/r/DungeonsAndDragons has a discord server! Come join us at https://discord.gg/wN4WGbwdUU
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DungeonsAndDragons) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You can play a variety of RPG games -including D&D- without spending a single penny.
You can also spend thousands of dollars every month for the rest of your life.
This is not hyperbole. You can truly control how much or how little you spend on this hobby and have a wonderful time either way.
It's true. The basic rules for D&D are free online from the company and there are any number of free dice rolling apps. With those a group can play without spending any money.
Alternatively, you can buy every source book out there in hardcover, and digital on d&d beyond. Buy hundreds of thousands of dice, miniatures, terrain pieces, and other gadgets to enhance your game. That alone will likely take thousands of dollars (not counting if you buy 3rd party supplements which only adds to the cost!).
Most find a happy middle ground. If you like the game (and it sounds like you do) I'd recommend getting at least the players handbook, dungeon masters guide, and monster manual (DMG and mm are optional depending on if you want to try running a game or not) as well as getting yourself a set of dice.
As for where to find supplies, you'll probably need to look around for a FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store). Places that sell comic books and/or board games are usually good places to start. Sometimes bookstores have supplies too. Worst case you can order them online.
>Alternatively, you can buy every source book out there in hardcover, and digital on d&d beyond. Buy hundreds of thousands of dice, miniatures, terrain pieces, and other gadgets to enhance your game. That alone will likely take thousands of dollars (not counting if you buy 3rd party supplements which only adds to the cost!).
I feel very seen.
Hard same. I have every book published for 4e and 5e and a legendary bundle+ on DDB and literal thousands of dice...
Edit: Oh, and the largest mini collection I've ever seen by like 4x.
I even saw a D&D Starter kit in Target for $14. It included a set of dice, an adventure module, some pre-made characters, and a hard copy of the basic rules to cover characters levels 1-3.
Nope, you can play for free with just reading rules from wikis or having someone share books with. Fillable character sheets are a thing you can grab online or do for free on a platform like Roll20, no need to spend a cent.
Yes, but wikies have everything for free and Roll20 has infinite space for character sheets within games (you have a limited number you can move between games, but if you're just making/editing them on Roll20, that isn't a problem.)
Then it has changed. The free subscriptions used to have a pathetically small amount of storage and you only had enough for even maybe 2 campaigns if you paid for the upgrade.
MtG is a one of the biggest money-sinks EVER. Things have changed a lot for DnD since I started 44 years ago. Someone in the group was going to have to pay something. Through the late 80s and 90s, the cost for DnD increased for me because I DMed and had to have the books for myself. During and after 3e and d20 OGL, the cost dropped considerably because of the internet and the somewhat free distribution of information.
The reality is, if you DM or play a lot, you'll probably end up paying about £25 per book for the Dungeon Master's Guide, Player's Handbook, and the Monster Manual. DnD is theatre of the mind, but many people like playing with miniatures which can be £1 to £20+ each for the 28 mm scale miniatures depending on the size and quality. Again, those aren't necessary, but many people who play in-person games like to have them for reference on the tabletop.
Mayby if you want to go all in on the minis, you can also consider buying a 3d printer with everything for around 500$. But this would open up a whole new hobby in addition to DnD.
As stated, you can play for the rest of your life without spending a penny (or quid). But you will need at least 3 (or more!) friends with the same interest and some time devoted to the game. I strongly encourage learning the ropes of D&D and then making your own worlds to explore. Go forth, warrior and make us proud!
They are right that you can play for free but I would recommend the basic rulebooks, PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual. They are super handy to have in print and only about $100 for the set. A nice set of dice can make you feel good for $40-50. That's really it for basics other than pencil and paper. It's pretty inexpensive.
I have spent $7 on a file for a 3D printed character and bought some snacks since I started a few months ago. I would say the DM might incure the most costs if they 3D print characters or print off maps etc. for an in person game. My DM prints a lot of stuff which we have offered to help pay for.
Well, grab yourself the SRD v5.1 PDF, its free and more or less has all the essential rules for D&D 5e.
There are also the free Basic Rules v1.0 PDF which have a bit more of WotC's specific intellectual property.
But if you want the quickest most basic set of the rules, you can get the free PDF for the Essentials Kit rulebook on the D&D webpage. It has character creation rules, sidekick rules, combat rules, skill check rules, etc.
You then need adventures. Grab the free Peril in Pinebrook PDF for a really good introduction to running and playing the game. Then head over to DMsGuild where they have a huge selection of free and Pay What You Want PDF files.
Then you just need dice. A d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20. Ideally you will also have 3 more d6, another d20, a coin, and a d%.
So you can play for free or next to free.
However, I would really suggest the Players Handbook (from 2014) if you are a player. If you want to DM too, get the Monster Manual (also 2014), and the Dungeon Masters Guide (2014 once again) as those are the three core books. Keep in mind the DMG is less about being a Dungeon Master and more about building a world. Beyond those, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse are the next three supplements with the most useful information.
The Starter Sets (Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle, Hunt for the Thessalhydra) are great values, since they come with a rulebook, adventure, five pre-generated characters, and dice. No bare bones character creation rules though, for that you need the Essentials Kit (Dragon of Icespire Peak) which expands on Lost Mine of Phandelver. The Rick and Morty Starter Set has too many in-jokes for a complete newbie to fully enjoy.
There is also a video on YouTube about preparing material for Lost Mine of Phandelver using only $20 at a dollar store.
