Everything You Always Wanted to Know About D&D but Were Afraid to Ask - Part One

Welcome back to Legends, lute and War. This is Episode 3. What we are calling everything you always wanted to know about D&D, but we're afraid to ask. I am joined with my co-host, joe, who is at home at the moment, so we are recording this remotely and we'll see how this goes. We've got all sorts of questions that we're going to answer. That will hopefully cover a lot of the things that you've been wondering about D&D. So if you've never played the game and have had questions, i've always wanted to play D&D, but we're kind of intimidated. Hopefully we will dispel some of those myths and answer some of those questions for you as we're going forward. I was just having a conversation with somebody last night about this and they were saying, yeah, i've always wanted to play, but it's always been kind of intimidating. They feel like it's like these marathon long games and it can feel a little intimidating from the outside. So hopefully we will make it a little less intimidating when we answer all these questions for you.

Yeah, andrew, and that's exactly what it is. That first two-part episode we dealt with a lot of technical terms, getting people to understand the basics of what's going on through the game. What we're going to talk about today is a lot more of the basics. This is going to be for the people who are always like, okay, those terms have intrigued me, but what's the more general characteristics of what the game is about and what do I have to do to get involved, and those type of things. We're not going to talk so much about gameplay today, whereas we're going to be more descriptive about what the game is and the aspects that are involved with playing. In our future episodes we'll talk more about the actual gameplay character creation, all those aspects as we get into there. But we wanted to take a step back from the technical stuff and talk about the broader picture for a second.

Absolutely Before we get into creating a character and playing the game, et cetera. Hopefully this will ease you into playing. Hopefully, at some point we might do a one-shot or something on our Discord server. If you want to get over to the Discord server, we'll have the link in the show notes. Please subscribe to our podcast. Hope. Support the podcast. We have all sorts of exclusive content on the Discord server as well for you. You can go to legendslootandloresupercastcom and you can help support the podcast there and also get some exclusive content on the Discord server as well. Hopefully at some point in the near future we'll do a one-shot on Discord so you can join in and get a feel for gameplay and things like that. We may even go through character creation, but we'll have some events on the Discord server so you can hang out, ask questions and see some kind of real-life gameplay. All right, should we dive into the questions?

Yeah, let's start off with the basic one, andrew. what exactly is Dungeons Dragons Cool look really known as D&D.

It is such a great question. You'll hear the term tabletop role-playing game, so that's typically kind of the short answer of what it is. It doesn't have to be played on a tabletop, because we play remotely online only, so there's multiple ways to play it. But it is a role-playing game some which are a lot of role-playing games that you may have played on video game consoles. For me, I described it this way in one of our previous episodes It's a choose-your-own-adventure. You have someone that's running the game for you a Dungeon Master and we'll talk about that probably again as well But you have a Dungeon Master who runs the game, who kind of guides and presents problems to you, options on where you want to take the story, and you get to be creative and figure out how you want to do it. You role-play as your character. When we go through character development, you'll see why that's so important, because the decisions that you make on building your character help guide the choices that you make when you are playing the game. A lot of it is creativity. A lot of it is also based on roles of the dice. You'll have opportunities to see if you can figure things out by rolling the dice, If you roll high and are successful, things go one way. If you roll low and are unsuccessful, things go another way. There's a lot of wondering what's going to happen. The luck of the dice will hopefully be with you when you need it. That's my general description of D&D. Would you have anything to add to that? What's your take on what is D&D?

I think you summed it up pretty well there. One of the things that I would like to bring out of what you said is the dice rolling. It's a role-playing game. Which we are constantly going to be telling you is that you make the decisions, you do what you want to do and that will shape your storyline, that will shape the narrative, that the dungeon master, the guy who runs you through the story, that will shape the narrative. Then some people will say why is there a dice roll involved? Why, how does that come into play? The thing is, this is all about your personality and how things work, but you don't know how person A is going to respond to your personality and how person B is going to respond to your personality. The dice roll adds that variety, if you will, that difference, if you will, so that you're looking at things and saying, if you go up to the town sheriff and ask him to buy you a beer, he might look at you like you're a bum, but if you go up to the local guy at the tavern and ask you to buy you a beer, he's more likely to give you the beer because he's having a beer himself or something to that effect. The dice roll adds the random element that we as players and they as the DM can't control and that we get every day when you walk up to your boss and ask for time off, when you walk up to the supermarket and say, hey, how you doing. That adds that random element, but otherwise everything else you laid out, it's a fantasy world, typically, that this game complies storytelling and choose your own adventurism if you will.

