Dungeons and Dragons is a roleplaying game (RPG) designed to bring people’s imaginations together in their own fantasy story. Players get to design their own characters, back stories, and even quests. Playing the game is living and building your own adventure; you are the focus point of the game. You even get to bond with others through magical fantasy.

This RPG is world renowned for its creativity, dimensions, worlds, and races. Many people may prefer one kind of basic world from another person’s perspective. As a group, you may decide to work in one world, and go from there, or your Game Master may even choose the broad settings of the world themselves. Everything is entirely up to you and your team.

There are many categories when it comes to building your character(s), and in guide books, they are listed in the easiest way possible for any beginner. It’s all up to your imagination and where you wish to take it. Austin, Mr. Ryan and many more have the proper books for anyone to create their own character. Vampires, Dragonborn, halflings, elves, half-orcs, we have it down in the D&D Club.

Game Masters are commonly referred to as DMs, Dungeon Masters. DMs are the acting “god” of the world the players are in. They are responsible for designing and laying the ground rules for the beginning journey. They may be the acting god, but they are just really there to be the story-teller and rule mediator. They aren’t exactly playing as any of the gods that one’s character may worship.

As the DM, it is their job to make whatever, as fun as it possibly can for the players. Some people may prefer the combat or roleplaying side of things with the campaign. Planning is also a big deal as the DM. They plan the backbones of the adventure, decide what creatures to throw at their unsuspecting victims. Austin is amazing at guiding a group through their unknown world. He makes the most interesting combat remarks too.

Deciding what world, made up entirely, or not, is the fun of each person’s imagination. Maybe you play in a world from DragonLance, Forgotten Realms, World of WarCraft spin-offs, or even a new one your DM has made. Creating the history of this world your players roam around in, is important too. How did the species and subspecies separate themselves from each other? How did the opponents of your group come to be? Where and who are the gods of this world?

Looting is the basic important information that each player wants to know after each battle. Loot tables, usually found on a DM screen, gives the DM everything from, art, gems, magic items, to treasure hoards. Rolling, for this information is the confetti of the win. There’s another table available to the DM on their screen, a name generator. Want your group to get so attached to an NPC (non-player character), only to have them stab your players in the back? Creating a name of sorts is key to this plan of action, and sometimes, that’s the most difficult for the DM at the moment, so they are given a table of names for the different races for ideas, and free use.

Making sure everyone is entertained and happy in each session is important to the DM. Keeping track of every character, and maybe their companion, if they have one, is a big deal during a session. No one wants to feel left out, or feel as though they get no say in anything that may occur in the transpiring event.

The Game Master is basically the author, giving you choices to make your own story through their book. If you have a question about the rules or abilities about your character, then they’d be the one to talk to. DMs give you the basic restrictions and freedoms of your journey, maybe even alter game rules to see how the story may follow. It is all about the fun of creativity!

There are also different types of campaigns when it comes to this exciting game. An evil campaign, as it says in its name, are the characters playing the antagonists of the story, wreaking havoc in the fantasy world. A good campaign involves players acting as the protagonists in varying good alignments, saving towns from the destruction of the world’s bad guys.

First things first, when it comes to starting your character, you must decide what race you want your person to be. The choice of race affects the many different aspects of your character. When choosing the race, you must keep in mind what kind of character you want to play, “For example, a halfling could be a good choice for a sneaky rogue, a dwarf makes a tough warrior, and an elf can be a master of arcane magic.” Taken from the D&D Player’s Handbook.

Each character has different racial traits, such as ability score increases, age, alignment, size, speed, languages, and subraces. Ability score increases are dependent on which race you choose for your character, so is everything based on your character sheets. Age of your race is given to you in different ways, when your character is considered an adult within your race, and how long your race’s expected life-span is.

Most races tend to have a more tendency to lean toward certain alignments. These do not hinder you at all though, these are just recommendations for your ideas, for how you may play as this race. Alignments are categorized into three groups; good, neutral, and evil. Through these, there are three subcategories to place on your character; lawful, neutral, and chaotic. This leaves you with several choices you may want to play with, lawful good, neutral good, chaotic good, lawful neutral, neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful evil, neutral evil, and chaotic evil. There are alot to play with, and you don’t necessarily have to pick one immediately. Play with one you think fits your character best, and if it doesn’t, you can always change it later.

There are many races, and because of this, many of your group members will be different sizes than your own. Most races are classified as medium. These medium-sized characters are roughly between 4 and 8 feet tall. Members of a select few races are between 2 and 4 feet tall, classifying them as small. Certain rules of the game affect them differently, they have trouble handling heavy weaponry and armor. The speed of your race depends on your size and race. If you’re a medium sized character, then you can walk at a base speed of 30 ft, and exhaust 60-80 ft of running speed during a combat turn.

Every race, and even subraces have their own languages. By the ethnicity of your race, your character can speak, read and write certain languages. Through the Player’s Handbook, each race will provide you with what languages you can be or are most proficient with, and give you the option to choose one or a few of your own choice.

A race’s height and weight can change over the course of the campaign, especially if they’re been canonically ‘playing’ in this world for several years. In Chapter 4 of the Player’s Handbook, a table is provided for every race they have included in it’s pages. The races the are mentioned and given to you as playable in the Player’s Handbook are, humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, dragonborn, gnomes, and tieflings. Subraces are, hill dwarves, mountain dwarves, high elves, wood elves, drow elves, half-elves, and half-orcs.

Character details are the essence of who you are playing as. If you are having troubles with deciding or coming up with names for your character, then the Player’s Handbook has you covered. Each race has their own samples of male, and female names. The tiefling race, for example, have “virtue” names, for a simple name that your character’s parents may have wanted you to carry out. Some races, even though they may be classified under male and female, are not against non-binary names, some even gvie you generated names that are neither comformed to the male or female.

Your character may be a male, or female, and they won’t gain any special benefits or hindrances. Make your character unique. Players’ character don’t have to be bound to (a) races’ cultural expectations of gender, and sexual behaviour. Characters can be completely different from their race’s expectations, maybe that’s why they decided to go off on their own, and be who they want to be.

The world’s fate is up to your decision.