I wanted to jump on here and give some basic rules for DnD for those who are watching our channel but don't really know much about it. There are several reasons I decided to do this. First, I wanted people who are watching our videos to have an understanding of what's happening and I wanted to give them more information so they can understand what is going on. My hope is it will give better enjoyment of the story. Second, it can be hard to decide if DnD is something you might enjoy if you don't know how it works, so I wanted to give this explanation in order help people try to figure out if it's something that they want to play. And third, Runner's Fortune (what we are playing) is similar, but still different from DnD, so I wanted to include a part two to this on Runner's Fortune, and in order to truly understand how it's different, I figured having the rules of DnD would be important. This rule list will be very basic as my knowledge is much more on the Runner's Fortune side than the DnD side as I haven't actually played DnD in years. I've always played my husband's homebrewed version, but still, I hope this helps. And now that we have that out of the way, here we go!
To start off, it's important to include a basic description of DnD. Dungeons and Dragons is a Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG) where you have a Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM) that creates a story and world for their players to experience. The only difference between a DM and a GM is the a DM is DnD specific and GM is the title for them throughout all TTRPG's. The purpose of the game, and this is important, is to explore the world, follow the story, and have fun. I've frequently heard people tell other's who play DnD, "I hope you win!" but there really isn't winning or losing in DnD in a specific sense. The only way to win is by small victories of winning the fights you encounter, finished the quests, and playing all the way to the end of the campaign if you can. You only really lose if your characters get killed. The whole point really is just to enjoy yourself and have fun as a player, and as the GM it's to tell an interesting story that your players are invested in.
Now, for the rules. This is just going to be a basic overview for now as I'm sure people don't want to sit here and read the full guidebook. If you want that, you can find it online most likely. But for now, I just want to let people get and idea of what it means to play DnD. The first thing that you need to know is that you start off with character creation. You get to choose a race (elf, dwarf, human, etc.) and a class (Rogue, Barbarian, Wizard, etc.) to play and you can choose any that are included in the guidebook. In DnD, your race gives you bonuses to you ability scores and includes few racial powers. Most of your abilities and powers will come from your class. When you first start character creation, you roll d6's (a 6 sided die) to get your six main ability scores. Generally, you roll four d6 and take the three highest numbers and add them together. The ability scores are strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. My favorite way to explain what these mean is using tomatoes (a thing I've seen go around the internet). Strength is how easily you can crush a tomato, dexterity is how well you dodge a tomato, constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato, intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad, and charisma is being able to sell a tomato based fruit salad. I like to think of intelligence as book smarts, and wisdom is street smarts/common sense, and charisma is how well you speak and portray yourself, and is often also attributed to how good looking you are. Once you get your six numbers, you get to choose which ability they go into, and those abilities relate to what class you are. If you want to use magic, you should have intelligence or wisdom or sometime charisma, if you want to be a front line tank, you need strength, if you plan to be sneaky you need dexterity, and classes like the bard use charisma. Each class will tell you what ability you need and that number will give you number a smaller number that you add to your attacks and rolls as a bonus. Races will also give you a bonus to two of these stats. So, picking your race based off the class you want to play is quite common. Once you pick your race and class, you fill in the information on your character sheet. Your ability scores also influence your skill stats, things like acrobatics, athletics, insight, perception, nature, etc. I'm not currently going to list them all here as it is quite a long list and some of them can change based off the version of DnD you play. Your bonus number for each ability score will be added to your skills. The guidebook will tell you which ability score is related to which skill.
I would like to mention, there are several different iterations of DnD, as it has at least 5 versions and one that is a .5 version, so closer to 6 or 7. Some of the rules may vary on the version you play, so I'm only giving a very basic description to be as encompassing as possible.
Once you have your race, class, and abilities, you get a certain amount of money to buy equipment. There is an amount that is given to you in the handbook, but your GM might give you more money if they wish. DnD uses copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins as well as sometimes star pieces. You use this money to get your weapons (if you use them), armor, and any adventuring equipment you might need like a bedroll, tent, and rations. Once you finish all of that, you are ready to play.