Exactly. We'll talk about what our dice rolls. in a little bit. We'll get into a little bit more detail on what the dice are and what all that means. We'll definitely explain that. Why don't we just talk about dice rolls right now, since we're on that topic, what are dice rolls and how do they impact the game? Actually, why don't you run through the dice? You know my obsession with dice, so I can talk all day about that. But why don't you run through what the set of dice are and what their implications are for gameplay?

The dice are the random element of the game. Like I was just saying, there are several different types of it. The main dice that you'll be using is called the 20-sided dice. The 20-sided dice, as it says, has 20 sides on it, numbered 1 through 20. 9 times out of 10, you want to roll that 20, not the 1. There are very infrequent times where you want to have a low roll. When you take an action right away or cast a spell, which includes casting spells or you try to perform a skill Just about anything that you do in the game the dungeon master will ask you to roll the dice And that's just something very simple. Like I open up the door, you know, and the door wasn't trapped, or anything like that I open the door. You don't have to roll the dice for opening up the door, but anything else that you might do, the DM is gonna say roll the D20, make a certain check And then you're gonna roll that. We'll get into stats and skills and abilities later, but basically you roll the 20 and you add your abilities into it to see how well you did on that particular task. I think in the previous episodes we gave the example of trying to pet a dog versus trying to calm a rabbit dog. You can just pet the dog, no problem. Trying to pet a rabbit dog would involve something called an animal handling check. So you roll 20, you check and add in your animal handling skill. And how high did you roll? Typical medium difficulty on items is a 15. Usually 13 and lower is easy and 18 or higher is like a really hard roll. If your total between your dice roll and your abilities equals or surpasses whatever the dungeon master sets up as the dice check, the DC is a dice check. That is when you succeed. If it's less, you fail. So in essence, every major action you take, you're gonna roll the D24. Now the results of your action, which are vastly typically damage done to an opponent or sometimes healing done to an ally, those are decided by the other dice. Now they are a D12, going down they are a D12, a D10, a D8, a D6 and a D4, just like you expect, based upon the name. D12 has 12 sides, 10 has 10 sides, so on and so forth. Now the one you're probably most common. What we're familiar with is the D6, that's your basic monopoly dice. It's got six sides numbered, one through six. The rest of them they have the number of sides. D12 has 12 sides. D12 has 10. Depending on the damage you're doing, based upon the weapon, certain weapons do more damage, certain spells do more damage. So you'll be rolling these dice to determine the effect of your attack or of your spell or something else, Typically during gameplay. these dice are not used otherwise, but it does happen on occasion.

Yeah, i mean there's. I mean you can get really deep into what all the dice do. But yeah, so it's in the most basic set of dice that you will find, and I'll put some links in the show notes to some basic set of dice that you can buy. There's typically seven dice in a set. There's two D10s, or what they call percentage dice, because you can roll the two together to get a number between one and 100 as well. So there's some combinations of those two dice there, but typically it's a set of seven dice and, yeah, it goes from a D4 to a D20, and you can spend as little as a couple bucks on a set of dice. You can spend hundreds of dollars on dice. They make dice in all sorts of materials, from resin to precious gems. Oh, they do.

Tell me about this, andrew. How many different types of dice do you have, and give me a couple of the materials that they were made out of.

