to work out who and where she is. That’d be plenty to get you started playing, and you can work out the rest later. Otherwise, with no backstory, you’re really just waiting for the next encounter or absently looking at your character sheet to work out if your character is useful while the other players are getting up to hijinks. That said, you can always develop or change your backstory as you play, if nothing special is coming to you. You might find that the perfect idea occurs to you as you watch others playing their own characters.

Secondly, on your backstory, it’s often fun if there are some hooks or blank spaces in there that the game master can use to integrate your story into the game. Amnesic halfling girl? Maybe the game master will make your amnesia something more sinister than a simple bar fight, kicking off the next adventure for your party. Missing sibling? Let the game master decide who was responsible and where they might end up—you might see them again on your adventures. A quest for redemption? Leave it open what redemption might look like, so the game master can weave the right circumstances into things. You get the idea.

Last, speaking of, check in with your game master. They’ll be able to tell you if what you’ve done looks good, or if you should change stuff. Also, they might need to correct bits and pieces for you, here and there. Better to get that sorted before the first session. Lastly, it’s particularly good to check your backstory with the game master. Firstly, they’ll want to know what it is so they can try and build it into the story. Secondly, they might help you adjust it so it sets up more sensibly for the start of the campaign (e.g. it’s no good your character living somewhere the campaign isn’t happening). Sometimes, the game master will build this opportunity in with a ‘Session Zero’, but if they don’t just reach out.

Mostly, though, I want to emphasise, don’t worry about getting it all right. Put something together, and then if the first session makes you realise you need to sharpen things up, talk to the game master and change things. Most of the concepts are going to be a bit alien regardless of how much reading you do beforehand (if you’re a dummy like me). Get to playing and they’ll make much more sense. In the meantime, I’ll leave any particularly useful resources I find here, and there’s plenty more online.