So can someone please help me understand D&D 5e and the best place to get started as well as meet other people who play?

>don't have friends
>don't have a place to meet friends
>don't want to use the internet for friends
I'm afraid you're shit out of luck.

>tfw no friends to play d&d with

Then you play video games.

I don't know. Aren't there social apps and friender sites and shit that you kids use nowadays? Back in my day, I recruited gamers by posting fliers on college and library bulletin boards--you know, the kind made out of cork. But I'm not sure if thumbtack technology still exists, or if it's been lost to the sands of time, like Greek fire and reasonable Republicans, so you're probably better off using some sort of computerized interweb gizmo, doodad, thingamajig, or doohickey.

Is D&D the most overrated game ever?

There are good digital board games, but I don't know any digital TTRPGs outside playing one on roll20/Fantasy Grounds/etc

No, Dungeon World is.

Yes. Without a doubt

Here's a helpful PDF.

Yes, D&D 5E is a good place to start. Find local people on www.penandpapergames.com.

Why? Dungeon World seems justified in its praise to me, what's overrated about it?

Well, it's bad.
Not as bad as some other systems out there, but far worse than promised.

It tried to combine AW's narrative framework with some of D&D's Sacred Cows, but completely missed what made AW work and left some unseasoned and undercooked minced beef of D&D.

Can you give an example of a mechanic which is bad?

And what made "AW work" which is not present in DW?

Not trying to pick a fight here, just genuinely curious, I've played and GM'd Dungeon World before and as long as the GM was good at improvisation things tended to be quite fun.

It's not a matter of single mechanics but more how they work together, or rather fail to do so.
It is a huge, interconnected failure of the experience system, the stats and the moves.

Let's start with experience.
Any XP system is an incentive system. It should tell you want you are supposed to be doing. And DW's experience system tells you to fail.
Now, awarding experience for failure makes sense and is nice from a philosophical standpoint, but it skews the game towards slapstick comedy and I doubt that's the intention.
Contrast AW's XP, which you mostly get from rolling one of your two highlighted stats, which are picked at the beginning of each session by the GM and one other player. The meaning of this will become apparent in the next part:

Stats.
AW's unconventional stats are each tied to one or two moves which represent a distinct approach to a situation. Cool is used when you put yourself in danger to get something, Hard when you use violence, Hot when you go for the personal angle, Sharp when you think things through calmly and Weird when you try your luck with some seriously messed up psychic maelstrom fuckery. Going back a bit, that means by highlighting these stats, your GM and fellow players can tell you what they want to see you doing that session, and you get rewarded for giving them what they want.
What do DW's stats and their basic moves represent? Hitting something up close, hitting something from afar, hitting something in response to a hit, being a smartass, thinking things through calmly and going for the personal angle. And all of them are for getting through danger. Doesn't really paint a strong image, does it?

(cont.)

And the consequences of the moves are pretty wonky, too.
The INT and CHA moves are pretty much carbon copies of the Sharp and Hot moves, so there's no big problem with those. Spout Lore tries to be the Weird move, but carries none of the consequence, because there's no otherworldly power involved. The consequences of Hack'n'Slash, Volley and Defend are all numbers and rarely change the situation in any way, except for ticking down one or two resources.
AW's moves all have a direct and meaningful impact on the situation and never give you an ideal outcome, even on a 10+.

Another difference is that AW has a lot of party drama built into the rules and setting. The game does satisfying PC v PC arguments better than anything else I've personally played (not necessarily the gold standard there).

DW is based around the party interacting with NPCs, typically violently, and standard dungeon crawling doesn't work so well with the rules AW uses well for its political warfare and character drama.

Its sort of like if someone used the D&D rules for a Freemarket clone. A ruleset which isn't really suited for the game at hand.

Sex super moves so you can fuck your way to an apotheosis.

>help me understand D&D 5e
1. Read the books. Not necessarily cover-to-cover, but get an idea

2. Go to the general thread () and/or other forums discussing 5e. On reddit GitP, here, and others.

3. Actually read literature that DnD is based on, especially classical heroic legend, conan, arthurian lore, and some pulp fantasy.