So okay, so geez, so I am. There's another term that we don't have and talked about, and it's what is known as a dice goblin or dice gremlin. I've heard some people call it a dice gremlin, dice goblin. It is someone who likes to collect sets of dice. One of my favorite sets to roll with are a set of sea glass dice. Mine in particular are green sea glass with gold numbering on them, and they're just absolutely beautiful. I can't remember the name of the manufacturer At the moment. I will look it up and put it in the show notes. It was a Kickstarter campaign. They've got all sorts of colors of sea glass, so if I can find the link again, i will put it in the show notes so you can check out those dice. Though those weren't, those were probably, i would say, maybe 50 or maybe 40 to 60 bucks somewhere in that range. So they're a little pricier, but they're just absolutely gorgeous dice to roll with. So I love those. I'm just gonna pull some of mine out at the moment, hang on.

So this is the dice goblin effect, where dice gremlin effect, where a person likes to have this dice or that type of dice and then they start liking, oh, i get it in different colors and this. So as he pulls them out, i'm just gonna tell you that he's got all these different types. Now I got quite a few types myself. I enjoyed. I've had to stop myself several times from buying extra ones and additional ones. It is a very easily addictive thing, especially when you find out that some of them are extremely cheap. You can buy online in Amazon like 10 sets for like five bucks. I mean, they're all basic, simple stuff, but there are so many different varieties out there.

Yes, I had to like rummage through my box of dice over here to remind me of all the different sets that I have.

All the happy memories.

Well, some of them are so nice that I don't wanna roll with them, But probably, yeah. So probably my favorite dice to actually roll with, other than just typical resin dice, are the sea glass dice. I have a set of Labradorite dice which shimmer in different colors which are absolutely beautiful. I love that set as well, probably my prized possession that I received as a gift and I think it was Dice Dungeons. I have to go back and look Again. I will look it up and put the link in the show notes. There's a set of Cubic Zirconia dice and they are just absolutely beautiful and they were like I said, they were a gift.

The wife loves you very much.

They were exactly. They were a gift for my wife and she understands my obsession with dice and she gifted that to me So that's like my prized kind of set of dice. Probably the most special die that I have is not a whole set of dice, but our next door neighbor took some time to try to make their own dice So they didn't make a full set, they made me a D12. So I have a special D12 and most of my characters don't roll a D12 for damage. So I think finally, when I had a character that I had like a great axe or something and I could roll the D12 for damage on that, i was very excited. So that's like my special die. That kind of sits up on my tabletop there, my little red and gold D12.

You know, what's really funny about that is like I have a bunch of different sets as well, but my favored dice to use is also not one that's part of a set. Years ago you and Catherine bought me a Strod, a Strod figurine, the bobblehead, not the bobblehead, the papa And inside of it it had a Strod D20. That is my go-to D20. It's textured a little differently. It's got these like vampire teeth if you roll a one. It's got this gnarly looking skull if you roll a 20. It's like you know that's my go-to for my D20. And it's like you'll find favorites in your own dice too. It's, it's, it is an obsession. The dice in and of themselves are their own separate obsession. Fortunately, if you do become a dice goblin or you do become obsessed with it, there are cheap ways to get your fix of what type of dice you're gonna get.

No, no, absolutely. I have more sets of inexpensive dice than I do of expensive dice, and again I will. I'll put a link to on Amazon so you can see exactly how many different different sets of dice you can buy. But you can buy them very inexpensively if you're setting up your character on D&D Beyond or if you're, if you're playing with others on some some other online platforms. a lot of them have basically digital dice that you can roll within the platform, so you don't even necessarily need to invest in a set of dice.

I just want to say there is two people that we play with on Monday nights, but specifically one. his character's name is Toma. He's insisted from the very beginning, even though he has a set of real dice, to roll with the digital dice And They're really not too good to him. So I caution many people about rolling digital dice. When you're rolling with the digital dice I feel like I'm out of control. I like having the control. even though it's the same statistical probability, i feel like at least I have a little bit of control over that randomness when I roll my own dice.

Absolutely. It's a lot of. It is personal preference. I love the feel of I've been rolling with the digital dice for a little bit now, just because I've got so much stuff on my desk I don't have a lot of room to roll actual dice, but I'm going to pull them back out again and roll with them because there's just something fun about holding the dice in your hand and rolling them And it's just. I think it's part of the experience And again, if I may, it's like the fate is in your hands, then Yes, absolutely, but yeah. so, as we were saying, you can spend a little, you can spend a lot on dice. So let's talk about how much does it actually cost to play D&D.

