Dungeons & Dragons remains the most popular tabletop roleplaying game in the western world, despite many competitors emerging to challenge its dominance over the years - such as Pathfinder and the recent Daggerheart. This being the case, it’s often an RPG that people want to try and get into, but getting started can seem a little daunting, especially if it’s the first tabletop RPG they’ve ever played. 

Before actually learning the rules and creating a dnd player character, there are multiple ways to start to play d&d, if you were interested in rolling dice and telling stories.

Watch or listen to dnd actual play shows

A Dungeons & Dragons actual play is a recording - either video or purely audio - of people playing a game of d&d for entertainment. Since the boom of actual play content in the early 2020s, there is now an abundance of dnd actual play shows for you to watch or listen to. D&D actual play shows are a great way to introduce yourself to how the game plays, some of its core mechanics and, most importantly, the act of roleplaying a character. Trying a variety of Dungeons & Dragons actual play shows, will also illustrate the different ways you can approach playing or running a game session. 

There are the obvious D&D actual play examples, such as Critical Role, Dimension 20, Friends at the Table, The Adventure Zone and Oxventure. However, it’s also worth broadening your horizons with some examples that aren’t as mainstream: like Three Black Halflings, Dungeon Daddies, Transplanar and Damsels in Dicestress, especially if you’d like to see a diverse d&d group play.

Read the Dungeons & Dragons books

You’ll want to get your hands on a copy of the D&D core rulebooks for when you’re actually learning the basic rules and playing Dungeons & Dragons, but giving it a read through ahead of time will also give you a clearer idea of how the ttrpg works and what to expect. Whichever book you grab will depend on the version of dnd you’re most interested in trying: either the Dungeons & Dragons’ Players Handbook (2014) for dnd 5th edition or the Dungeons & Dragons’ Players Handbook (2024) for the most recent iteration. If you’re planning to run your own D&D games, you’ll also want a copy of either the d&d 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide (2014) or the Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024), as well as the Monster Manual for either 5th edition or the 2024 version. 

Once you’ve given the core rulebook/s a read, you might benefit from having a look at some of the various sourcebooks and campaign books released for Dungeons and Dragons - from the compilation books like Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, to setting books like Eberron: Rising from the Last War, Spelljammer: Adventures in Space and Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, to campaign books such as Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd. Reading these will provide insight into the world of dungeons and dragons and its various flavours, some of which you might be more drawn to than others. 

Figure out what you want from D&D

Why do you want to play Dungeons & Dragons? 

Before jumping into the process of learning how to play, getting a party together and character creation, it’s advisable that you have a good idea in your head of what kind of experience you want out of playing dnd. What sorts of stories do you want to tell?: funny or chaotic or epic or emotional? What would be your primary inspirations for a D&D campaign/world/character?: Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time or Dark Souls or Delicious in Dungeon?

Perhaps you want to start playing Dungeons & Dragons to create and develop the most overpowered, efficient and impressive character possible? Or create impressive dungeons filled with traps, puzzles and enemy encounters for your players to face? Maybe you just want to spend time with a group of friends or to make new ones? 

Having a clearer idea of your goals with D&D will help you to approach playing in the right way.

Find some fellow d&d players

This might be the most challenging step you take towards actually playing Dungeons & Dragons: how do you find other gamers to play with? There are a variety of ways you can go about finding your d&d group. 

If you have a local game store or board game cafe situated relatively nearby, then you might have some luck finding people who are looking to play Dungeons & Dragons there. Consider asking if the store or cafe hosts any D&D nights or have a look on their website for information about dnd sessions there. You could also use sites like Meetup or social media to find dnd games happening in your local area.

Another option is using the official Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer’s League, which hosts events and offers channels for people to find D&D games and new players, both in-person and via virtual tabletop. You can find ways to utilise the Adventurer’s League on the D&D Beyond forum and use the Wizards of the Coast Play Network website to find D&D events happening in your local area. Various conventions - such as Gen Con and Dragon Con - also host dnd events for you to play at. 

You can also sign up to sites like StartPlaying, though it often costs some amount of money to join game master sessions. Or join the Legendkeeper Discord to find people looking to play Dungeons & Dragons there. 

Don’t be afraid to rely on the D&D Starter Set and pre-written campaigns

If you’re planning to take the role of Dungeon Master in your upcoming D&D games, then you could be overwhelmed by the prospect of planning and running your own Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. There are absolutely tools that will help you with your dnd planning and worldbuilding, such as Legendkeeper’s map-making and wiki page tools. 

But if you wanted to start running your own D&D games without extensive pre-planning, you can make your life easier by relying on resources like the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set - which contains the very basics of what you need to begin playing d&d 5E, including a pre-written campaign that’s perfect for first time players and new DMs, a beginner’s guide to the rules and a set of premade characters. Alternatively, you can have a look at the previously mentioned sourcebooks and campaign books, or even homebrew one-shots, modules and campaigns - which can be found on sites like DrivethruRPG.