D&D 101 - Three Things To Know About D&D

Dungeons & Dragons, at its core, is simple

Welcome to D&D 101. If you have never played Dungeons & Dragons before, or have never played a roleplaying game, there are only three things you need to know about D&D before you start playing.

The main “mechanic” of D&D involves an ongoing conversation between the players and the DM, the “Dungeon Master”, who runs the game.
Players view the world through their characters’ eyes.
The goal of the game is not to win, but to cooperate with the other people around the table to discover a fantastic story.

1. The main rule lies in a conversation between players and DM

There is really only one “rule” or “mechanic” we need to know. Almost every other rule in the hundreds of pages of D&D rulebooks can be reduced to these three steps which are repeated constantly throughout a game session.

The DM describes the situation. For example, the DM might say, “You find yourselves in a room with two doors: a red one and a black one. What do you do?”
The players declare what their characters intend to do. For example, “Nemenor, being the elvish investigator that he is, tries to listen through each door, to hear if there is anything behind them.”
The DM decides whether any dice rolling is necessary, and narrates the outcome. “Nemenor puts his ear to one door after the other, and hears the rattling of chains behind the black door. The red door seems silent. What do you do?”

This process repeats over and over again. The player who plays the character Nemenor might have Nemenor do more investigations. Or another player might decide that their character is going to try to break open the black door.

Clearly, the DM, who runs the game, has a different role than the players. Each player controls a single character. The DM, on the other hand, controls and describes the fictional world in which the characters live and act.

Sometimes the DM might decide that something a character is attempting could reasonably fail. If it is uncertain whether something fails or succeeds, we roll the dice. In that case, the DM will tell the player which dice to roll, and whether the roll is high enough for the character to succeed.

2. See the world through the eyes of your character

As players, we try to see the world through the eyes of our character. Before the game begins, every player creates a character together with the DM and the other players. Then, during the game, when the DM describes a situation to us, we can close our eyes and imagine what our character sees and how they would react. For example, a brutish Viking might react differently to a locked door than a keen-minded elf would.

Whenever we are uncertain what to do after a DM has described a situation to us, we can return to the question, “What would my character do?” To answer that question we put ourselves in our character’s position. How do they see the world? What is their go-to approach to a problem? Do they prefer wits or muscle? Deception or honesty? Altruism or egoism?

Thinking about the situation from the perspective of our character helps us to prevent a mentality of always trying to find the optimal solution (Hint: there is never one optimal solution in D&D). The goal of D&D is not to win, it is to cooperate to tell a fantastic story together.

3. The goal of the game is not to win

Having played board games before, but not a roleplaying game, we most likely assume that the goal of any game is to win. In D&D we cannot win, and we cannot lose. The goal of the game is to have a good time first and foremost. More specifically, we play D&D to cooperate with the other people around the table to discover a fantastic story together. Let’s unpack that sentence…

“We play D&D to cooperate…”

In D&D everyone is on the same side. Everyone around the table tries to work with the others to tell a story filled with fantasy, adventure, and drama. We don’t compete with the other players, and we don’t compete with the Dungeon Master, who runs the game. We might face obstacles such as hidden passageways, traps, and monsters, which the DM puts in front of the characters. But we must remember that these are simply tools the DM uses to fill the story with tension, drama, and adventure.

“… to discover a fantastic story together.”

The true magic of D&D lies in discovering the story as it unfolds the table. When we sit down to play a game of D&D, no one, including the DM, knows what is going to happen. The DM might know what challenging situations await the characters in any given session, but neither the DM nor the players know how the characters will attempt to overcome these challenges, and whether they will succeed. We play the game to find out what happens.

That’s all we need to know to play D&D

And that’s D&D 101. With these three things in mind, anyone can play a game of D&D. We constantly talk with the DM to navigate our character through the fictional world, we view any situation through the eyes of our character, and we cooperate with the other players and the DM to discover a fantastic story at the gaming table.