Hey Guys

There has been some expressed interest in playing Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) at HPH. If you are not familiar, it is a table top role-playing game that has been around since the 1970s. You can learn more about the history at the following links (video / written). In a similar capacity in how we work remotely, we can play remotely using similar tools.

If you have never played before the concept is simple. You and a group of people get together on a regular basis for a couple hours. The goal is not to optimize and win, but rather enjoying a fantasy world with friends while you try to accomplish things and watch a bunch of silly shit go down. So it’s like work, but it’s optional and you’re getting paid in good vibes instead circus peanuts.

You need a few things to play:

Player Tools

Character Sheet: This is actually a few pieces of paper that has all the information you need to functionally play your character. I’ll cover more on this later but review the list below as this is where information on the following will live:

Character Name
Demographics
Base Stats
Speed
Savings Throws
Hit Points (HP)
Armor Class (AC)
Initiative
Skills
Weapons/Attacks
Spells

Polyhedral Dice: Since DnD is a game of chance, you need real or virtual dice.. Dice are refereed to as D(meaning dice) then the number of sides is has. Most people are familiar with six-sided dice from common board games, a D6. To Start, you will need the basic set containing:

D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20

If you want to roll the real stuff, you can choose between plastic dice (cheaper, and lots of color options) and metal dice (more expensive, but feels amazing in the hand, make a beautiful sound on non-glass tables but are a real bitch to step on)

Behold… The beautiful, amazing metal dice.

Notebook: During your weekly adventure, you are likely to want to remember names of people, places and things that you come across. There are a few things you will want to keep literal tabs on:

Adventure Log: What you did during a session
Inventory: The stuff you carry around
Quests: What your character/party is trying to accomplish or has been rope-a-doped into helping with
Lore: notes about the culture and world, some of this may serve useful later on and helps with immersion.

Picture of your character: Nobody knows what your character looks like but you, so a basic rending is quite helpful for the imagination. Snagging a picture from the internet is easy, but if you have the talent to draw, go for it. Creativity is appreciated in these circles.

Roles:

Dungeon Master (DM) / Game Master (GM): This person runs the game and tells the narrative. This person has a good understanding of the rules, game mechanics and lore. The idea is simple, you tell them what you want your character to do and they tell you what happens. When you interact with the world, use skills, attack or react to the world, the DM will tell you what type of Dice Challenge (DC) your character needs to roll and will tell you if you succeed or fail and how.
Player Character (PC), You (and the rest of the players): This band of rag tag oddballs (friends, family and/or colleagues) is your party. Each exists as a character in the world and can interact in it.

Tools

DnD Beyond – This is a digital tool set produced by Wizards of the Coast (WoTC, the owners of DnD from an intellectual property standpoint). Creating a basic account is free and since I pay annually for the fancy version, I can share the platform that is populated with the digital books I’ve procured over the years. This will give you access to easy use:

Character Generator: Easy to use tool for getting started, follow prompts, click to select.
Interactive Character Sheet: an amazing interface that gets the right dice and rolls the for you on screen. Also has a lot of direct click explanations.
Players Handbook: how to play, character races, character classes, spells, items, game mechanics and more.

Mumble is a self-hosted, low-latency, high-quality voice chat platform. I run it on my server and have instructions to connect to it later on. Being able to communicate verbally is great. There are other paid platforms like Discord, Zoom, or GoToMeeting, but those feel a lot like work and they often take up a lot of screen real-estate for those with regular monitors and I find that just the voice helps with immersion for the game.

The Virtual Table Top. I’m planning on hosting this on my server and having folks use their browsers to connect, but this platform will enable you to create a token for your character and move it around and explore the maps I steal/create/use. I also have Roll20.net and you can run maps, voice and video through it, but they feel like the NetHealth of VTTs so… maybe we won’t use that.

Basic Rules

You can access the basic rules on DnD Beyond or you can download a PDF with the basics HERE for those that like to read.

Expectations

Ideally, we’ll play once a week. Players will need to do their best to learn the basic mechanics, learn how their character and class works, attend sessions regularly and pay attention and participate during gameplay. Unlike a work call, we’ll need to actually pay attention since anyone can interact at any time, except combat where there is a turn order.

It’s not a bad idea to enjoy snacks or adult beverages during game play, so long as it does not become disruptive. Letting loose and having fun in a fantasy world would we could do crazy, unrealistic things like magic, explore the world, have work/life balance, own property and achieve our goals.

What’s Next?

To start off, I’m going to continue to work on this page, configure services and add resources. Once we get about 3-5 people together, I’ll write up a tutorial on how to connect and have everything ready, then we’ll have a session 0 – where people learn the platforms, develop their character ideas, ask questions, share ideas and we’ll schedule our first session. In them meantime, I would suggest that you take a look at the content below.

I have selected an existing campaign for us to start with and have experience running DnD campaigns since 2019.

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Videos!

Introduction to DnD

Crap Guides to DnD

While JoCat’s videos are fast, they are accurate and memorable and explain things well. He does videos for each character class and covers the stereotypes too. You can find the playlist HERE and specific videos below: