D&D has been around since 1974. There are no winners or losers — you succeed, fail, and make decisions together. A session usually lasts two to four hours. A series of sessions connected by one story is called a campaign.
The version people play today is called 5e — a clean, accessible edition that most people start with. If someone says they play D&D, this is almost certainly what they mean.
Dungeons & Dragons is a game where a group of people sit around a table and tell a story together. Instead of just talking through what happens, the outcome of your choices is decided by dice.
One person, called the Dungeon Master (DM), acts as the narrator and referee. They describe the world, play the villains, and decide what happens when you try something risky. Everyone else plays a character — a hero you create and control.
Dungeons & Dragons is the most popular tabletop RPG, but it's not the only one. Depending on what you want from a game, a different system might be a better fit for your group.
Pathfinder started as a fork of an older edition of D&D. It's more complex, with hundreds of published adventures and deeper character customization. Players who love digging into rules often prefer it over D&D.
Call of Cthulhu is a 1920s investigation game where characters can go permanently insane and monsters are rarely fought head-on — a different kind of tension than D&D's combat-driven adventures.
Once you know D&D exists, trying a different system opens up everything else tabletop can do. The format — a GM, players, and dice — stays the same. The tone and rules change everything.
Most similar games on this site are complete in a single book. Blades in the Dark, FATE Core, Monster of the Week, Kids on Bikes — you buy the book, you play the game. No starter set required.
The exceptions are D&D, Pathfinder, and Call of Cthulhu — all three have separate starter sets on this site, and those are the better entry points for beginners. For everything else, the first product listed is all you need to start.
A starter set is the fastest way to begin playing. It's one box with everything your group needs: simplified rules, dice, pre-made characters, and a short adventure. No extra books required.
The D&D Starter Set costs around $15 and contains enough content to run several sessions. The Pathfinder Beginner Box and the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set follow the same format for their respective games.
Once you've finished a starter set, the next step is a module — a standalone published adventure that assumes you already know the basic rules. A good first module is Lost Mine of Phandelver for D&D.
What not to buy first: the full core rulebooks. They're dense, expensive, and most of the content won't apply until you've played a few sessions. Start with a starter set and buy the rulebook when you know you're hooked.
An adventure is a pre-written story you can run at your table. Someone else has already designed the plot, the locations, the villains, and the rewards. Your group plays through it.
Think of it like a screenwriter's script — except the players can go off-script at any moment, and the DM improvises around them using the adventure as a framework.
A short adventure might take one or two sessions. A full campaign book like Curse of Strahd can take months of weekly play. Most published adventures land somewhere in between.
You don't have to use a published adventure — DMs can write their own. But for beginners, a published adventure removes the hardest part of running a game: coming up with everything from scratch.
A campaign setting is a pre-built fictional world — the stage where your story takes place. It has its own geography, factions, history, and tone, all defined in advance so you can focus on playing. You don't need to buy a campaign setting — you can simply use whatever setting the adventure you're running takes place in.
Some players choose to buy specific campaign settings for their games, which adds an extra layer of lore and world-building to draw from.
The Forgotten Realms is D&D's default setting. Most beginner D&D products are set here, so if you've bought a starter set, you're probably already playing in the Forgotten Realms.
Ravenloft is a campaign setting for D&D — a gothic horror world where the land itself is a prison.
Eberron is a D&D setting that mixes magic with pulp adventure and noir intrigue.
Exandria is a campaign setting created by Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer for Critical Role, a popular RPG show.
Planescape is a D&D setting that takes place across infinite planes of existence, centered on Sigil — a labyrinthine city at the hub of the multiverse.
The core loop is simple: the DM describes a situation, you say what your character does, the dice determine the outcome, and the story moves forward. That's the whole game.
Finding a group is easier than it sounds. Ask friends first — most groups start that way. Online play via Roll20 or Foundry VTT is a solid alternative. Local game shops often run open tables for beginners.
Your first session: don't worry about knowing all the rules. The DM handles most of that. Your job is to say what your character does and react honestly to what happens.
Between sessions, the concepts on this site — dice systems, rules weight, session formats — fill in the rest. Read what's relevant to you. Ignore everything else until you need it.
