I am completely new to D&D. I have heard of it of course and always been interested, but never met anyone who played. I have recently been watching the Critical Role 2nd campaign on YouTube and would love to try a small campaign to learn more about the game and start my D&D career. I am currently living in Bahrain for the next 4-6 months so can only do online games.
Welcome to the hobby! They do play-by-post on the forums here, as well as other forums. Or you can use reddit.com/r/lfg or roll20 to find people to play with online.
Learning D&D at a table is preferred. Learning rules and mechanics are daunting enough without having to learn an online platform at the same time. If your first exposure to D&D is Critical Roll, you’ll need the human interaction of voices to feel like you’re in the same game. Play by text is probably going to be tediously slow and soulless. So, I’d go Roll20 for any online play.
Things Roll20 doesn’t explain well to new users:
Use a laptop or PC. System is not worth trying to make work without a mouse. The ipad app is worthless for anything, and the app store reviews will back me up on that.
Don’t plan on building a character in a Character Builder page to have ready to bring into games when you join them. Characters are built in game after you join. Not great for a quick starting game, but they run many gaming systems from Roll20, and character sheets are system-specific, so I kinda get it. If you get an attentive game master, you can ask them to let you in the game early to get familiar with your character sheet. Once you have a character in a game, you can export it to your character vault(in the Tools menu) to be used in other games.
Rolls can be made by clicking the words on your character sheet. Want to swing your mace? Click the word “Mace” on your weapons box on your sheet. And when rolling initiative, make sure your character token is clicked/selected on the map or the roll won’t show up to anyone else. As far as I know, that’s the only time anything needs to be selected for a roll to count.
”Click and hold” is how you “ping” a spot on the map. Very useful for things like “THIS is the guy I’m shooting.” Or “I want to investigate THIS spot in the room.”
The compendium is your friend. The tab with the black circle with the “i” on top on the right side of the screen. Does your character know the “Burning Hands” spell? Search Burning hands and drag the spell onto your character sheet. Now you have a clickable spell imported just like that. Same with weapons, classes, carried items, etc. Not everything is drag and drop, but much is.
Almost everyone uses Discord to run audio in game. They’ll give you a link to their server when you join the game.
Know that much ahead of time and you’ll slide into games without feeling lost or like you’re dragging down the pace of play.
I'd have to disagree a little bit with kcbcollier. While I totally agree that learning at a table is the best, there's something to be said for PbP here in the forums. I'm currently DMing a new player PbP campaign that is moving right along and, as far as I can tell, is being enjoyed by the players. The advantage to PbP is that you have lots of time to decide what to do, research anything you're unsure about and ask questions along the way with interrupting gameplay.
If you can find a discord or any other online game catered to new players than you should be able to ask questions and make mistakes without the DM or other players having issue. Sometimes patience can run short when it gets in the way of gameplay so I think that's something to be aware of.
I think the bottom line is that however you choose to play, having a good group and a great DM will make the experience enjoyable. Something for you to think about when looking for a group is what kind of game you'd like to play. Are you more interested in a hack n slash combat driven game, a campaign filled with puzzles and mind ****s, heavy roleplay? Then look for a group that matches. That should give you a leg up in finding an enjoyable game.
Thanks for the info BTI_Brian, I'll definitely take it into account. I've managed to find a DM on ROll20 who is setting up live discord games for newbies only to teach them the ropes so I'll start there as well as checking out the discord servers CharlesThePlant mentioned.
I don't know of any personally, but I know a lot of people do play that way. I see a lot of posts on imgur advertising openings on servers on there dnd page
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I am completely new to D&D. I have heard of it of course and always been interested, but never met anyone who played. I have recently been watching the Critical Role 2nd campaign on YouTube and would love to try a small campaign to learn more about the game and start my D&D career. I am currently living in Bahrain for the next 4-6 months so can only do online games.
Welcome to the hobby! They do play-by-post on the forums here, as well as other forums. Or you can use reddit.com/r/lfg or roll20 to find people to play with online.
Learning D&D at a table is preferred. Learning rules and mechanics are daunting enough without having to learn an online platform at the same time. If your first exposure to D&D is Critical Roll, you’ll need the human interaction of voices to feel like you’re in the same game. Play by text is probably going to be tediously slow and soulless. So, I’d go Roll20 for any online play.
Things Roll20 doesn’t explain well to new users:
Use a laptop or PC. System is not worth trying to make work without a mouse. The ipad app is worthless for anything, and the app store reviews will back me up on that.
Don’t plan on building a character in a Character Builder page to have ready to bring into games when you join them. Characters are built in game after you join. Not great for a quick starting game, but they run many gaming systems from Roll20, and character sheets are system-specific, so I kinda get it. If you get an attentive game master, you can ask them to let you in the game early to get familiar with your character sheet. Once you have a character in a game, you can export it to your character vault(in the Tools menu) to be used in other games.
Rolls can be made by clicking the words on your character sheet. Want to swing your mace? Click the word “Mace” on your weapons box on your sheet. And when rolling initiative, make sure your character token is clicked/selected on the map or the roll won’t show up to anyone else. As far as I know, that’s the only time anything needs to be selected for a roll to count.
”Click and hold” is how you “ping” a spot on the map. Very useful for things like “THIS is the guy I’m shooting.” Or “I want to investigate THIS spot in the room.”
The compendium is your friend. The tab with the black circle with the “i” on top on the right side of the screen. Does your character know the “Burning Hands” spell? Search Burning hands and drag the spell onto your character sheet. Now you have a clickable spell imported just like that. Same with weapons, classes, carried items, etc. Not everything is drag and drop, but much is.
Almost everyone uses Discord to run audio in game. They’ll give you a link to their server when you join the game.
Know that much ahead of time and you’ll slide into games without feeling lost or like you’re dragging down the pace of play.
Thank you very much for the information guys, very much appreciated. I will head over to Roll20 and check it out.
There are also a lot of d&d Discord servers where you can find a group to play with
I'd have to disagree a little bit with kcbcollier. While I totally agree that learning at a table is the best, there's something to be said for PbP here in the forums. I'm currently DMing a new player PbP campaign that is moving right along and, as far as I can tell, is being enjoyed by the players. The advantage to PbP is that you have lots of time to decide what to do, research anything you're unsure about and ask questions along the way with interrupting gameplay.
If you can find a discord or any other online game catered to new players than you should be able to ask questions and make mistakes without the DM or other players having issue. Sometimes patience can run short when it gets in the way of gameplay so I think that's something to be aware of.
I think the bottom line is that however you choose to play, having a good group and a great DM will make the experience enjoyable. Something for you to think about when looking for a group is what kind of game you'd like to play. Are you more interested in a hack n slash combat driven game, a campaign filled with puzzles and mind ****s, heavy roleplay? Then look for a group that matches. That should give you a leg up in finding an enjoyable game.
That's what happens when you wear a helmet your whole life!
My house rules
I found some of these on good after reading your comment. Do you have any you'd recommend?
Thanks for the info BTI_Brian, I'll definitely take it into account. I've managed to find a DM on ROll20 who is setting up live discord games for newbies only to teach them the ropes so I'll start there as well as checking out the discord servers CharlesThePlant mentioned.
I don't know of any personally, but I know a lot of people do play that way. I see a lot of posts on imgur advertising openings on servers on there dnd page