DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE: Teaches how to run D&D adventures for other players and how to give them monsters to fight, mysteries to solve, and fantasy worlds to explore.PLAYER'S HANDBOOK: The essential reference for every D&D player, the Player's Handbook contains rules for character creation and advancement, backgrounds and skills, exploration and combat, equipment, spells, and much more.
ALL THE TOOLS: The Dungeons & Dragons Core Rules Gift Set includes a copy of all three core rulebooks (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual) plus a Dungeon Master's Screen, all collected in a stylish slipcase.Plus, Wilson says, flipping through a book for answers is on-brand for D&D. Dimension 20 cast member Lou Wilson says the PHB helps him improvise as a DM because “it lets me understand what the nature of a paladin is so that I can always figure out, based on what a player wants to do with a character, how that fits into the dynamic.” You can also buy a digital version of the handbook on D&D Beyond, but the hard copy is more fun. The background information in the book is also useful for longtime players. Ally Beardsley, a Dimension 20 cast member, appreciates its tactility: “It’s very nice to play D&D and not have your phone or any electronics, and the PHB is amazing for that.” It reminds James Melo, who has DM’d most of the campaigns I’ve played, of “playing Dungeons & Dragons in the basement at the hobby shop that was in my neighborhood, and we’d be up until three in the morning slaying orcs.” Mulligan recommends it particularly for younger players: “Giving them books to get totally absorbed in is great.”
(Other core books like the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual are necessary for DMs.) “Not only is it your guide to the rules for playing and building your first character, it is an essential reference for the base spells, combat, skills, and equipment,” says professional DM Satine Phoenix. Nearly everyone we spoke to recommended getting a hard copy of the Player’s Handbook ( PHB), the game’s illustrated rule book for players. The rulebook and a beginner kit they’ll need to get started (if they don’t have a friend who DMs).
We spoke to 16 devoted D&D players - including podcasters, professional tabletop role-players, actors, and the friends who first got me involved in the game - about gifts they’d recommend for everyone from the level-one bard to the level-20 multi-class sorcerer-barbarian. “If you have dice and you have a pencil and paper, you can play this game.” “All you really need to play D&D is a way to record character information and a set of dice,” says Brennan Lee Mulligan, the creator and dungeon master (the person who runs a game, usually abbreviated to “DM”) of the show Dimension 20.
While some players will carry around a “backpack full of role-playing gear,” according to Anthony Burch, a co-host of the Dungeons and Daddies podcast, part of the game’s appeal is a short list of essentials. If you’re gift-shopping for a D&D player (or for yourself), some good news: The game requires less equipment than I expected, though there’s always room for more. It has taken longer for me to internalize all the rules - I just figured out how to use my rogue’s class features correctly - but in the midst of a long COVID winter, it was a good excuse to make up a character, put on a wig (not mandatory but fun), roll some dice, and learn surprising things about your friends. But after hearing enough secondhand D&D stories about dead gods and magical pets, I succumbed to curiosity. I wasn’t completely turned off, but I didn’t expect to find it especially addictive or intuitive. I’d known of D&D as a math-heavy tabletop role-playing game first published in 1974 with a historically white, male, and nerdy fanbase. Photo-Illustration: The Strategist Photos: Retailersĭuring the last few years, my corner of the world has been transformed by strange, arcane forces: More and more of my friends are playing Dungeons & Dragons.