What Is Dungeons And Dragons

Caught in traffic. Trapped in a cubicle. Stuck in a rut. Tangled up in red tape. In the real world, sometimes you feel powerless—but not in Dungeons & Dragons (D & D). In this fantasy-adventure, you have all kinds of special powers. You can slay the evil dragon, overcome the orc or the ogre, haunt the werewolf, and triumph over sinister trolls. You venture into strange realms, encounter strange creatures, and use magical powers. Your character grows and develops with every adventure. With this guide, you can learn the ins and outs of D & D and start playing right away. Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies gives beginners the basics of the complex game and helps experienced players fine-tune their roleplaying. It guides you through: Creating your character (a powerful fighter, a sneaky rogue, a crafty sorcerer, or a charismatic cleric), and character advancement The races: humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings The types of character actions: attack rolls, skill check, and ability checks The 6 abilities: strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma Feat requirements and types Playing the game, including moving in combat, attacking with a weapon (melee attacks or ranged attacks), and damage and dying Picking skills, armor, weapons, and gear Choosing spells if your character is a sorcerer or domains for a cleric Building encounter or combat strategies and using advanced tactics Maximizing your character’s power with the acquisition of the right magic items: armor, weapons, potion, scroll, ring, wand, staff, rod, plus wondrous items D & D game etiquette Becoming a Dungeon Master There’s even a sample play session that walks you through typical play, gets you comfortable using the battle grid and character markers, lets you test player characters against each other and against monsters, and shows you how to add story elements to create an adventure. Produced in partnership with Wizards of the Coast, written by D & D game designers, and complete with a battle grid, a sample dungeon map, and a glossary, this guide arms you with the knowledge to create and equip a character and empowers you to enter the captivating, fascinating world of D & D.

A bestiary of wondrous friends and foes for the world’s greatest roleplaying game Sparkling with the musings of the wizard Mordenkainen, this tome features a host of creatures for use in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Compiling and updating monsters that originally appeared in previous D&D fifth edition releases, these creatures represent some of the most benevolent and malevolent forces that D&D heroes might face. The book also gathers together fantastical peoples from many different worlds. Each of these peoples represents a race option when you create your D&D character, expanding on the choices in the Player’s Handbook. Includes more than 250 monsters—updates to the monsters include making spellcasters easier for Dungeon Masters to run, giving many monsters more damage and resilience, and improving the organization of the stat blocks themselves Includes more than 30 playable races—brings the game’s setting-agnostic races into one book, complementing the races in the Player’s Handbook A multiverse of lore—includes updates to monster lore that refocuses their stories on the D&D multiverse, rather than on any particular world

An illustrated guide to the history and evolution of the beloved role-playing game told through the paintings, sketches, illustrations, and visual ephemera behind its creation, growth, and continued popularity. FINALIST FOR THE HUGO AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE DIANA JONES AWARD From one of the most iconic game brands in the world, this official DUNGEONS & DRAGONS illustrated history provides an unprecedented look at the visual evolution of the brand, showing its continued influence on the worlds of pop culture and fantasy. Inside the book, you’ll find more than seven hundred pieces of artwork—from each edition of the core role-playing books, supplements, and adventures; as well as Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels; decades of Dragon and Dungeon magazines; and classic advertisements and merchandise; plus never-before-seen sketches, large-format canvases, rare photographs, one-of-a-kind drafts, and more from the now-famous designers and artists associated with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. The superstar author team gained unparalleled access to the archives of Wizards of the Coast and the personal collections of top collectors, as well as the designers and illustrators who created the distinctive characters, concepts, and visuals that have defined fantasy art and gameplay for generations. This is the most comprehensive collection of D&D imagery ever assembled, making this the ultimate collectible for the game's millions of fans around the world.

Presents an introduction to Dungeons and Dragons with information on the rules, characters, weapons and gear, and game etiquette.

