Ok, Veeky Forums, so I asked this several times on d&d forums in my language...

Ok, Veeky Forums, so I asked this several times on d&d forums in my language, but since no one seems to give a damn there, I decided to try here.

So, I want to get into D&D and have a group of 4 friends that I could play it with, the problem is that I can only find two versions/editions of D&D to buy locally. 4e in my mother tongue and 5e starter kit in english. While I, as you can see, am pretty much fluent in english, my friends are not as much so... still, I've heard that 5e is easier/ more newbie friendly and it also comes with a ready adventure (in 4e I would have to make an adventure by my own, which would make it a bit harder to start)

I ask; What do you advise? Go with 5e and translate to my friends or go with 4e and make an adventure myself?

Don't fall for the 4e meme. What language do you speak?

Polish

What's your native language? Why not just order the 5e kit in your native language online?

>So, I want to get into D&D
First, I doubt that.
Second, why do you want to spend money on it?
Third, there are plenty of published 4e adventures and it doesn't matter whether they're in English or your native language, because they're for your english-speaking eyes only.

Well, that sucks. Shouldn't you guys be able to speak russian at least a little bit?

5e is simple enough to translate.

Of course like every italian speaks french, right?
English is a germanic language, I suppose your german and danish are perfect, amrite?
Not him.

There is no 5e in my language. WotC had a disagreement with 4e's publisher here so 5e just kinda didn't come out here
>I doubt that
why?
>Why do you want to spend money on it?
because someone took their time to design the system and I'm not one to be a piece trash and download PDF's of it or however you get it free

No objections to your third argument though, haven't thought of it at first

nyet

I'd recommend going with a lighter edition of D&D - something like Mentzer or Moldvay/Cook (or Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord) find a cheat sheet for whatever you go with, and translate that to polish.

By trimming the rules down, the amount to translate goes down too. I'm actually surprised there isn't a polish languages SRD kicking around.

>why?
Because D&D is a pretty bad starting point for getting into RPGs.

>because someone took their time to design the system and I'm not one to be a piece trash and download PDF's of it or however you get it free
Then at least get it at the lowest price possible, because at full price, you're buying one poor game for the price of six decent to good ones.

4e is good, but the core rulebook is its weakest spot. It's really best played with the CBLoader and/or other online tools, which are all in english.

If you want to play with books only, preferably 1-2 books only, I'd go with 5e.

I agree witht his guy.

There is a lot of much better system, and D&D is by no means the best, only the most popular.

There's bound to be some OSR translations.

Or possibly even something like a Dungeon World translation, there seems to be a dedicated international fanbase (for all of its faults, is still a better intro game than 4e or 5e imo).

yeah, but it surely is popular for a reason, isn't it?
Core rulebook? The set I found was DM's manual, monster manual and Player's guide, does that mean that's not even enough to start?

You can definitely play the game with those. is just talking about some programs that help with making characters and other stuff.

>yeah, but it surely is popular for a reason, isn't it?
Marketing. And inertia.
As stupid as it sounds, the only reason for its popularity is its popularity (the brand name's, that is).

>The set I found was DM's manual, monster manual and Player's guide, does that mean that's not even enough to start?
It is purely technically enough to start, but if you want a decent experience out of 4e, you need at least MM3, DMG2, PHB2, PHB3, Arcane Power, Divine Power, Martial Power, Martial Power 2, Primal Power and Psionic Power. Or the aforementioned (no longer officially obtainable, iirc) online tools, which replace all but the first two books.

Hi, fellow Polefag here.
Totally ignore that long list this guy just described. To play the game you basicly only need Player's Handbook. You can look up monster stats and write them down to use during session online, DM book is to obvious crap to pay for it, don't make my mistakes.

What region of Poland are you?

4e DM book is considered one of the best DM books.

And if you don't plan on getting more books, for the love of god get CBLoader and use funin.space. A Core rulebook only game has issues, especially if you go into levels higher than 5.

So basically what you're saying is that I'd have to buy a metric fuckton of manuals to play 4e enjoyably (and those probably won't be in my language either, I mostly found books for 3/3.5e, not the very essentials though, like MM, DM's manual, PHB, only things clearly expanding on them)

So am I better off getting 5e in english and translating?

I have to say, I haven't seen any expansions for 5e available here (though if I get it in english anyway, I could get them from outside my country if I enjoy the game enough, I suppose)

To Lubelskie pozdrawia :)

So if I get the set I mentioned in
I'm more than ready to go?

>but it surely is popular for a reason, isn't it?

At this point, D&D is popular because it's popular. For the most part it's a pretty bad game and basically is only know for name recognition at this point.

Or use electronic tools (available for free), but yes, it'd be all in english.

5e basically doesn't have expansions aside from a few adventures and sword coast adventure guide.

>5e basically doesn't have expansions
Oh, well that actually explains a lot

I'm from Łódź so i'm not able to help directly BUT

if you are from some larger City there is probably some kind of Fantasy Club around there. You can get really good advice from experienced players in places like this.

Secondly
You really need to be sure you want to play D&D. There are many many more systems aviable. If you are interested i could point you to few games published in polish that i like.

I literally live in Lublin, so yeah, a big city I'd say

And of course, I'm open to suggestions, even if the suggestions are to pick something other than D&D

I recommend BFRPG

It's free, there's loads of of free material, it's dead simple, it's very D&D.

No. What I'm saying is that you should get a better and easier (and far more favorably priced) system in English and translate what little your players need ad-hoc.

Recommendations off of the top of my head are Ryuutama (full tutorial for GM and players), Beyond the Wall (derived from oldschool D&D) and Apocalypse World (if you don't mind post-apoc instead of fantasy)

>yeah, but it surely is popular for a reason, isn't it?
It started off when it had no competition and has been riding off its own inertia since the 80's? I mean, you ask any random moron to name a tabletop RPG and inevitably, you're going to end up with people who have heard of D&D over anything else.

I mean, there has never been an edition of D&D that has outright failed. Not even 4e failed to at least break even and people are starting to get back into it after seeing how barebones 5e has become.

>Go with 5e and translate to my friends
This

Use this summary to help them, 5e is pretty easy

while I am someone who has criticized D&D time and again, I also acknowledge that it is good at what it does: gamist fantasy mishmash. it's only a bad game outside of that.

as a follow-up, it's fine to start with D&D, as long as one is aware that it is merely one role-playing experience and that other RPGs are out there who convey a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT experience. it's almost like a different hobby.

so i'll give you my advice: buy the 5e books and run a game, don't make it a science. the game, in the end, runs on your descriptions as GM and not on any game text

>I also acknowledge that it is good at what it does: gamist fantasy mishmash.
Except 3.5 and 5e horribly fail in terms of being a game, or rather "gamist", too.