D&D 5E ASKING ASSISTANCE

[Quickleaf]

Ah okay, thanks a bunch. I have a local comic shop but they don't do D&D very often. They do more MTG and YuGiOh tourneys. And like I said I do want to learn how to DM but I will definitely try to find someone who would be more cool with it. I live in a superbly rural area where everything is about sports and beer and hating people that are different so it's really hard to find others that enjoy this type of thing.

Welcome to ENWorld Seth Yeah, that certainly sounds like a challenging environment to find fellow gamers in, but you'd be surprised! We're everywhere!

I think D&D is best learned through osmosis through friends, your cousin would be ideal. Have you ever seen or participated in a D&D game before? If not, there are lots of live streams online to learn the game. Organized play at public venues (Adventurer's League) is also good, but likely a scarce opportunity or else too far from where you are. As a last resort, you could try an online tabletop like Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds (there may be others now) or even play-by-post –– personally, while those are great options for gaming, I don't recommend them when learning the game at first. Face-to-face really is the best way to learn D&D.

I remember I got into D&D back in Boston from my friend Mike (rip) whose older brother DMed a game. Classic dungeon-crawling and beer-drinking stuff. I was 8 IIRC, so the older guys were beer drinking. And we indeed played in their family's basement.

When we moved to San Diego, I think I was 10 or 11, I enrolled in a summer camp that had D&D as an extracurricular, and I played the party rogue in the A-series modules (Slavers). A lot of fun. I got killed by traps so many times, they had a special rogue resurrection fund. Playing with strangers gave me more confidence, and made me realize I wanted to try DMing.

A year later I met my friend Jarett at a Ray Bradbury book-signing at UCSD. There was a power outage due to storms, and I ended up chatting with Jarett about Fahrenheit 451 and other books, and somehow got on the topic of D&D and I invited him to play. For a bit it was just me DMing for him. Then I bought the Planescape books, and met my friend Vishal in junior high who was interested, so I ended up DMing a Planescape game for the two of them.

I played a little through a club, with roommates and mutual friends in college. But then I left the hobby for many years until I moved to Honolulu and had a serendipitous encounter with an old high school friend Charlotte who'd moved to Honolulu with her spouse and son, and they happened to have a D&D game running.

You never know! In my experience, a lot of people are "D&D curious" but never get the opportunity because they don't know anyone, they're worried about persistent stigma or getting teased, or just because geeks can tend to be more introverted.

 

[robus]

Check the "best of " pinned thread. There's some good stuff for new DMs there. Also check out the AngryGM.com, if his style doesn't grate on you, there's a ton of great (ha!) advice there. I've found it invaluable and easy reading but YMMV.

 

[CydKnight]

In my experience, a lot of people are "D&D curious" but never get the opportunity because they don't know anyone, they're worried about persistent stigma or getting teased, or just because geeks can tend to be more introverted.

This has been true in my experience as well. In fact, when I began playing again almost a year ago, I could have given up playing before I started because it took me nearly 2 months just to find a consistent group and one that I basically had to create from scratch myself largely of players who had never played a tabletop RPG before.

So my advice to Seth is, if you really truly want to play, don't give up trying to find a regular game group. Eventually you will find one but it may take some additional effort on your part at least until you get in the first one. Later it will be much easier to find a game as you network with other gamers you meet along the way.