This is Hang on, let me go get my receipts from how much I've spent on it and I'll let you know how much it's costing me. Carry the one, multiply the integer. Yeah, my bank account's not telling me.

Exactly. So don't be intimidated and feel like you've got to spend a ton of money. It's for those that are into other hobbies. You realize how quickly you can kind of get involved in a hobby and spend a ton of money on it. But really as a beginning player, you don't have to spend a ton of money to get up and get started. You can create a character for free on D&D Beyond using the basic rules, so you can use the basic races, classes et cetera that everyone has available to them in D&D And you can build a character that way. You can, spend a little money, get some of the source books. So if you want to spend some more time reading, getting deeper into the rules, the mechanics, the lore of D&D, you can certainly do that. Purchasing other source books gets you access to things like other races, other spells et cetera. So there's more and more that you can add on, but really to begin with, you don't need to spend very much money at all, which is one of the things that I like about D&D. It's really very simple to get started. What you want is you need a character, you need dice And again you can roll the digital dice or you can purchase an inexpensive set for under $10. Very easily. You can get multiple sets for under $10.

I found them even at GameStop for like $0.50 to $2 for multiple pairs. So go and do a little bit of shopping if you want, or you can go on Amazon and you can buy. Like Andrew was saying, you can buy packs two, three packs for five bucks.

It's a very, very inexpensive hobby as far as a player is concerned. If you're going to be a dungeon master and you're going to run a game, that can really start to get more expensive because you want the source books. You would buy miniature figures if you're playing in person, to lay out a battle map or the adventure for all the characters, for all the enemies that they're fighting. So it can escalate more if you're on the DM side. But as a player it can really be. It really is entry level friendly And again it's up to you how much you really want to spend and invest on the hobby going forward. But fortunately it's not a very expensive hobby that you need to get started with. So that's what I found. Of course, I also found very quickly that I could spend a lot of money on it because I like math, rocks, dice. I like them a lot And they're just really fun to collect and have different types. But there's books, there's all sorts of stuff that you can buy. There's people that will be happy to sell it to you. You can find it on Amazon, you can find it on D&D Beyond, you can find it at your local game shop. They've got tons of stuff, so there's all sorts of avenues to see what's available to you. If you're still on a budget, you can always find used items very easily. There's always people selling a used source book, so if you want to buy a lot of the books, you can usually find somebody selling those.

So there's lots of ways to continue to make it affordable without it being a massive investment, because I'm a big fan of Yeah, And that comes back to the idea of when you're getting into a new hobby, everybody's always like, well, how much is this going to cost me? Is this going to be a lot of time and effort on my part, And while the time thing can rack up, the cost is definitely something that's much more controllable, much more financially feasible, if you will. But actually you bring up a question that I think we should be answering here, Andrew, is that when you're looking at it, there are several quote unquote core rule books and there are several expansion rule books, and then you get into the different adventures, and then you get into adventures that are created by other people, called home brews, and you can buy all these things. But when you come back to the rule books and you say, do I need to read all of these books, Do I need to understand all the nuances, every single rule behind it? And the answer, I think, is no. The player's handbook is the basic core rule book. that is a step up from what the D&D Beyond has as the basic rules. The player's handbook has the eight core races, that has the core classes and the basic rules for how spells work, combat works, adventures are run, and it has the basic spell glossary in the back of it. I personally recommend you get your hands on this, specifically in the digital format if you're going to be using D&D Beyond, But even in the hard copy, because it's a wonderful reference guide for everything that you do. that being said, keyword reference guide It's got an excellent glossary in the back for looking up anything you want to look up, and don't think you need to read through the whole thing. But if you've got free time well, who's got free time? Well, everybody's favorite reading room. flip through some of the pages, take a look at some of the stuff. I would recommend maybe picking up that book, but don't think you have to sit down and read through every single book that's out there, or even just this one, Because most of the time when you're playing, you may come up with something that DM's going to know right off the bat. yes, you can, no, you can't do that, Or one of the other players will have experienced it before. And, like I said, if not, the glossary of terms in the back of the book is an excellent resource for looking things up. So don't be thinking that with all these rule books we're talking about and adventures. you need to read everything as a player. As a player, you need to understand the basics. Sometimes even the DM won't know, and you can all look it up.

