How to Get Started With Dungeons & Dragons

I didn’t really get Dungeons & Dragons until I came across a video on YouTube titled “D&D meets NYC.” I had played a few sessions with friends, but I got tripped up at every turn and didn’t think I could ever learn all the rules. As it turned out, “D&D meets NYC” was the first episode of Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, a recurring actual play D&D show. In the first five minutes, the audience is introduced to Pete the Plug, a sorcerer who is meeting with his doctor shortly after getting top surgery. I was hooked.

I didn’t realize D&D could look like that—that it didn’t have to exist in the medieval fantasy worlds I had seen and heard so much about. Still, it can be intimidating to break into an activity that’s so dense with jargon and rules and has a history of gatekeeping. WIRED talked to some experts on how to get started and the role of identity in tabletop role-playing games.

The hardest part, as is true with most things, is getting started. But you really only need to get a couple of friends together and figure it out as you go, says content creator and D&D performer B. Dave Walters. “Don't stress too much about the rules,” says Walters. “Don't stress too much about what you're supposed to do.” Instead, think of your favorite fantasy movie, show, book, or even character, and go from there.

“Growing up as a little Black kid in the south, there weren't many opportunities to feel powerful,” says Walters. “And that was one of the things that D&D gave me originally—a chance to feel heroic. Not just reading about superheroes or watching movies, but actually going out and living one.”

Walters has been playing D&D since he was 13, but the game has changed significantly since then. “We played the first one, like something straight out of Stranger Things sitting in your mom's basement, with the miniatures playing the crunchiest version of it,” Walters says.