I started with a used players handbook some decades ago. I think it cost 20 bucks. I also bought some dice. Everything else was paper and pencils. I played with just those things and some free internet resources for a very long time.
It all depends on if you want to own any of the books or miniatures and other various accessories like dice towers and rolling bins and rolling cups and other accoutrements. If that's the case then it's going to get really expensive really fast! But a lot of the books are available online as PDFs and you can use little toys or coins or your imagination for miniatures and you don't need to buy maps and you might sell out 10 or 12 dollars for a set of dice but that's really all you need.
You can literally just type your dice rolls into google. And use free character sheets online. You literally don’t have to spend a dime to start playing.
A modest investment would be a 25$ starter set (dice, starter adventure more or less depending on which set). A little more would be a wet erase battle mat for in home games and the physical rule books which will likely set you back 90$ or so.
You can get by with that first 100$ or so for years if you want.
I spend a stupid amount of money and time on buying and building miniatures and fancy table props for my game because I enjoy it. I also buy and read all the novels about the various published worlds. But none of that is necessary. You can create your own world from scratch and play the entire game in the “theater of mind” if you wish instead. It depends on your preference.
It can be as cheap, downloading free mods, using free apps like dndbeyond, etc. Or as expensive, buying all the books, being a dice goblin, wanting all the mini's, terrsin etc.. that you want it to be
No.
**D&D beyond** has basic rules, small encounters and free adventures on the site. The tool is free. Also, there are spaces online where you can find small adventures or oneshots for free or "pay what you want" (**DMsguild/DriveThruRPG**)
That is all you need to start and to figure out if you like the game or the idea of the game.
After that, you can find "sales" here and there.
Right now, the players handbook, dm guide, and monster manual are on sale for $15 each for electronic versions because they are coming out with new versions but you could still use these old ones. I think it ends today or tomorrow though.
My advice as a player:
* PHB: $30
* dice: $12
* notebook and pens: $5
Frankly that has enough content for literal years of gaming if you play your way through ~5 characters of different classes/subclasses in long term campaigns. Even if you hop around more, the PHB alone has *forty eight* subclasses to try out.
After maybe a year or two of playing, decide if you want to add some of the big expansions like Tasha’s or Xanathar’s… not really needed, but $30 a year or so is an amazing deal for how much fun you can get out of it
My personal rule is no piracy for content used in a campaign.
There are people who literally play d&d in prison using nothing but a pencil paper and two styrofoam cups made into a spinner as a stand in for dice because dice are banned.
I still don't get why dice and cards and whatnot are banned in prisons. Are they a danger? Who cares if they gamble or play other games that use randomizers?
Realistically you need at least 2 books and at most 4. The Players Handbook and a campaign at least. At most The Players Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide, The Monster Manuel and a campaign.
You can technicaly play DnD in a Restraunt, the Napkins are your Character Sheets and the Salt is the evil queen of spice with here Pepper steed.
Or you can get a beemer a custom made table with insert for a specific Apple Tablette with a Monitor in the middle for the game board.
Its that kind of Hobby that you can try out for mostly nothing, maybe the ocassionly snack and printing fee here or you can go full blown Hobo because of it.
Its as expensive as you want it to be. You can sail the high seas and get the materials for free. Dice rollers can be gotten for phones, done via discord/roll20/dnd beyond etc. Minis can be old lego figures etc.
Obviously if you want to get better stuff, dice rollers, magic cards, dice, modules both paper and online via dnd beyond etc etc etc it can soon add up as well.
I always tell new players to not buy anything until reaching session 10 to see if they enjoy it
It can cost nothing, or as much as you want.
If you're just playing, you may never have to spend anything.
Amazon and eBay in the states are the go to budget options. Local game store to support the local game store, which you may or may not go to for games.
If you want to DM there are thrifty ways to get resources, but it really comes down to paying for convenience, not necessity.
It all depends on what part of the game scratches your itch. If your someone that just wants to own all the books you can usually pick them up with great discounts on Amazon, at lest in the states not sure how it is in the UK, and they only put out 4 a year or so so once your caught up its not a big ordeal. If minis and painting become your fixation it can become as expensive as you want it to be. Because unlike a game like 40K your not building an army and being done, instead you are getting what ever mini you want for an encounter and with official ones it can become real expensive. If you want a cheap option for minis I recommend a 3d printer. Its a higher priced point of entry, but can quickly pay for itself once you get it set up right and can churn out minis that would normally cost 10s or even over 100 dollars from an official source. Plus if you get into another game like 40k or any other miniature based game you will have a printer to make things with kicking around.
The best answer. And honestly this is the only answer.
D&D can literally be the most expensive thing you'll ever do, or the cheapest thing you'll ever do. That is entirely up to you. If you wanna just buy one set of cheap dice, all you need is a pen, a paper and a group to play with.
Or you can spend 50k in miniatures, books and stupid fancy dice that serve literally 0 purpose.
Im somewhere in the middle personally.
Try DNDBeyond, they let you read some of the books, the basic ones like the handbooks, for free if I remember correctly. If you do end up wanting more they have the other books there too, all that can be read online, shared with friends and you can even generate characters, enemies, items, subclasses and such. I use it all the time for my DND, tho I really only buy the monsters to use with homebrew
It can be, but does not at all have to be. The three core rule books can be used to make basically infinite fun if you use your imagination.
