So Confused. . .D&D

[FinnMacCool]

I inherited the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook Core Rulebook I from my friend who died recently, and I was really interested in learning how to play but I'm facing two problems

1) It's confusing as hell.

2) I don't know anyone besides my late friend who play/played that game.

So my question is, can somebody break it down for me? Or is there like some kind of faq that explains everything in simple terms so I can understand?

Also, how do I find other players?

[ShadowWalker]

I have made a number of posts about both creating characters and playing the game. We have several people that are very good roleplayers, and they can share a lot of knowledge, experience and stories. From my own experience, stories are the number one thing most commonly shared with gamers.

Literally, it's a board game without the board. You have a select number of people who sit down to play this game, and they each have a set of dice, a character sheet, and a pencil in some form. I suggest the finest point of pencils as possible, and a permanent BAN on ink in any form. I never allow ink anywhere visible, or if I can help, in the ROOM during a game. You always wind up with some dolt who thinks that using ink is okay, and in D&D, anything on the character sheet can change, ANYTHING. Stick with pencil.


Now then, anywhere on the so mentioned book, does it say anything about edition? It sounds like 2nd, but third is highly commonplace these days.

Each person that plays in the game all sit down and take orders from the GM/DM. Commonly called the GameMaster/StoryTeller/ Dungeon Master. This is "God" for all practical purposes, the job of the DM is to tell all of the players what happens with each response, each action that the players might make and to generally run the game. They award experience for kills, they literally describe everything for the players of the game, they attempt to provide all information that the characters senses might be able to provide to the given players. Whatever the players might be doing at a given moment is moderated by the DM, the DM builds and decides all encounters with monsters or other characters in the game. Anyone playing with Dice and those people that are taking an active role in the game are commonly referred to as "PCs", or Player character, fill in characters, or support characters in the storyline are generally played as the DM. Generally, this is quite comical if the DM is a chick, and is 5ft 3 inches tall and tries to be a barbarian. What a hoot. These extras are NON-player characers, or NPCs.


You need to find the section that talks about rolling patterns, and if you don't have a Dungeon Master's guide, and a Monster Manual, you should invest. Ebay is the WIN for D&d books.

Generally, you roll so many six sided dice. Which, speaking of dice, you should have.

http://www.gamestation.net/shared/viewProductImage.html?http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/414URZdPQbL.jpg

For the record. Ebay for good deals on Dice. Some RPGS require different amounts and types of dice.

You should have a 1 20 sided dice( I suggest multiple for different attacks, or whatever), 12 sided dice( generally only one), 10 sided dice(generally two, one for the tens and one for the ones. A lot of proper gaming dice have a slot for 10s already for percents. And 8 sided dice, of which you only need a single. D6's which you should have a set of four when you buy your dice, most of the stat rolling systems favor different versions of rolling four d6, keeping the three highest, and forming columns or some such as a means of rolling stats. I suggest three columns, and then from that, take a total of six number not exceeding 18. Let me know if this helpful or whatever. I have lots of information.

For classes- Ie- Character Job more or less.

http://www.animeforum.com/showthread.php?t=80305

www.wizardsofthecoast.com

LOTS of character classes, more then you could ever play.


As for finding people. There are TONS of different mediums you can use to find people. Sorry to say thanks to society's classic sense of ...whatever, most gamers don't advertise. Find a local gaming or hobby story, and check into local events that are going on. I've known some people that used the internet, facebook, myspace, or whatever, and sometimes it works, and sometimes not. But all are mediums that you can use. ^_^


Best of luck! If there is any other questions you might have, let me know and I will be more then happy to answer them.

We have a lot of good people here, and we have some people that can really share some good stories, I would suggest finding a small handful of people to gain stories from, as this can be an invaluable learning tool. Find people that have gamed for awhile. ^_^


Later.

[FinnMacCool]

Thank you. That was very helpful indeed. Question though: Do you think its possible to get away with owning an outdated core book and not owning those other two guides? Because I have very little cash and I would rather try out the game first before investing in a bunch of books that I might not even use ever again.

[Tetsanosuke]

Well try using an SRD.

This one (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/home.html) usually comes handy when I'm doing some DM planning or looking up quick rules.

[sunnyside]

If you're confused about the basic premis here's a little thing I did on a forum for someone a while back to introduce them to D&D 3rd edition

http://www.neoaxial.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1197496335

[ShadowWalker]

You can totally look them up online, print them out if you want, and get yourself your own copies for next to nothing. ^_^ and calling ANY D&D book outdated it just silly. There are still people out there that play first edition. ^_^