That was my experience starting. So when you DM the first campaign, i got to copy the player's handbook, but I didn't necessarily read through it very thoroughly. It was more of an ongoing learning experience for me over time. I'm not a This is. This is where you and I differ, joe. I'm not like a Hardcore kind of reader of all the rules. You you love diving deep into all the rules and mechanics and things of Of the game, which is great because, as a DM, having having that level of knowledge is is super helpful. Even even having somebody in your party with that knowledge is super helpful. So It's a great resource. But but if you, if you've got a good DM or a DM that that's willing to to work with you, that's that. That's a great way to go about it. It's just think of it as as a learning experience, just like how. Just like how your character will probably start at level one and and gradually level up and gain more and more Experience as you play the game. You personally will level up and learn more and gain more experience as you, as you play your character, understand the spells, understand the mechanics of the spells, etc. So so think of it always as an as an ongoing learning experience. As far as far as that. But we're going back to the, the original question, it, it can. You can start out very inexpensively. Players handbook is is anywhere from 20 to $30, either digitally or or in hardback. So you can, you can, you can get that right on D&D Beyond or you can get it through Amazon. Again, i'll provide the link in the in the show notes for that. But That that's, that's really it. It's very, it's very user-friendly as far as. As far as cost is concerned, we were just talking about this, you know, gaining experience in. The next question is really, do I need any prior experience or knowledge of D&D to to play the, play the game? and? and for me, the short answer is no. You don't need any prior experience and You can. I, i was very tangentially aware of of what D&D was. I've heard about it. I knew other people that had played the game, but I I never really played it myself. I'm I'm very familiar with RPGs, playing those. Those are some of my favorite types of video games. So I'm familiar with the, with the concept of what a role-playing game was, but I really didn't know anything about the, the world and and how to play D&D. So, joe, when, since, since this, this was our interaction You were the. You were the one to come up to me and ask me to if I wanted to play D&D. So what would you say is What, what? what level of understanding should someone have with D&D, if any? and and what do you think? What, what do you? what do you think is the answer to that question? you know, is there any prior experience necessary? I don't my again, my short answer is I don't think you necessarily have to be experienced with D&D, but, but there are some key skills I would think that you might want to have. So what, what do you think? those would would be math.

Basic math. No matter what they try to do to the game, there's always going to be a little bit of basic added addition and subtraction. That's required. The only other thing about this that you would really want to have and it's very non-specific, well, the two things is an open mind and a critical mind. You want to be open-minded because you don't want to limit yourself to any ideas, any concepts that is put in front of you. Anybody who might have done an escape room, you know you're in the escape room Until they you start figuring things out. Literally any option is possible. You know they could put something inside the seat cushion, they could put something behind the pitcher on the wall, they could put something underneath the chair. Until you start looking around and figuring it out, anything is possible. Keep your mind open. Referred to the DM. The DM is going to be the person who's going to tell you yes or no. You can or cannot do that, and if you can do it, is there that D20 that we were talking about? is that dice check going to be required? Now, that being said, as a starting player, that's all you need. You don't need anything else. As a DM, a little bit of playing experience is always recommended. Beyond that, you know, maybe a heavier read through of the player's manual. You came into the game and you were saying before you kind of, just you bought it, you browsed it and then you looked it up as you needed it. When I came to you and I went to the other people to make that first game, i was in the middle of studiously literally reading page by page of that book. I didn't really need to. I found out in the latter end, but that's what I was doing. I was like trying to figure everything out. So if you're Unfortunate enough that you're starting with a group of your friends and you are going to be the person who's the DM, to spend a little more time inside that player's handbook, maybe spring for the DMG, the dungeon masters guide, but for the most part, especially as a player, just get in, start playing. If something's unclear, go ahead and use the players handbook as a reference, look it up, see what's going on. There really is no experience in life or experience and gaming needed Except that turn of the wrist to let the dice fall out and hit the table, and if you played any monopoly board game, you've all had that.

