Thinking about D&D...

A strong desire to never get laid?...Ok, I kid.

I don’t know about today, but, when I played we had several of the books like the Dungeon Master’s guide, Players Handbook, Monster Manual (and a few others), along with at least a few rudimentary adventures (that you can buy at the same stores that sell the books, or of course, online). You need dice, some figurines, and a few willing friends to play with. Take all this with a grain of salt however. Maybe things are different today, with computer simulations and all that.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that there are other people in your area that you can play with, so I would start out by saying you should borrow some rulebooks and get a taste of what you’re in for. Start with just a character. A basic player’s handbook will do for the basics, and you can augement it with things like the rulebook for monster races or psyker races (I’m probably butchering that word, it’s been a while). A monster manual might be a good idea to get a basic idea of what you might be up against, but I don’t think you need too much more to get into it. That said, if you want to start DM-ing and making your own dungeons, it’s going to be quite a bit worse. But like I said, try before you buy, and get what your interested in. You can find the character sheet to print out here to start off. You should also think about a basic set of die, or at least get a d6, d10 and d20.

It might take a bit of getting used to, but it’s sure a lot of fun. Just tonight while I was watching my friends play, friend 1 (a chaotic neutral orc) who needed a weapon decided to bludgeon friend 2 in the back of the head with a lute, knock him out, and borrow his sword. Good times.

A good DM. I think a bunch of inexperienced guys trying to learn as they go along will just get confused in all the rules and eventually end up fighting. A good DM will break it to you easily, and above all create the magic atmosphere, letting your imagination fly to places no video game or movie could ever take you. After a couple of years, one of the others could have a go at being a DM, and so on.

I would help if I was in your area, but I can’t.

I agree with Jack – if at all possible, try to find a good, experienced DM because it will make learning the game much easier. Starting out as a DM when you’ve never played before could potentially turn you off the game, as well as whoever games with you.

Second most important (and a very close second) is finding good people to play with. If you don’t get along with the people you game with, it’ll kill the game. If people start taking the game personally, things can get ugly. Also, if you try gaming with people who want to just dungeon crawl (just kill lots of creatures for loot) when you want to get more into the characters and roleplaying, or vice versa, problems will inevitably ensue. Get the right people together and gaming is an absolute blast!

“If you don’t get along with the people you game with, it’ll kill the game”

this is like a golden rule of D&D and it took me 5 years to figure out why everyone kept saying it. Luckily, our DM was so good (and could multi-task very easily, which is important), that he made the experience enjoyable for everyone. We all wanted different things, one wanted to know details about the statistics, another a more descriptive atmosphere, I wanted to explore the map and get all the historical background of the campaign, and most of us just wanted to get levels (except this one guy who wanted as much gold as possible, Corellon knows why…).

Our problems arose when our DM (who also happens to be gay) got the hots for one of the players and the game got imbalanced. That player was always invincible, could do anything he wanted, got levels faster and always happened to stumble across the best items. It ended up being a One-Person RPG with the rest of us cast as NPCs, which of course was not much fun anymore. But I’d still play with them if I could.

I’d find a group to play in before starting to make your character, for a couple of reasons. As above, it’s important to make sure you fit in with them, so that your initial playing experience won’t be a bad one and turn you off from the game (which would be a tragedy).

Secondly,you’ll need to find out which edition you’ll be looking at—since 4e is so new (and in many ways controversial), it’s kind of a toss-up to say which ruleset you’ll be on, and it would be a shame to spend any money on books that aren’t what you need in the end.

On the subject of books, your group might also be able to lend copies to you before you buy—just to make sure you’re happy with everything. However, do try and get your hands on the books before you play with that group, so you can look through the races and classes and perhaps start to get an idea of what character you’d like to make (that’s what I did, before even worrying about the rules—which are much easier to learn from gameplay than from the page).

Once you get ready to make your character, it’s nice to have a group already so that you can a) ask for advice from the other players on what builds might work well, especially in the context of that particular party, and b) ask the DM about any special house rules they might have. I was abroad when making my first character, and so did it with only the PH’s basic rules; after having played that character for a while, I discovered that the DM had a house rule about rolling basic ability scores that is more powerful than the core DnD rules—which would have been great to know, and can’t really be changed once play has started. Of course, if you want to try character-creation on your own beforehand, which is always fun (at least it was in 3rd; I didn’t learn on my own for 4th, but it shouldn’t have changed!), then you’ll give your character sheet to the DM before you start play and hopefully they’ll sort anything out of that nature.

That was rather rambling; my apologies and I hope there was some small bit of help somewhere in there. As others have suggested, definitely buy yourself some dice; I’d recommend getting a full set straight off the bat, since it’s always nice to have pretty matching dice! But get whatever you can find. If you want to buy the books, the PH (Player’s Handbook) really should be all you need, especially in 4th edition.

Whatever you do, good luck! DnD is an amazing hobby; glad you’re looking to join in.

@foolaholic: why didn’t friend 1 just ask friend 2 for the sword? Are they not friends? ;) Poor lute…