Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How to play DnD 5e for Free
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Green DM" data-source="post: 8150420" data-attributes="member: 7026720"><p>Video if you don't want to read the wall of text, then wall of text.</p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]h4CtPKPzhrI[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>Dungeons and Dragons, and tabletop roleplaying games in general, can be very expensive. The books, the dice, the miniatures, the terrain. There is a lot you could spend money on. And that can feel like a barrier into the hobby. I want to layout how someone could run or play dungeons and dragons for FREE. All they should need is a bit of time, a printer if they want the physical version of some things, and a desire to get started. Will be using "you" as subject for ease of writing. Feel free to share this with anyone you think wants to get into DnD, but thinks it is too expensive to try.</p><h3>RULES*</h3><p>The first thing you will need is rules. The players handbook, dungeon masters guide, and monster manual will run you about $25 US dollars each, which as you can tell, is not free. Instead you will be using the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition SRD, which stands for System Reference Document. The SRD is free, and gives you everything you need to run and play a game of Dungeons and Dragons. This is 400 pages long, which can be very daunting, but you don’t need to read it all.</p><p>The basic rules start on page 76 and go to page 104, laying out how to play, including when to roll dice, how to make attacks and saving throws, and everything in between. Pages 3 through 75 layout how to make player characters including options for their race, class, background, and equipment. If you have any spellcasters amongst your players or monsters, pages 105 through 194 list all the spells they could need. Pages 206 through 253 lists magic items you can use in your game and page 254 onwards is a big list of monsters you can use to populate your world and use in combat. You don’t need to know everything in this document. Just choose a few monsters, a few magic items, a few player character options and run with that.</p><p>The SRD is an incredible resource that you should think of as the DnD demo document, and I thank wizards of the coast for making it available to everyone for free. It does not have as many options as the full rulebooks have, but this is your first time playing, you don’t need a bunch of options right now. You just need to get a feel for the game and how much your group likes it.</p><p>SRD pdf</p><p><a href="https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf" target="_blank">https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf</a></p><p>SRD WOTC article</p><p><a href="https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-document-srd" target="_blank">Systems Reference Document (SRD) | Dungeons & Dragons</a></p><p>*You can also look at the Basic Rules Document, which may be more new gamer friendly than the SRD.</p><p><a href="https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules" target="_blank">Basic Rules For Dungeons and Dragons</a></p><p>SRD And Basic Rules Combined on DnD Beyond!</p><p><a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules" target="_blank">D&D 5e Basic Rules</a></p><h3>Character Sheets</h3><p>The SRD unfortunately does not come with player character sheets, but thankfully you have some options. Wizards of the Coast has a lot of free character sheets for you to use. If you just want some pre generated characters, wizards of the coast has some of those as well.</p><p>5e Fillable Character Sheet</p><p><a href="https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/5E_CharacterSheet_Fillable.pdf" target="_blank">https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/5E_CharacterSheet_Fillable.pdf</a></p><p>5e Progenerated Characters</p><p><a href="https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/trpg-resources/trpg-resources" target="_blank">TRPG Resources | Dungeons & Dragons</a></p><h3>Adventure</h3><p>Alright, so you have some rules, but you need an adventure to apply them to. There are tons of free adventures online, but again you don’t need a bunch of options right now. I recommend the Delian Tomb by Matt Colville. It is short, made for level 1 characters, and even comes with a map! The monsters of the adventures are also in the SRD! The bugbear on page 266, goblins can be found on page 315, and the undead in room 6 will be 2 ghouls, from page 312. The scythe trap in area 3 is not in the SRD, but we can just use the trap table in the SRD to choose its properties. This is your first adventure, so lets make this a level 1 setback trap. So characters will need to make a DC 10 dexterity saving throw to avoid it, or take 1d10 slashing damage. If you don’t understand those terms yet, don’t worry, the basic rules in the SRD will explain them.