I think, i think the one reason I think the one reason this question comes up is because people may have watched Or listened to other groups playing Like I. I think about critical role and matt mercer and that's a great point And you look at these guys, i mean these, these guys are professional voice actors. So so don't, don't be intimidated, don't think you've got to come up with some Character, voice and and all of this for your, for your character. You don't, you don't have to get that deep into it. It can, it's, it's all up to you, your, your level of involvement in In the game, in the role playing, etc. So don't, don't, don't feel like you. You've got to be this, this professional actor And and and have this tremendous backstory and and everything like that. It doesn't have to be that way. It can, you, can, you can certainly do that. It's, it's. if that's, if that's what you enjoy doing, go for it. You know, don't, you know, don't, don't be afraid to, but don't, don't also feel obligated to, to, to, to be this, this Polished kind of character, professional voice actor, because that's that's not what most of the games are. I, i think they, they, they put on a fantastic show, but I don't think it's, it's not the norm that that goes on out there.

As far as d&d games are concerned, That's absolutely correct and and and I think you nailed it They put on a show. Okay, as much as they may love playing the game and as much as they may be a spirited to the game as everybody else is, they are there to make money. They are there to put on a show. You're here to play and have fun. Like andrew says, if you got that ability to throw your voice for different character voices, hey, it enhances the ability and enhances the game and makes everything great. But you don't need that type of experience to play and in fact, a vast majority of the people you come across They're not going to have that experience either. I think in our two groups I think one person Has maintained the character voice throughout the entire campaign. I think that was cat during the Uh curse of strahd, one For her dwarf, but I don't even know if she maintained it for the whole thing. Like a lot of times, the, the, these things fall by the wayside because you get caught up in the moment. You're in the middle of combat, you say something in character and it doesn't happen. The vast majority of the people don't have that kind of skill and it's not needed to play, it's not needed to enjoy and it's not needed to have the most fun you can have. That's something you can build on after you get experience in the game When you level up, if you will.

So let's talk. Let's talk a little bit about How do you get started playing the game. So let's talk about One, one question. You know somebody is interested in in playing dungeons and dungeons and dragons. But how do they, how do they find a, a group to play with, is one question that I've hear, that I've heard numerous people play like how do I, how do I get started? and, and for me, you know I, i was, i was fortunate Joe, joe came up to me and you know, up into that, Joe over to head with the club and dragged you into my game exactly forced me into into playing dungeons and dragons. Up up into that point I had I thought on multiple occasions you know I'd love to play, but again, where do I find a group to to play with? so there, there are numerous ways to Find groups to play with. You know, for for me, one great, one great resource is your. If you have a local Gaming store, a lot of the times they they host events and things like that, and there there's always people looking for for new people there. Another, another channel is facebook. I know it's not necessarily everybody's favorite social media platform, but there are, as far as groups and communities for dungeons and dragons players, there's a ton of groups on their Very local groups as well. So if you go into facebook, you know I know of at least several New jersey based dungeons and dragons groups that are that are on there and people are always either looking for a game to To play, or they are, or they're looking for someone to join their game. So Definitely jump on to those online communities. Facebook, reddit, reddit is another great one. The dnd community on there is really strong, you know. Jump in there, feel free to ask questions. Fine, fine local groups Um, you know discord roll 20. There. There's all sorts of platforms where where people are playing dnd, that that you can get involved with, and and a lot of them are geared toward Beginners. So it is again a very beginner friendly environment. People. People are always happy to, to help out new players coming into the game to, to get involved and kind of Get started and and they're always happy to answer questions. So Definitely the online community, definitely your local gaming stores are our great resources. Ask your friends. Yet You never know who who might also like, like when joe asked me, you never know who else might be interested in actually playing a game of dnd and you might all of a sudden find yourself being a dm for the first time and And having no clue what you're doing. But but that's how you start, you know. So you know everyone starts, starts somewhere, so so reach out to all those those resources and and see Who who's also out there looking for, looking for a game to play. The one other thing I would like to add is a place called the dungeons and dragons adventure league.

They are semi official league. They dungeon and dragons does have connections to them and what they do is They organize, like groups of games in certain areas where, like they, they will like, they'll designate Okay, we have 7 dm, so that means we can set up eight tables, or seven tables with six people on a table, and they'll all run the same adventure in the night and, and you know, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll organize these big dnd parties so that people can get together and play. Now, you know they, their availability in different areas are, you know, hit or miss, based upon population sizes. But I think you know, at the end of the day, what Andrew just said is the the most sure fireway is to to, you know, do it yourself. It's the hardest way to do it. But you know, i spent three, four years before I found a couple of people that were interested and, to be honest with you, i never even thought of asking Andrew when I was you know, we used to work together I never really thought of asking.

He is, he's this six foot seven monster of a met.

So like we like We talked about chess. Honestly, that's that's really where we first started, you know, talking. We sat next to each other at work and we were having conversations about and chess came into it and we started playing chess with each other. And then my office, my location, shifted, so I wasn't sitting next to him and I hadn't talked to him in a couple of months and I reached out to him and it's like hey, i know some people I'm trying to get. I was desperate to find somebody to play with and turned out he was like yeah, yeah, i've always been kind of interested in it. It takes a little bit of nerve to be a person to like say, look, i'm going to be that first person and I'm going to start reaching out and asking people. But don't be too afraid to do that, because that that way you can gather in your friends to play and then you're not dealing with the random element of some Some stranger at a table. But I have found the vast majority of the community Very open, very accepting and, like Andrew says, you have any questions, they're happy to help you and answer it, and if you look online in the forums you'll get a lot of different answers of different things. There's a there's a lively debate going on about this stuff, so it's definitely a friendly community in any way, shape or form. You can find a way to get yourself into it.

Absolutely, and so here's a follow-up question that that I Have heard some people ask this question, and, and it is Can I play D&D alone, or do you always need a group? Now I I've got my opinion on this, but what, what? what do you think, joe? How Can, can you play d&d alone?

alone, as in a dm and a player, or you mean alone.

I'm talking solo. I'm talking solo You, you, you need. you know I am a rock, i am an island. like what is? what is that? What is that person that They, they just they're, they're not comfortable Maybe looking for an online group group? Maybe they just want to try it out and and see Are, are there ways for them to To play, to play by themselves and to maybe just kind of ease into dip their toe in the water, so to speak, of Dungeons and Dragons?

Yeah, there are. I wouldn't say that there's any official ways, but there are ways to do it so that you can get that something of that experience without having to if you are, you know, have a little more difficulty with social situations you can try to limit your exposure to social groups until you really get comfortable with the game. Specifically, what I'm thinking of is a A one shot, which is one of those very short games that we had previously talked about, where it's specifically written for a dungeon master to do with One player and you could easily substitute the same person on either side, have yourself play the player and then respond with the dungeon master responses as they go through. That particular one shot was specifically created to walk a person through how to play the game. It tells them you know, well, i want to do this jump. Well, okay, you need to make an athletics check for that. You landed on this specific you know, skinny rail with that's an ability, agility check and athletics check and stuff like that, so you could do this as a solo person. You're not going to be able to get one of those great, spanning, amazing adventures that we've been talking about Playing by yourself. I'm sorry, i don't see that happening. But you can get the basics down playing by yourself a few times. If we're talking about the tabletop now, there's plenty of dnd video games out there. Some of them have very realistic mechanics. I'm told I haven't really played any of them myself. But if you're talking about the actual tabletop game, you can get the basics and the understanding of it. But in order to get that fully immersive experience, at the very least you need a dm who's going to keep you guessing about what might come next. My personal recommendation Is a party size between with the dm and then three to five players. When you start getting to six and seven players, things start taking a little bit longer to happen, and anything under three it sometimes it's a little harder to balance out combats.