>meet other people who play
In no particular order: LGS, AL, existing friends, roll20, online meetups, gamefinder threads here and on other sites, and university clubs

I think the exp for failure rule was to encourage using stats which the player did not have a significant advantage in (i.e -1, -2 stats) to avoid making all the PC's one-dimensional.

I don't know why it would turn to slap-stick unless you wanted it that way, it's up to GM and the players to determine what kind of play they want and the consequences of failure should reflect that.

The description of the stats you described are exactly those actions you'd use most frequently in a dungeon crawl ala classic D&D, so I don't see a problem there, I think that is the intention to begin with.

Consequences of the moves are pretty much whatever the GM wants, the lists given are only suggestions after all, and even then they pretty much cover what the GM might reasonably do anyway. Consequences of Hack, Volley and Defend are not just "all numbers" (at least not when I GM'd/played) but numbers should only be reached for when the narrative is exhausted or when it feels appropriate. Combat is supposed to be one of the strong points of DW, it's fast paced, involves everyone without silly things like initiative and dynamic. Consequences for Spout Lore, as I use them, are usually misinformation or outright lies, and those can be quite effective for creating drama.

But, I do agree that party drama is usually kept to a minimum in DW but then the point of DW is to find loot, kill bad guys and discover secrets (which is what you get exp for) and not necessarily party politics.

It seems to me the overarching idea of DW is to consistently put the characters into danger, danger which they themselves fall into (through failure of moves -- which is incentivized by exp or through chasing dangerous things -- again incentivized by exp) and then seeing (not allowing) if the characters can get themselves out of it.

To that end, I think the moves and exp work quite well. Seems to me like you've had a bad experience with DW (or maybe, no experience)
(1/2)

But I don't think DW is meant to be played the way you described or want to play it (combat being all numbers, party politics, avoiding failure etc.). Course I could be completely wrong, and you might be a jaded DW veteran, but in my experience I haven't encountered the problems you've mentioned.

Go play other games before it's too late and your brain ends up in D&D-inducted cyst, rendering you TTRPG hindicapped for life.

>fliers
>college
>putting OP's vulnerable autism basement dwelling out there
yeah, from what I can read in this thread he is better of playing a solo ERP.

>I think the exp for failure rule was to encourage using stats which the player did not have a significant advantage in (i.e -1, -2 stats) to avoid making all the PC's one-dimensional.
>I don't know why it would turn to slap-stick unless you wanted it that way, it's up to GM and the players to determine what kind of play they want and the consequences of failure should reflect that.
I am not talking about intention. I am talking about effect.
DW's XP system rewards failure, and failure only (barring End of Session). AW's allows the GM and players to determine AND reward the kind of play they want.

>The description of the stats you described are exactly those actions
Yes. Exactly. Actions. Not Approaches.
DW only takes into account what you do. AW wants to know why you do it.
This is also why DW has problems providing adequate consequences. Hack'n'Slash, Volley and Defend are all using violence to do... what exactly?
If the creators had actually thought about what motivates the typical actions in a dungeon crawl, they could have written much better Moves.

>Consequences of the moves are pretty much whatever the GM wants, the lists given are only suggestions after all
But so is the entire rulebook, so let's go freeform, shall we?
I feel this is the entire crux of your argument. You had fun with DW, so obviously it has to work. But here's the catch: 3.PF or even, say, FATAL can be fun with the right group and some amount of non-explicit modification, addition and omission of rules. I mean, it is kind of telling that a fan guide written for DW is basically required reading if you want to run the game. The only reason that fan guide doesn't include a set of explicit houserules is because DW already plays fast and loose with the rules.

(cont.)

>Seems to me like you've had a bad experience with DW (or maybe, no experience)
No, quite the opposite. I had an excellent experience with DW, coming off... 13th Age, if I remember correctly. It was a revelatory experience and I got a lot of my friends GMing with it for the first time.
But then I experienced AW and got to understand the game that DW is based on. And with that understanding, I saw how DW's creators completely bungled its conversion into a D&D love letter.