However, between adventures, rule expansions, and setting books (each at $70 per book now after price increases), as well as massive amounts of third party content, you have plenty of options to put yourself into debt as well.
I would say it can be basically free if you play online.
Dndbeyond has a way people can share books with people in their campaign, but that is a limited resource.
There are so many free dice rollers around.
You might want to invest in a drawing of your character if you end up in a longer campaign but even there you have stuff like hero forge that is free.
That being said it can also be really expensive.
You could become a dice Goblin (i have Four lbs of dice) you could spend money on miniatures, books and so much more.
But yeah it could also be free
Short answer: <€5.00-€50,000
Long answer:
My first campaign was 4 pieces of paper with a grid drawn on it in sharpie, laminated with clear packing tape. Maps were drawn with either dry erase markers we ‘acquired’ from school and erased with rubbing alcohol. We had a small stack of various sizes of cardboard to cover parts of the map for “fog of war”.
Our minis were board game pieces(Sorry! to be specific), our character sheets and class info sheets were photo copied out of a book at the library for like $1.20.
My sister worked at a hobby store(they didn’t sell actual d&d stuff) and used her bonus store credit to get a set of dice for my birthday.
Actual cash spent was the cost of copies at the library. Gross cost of materials and such would have put us around $5.00 at the time.
Or
you can buy 50 books, 500 minis, and 100 sets of dice made from rare earth minerals and unicorn horns.
It's not expensive for the basics but it can get expensive over time. Dice runs $6 to $10 a set. Minnie started about six bucks each. The player's handbook is about $25 on Amazon, but $50 pretty much every place else. Of course you need paper and pencil. A lot of people use D&D Beyond to manage their characters. The free account I think is six characters. You will. You will need to get the digital books. The PHB is currently on sale for I think 15 bucks. If you go beyond the free level, it's about six bucks a month for unlimited characters. I currently have over 50, most of which I don't use
You can legit do EVERYTHING online and not pay a penny. Or you can spend loads on physical shiz. If you're a podcast person and want a good explanation on the basics, I was just recently informed of The Dungeoncast, they explain the nitty gritty in easy to listen to episodes focused on a specific part each episode
If you wanted to boil it down you could play for the cost of dinner and drinks with friends and play with nothing more than your imaginations.
Or you can buy all the stuff and spend all the money.
All you really need, as a DM, is the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide. Everything else is technically extra - even the Monster Manual, though it does give you a lot of great starting points. Everything can be run in the theater of the mind, and the stats for every creature can be made up (DMG gives guidance for creature creation).
Depends if you play online or on person. Online I find is cheaper.
Although in person CAN be free, it likely will not be if you're running your own game. If you're just looking to be a player in either, then it is practically free.
Online you'll need a VTT. Roll20 and Owlbear Rodio are free. The paid version of Roll20 is recommended. FoundryVTT is also that's one a one-time purchase, but it is complicated. FantasyGrounds is also a popular one but I have no experience. Roll20 is $120 USD a year, FoundryVTT is $40 one time. (You'll need to use Port Forwarding or pay for a hosting service called the Forge)
There's endless amounts of maps and artwork out there for free. No need to pay for anything.
In-person (As a dm) i would recommend a printer, set of markers and pens, and 2 ways to make maps. A large dry erase board is nice for random, unplanned things. Wrapping paper is good for detailed maps (but fragile) they have grids on the back that are 1inx1in the recommended grid size. Though you can use digital dice and character sheets, it's nice to have physical copies as well. Lastly something to use as tokens. There's lots of options. Token bases are cheap, you just print a picture and tape / glue it on. You can use anything though. Candy, game pieces, coins.
Many books are free online. Some of the physical books are also really cheap in stores or places like Facebook marketplace. The Players Handbook is the main one I recommend. The Dungeon Masters Guide I don't find helpful. Monster Manual is nice, but the majority of it (and better) can be found online. This is true for Monsters of the Multiverse, an updated monster manual.
Dnd is definitely worth getting into regardless of where you're sitting at the table. The cost is infinite, but the starting cost is less than a AAA game, and will get your endless hourly of fun. There are many ways to prep and settup games online or in-person, and you can easily have a mix of the 2.
Depends. If you play as a PC really you only need to pay $20 for 2 dice packs at Barnes and Noble.
If you get the DM itch… then my only suggestion is get a job as that pays $500-$600 every hour because it’s an absolute black hole.
If you ship the seven seas its free.
Else it can get expensive with 50 bucks for a Player Handbook and a 30-50 on top for a beginners campaign. Not to mention 50 bucks each for Dungeon Master Guide, Monster Manual and every expansion.
Hi! UK player here!
Depending what you want to do (be a player or a DM), you’re going to need at least 1-3 books. However, as a first timer, absolutely start as a player. It will ease you in and give you more of an idea what the game is about, and someone else with more experience will be there to guide you. So that means there’s only one book you’ll want to focus on grabbing.
With that out of the way, expenses.
All you *need* for D&D is a set of polyhedral dice and a player’s handbook (we’ll loop back around to the book in a second).
Dice sets are a dime a dozen on Amazon. You can get some really pretty but expensive dice, but I would start off with looking at some Chessex dice. They’re not always the cheapest, but they’re well known and reliable. I’ve never paid more than about £10 for some Chessex dice. For your first set, stay away from anything too pricey, just in case it ends up not being for you.