The way gameplay works is fairly simple. Your GM will come up with a story, and they'll introduce you to this world they have created. You play one character, or sometimes more if you need them in the group, but most people will play one character. Think of it as a do it yourself adventure book where you make choices depending on what is happening, though you have a lot more freedom. Your character is like a character in a story, and your companions are the other characters. Your GM will play any of the NPC's/background characters. You get to make choices on what you want to do. If you are put in front of tyrannical king, you could choose to oppose them, you could choose to join them, you could choose to kill them, or any other thing you could possibly conceive off. It's all up to what you are capable of imaging. Your character could essentially be yourself in fantasy form, or you could play someone with a completely different personality from yourself. It's up to you.
As you play, your GM will ask you to make skill checks as part of the roleplaying experience. Let me give an example as the easiest way to explain this. You step into the street and see a young woman crying. You want to know why she's crying. Now, you can, yourself, say you want to do a skill check or your GM will tell you to. The skill check that you use depends on what exactly you're looking for. You could look around and see if there is something around that might explain her crying, and in that case you would roll a perception check, or you could roll an insight check to see if she's giving something away as to why she's crying. To do a check, you roll a d20 (20 sided dice and one of the most commonly used in DnD) and the number you get on the dice is added to the number next to your skill and that's the number you tell the GM. The higher the number the better. A natural 1 (nat1) roll on your dice will give you the worse possible outcome (based on what your GM decides) and a natural 20 (nat20) will give you the best possible result. That doesn't mean it's an automatic success, just that you'll get the best result from what you're doing. Everyone in your party will have different things they are good at, so you should work together to have the person with the best skill for the situation do the check.
The next thing you might come across is, of course, fights. You might fight monsters or people, or even wildlife. It depends on what you do, where you go, and what your GM decides to put in your way. Every character takes up a five by five square, though monsters may take more. At the beginning of a fight, you roll initiative, which is a d20 roll. The person with the highest roll goes first, and it goes all the way through until the person with the lowest roll goes, and then you start back at the top. That is one round of combat. All enemies also have an initiative. When you fight, depending on your class, you will have different powers and abilities to use. You may really just have an attack that you can use with your weapon, or you may have spells and the like. I don't want to go too much into this because, again, they can be different depending on what version of DnD you play. But you get a certain amount of actions a turn. When you attack, you roll your d20, add whatever bonus you get from your ability score, and that number will go against a defense, whether it's armor, reflex, fortitude, or will (which all go off of your ability scores). If your roll is higher than their defense number, you hit, and then you roll damage. Armor is how pretty obvious, it's the defense from the armor you get to see if the attack glances off. Reflex is being able to dodge the attack. Fortitude is being able to take the attack. Will is only used if the attack is against your mind. Each attack will have a different way to roll damage, but it's generally a dice of some kind added to your bonus. Once you use up all of what you can do, you end your turn and let someone else go. Though each player takes their turn one at a time, that's just to make it easy to see who attacks first. Everything is technically happening simultaneously and each round of combat, from the top of the initiative order to the bottom, takes about six seconds in game, even if it takes twenty minutes in real time.
That's really all of the technical stuff of DnD. Anything else is up to your GM. You get experiences from fights and level up, getting new powers when you do so. You gain whatever money your GM decides to give you and you can spend it on new weapons, armor, you could get a pet, a wagon, a horse, or whatever you can find. Sometimes, you can get a boat or a house. It just depends on how you play the game and what you want to do.
For anyone who read this, I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please let me know. I don't have as much knowledge of DnD as I do of Runner's Fortune as, which is the game that Nate has made and that we are playing on our channel. My next blog post will be devoted to explaining that and how it is different from DnD. Thanks for reading.
If you like content like this, keep coming back to this blog, I plan to share a lot more. And if you like TTRPG's and haven't yet, check out our YouTube channel, Neko-Maoh Games, as well as our Facebook page of the same name, and Instagram @nekomaohgames.
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