Yeah, it was what is yours? you said you seem to be having something different than what I was gonna say I have a thought on this matter Because in my so when when working on on this episode and looking at all these questions I did, this question really jumped out of me and was like, really, can you, can you play by yourself? you know, i thought I thought it was a really interesting question And one of the things I don't know, i don't know if you've ever used this resource. I love this resource, the website dms guild. Have you ever? have you ever gone to that site? yeah, dms guild is is phenomenal. It's a huge user community of user generated content for for Dungeons and Dragons, but there are there are a lot of adventures built for solo players And really, I had no idea. I say, say you, you learn something today. I'm just educating the world. So yeah, so there are. If you just look up like solo dnd or solo adventures on dms guild And again I'll provide the link to the dms guild on our on our show notes There are tons of solo adventures that you can play by yourself. So if, if so, some of the reasons why you might want to play by yourself is maybe you're in between, in between campaigns, so maybe you're, maybe you're your campaign with your, your party ended And you've got some downtime. Maybe you just want to kind of just keep playing and use a character that you already have. You could, you could do that. So it's not even necessarily Just for beginners who are, who are trying to dip their toes into the water, but it could be for someone that just needs to get their dnd fix and doesn't have a current game going on at the moment. So there, there's tons of yeah, there's tons of solo content available on there that that people have created. That's awesome. I was, i was on the fantastic new social media platform threads, but there was, there was some. There was another user. I was just. I was looking through dnd content on on threads and there was someone else that specifically makes solo tabletop RPG Adventures, which I, which I thought was a, which I thought was a great idea. You know again, sometimes, sometimes you just again it's. You know, having having a great big dnd game with the dm, three or four or five other other players is great, but maybe sometimes you just aren't that games not going on and then you want to, you want to do your own thing, which is it's a great, it's a great way to play, test a character and test out things and see, see how it goes, without having having to play that character in a full group or anything like that. So I think there's a lot of good reasons why you might want to play solo.

Play solo sometimes you just don't want to be around people. You know, i get that way. I'm a very sociable person. I love being around people, i love talking to people, i love having conversations, but then there are times was just like you know what. I just want to turn my phone off, i want to sit down and I just want to have nobody else interacting with me for couple of hours, just to have myself to myself, and this would be a great way to go through that couple of hours. I honestly and I know it sounds like we set that bit up, but I honestly didn't know that there were these adventures out there that was like full blown adventures for people that were sold. That's actually really cool.

Yeah, i think it's, i think it's a great, it's a great niche that's being, that's being filled with with content by, by creators out there, and Yeah, i'm, i'm going to talk about the term homebrew.

Yes, this is the term that we've been talking about homebrew, where people Brew up at home their own content. Now D&D does not officially license and say, well, this is ours, but they're having open game license. But basically, the rule basically says now, for all intents and purposes, anybody can use the basic game rules to create their own world And adventure and even make money off of doing it, and that's what some of these people are able to do, and it sounds like what you're saying is that's what these solo adventures are. That's that's also.

Absolutely it's. It's a tremendous opportunity for people that are maybe, maybe just aren't again, there's many reasons why you might want to play play D&D by yourself, but there there definitely are ways to do it out there. Alright, that is going to conclude the first half of everything you've always wanted to know about D&D. But we're afraid to ask. We've had so many questions that we're going to break it again into two parts, like we did the first part. So This will be part one and another two weeks we'll grab part two, and I just want to thank you all for listening. If you have additional questions, feel free to email podcast at legends, loot and lorecom, and we'll get those questions answered in a further episode. One final thing I'll let Joe hit on here is is just our, our, our, piece of advice to you for from from this episode.

Basically, it seems like we're talking about so many things. Last episode we talked about all the terms. Now we're talking about all these questions in the rule books. If you can find somebody to play with who's experienced, jump in and play with them. They'll help you guide into your character. Go on to D&D beyond there's there's a self help option to creating your own character. Just jump in and try. Once you start playing, 90% of what we said is going to make so much more sense. Don't be afraid, they'll help you. Most people in this game are very helpful.

Absolutely. Just remember, everybody that's playing D&D wasn't was a newbie at some point. So we, we all, started at some point without, without knowing much. So don't again, don't be afraid to jump in and just go for it is. It's a lot of fun. You really can't make a mistake if you do. It's it's, it's part of the adventure. That's just like life. So so good luck out there and again we'll see in two weeks with the conclusion of questions and answers. Thank you you.