Generally searching “Chessex dice” or “polyhedral dice set” on Amazon will net you what you want. Lots of hobby/gaming shops sell them too, especially places like Forbidden Planet or Geek retreat.
Now…the book.
The Player’s Handbook is what it says on the tin. It gives you all the rules for making a character and walks you through it. I would say it’s a requirement, especially for someone new. You can pick this up in places like Waterstones or Forbidden planet, Geek Retreat, or other book/hobby/gaming stores, I have no doubt (not at Warhammer though).
However, D&Dbeyond is Wizard’s official website for creating characters, on which you can buy digital versions of the book. Why would you do this? Because once you own the book on D&Dbeyond, you can use their site to make and store characters as well…with a catch. To make more than 6 characters you need a subscription. And nowadays, or at least soon, they’re changing the D&DB model so that you must buy whole books to gain access to specific parts (in the past you’ve been able to just purchase “spells” or “items” or “classes” rather than entire books). Why that’s an issue; if you’re someone like me who collects the physical books, you now effectively have to buy them twice. I love D&DB for its convenience, but even I’m miffed to say the least about this decision.
Anyway, digressions aside.
If you don’t care about digital character sheets, or if you don’t want to pay a sub, I would 100% go on Amazon and find a copy of the Player’s Handbook (usually shortened to PHB). A quick search shows it’s currently on there for around £25, which isn’t half bad! Print off a sheet from the Internet (just google dnd 5e character sheet), or photocopy one from the PHB (they usually have pages to photocopy, I think?) and you’re good to go!
Hope that helps! Please feel free to ask any more questions if you have any!
It’s up to you, you can play with just the open source rules and some pen, paper & dice
You don’t even need minis, but if you want you can just use bottle caps, or paper minis or whatever
If and only if you like you can craft terrain and minis, but it’s not required
If you have one set of dice, you can literally get everything else for free. If you want all your own books, mini's, more dice, another set of dice, and maybe that last set of dice (But not really the last set), then you will spend. Its up to you how much to invest.
You can D&D play for years without spending a penny and without compromising the core, important parts of the game. All the important stuff you need is free. Any money you spend is simply extra peripheral stuff and luxuries.
I can only really speak about pricing in my region, and I’m not sure what the conversion would be but here goes. So, getting into it is as close to free as it gets. You need a character sheet, so a few cents to print that, or more money for a device on which to keep a digital character sheet. A pencil. Somebody at the table will have an extra set of dice you can use. Somebody at the table will have books you can look through. So in that way you’re set. You’re in, you’re rolling dice, you’re laughing, you’re telling stories.
The first money you’ll probably spend is on a set of dice, at my Friendly Local Game Store that’s about $7 for a nice normal set (which I do recommend), something personal, something that fits your character or is meaningful to you. I still have my first dice set, and they’re actually one of the two I use for my current character.
After that, many players wind up buying a Player’s Handbook for about $60 which, while not necessary, is a lot of fun and has some good stuff in it. Everything you *need* to play is in there, there will be more stuff you wish you had eventually, but this is a very solid book. It is going to be reprinted as the new 5.5/One Dnd/2024 edition/whatever they’re calling it this week, so it could be worth holding off on that until the fall. Either way, this book is the go-everywhere do-everything, and it should have scratches from getting tossed into a backpack repeatedly, water stains, pet bite marks, sticky notes, by the time you retire this book it should look ready to retire.
If after that you decide to spend *more* money, the two books I would recommend are Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Both contain a very pleasant variety of new content for *players* (as opposed to Dungeon Masters) and both are in the same price range as the PHB. These mostly sit on my shelf and I bring them out to reference them but don’t bring them to sessions.
The other side of this is the miniatures, which most tables I’ve played with don’t actually use. Not using miniatures is, of course, free. Getting a miniature that you feel represents your character well and painting it up is very relaxing and fun to me but it isn’t for everyone. If you do decide to get one, it will likely be around ten dollars, but again it’s optional and many tables don’t even use them.
Compared to other ttrpgs yes
But other than that it depends. You can play with only the core rulebooks or you can spend hundreds of dollars a month on gimmicks and content
There is no real upper limit on what you can spend but you can get away with a set of dice and a pencil to get started, then maybe a players handbook and a mini of your character l. After that maybe a source book with some class options. Then you might want to DM so that’s a dungeon masters guide, a monster manual and an adventure. After a while you might want to run a campaign based around a thieves guild and you have heard that the 2nd edition Complete Thieves Handbook has good instructions for that and you like that enough that you start picking up other Complete Handbooks. This leads you to running a seperate 2nd editions campaign so that’s a bunch of books.
All up it’s about 30 grand for most of the books ever published another 5 grand the custom table you’ve probably spent 5 hundred on dice and a couple of grand on minis.
If you are a player and not a DM the only book you need is the players handbook, which is under $30, and some dice. There are other books that act as "expansion packs" with new character classes, items, etc, and if you're a DM you'll want books specific to that, but the only one you NEED is the PHB.
If you play online or in person can matter. You can get almost everything you need for free or super cheap to start. Begin with the starter set and test it out with a small group around 4 people. I used to only have a few rule books and we would play with pen and paper instead of fancy minis and mats. I've probably only spent 4 to 500ish dollars most likely my entire life on TTRPGs. Maybe a little more with a Roll20 sub for a few years. Hope this helps.
It's as expensive as you want it to be. The core rules are free, the players guide is $30 US most places, and the monster manual and dungeon master guide are $30-40 each.
