Is Dungeons & Dragons Easy To Learn?

If you’re not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons and happen to walk in on a game, you might think the strange people at the table are trying to predict the next global catastrophe by deciphering numerical patterns hidden in the Bible, or unraveling conspiracy theories about who really shot JFK… and why!

With all the books, and pencils, and white boards, and random bits of math scribbled onto scraps of graph paper, the last thing you’d suspect these people were doing is playing a game, or anything even peripherally related to fun.

To the casual observer, D&D can look pretty complicated. And it absolutely can be. The game’s fifth edition has done well to streamline a lot of the rules, but it’s still quite a bit to take in for a player new to the game.

So it would seem that the answer to the question, “Is Dungeons & Dragons easy to learn?” would be a resounding “No”. But that’s not always the case. Not even usually the case, and I’ll give you a few reasons why.

1. No prior knowledge required. If you speak the same language as the other players at the table, there’s nothing stopping you from jumping into a game at a second’s notice.

Tabletop gamers generally tend toward being patient with newcomers and eager to welcome them to their hobby.

You don’t have to know your Dex from your dicks. The Dungeon Master will explain the situation your character is in, and you tell him or her how you think your character would react. If he tells you a goblin is running at you with a dagger, you can choose to fight back, run away, tickle it, whatever. According to what you decide, the DM will tell you what dice to roll and give you the results. At this stage, you don’t have to know what any of the technical stuff means because…

2. You’ll pick it up as you go. If I were a gambling man, I’d wager that less than 5% of gamers at any table have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the rules. All those rule books are open to different pages for a reason.

Everyone starts from zero, and you can pick things up at your own pace. As you take certain actions over and over again, knowing how many of which dice you need to roll becomes second nature. Over time, you’ll find yourself consulting the rulebooks less and less often. Especially since…

3. There’s more to the game than rules. If you find yourself in a role-play heavy group, you might go an entire session without anyone rolling a single die. It’s not all about beating the snot out of orcs. You might find your character in a situation where he or she needs to solve a crime or negotiate peace between two feuding clans. In situations like those, it’s less about dice and more about imagination.

But even in more battle-hungry groups, it’s not imperative to know exactly how every little thing works, because…

4. The rules don’t matter. At least, not necessarily. You might find yourself in a group, as I did when I first started playing D&D, in which nobody really knows what they’re doing. If we weren’t sure about a rule and we didn’t feel like interrupting the game to hunt down a particular rule, we’d make it up.

It’s not like Gary Gygax’s ghost is going to haunt your house if you forget to add your Dexterity bonus to your Initiative roll. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone months - or even years - without realizing I’d been doing something or another the wrong way that entire time. But who gives a shit? I was having fun.