</p><p>If this adventure is too short for you, or you would like to find another one, DMsGuild.com an online store where you can buy adventures, optional rules, and a lot more, has a free adventures section you can look through. Again links in the description.</p><p>Delian Tomb Adventure</p><p><a href="https://mcdm.fandom.com/wiki/The_Delian_Tomb" target="_blank">The Delian Tomb</a></p><p>Free Adventures on DMsGuild</p><p><a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45469_0_45418_0_0_0_0_0&pfrom=0&pto=0&src=fid45418" target="_blank">Dungeon Masters Guild - 1st Tier (Levels 1-4) | DMs Guild -</a></p><p>Best Free Adventures, Courtesy of M.T. Black</p><p><a href="https://www.mtblackgames.com/blog/top-20-free-dnd-adventures" target="_blank">Top 20 Free D&D Adventures — M.T. Black is creating Roleplaying Games</a></p><h3>Dice</h3><p>Okay, you have rules, and an adventure, but you are missing a key component, dice. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of spare dice lying around. If you do have a bunch of boardgames, you might be able to cobble together enough dice to get this gaming going. Otherwise, you will need to use an online resource, or get creative.</p><p>For online resources, there are free dice rolling phone apps like Critdice. google has a built in dice roller, or you can use a website like a.teall.info.</p><p>If you want physical dice for free, you might have a hard time. But Dice are just an easy way to roll a random number. If you have another fun way of generating random numbers, then use that instead. Whether that means, cutting up some paper squares with numbers on them and putting them in a hat, or cutting little blocks of wood into dice is up to you.</p><p>Dice Rolling App - CritDice</p><p><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vuesoft.critdice&hl=en_US&gl=US" target="_blank">CritDice - Dice Roller - Apps on Google Play</a></p><p>Google’s Dice Roller</p><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=dice+roller" target="_blank">dice roller - Google Search</a></p><p>Web Based Dice Roller</p><p><a href="http://a.teall.info/dice/" target="_blank">teal 3d dice roller</a></p><h3>Players</h3><p>Okay now comes one of the hardest parts for some people, finding a group to play with. Most people just ask their friends or family to play. If that is not an option for you, coworkers are a great next place to look. If that doesn’t work for you, there are a lot of places online that can help you find a group. Reddit has an entire subreddit <a href="https://www.enworld.org/r/lfg" target="_blank">/r/lfg</a> dedicated to people trying to find groups for tabletop games, but that’s not all. Facebook groups such as the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition group can be a place to connect with other people looking for a game, and the Dnd Beyond forums, as well as many other online tabletop forums, have sections dedicated to getting groups together.</p><p>If you do use an online resource to find players, try to ask them a few questions or have a virtual hang out before committing to playing a long game with them. You don’t really know if you will enjoy playing with them, or if you will like their attitude, so don’t commit to long term plans until you feel these people are more than strangers and you feel safe roleplaying with them.</p><p>Reddit - Looking For Group</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/lfg/" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/lfg/</a></p><p>Facebook Dungeons and Dragons 5e Group</p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/DnD5th/" target="_blank">Facebook Groups</a></p><p>DnD Beyond Forums - Looking For Group</p><p><a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/looking-for-players-groups" target="_blank">Looking for Players & Groups - D&D Beyond General - D&D Beyond Forums - D&D Beyond</a></p><h3>Place to Play</h3><p>Now we have all the rules and equipment we need to play the game, now we just need a place to play it.</p><p>If you are playing in person, this part can be pretty easy. Choose whoever’s house has the biggest table and play there, or let whoever enjoys hosting people, well host.</p><p>If you all live too far apart, or for some reason don’t have a spare table lying around, you can look for local game stores to play at, but most require some form of payment to use their facilities, which I have to point out, is not free.</p><p>If none of that works, or you are experiencing a global pandemic which causes you to never leave your house and never see anyone in person for months, online gaming is a great solution.</p><p>Online gaming is done at a virtual tabletop or VTT. You have a lot of options, but most either require a onetime payment or monthly subscription. For free options, you have Astral Table Top, Tableplop, Let’s Role and many more. I am not well versed in the free virtual table top market, so people in the comments or in a google deep dive may know better.