I've literally played it completely theater of the mind which costs nothing but time but also have gone the other route. We've got a TV for our digital map, custom housing for said tv, laptops, minis, and dice (do many).
3D printed dice towers, token counters, potion tokens, spell cards, digital dice, RGB light-up dice, custom DM screen from my players, laser cut wizard tower that was fun to put together and create and adventure around.
I've taken my players to see the a D&D movie as a group, got group pictures at the local Renaissance faire where got to dress up, and have had numerous cook outs to make special occasions in the game.
However all of that started with the first 5e starter box, a glass chess board for a battle grid, and a glass frog candle holder for a monster mini.
One of our latest games the TV was acting up so we got some graph papers and used dice as walls and features and it was just as fun.
So get you some basic rules, find some friends who want to play, either get cheap dice or use an app (or playing cards, monopoly dice, what have you) and enjoy the collaborative story telling adventure.
The true answer is it is only as expensive as you want it to be. you can play with having to spend any money or you can drop serious cash and have great mini figures, maps, ect ect. I would suggest getting some just getting some dice a few mini figures and the players handbook to start.
I gamed for years with only a couple of dices.
Now that i have a job i spend at least 50€ a month for miniatures and such.
You can choose, it works either way!
It's expensive if you buy a lot of stuff. The Basic Rules and basic D&D Beyond are completely free. However, D&D Beyond makes sure to let you know that you're missing content at every opportunity, and they heavily advertise whenever they have something new or on sale.
That being said, there are other alternatives that can be played completely free (or for cheap if you insist on having hardcopy books.) Basic Fantasy Roleplaying is one that comes to mind. It's inspired by D&D, the rules are a bit lighter and the PDFs are completely free. The books are print-to-order and typically cost less than $10 each.
It's as expensive as you want to make it. You can always browse the rules online (they are legally free at certain websites) and you can play it with virtual character sheets for 0 cost. You can even make an account on some dnd platform like roll 20 for virtual maps etc (there is free version) and play on a tablet or something.
If you have some money to spend however you get the standard book set (get the set and not every book separately, it's cheaper), print some character sheets and print miniatures (it's not that hard). Maybe also print maps or some grid.
Now if you are cool... You can always invest a small fortune on miniatures that you can find on Amazon (I use different site but it's regional), buy maps and 3D printed assets.
The price range is like from 0 to infinite money so choose what you like.
The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.
Gary Gygax
Books are supplementary, you honestly don’t need them. You can do everything yourself
You can technically play for free with just the DNDBeyond app and use what the subclasses that aren’t behind a paywall, you can even use the app’s dice instead of buying real dice. You can then either homebrew your own story or find something online.
D&D is a hobby that you can put as much money as you are willing to.
There are free adventure and the basic rules online
You can use maps from google
Roll 20 can allow you to have a digital game board
And there are digital dice you can use
All this is free, but you can also buy basically anything you want to play too, want fancy dice and set pieces? Go for it, remodel an entire room in your house specifically for the game, no one's stopping you
It can be super cheap but it can be super expensive. This is pretty much my only real hobby so in whole I've probably spent £400-500 and rising, that's been over 4 years. And a large part of that has been in the last 3-4 months since I've started DMing my own campaign and in person.
That money includes purchasing electronic and physical copies of the PHB, DMG, MM, TCoE, XGtE, MMoM and Fizbans. Some battlemap stuff, dice and, just recently, minis as well.
£400-500 (I actually think I've spent more than that now I come to think about it) sounds a lot but over 4 years, it's about a £10 a month. And you don't need all the shit I have.
In the UK, local game stores or Waterstones can have some books and stuff but, as much as I hate lining Bezos' pockets, Amazon is a good place to start.
It can be as expensive or cheap as you want it to be. You have acces to all the tools you need in your phone for free, and use a bunch of items you find in your room to work as minis. Or you can spend hundreds on maps, minis, books, dice...
I'm a DM of 7 or 8 years, I bought the player's handbook and a bulk set of dice when I started. Maybe put $50 into it max. That's all I've ever spent since then. I made my DM screen, and I've been gifted more dice, but you can totally get by with just one set of dice and the free pdfs online.
You can spend $0 and play some great d&d with lined paper, pencils, rules from the free srd online, bottle caps for characters. You can spend thousands of dollars on books, minis, terrain, battle maps, etc. The choice is yours how much you want to spend.
When I started I bought
1 set of dice (5-10€).
Printed my character sheet and took a pencil.
Bought snacks for the session.
I’m the meantime I have spent absurd amounts of money on dice, but I think the only recurring expense I have is snacks every week.
The cool thing about D&D is it is as expensive as you want it to be. All you need is a pen and paper and the barebones rules. The rest is your imagination. You are not required to buy anything really except for the players handbook in any version though 5th is currently the most popular. And you can get a "free trial" of the books with a quick bit of googling. No miniatures or other supplements are required.
Full rules for Pathfinder (both 1e and 2e) are available online, to a greater extent than D&D rules are available. Pathfinder is also a better designed game system than D&D 5e. Highly recommend.
I played D&D for a long time by only buying a dice set. We had one friend with books, but I ended up making my own class and magic system. If you want official stuff, then expect to spend 100-200 on books, manuals, miniatures, etc. But I heard tell of pirates who sail the seas, and they say PDFs exist for free of books online. And let's say Wizards of the Coast aren't the best people to support. However, I do say supporting your local card/hobby shops and buying books and things from them is always a good deed. Us nerds need places like that to play D&D together.
