Hello all,

     I'm new and in need of guidance. I'm interested in joining an online campaign, but unshore of everything that's needed to get started.                                                                    Discord account, webcam and mic (is a cellphone accpetable), access to my class and race on dnd beyond and...well I'm not sure if this is sufficient or is more needed?

Any and all help would be appreciated.

The biggest hurdle will be finding people to play with. For that I recommend the looking for groups thread or roll20. After that they can tell you what you need.

There are 3 options for playing online: play-by-post, text-based and voice-based.

Play-by-Post involves posting your actions and decisions and character thoughts into a post on a forum thread. This has the convenience of not needing to schedule a specific time, has in-built dice roller and gives everyone as long as they need to make their decision. The downsides are that this method is slow - always waiting for new posts which could end up being days apart, and can be awkward and staggered to run combat the normal way. A virtual tabletop is not really possible this way, so the DM may have to make images of grids for visualising battles.

Text-based is basically like everyone being in a chatroom and typing things out. It's a little slower than voice-based because you type rather than speak but is fast enough for running combat. However, many options for playing this way exist where you can roll dice into the chatroom. Many VTTs like Roll20.net offer chat based. If you don't need a VTT you can use D&D Beyond's discord server - their dicebot Avrae can link to your D&D Beyond character sheet to roll attacks and whatnot directly from it.

Voice based - which may or may not include a webcam - can be done with VTT like Roll20.net or (if mic only) over Discord. This is the fastest and easiest way to play but requires equipment like a microphone and, optionally, a webcam. 

D&D beyond does not yet have a VTT so if you need one, Roll20 is best. You may have to recreate your character on there, but that's not too bad. 

Thank you very much!

If anyone else has anything to add feel free all info is appreciated. The more detailed the better IMO.

I have no issue reading a wall of text.

I've been playing D&D for a little over a year myself, exclusively using Discord. The group you join will dictate what you need. In my case, that was a headset and mic, a Discord account, and my character and spell sheets. These are obviously the minimum. Some DMs allow you to type and not talk as long as you can hear the conversation, but unless the entire game is text-only, you'd have to have a headset so that you could at least hear the people who were talking.

On the D&D Discord servers I've seen, there's always a channel for dice rolling, and a bot that helps you to do it. For example, there's a bot called Yggdrasil that allows you to type in a command like this: --roll 4d6 +4 ... where the number before the letter d is the number of die, the number after the d is the type of die, and the +6 is the bonus (or you could use a negative number for a penalty). Other servers use other bots, but the mechanism is similar.

Some DMs may like to use Roll20 to show the location of a combat encounter and where the PCs and NPCs (including monsters) are. If your DM wants to do that, you'll need a Roll20 account. I've used Roll20 once, and although I was a little confused at first, it wasn't hard to make sense of. 

If you're new to D&D in general, I'd recommend talking to the DM of the party you're considering joining in advance. This way, you can find out whether you think you'll enjoy playing with that particular DM, whether their campaign style is one you'd enjoy (in terms of things like the amount of roleplay, the amount of combat, the story theme, any house rules, degree of difficulty, new player friendliness, etc). When you pick a campaign, as a DM, I personally love it when my players ask me questions when creating their backstory so it fits the world (since my campaign is homebrew); many DMs would probably appreciate the same if they have a homebrew campaign.

Hopefully that helps!

I'm in two groups that share some players. One meets physically for games. DndBeyond is the main way we track everything. The other is over Roll20.

For the second game, we use DndBeyond for most of our characters, as well as for resources like PHB. We use Roll20 for everything else. Most of us have mics and cameras, but we usually only use the mics.

Roll20 and a headset. Awesome!

Didnt want to use a webcam any how. If I want to DnD in my drawers that's my buisness.

Our D&D group uses discord and R20 but we use discord for the voice and video. We have one of our players who uses their cellphone rather than a webcam and headset and it can be annoying from time to time. If they dont mute their phone then we can hear ourselves talking sometimes and muting and unmuting themselves can be a slow process. I would recommend getting a headset with a mic to play.

Webcams for us are great because facial expressions and seeing people is great in this game, but when doing it with people who are strangers (at least in the beginning) can be a bit awkward. We use them primarily because most of us knew each other prior to playing D&D.