</p><p>Astral</p><p><a href="https://www.astraltabletop.com/" target="_blank">The easiest way to play tabletop games online | Astral TableTop</a></p><p>Tableplop</p><p><a href="https://www.tableplop.com/" target="_blank">Tableplop: Easy to use virtual tabletop</a></p><p>Let’s Role</p><p><a href="https://lets-role.com/" target="_blank">TableTop Gaming for Everyone!</a></p><h3>Place to Communicate</h3><p>Now that you have a place to play, you need a place to communicate. If you play in person, this seems like a no brainer, its just the table you are playing at, but you might need more than that. Sometimes you want to draw a map to help people visualize a situation or mark out where everyone is in relation to each other. This can be done on some printer paper or graph paper you have lying around, with everyone marked with a coin or token of some kind. Again, this is suppose to be free, so don’t go out buying a bunch of custom miniatures for you players to use. Just say Tom is red bottle cap, Darnell is the kitchen magnet, Jessica is the eraser, and so on. Although, if you have some lego figures lying around, this is a great use for them!</p><p>If you are playing online, you will need a place for everyone to go to communicate. I highly recommend at least communicating through voice, but having video and text communication is a good idea too. For this, I recommend using something everyone in the group is already familiar with and uses often. Google hangouts, Skype, Zoom, or my personal favorite, Discord. If you just use what everyone is already familiar with, that means there is one less obstacle stopping you from actually playing.</p><p>Google Hangouts</p><p><a href="https://hangouts.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Hangouts</a></p><p>Skype</p><p><a href="https://www.skype.com/en/" target="_blank">Skype | Communication tool for free calls and chat</a></p><p>Zoom</p><p><a href="https://zoom.us/" target="_blank">Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing</a></p><p>Discord</p><p><a href="https://discord.com/" target="_blank">Discord | Your Place to Talk and Hang Out</a></p><h3>Conclusion</h3><p>With that, you have everything you need to start, and it is all free! Do note that you will have less options in terms of character classes, adventures, and equipment than someone who spent a bunch of money. But that does not mean your game will be worse or less fun in any way. At its heart, Dungeons and Dragons is a story telling game. Your imagination and passion is going to be worth far more than any fancy terrain or cool virtual animations will ever be. So, go grab the SRD, go grab a phone for dice rolling, go grab some paper to scribble notes on, go grab some friends to play with, and go grab, some memories!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Green DM, post: 8150420, member: 7026720"] Video if you don't want to read the wall of text, then wall of text. [MEDIA=youtube]h4CtPKPzhrI[/MEDIA] Dungeons and Dragons, and tabletop roleplaying games in general, can be very expensive. The books, the dice, the miniatures, the terrain. There is a lot you could spend money on. And that can feel like a barrier into the hobby. I want to layout how someone could run or play dungeons and dragons for FREE. All they should need is a bit of time, a printer if they want the physical version of some things, and a desire to get started. Will be using "you" as subject for ease of writing. Feel free to share this with anyone you think wants to get into DnD, but thinks it is too expensive to try. [HEADING=2]RULES*[/HEADING] The first thing you will need is rules. The players handbook, dungeon masters guide, and monster manual will run you about $25 US dollars each, which as you can tell, is not free. Instead you will be using the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition SRD, which stands for System Reference Document. The SRD is free, and gives you everything you need to run and play a game of Dungeons and Dragons. This is 400 pages long, which can be very daunting, but you don’t need to read it all. The basic rules start on page 76 and go to page 104, laying out how to play, including when to roll dice, how to make attacks and saving throws, and everything in between. Pages 3 through 75 layout how to make player characters including options for their race, class, background, and equipment. If you have any spellcasters amongst your players or monsters, pages 105 through 194 list all the spells they could need. Pages 206 through 253 lists magic items you can use in your game and page 254 onwards is a big list of monsters you can use to populate your world and use in combat. You don’t need to know everything in this document. Just choose a few monsters, a few magic items, a few player character options and run with that. The SRD is an incredible resource that you should think of as the DnD demo document, and I thank wizards of the coast for making it available to everyone for free. It does not have as many options as the full rulebooks have, but this is your first time playing, you don’t need a bunch of options right now. You just need to get a feel for the game and how much your group likes it. SRD pdf [URL]https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf[/URL] SRD WOTC article [URL='https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-document-srd']Systems Reference Document (SRD) | Dungeons & Dragons[/URL] *You can also look at the Basic Rules Document, which may be more new gamer friendly than the SRD. [URL='https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules']Basic Rules For Dungeons and Dragons[/URL] SRD And Basic Rules Combined on DnD Beyond! [URL="https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules"]D&D 5e Basic Rules[/URL] [HEADING=2]Character Sheets[/HEADING] The SRD unfortunately does not come with player character sheets, but thankfully you have some options. Wizards of the Coast has a lot of free character sheets for you to use. If you just want some pre generated characters, wizards of the coast has some of those as well. 5e Fillable Character Sheet [URL]https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/5E_CharacterSheet_Fillable.pdf[/URL] 5e Progenerated Characters [URL='https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/trpg-resources/trpg-resources']TRPG Resources | Dungeons & Dragons[/URL] [HEADING=2]Adventure[/HEADING] Alright, so you have some rules, but you need an adventure to apply them to. There are tons of free adventures online, but again you don’t need a bunch of options right now. I recommend the Delian Tomb by Matt Colville. It is short, made for level 1 characters, and even comes with a map! The monsters of the adventures are also in the SRD! The bugbear on page 266, goblins can be found on page 315, and the undead in room 6 will be 2 ghouls, from page 312. The scythe trap in area 3 is not in the SRD, but we can just use the trap table in the SRD to choose its properties. This is your first adventure, so lets make this a level 1 setback trap. So characters will need to make a DC 10 dexterity saving throw to avoid it, or take 1d10 slashing damage. If you don’t understand those terms yet, don’t worry, the basic rules in the SRD will explain them. If this adventure is too short for you, or you would like to find another one, DMsGuild.com an online store where you can buy adventures, optional rules, and a lot more, has a free adventures section you can look through. Again links in the description. Delian Tomb Adventure [URL='https://mcdm.fandom.com/wiki/The_Delian_Tomb']The Delian Tomb[/URL] Free Adventures on DMsGuild [URL='https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45469_0_45418_0_0_0_0_0&pfrom=0&pto=0&src=fid45418']Dungeon Masters Guild - 1st Tier (Levels 1-4) | DMs Guild -[/URL] Best Free Adventures, Courtesy of M.T. Black [URL='https://www.mtblackgames.com/blog/top-20-free-dnd-adventures']Top 20 Free D&D Adventures — M.T. Black is creating Roleplaying Games[/URL] [HEADING=2]Dice[/HEADING] Okay, you have rules, and an adventure, but you are missing a key component, dice. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of spare dice lying around. If you do have a bunch of boardgames, you might be able to cobble together enough dice to get this gaming going. Otherwise, you will need to use an online resource, or get creative. For online resources, there are free dice rolling phone apps like Critdice. google has a built in dice roller, or you can use a website like a.teall.info. If you want physical dice for free, you might have a hard time. But Dice are just an easy way to roll a random number. If you have another fun way of generating random numbers, then use that instead. Whether that means, cutting up some paper squares with numbers on them and putting them in a hat, or cutting little blocks of wood into dice is up to you. Dice Rolling App - CritDice [URL='https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vuesoft.critdice&hl=en_US&gl=US']CritDice - Dice Roller - Apps on Google Play[/URL] Google’s Dice Roller [URL='https://www.google.com/search?q=dice+roller']dice roller - Google Search[/URL] Web Based Dice Roller [URL='http://a.teall.info/dice/']teal 3d dice roller[/URL] [HEADING=2]Players[/HEADING] Okay now comes one of the hardest parts for some people, finding a group to play with. Most people just ask their friends or family to play. If that is not an option for you, coworkers are a great next place to look. If that doesn’t work for you, there are a lot of places online that can help you find a group. Reddit has an entire subreddit [URL='https://www.enworld.org/r/lfg']/r/lfg[/URL] dedicated to people trying to find groups for tabletop games, but that’s not all. Facebook groups such as the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition group can be a place to connect with other people looking for a game, and the Dnd Beyond forums, as well as many other online tabletop forums, have sections dedicated to getting groups together. If you do use an online resource to find players, try to ask them a few questions or have a virtual hang out before committing to playing a long game with them. You don’t really know if you will enjoy playing with them, or if you will like their attitude, so don’t commit to long term plans until you feel these people are more than strangers and you feel safe roleplaying with them. Reddit - Looking For Group [URL]https://www.reddit.com/r/lfg/[/URL] Facebook Dungeons and Dragons 5e Group [URL='https://www.facebook.com/groups/DnD5th/']Facebook Groups[/URL] DnD Beyond Forums - Looking For Group [URL='https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/looking-for-players-groups']Looking for Players & Groups - D&D Beyond General - D&D Beyond Forums - D&D Beyond[/URL] [HEADING=2]Place to Play[/HEADING] Now we have all the rules and equipment we need to play the game, now we just need a place to play it. If you are playing in person, this part can be pretty easy. Choose whoever’s house has the biggest table and play there, or let whoever enjoys hosting people, well host. If you all live too far apart, or for some reason don’t have a spare table lying around, you can look for local game stores to play at, but most require some form of payment to use their facilities, which I have to point out, is not free. If none of that works, or you are experiencing a global pandemic which causes you to never leave your house and never see anyone in person for months, online gaming is a great solution. Online gaming is done at a virtual tabletop or VTT. You have a lot of options, but most either require a onetime payment or monthly subscription. For free options, you have Astral Table Top, Tableplop, Let’s Role and many more. I am not well versed in the free virtual table top market, so people in the comments or in a google deep dive may know better. Astral [URL='https://www.astraltabletop.com/']The easiest way to play tabletop games online | Astral TableTop[/URL] Tableplop [URL='https://www.tableplop.com/']Tableplop: Easy to use virtual tabletop[/URL] Let’s Role [URL='https://lets-role.com/']TableTop Gaming for Everyone![/URL] [HEADING=2]Place to Communicate[/HEADING] Now that you have a place to play, you need a place to communicate. If you play in person, this seems like a no brainer, its just the table you are playing at, but you might need more than that. Sometimes you want to draw a map to help people visualize a situation or mark out where everyone is in relation to each other. This can be done on some printer paper or graph paper you have lying around, with everyone marked with a coin or token of some kind. Again, this is suppose to be free, so don’t go out buying a bunch of custom miniatures for you players to use. Just say Tom is red bottle cap, Darnell is the kitchen magnet, Jessica is the eraser, and so on. Although, if you have some lego figures lying around, this is a great use for them! If you are playing online, you will need a place for everyone to go to communicate. I highly recommend at least communicating through voice, but having video and text communication is a good idea too. For this, I recommend using something everyone in the group is already familiar with and uses often. Google hangouts, Skype, Zoom, or my personal favorite, Discord. If you just use what everyone is already familiar with, that means there is one less obstacle stopping you from actually playing. Google Hangouts [URL='https://hangouts.google.com/']Google Hangouts[/URL] Skype [URL='https://www.skype.com/en/']Skype | Communication tool for free calls and chat[/URL] Zoom [URL='https://zoom.us/']Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing[/URL] Discord [URL='https://discord.com/']Discord | Your Place to Talk and Hang Out[/URL] [HEADING=2]Conclusion[/HEADING] With that, you have everything you need to start, and it is all free! Do note that you will have less options in terms of character classes, adventures, and equipment than someone who spent a bunch of money. But that does not mean your game will be worse or less fun in any way. At its heart, Dungeons and Dragons is a story telling game. Your imagination and passion is going to be worth far more than any fancy terrain or cool virtual animations will ever be. So, go grab the SRD, go grab a phone for dice rolling, go grab some paper to scribble notes on, go grab some friends to play with, and go grab, some memories! [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How to play DnD 5e for Free
Top