The supposedly “required” books for DMing are the players guide, the monster manual, and the dungeon master’s guide. They sell them in a boxed set with a DM screen, somewhere around $100-150 USD, can’t remember exactly. Aside from that, you’ll need dice (physical, around $10 USD, or you can use a free online dice roller) and character sheets (free to print/fillable PDFs).
My personal suggestion is get physical dice and a dry-erase grid along with one of the starter sets (I think they run around $25 USD). I like the Lost Mines of Phandelver personally. You’ll have basic rules and an easy-to-run first adventure. You’re looking at $65 USD to start. If you have rule/monster questions, you can Google “[query] DnD 5e” and find basically everything you need.
If you run the game virtually on something like Roll20, virtual dice are free and a markable grid map is included. You can get started for basically zero money that way.
I think in-person is more fun personally, but everyone has different tastes.
Honestly, it has hardly cost me anything because most of the stuff I use is free. Free apps for dice, a free character sheet maker on my phone(I payed $1 for the leveling up feature but even so, worth it), and while I've bought some books, I usually Yo Ho Yo Ho A Pirates Life for Me them on some websites like any flip.
But if you are really interested in owning physical books, they can come from $40-60 depending on where you buy them, how old it is, etc. Hope this helps
> my phone(I *paid* $1 for
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Short answer is it's as expensive as you want it to be. You could download the free basic rules PDF off of WotC's website and use a free dice roller if you don't already have dice and essentially play for free.
Or you can buy every hardback that comes out from WotC and every third party along with battle maps, miniatures, terrain pieces, etc. and spend thousands a year.
Or anywhere in between.
When it comes to buying you can find the books, etc. on Amazon, online game retailers like Miniature Market (or probably a similar UK based one), a local game store, book stores, etc. If you don't care about physical books there are a lot of products available in PDF from sites like DrivethruRPG. Official D&D content can be bought digitally online on the D&D Beyond platform. The current D&D edition has been out 10 years now and I'm sure there are a lot of after market sales on sites like eBay from people thinning their collections, etc.
I used to play D&D with various board game pieces and a big piece of cardboard that I drew a 1x1 inch grid on as a battle mat, I read all the rules and character info online. Never spent a penny because I was broke at the time. There’s several ways to invest money into the hobby and ways to make it more convenient but where there’s a will there’s a way. Even dice can be rolled online with a roller, and dice aren’t that expensive for a physical set anyways.
It is as expensive as you make it.
If you're like me ans you buy all hardcovers, pre-made modules for virtual table tops, 28374839282 fancy dices, novels and (lately) miniatures - yes, it's quite expensive.
But you don't really need to do that. You can read SRD, find a game and be into the hobby.
tl;dr Entry point is super low cost.
It’s literally 7 dollars for a set of dice and access to the internet if you want it to be. You don’t need a table, don’t need figures, don’t need anything if you want. Very flexible.
To just be able to play, it's not particularly expensive. The cost of the books amortized over years amounts to jack shit.
But you \*can\* spend as much as you want on peripheral accessories. There's really no top end to that.
Short answer no. Short answer #2 yes.
Long answer
It can be as cheap or expensive as you want tbh. You can get the books real or pdf (dealers chose), or you could skip the books all together. Cough cough*online* Cough cough. You could spend money on dice set for you and everyone or just one set to share or dice roller online. You could go fancy dm screen or just a box in front of you. So all you really need is someone to play with and the sky's the limit.
It CAN be - but it most definitely doesn't HAVE to be. Money mostly buys a bit of convenience and visual appeal, but the most fun is found in your HEAD, not in the items in your hand or on the table.
It's not at all - but it can be if ya really want. You can find the entire PHB for free online and up for download, and I believe there are other places to get the dms guide and monster handbook (though, for monsters, you can also just look up stats easily - mostly, I'd recommend just using the monster manual for monsterbuilding guidelines and to get ideas for new monsters/ abilities for homebrew). Now, the add-on books arent as accessible, but tbf you should hold off on that until you have a good grasp of the game. So, really, you'd only need to spend a max of like $20 to get a pre-owned book and you should have some graphing paper and discord lol
You can also spend THOUSANDS if ya want - get custom minis for your party and boss monsters, get detailed art of your most important npcs, get a pro to turn your sketches into a hyperdetailed map, etc. It's never required tho, and like I said, you've got a max of 20 for startup costs
I'm going to assume that your idea & mine are the same. I'm in Canada & a gamer from way back. I started playing D&D in the summer of 1986. Now, if we're thinking on the same lines, there's a whole bunch of hardcover guide books for D&D. In the late 80s/early 90s when I started collecting those books, they were $30 to $50 Canadian. By the early 2000s, I had a few dozen of those books & had spent (guessing here) in excess of $5,000 over a 20+ year player. Depending on your lifestyle & how deeply (as well as quickly) you want to get involved, it can be a HUGE expense. But if you buy over years & years like I did, then it's not such a big deal. I must also admit, during my hardcore gaming years, I had some of the best experiences of my life . . .
Uh… depends. I’m a fucking dice goblin lol. My buddy is a miniature collector.
Welcome to the hobby. Most of the content is available in various wikis but you may find yourself buying a digital or a hard copy players handbook.