Again, Dungeon World is not bad. It is just a disappointment in how much better it could have easily been.

Hmm, well you can't just leave it at then! How could it be better? What would you add or subtract or modify?

And as you correctly stated, I [i]am[/i] biased since I enjoyed the experiences with DW (and admittedly I've never played AW), so I'd love to know how it could be better.

I can't write you a hotfix, if that's what you're expecting.
It's not that it could be made better, but that it could have been better, had it not been for the fundamental errors I listed.

If I were to do it better, which is an undertaking in a scale far beyond what I am willing to do, I would do a complete rework of the game.

First, trash the Ability scores.
D&D-style stats do not work in a game Powered by the Apocalypse. Think about what you want and need to accomplish over the course of a dungeon crawl. Think about what could go wrong in trying to accomplish that. Then make Moves out of that. And only then do you come up with stats for these Moves.

Second, make HP meaningful or toss them out.
AW has a clock with six segments for a character's health. The first three segments heal over time, but once you go past them, you slowly but surely bleed out without medical attention. It is perfectly possible for a single hit to take out three segments. Every single hit changes the situation, not because of any purely narrative additions to the injury, but because every single hit takes you very tangibly closer to death.
So you either attach some interesting conditions to that HP pool or you come up with an entirely different health system. Just make it feel meaningful.

Third, experience.
Failure giving XP is perfectly fine. But it should be a consolation prize, not the main method of character advancement.
Copying AW's system is perfectly sufficient, because it's frankly brilliant, but some original creation is fine, too, as long as it allows the group to reward what it wants to see or reinforces the central theme of the game. (Which I assume to be dungeon crawling for the purposes of this post.)

Beggars can't be choosers.

>So can someone please help me understand D&D 5e
yeah, the book. Read it. Read it again. Read it a third time. Then and ONLY then go the 5eg thread and ask questions.

Leave Veeky Forums before you end up like , elitist over games of pretend

5e and OSR do dungeon crawling better than any other system.

UNDERSTANDING D&D 5E
>5esrd.com/
>dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules?x=dnd/basicrules

The srd is a free source for general rules but is somewhat incomplete and doesn't contain a lot of the 1st party content, as far as I can gather.

The Basic Rules on the Wizards site is a free light version of the ruleset that is rather lacking in features (Only 4 races and 4 classes, no feats, etc.) but it'll give you a good overview of the game. I don't know if anyone really plays Basic at this point but it can be a good introductory version if you want to run a game yourself with some other friends who are new and interested, and don't mind not having a million character options.

If you like what you see enough to spend some money, then you can buy a Player's Handbook from a big book store, online, or from your local comics/games store. Its a little expensive, which is why I recommend checking the other stuff out first if you are unsure. If you want to DM with the full ruleset, you'll need the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master Guide as well, I don't recommend that right away especially since that's really expensive.

MEETING PEOPLE TO PLAY

You're there, at least if you want to play online (ie. over Skype, and possibly with a virtual table top like Roll20). I see group finder threads every now and again here.

If you want to play in person, FLGS, or find out if there is a tabletop/D&D club at your school/place of work. If none of those options are available to you, just keep going where nerdy types go, and making friends, chances are a few will play or DM.

In life, sometimes you have to say 'fuck it' to other people's judgement of you. Especially the older you get. Hiding some of what and who you are is understandable in high school, but by college you should be learning to let that go.

Otherwise you're going to be a dull person who is scared to have any/many discernible interests, your whole life.

Seconding this, along with some hot opinions:

DW tries and fails to take the more narrativist approach of AW and lazily grafts on the more gamist approach of D&D. It tries to have meat-point HP make sense in a narrative system, for example.

It could be fixed by being a different system, and choosing to be narrativist or gamist.

The easiest way in is to find an existing group and ask to join.

That can be found at any of the following: