Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most well-known tabletop role-playing games worldwide. To start playing, you only need exactly 8 things, and they are even available for free. What they are, you will read in this article.
Dungeons & Dragons is highly popular and world-renowned. But how exactly do you start your first D&D adventure? What do you need for it? And how do you get going?
In this article, we have compiled eight essential things you need for your very first adventure. You do not need any prior experience with any kind of pen & paper games. Moreover, we mainly recommend free resources in German here.
Who is writing here?
MeinMMO editor Sophia Weiß has been a huge fan of Critical Role since 2017. She experienced the end of the first campaign (Vox Machina) live and watched the Mighty Nein almost every Friday night. Since 2018, she has been an active D&D player and has tried a lot: official adventures from Wizards of the Coast, homebrew campaigns, and fan and Kickstarter scenarios.
She started her journey directly as a game master (because naturally, no one else wanted to). Nowadays, she also gets to play with her own characters and was even involved in the GameStar talk series Ready to Roll.
Currently, she is playing in two ongoing campaigns and is running The Wilderness Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure
for her friends.
With the following table of contents, you can jump to the individual points you want to know more about. If you just prefer a quick overview, you can jump directly to the conclusion via this link.
In this list, we have omitted tools for advanced players. If you later crave more equipment, you might be interested in the list from our pen & paper veteran Caro with the next level of new purchases:
Pencil, Paper & Eraser
The genre of pen & paper directly defines the two most important things to start the game: pencil and paper. With the pencil, you make notes for the game and label your character sheet. If needed, you can visualize existing in-game situations or draw NPCs.
We recommend a regular pencil. With it, you can label the changed statuses on your character sheet and edit your notes if needed. For editing to work, you should also have an eraser on hand.
But to be able to make those aforementioned notes with a pencil, you simply need a writing surface. For example, paper. My concrete recommendation is a standard notebook in DIN A4 or DIN A3. Whether lined, squared, or blank is really completely irrelevant. What’s important is that you can write. If nothing else is available, you can also use printer paper.
I personally have a nice notebook for each ongoing D&D campaign. Really practical are also the so-called campaign books, notebooks that are specifically designed for D&D with character sheets, adventure trackers, and more.
If you want to carry less, you can of course also digitize everything: notes on your phone, a digital character sheet, or a tablet or PC combo can be good alternatives.