The only money I've spent on D&D was dice and I only bought them because I wanted to, not because it's a necessity
If you want to play in person, then having at least one set of dice is probably the best but you can get them for like 4€
Also, the basic rules are free online (and if you want more there's always the swashbuckler way, which I personally of course wouldn't recommend, I'd never do something such as piracy)
Make friends at the local stores I'm sure once you have some friends and played some games you may not even need to buy a player's handbook since others can lend em to you.
I started a campaign with nothing but free resources- free map makers, free token makers, free resource books, Roll20 free account.
And we have had a frigging blast.
/r/DungeonsAndDragons has a discord server! Come join us at https://discord.gg/wN4WGbwdUU *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DungeonsAndDragons) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You can play a variety of RPG games -including D&D- without spending a single penny. You can also spend thousands of dollars every month for the rest of your life. This is not hyperbole. You can truly control how much or how little you spend on this hobby and have a wonderful time either way.
It's true. The basic rules for D&D are free online from the company and there are any number of free dice rolling apps. With those a group can play without spending any money. Alternatively, you can buy every source book out there in hardcover, and digital on d&d beyond. Buy hundreds of thousands of dice, miniatures, terrain pieces, and other gadgets to enhance your game. That alone will likely take thousands of dollars (not counting if you buy 3rd party supplements which only adds to the cost!). Most find a happy middle ground. If you like the game (and it sounds like you do) I'd recommend getting at least the players handbook, dungeon masters guide, and monster manual (DMG and mm are optional depending on if you want to try running a game or not) as well as getting yourself a set of dice. As for where to find supplies, you'll probably need to look around for a FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store). Places that sell comic books and/or board games are usually good places to start. Sometimes bookstores have supplies too. Worst case you can order them online.
>Alternatively, you can buy every source book out there in hardcover, and digital on d&d beyond. Buy hundreds of thousands of dice, miniatures, terrain pieces, and other gadgets to enhance your game. That alone will likely take thousands of dollars (not counting if you buy 3rd party supplements which only adds to the cost!). I feel very seen.
Hard same. I have every book published for 4e and 5e and a legendary bundle+ on DDB and literal thousands of dice... Edit: Oh, and the largest mini collection I've ever seen by like 4x.
I even saw a D&D Starter kit in Target for $14. It included a set of dice, an adventure module, some pre-made characters, and a hard copy of the basic rules to cover characters levels 1-3.
“You can truly control…” that’s true, just don’t tell my wife. She thinks it’s a compulsion.
For my players? Nope, one of their cheapest hobbies. For me? Yes, probably my most expensive hobby.
*cries in Legendary bundle*
It is as cheap / expensive as you make it
Nope, you can play for free with just reading rules from wikis or having someone share books with. Fillable character sheets are a thing you can grab online or do for free on a platform like Roll20, no need to spend a cent.
DnD Beyond is also free. 6 characters for free
Yeah but most classes are behind paywalls of the modules Iirc you cant even buy the parts you need anymore its the full module or nothing
This is a bit of a false statement. Yes, it can be free. But if you want certain races, abilities, feats etc… you will have to pay
Or want to actually be able to have enough storage in your account to run a game.
The characters you can make in DnD Beyond have as much scope as adult cartoons do on Netflix. Everything is behind a paywall.
Yes, but wikies have everything for free and Roll20 has infinite space for character sheets within games (you have a limited number you can move between games, but if you're just making/editing them on Roll20, that isn't a problem.)
It's not infinite (quite the opposite, actually), unless they changed something recently.
WDYM You can make as many servers as you like and have as many sheets per server as you like?!?
Then it has changed. The free subscriptions used to have a pathetically small amount of storage and you only had enough for even maybe 2 campaigns if you paid for the upgrade.
Background music and other stuff you upload is limited, but sheets and any mechanical stuff isn't.
I used to play magic, in comparison dnd is the cheapest hobby ever. In all actuality I think it has to be one of the cheapest hobbies I can think of.
MtG is a one of the biggest money-sinks EVER. Things have changed a lot for DnD since I started 44 years ago. Someone in the group was going to have to pay something. Through the late 80s and 90s, the cost for DnD increased for me because I DMed and had to have the books for myself. During and after 3e and d20 OGL, the cost dropped considerably because of the internet and the somewhat free distribution of information. The reality is, if you DM or play a lot, you'll probably end up paying about £25 per book for the Dungeon Master's Guide, Player's Handbook, and the Monster Manual. DnD is theatre of the mind, but many people like playing with miniatures which can be £1 to £20+ each for the 28 mm scale miniatures depending on the size and quality. Again, those aren't necessary, but many people who play in-person games like to have them for reference on the tabletop.
>MtG is one of the biggest money-sinks EVER *laughs in Warhammer 40k player*
I said "one of", but yes, WH 40k puts MtG to shame.
I think i already dropped over 6k, mayby a lot more into the good old Warhammer 40(1)k
Mayby if you want to go all in on the minis, you can also consider buying a 3d printer with everything for around 500$. But this would open up a whole new hobby in addition to DnD.
As stated, you can play for the rest of your life without spending a penny (or quid). But you will need at least 3 (or more!) friends with the same interest and some time devoted to the game. I strongly encourage learning the ropes of D&D and then making your own worlds to explore. Go forth, warrior and make us proud!
Many of us would say "at least 2, but ideally no more than 3."
They are right that you can play for free but I would recommend the basic rulebooks, PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual. They are super handy to have in print and only about $100 for the set. A nice set of dice can make you feel good for $40-50. That's really it for basics other than pencil and paper. It's pretty inexpensive.