Create heroic characters for the world’s greatest roleplaying game. The Player’s Handbook is the essential reference for every Dungeons & Dragons roleplayer. It contains rules for character creation and advancement, backgrounds and skills, exploration and combat, equipment, spells, and much more. Use this book to create characters from among the most iconic D&D races and classes. Publisher’s Weekly #1 Best Seller in Hardcover Nonfiction Wall Street Journal #1 Best Seller in Hardcover Nonfiction • In Dungeons & Dragons, you and your friends coauthor your own legend. Guided by a Dungeon Master, you create characters and play their roles in a story, rolling dice and navigating maps as you unfold a tale as limitless as your imagination. • The Player’s Handbook is the first of three D&D core rulebooks, along with the Monster Manual and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The Player’s Handbook is the cornerstone. It’s the foundational text of D&D’s fifth edition—for beginners and for veterans alike. • The Player’s Handbook walks you through how to create a Dungeons & Dragons character—the role you’ll play in the D&D world. • Dungeons & Dragons is the world’s greatest roleplaying game. Created in 1974, D&D transformed gaming culture by blending traditional fantasy with miniatures and wargaming.

Weave legendary stories in the world’s greatest roleplaying game. All you need to run a Dungeons & Dragons game is your imagination, some dice, and this book. The Dungeon Master’s Guide teaches you how to how to run D&D adventures for your players— how to invent monsters for them to fight, mysteries for them to solve, and fantasy worlds for them to explore. “[The Dungeon Master’s Guide is] the one book to rule them all, the most comprehensive and powerful set of resources needed to run a game of D&D. . .” —Charlie Hall, Polygon.com “D&D acolytes are everywhere...Tech workers from Silicon Valley to Brooklyn have long-running campaigns, and the showrunners and the novelist behind ‘Game of Thrones’ have all been Dungeon Masters.”—Neima Jahromi, The New Yorker • The Dungeon Master’s Guide is one of the three main Dungeons & Dragons books, along with the Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual. It’s a reference used by the Dungeon Master (the game’s narrator) to create adventures—to run Dungeons & Dragons games and fill them with characters and stories. • The Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) is full of tools to help you immerse players in the game. What’s the demon lord’s secret weakness? Are the orcish invaders a criminal enterprise, or traitorous allies? Dozens of tables throughout the book help inspire your decisions and keep the game flowing smoothly. • In the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG), even the tables tell tales. A legendary sword takes five decades to craft. Who created it, and why? A tavern-crawling gnome has an eye twitch. How did she get it, and when? In every detail is an architecture for narrative—and the Dungeon Master’s Guide has all the tools you need to flesh it out with ease. • In Dungeons & Dragons, you and your friends coauthor your own legend. Guided by a Dungeon Master, you create characters and play their roles in a story, rolling dice and navigating maps as you unfold a tale as limitless as your imagination. • Dungeons & Dragons is the world’s greatest roleplaying game. Created in 1974, D&D transformed gaming culture by blending traditional fantasy with miniatures and wargaming.

Explore a wealth of peril and personalities in this campaign book for the world’s greatest roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. Acquisitions Incorporated is a different flavor of Dungeons & Dragons. A fifth edition D&D book created in partnership with Penny Arcade Inc. and inspired by the podcast and web series, this book is full of madcap heists, hilarious moments, and all the ingredients you need to include the adventurers of Acquisitions Incorporated in your own fifth edition D&D campaign. • Start up your own Acquisitions Incorporated franchise in the Forgotten Realms or anywhere in the multiverse. • Live out your fantasy of climbing the corporate ladder of the most notorious retrieval agency in the Forgotten Realms—Acquisitions Incorporated. • The 224-page book will give Dungeon Masters and players plenty of bits to play a D&D fifth edition game just as if you were on stage with the crew at PAX! New backgrounds, character options, franchise information and more. • You'll also find an adventure that will take characters from levels 1 through 6, establishing your party's claim on a world they've just begun to explore—and to strip-mine for profit. Dungeons & Dragons is the world’s greatest roleplaying game. Created in 1974, D&D transformed gaming culture by blending traditional fantasy with miniatures and wargaming.