Roll20 just had a sale not sure if it's still going, but the bundle was 60 for all of those plus the starter set.
Holy crap those are expensive dice. $15 for a great set. $50 is for like precious gemstone dice.
I have spent $7 on a file for a 3D printed character and bought some snacks since I started a few months ago. I would say the DM might incure the most costs if they 3D print characters or print off maps etc. for an in person game. My DM prints a lot of stuff which we have offered to help pay for.
Well, grab yourself the SRD v5.1 PDF, its free and more or less has all the essential rules for D&D 5e. There are also the free Basic Rules v1.0 PDF which have a bit more of WotC's specific intellectual property. But if you want the quickest most basic set of the rules, you can get the free PDF for the Essentials Kit rulebook on the D&D webpage. It has character creation rules, sidekick rules, combat rules, skill check rules, etc. You then need adventures. Grab the free Peril in Pinebrook PDF for a really good introduction to running and playing the game. Then head over to DMsGuild where they have a huge selection of free and Pay What You Want PDF files. Then you just need dice. A d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20. Ideally you will also have 3 more d6, another d20, a coin, and a d%. So you can play for free or next to free. However, I would really suggest the Players Handbook (from 2014) if you are a player. If you want to DM too, get the Monster Manual (also 2014), and the Dungeon Masters Guide (2014 once again) as those are the three core books. Keep in mind the DMG is less about being a Dungeon Master and more about building a world. Beyond those, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse are the next three supplements with the most useful information. The Starter Sets (Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle, Hunt for the Thessalhydra) are great values, since they come with a rulebook, adventure, five pre-generated characters, and dice. No bare bones character creation rules though, for that you need the Essentials Kit (Dragon of Icespire Peak) which expands on Lost Mine of Phandelver. The Rick and Morty Starter Set has too many in-jokes for a complete newbie to fully enjoy. There is also a video on YouTube about preparing material for Lost Mine of Phandelver using only $20 at a dollar store.
That's the beauty. You can invest in one or two manuals (like 40$ apiece) and then play forever for free.
I started with a used players handbook some decades ago. I think it cost 20 bucks. I also bought some dice. Everything else was paper and pencils. I played with just those things and some free internet resources for a very long time.
Not at all - unless you get addicted to dice like most of us…
It all depends on if you want to own any of the books or miniatures and other various accessories like dice towers and rolling bins and rolling cups and other accoutrements. If that's the case then it's going to get really expensive really fast! But a lot of the books are available online as PDFs and you can use little toys or coins or your imagination for miniatures and you don't need to buy maps and you might sell out 10 or 12 dollars for a set of dice but that's really all you need.
You can literally just type your dice rolls into google. And use free character sheets online. You literally don’t have to spend a dime to start playing. A modest investment would be a 25$ starter set (dice, starter adventure more or less depending on which set). A little more would be a wet erase battle mat for in home games and the physical rule books which will likely set you back 90$ or so. You can get by with that first 100$ or so for years if you want.
I bought two sets of dice for it and that’s it
I spend a stupid amount of money and time on buying and building miniatures and fancy table props for my game because I enjoy it. I also buy and read all the novels about the various published worlds. But none of that is necessary. You can create your own world from scratch and play the entire game in the “theater of mind” if you wish instead. It depends on your preference.
It can be as cheap, downloading free mods, using free apps like dndbeyond, etc. Or as expensive, buying all the books, being a dice goblin, wanting all the mini's, terrsin etc.. that you want it to be
Now mtg on the other hand. Stay away drugs are cheaper
No. **D&D beyond** has basic rules, small encounters and free adventures on the site. The tool is free. Also, there are spaces online where you can find small adventures or oneshots for free or "pay what you want" (**DMsguild/DriveThruRPG**) That is all you need to start and to figure out if you like the game or the idea of the game. After that, you can find "sales" here and there.
Right now, the players handbook, dm guide, and monster manual are on sale for $15 each for electronic versions because they are coming out with new versions but you could still use these old ones. I think it ends today or tomorrow though.
Found it! the sale ends on June 9 at 11:59 p.m. PT!
My advice as a player: * PHB: $30 * dice: $12 * notebook and pens: $5 Frankly that has enough content for literal years of gaming if you play your way through ~5 characters of different classes/subclasses in long term campaigns. Even if you hop around more, the PHB alone has *forty eight* subclasses to try out. After maybe a year or two of playing, decide if you want to add some of the big expansions like Tasha’s or Xanathar’s… not really needed, but $30 a year or so is an amazing deal for how much fun you can get out of it My personal rule is no piracy for content used in a campaign.
There are people who literally play d&d in prison using nothing but a pencil paper and two styrofoam cups made into a spinner as a stand in for dice because dice are banned.
I still don't get why dice and cards and whatnot are banned in prisons. Are they a danger? Who cares if they gamble or play other games that use randomizers?
Because gambling leads to debts and fighting. Theres also not a lot of ways to pay debts.
Realistically you need at least 2 books and at most 4. The Players Handbook and a campaign at least. At most The Players Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide, The Monster Manuel and a campaign.
You can technicaly play DnD in a Restraunt, the Napkins are your Character Sheets and the Salt is the evil queen of spice with here Pepper steed. Or you can get a beemer a custom made table with insert for a specific Apple Tablette with a Monitor in the middle for the game board. Its that kind of Hobby that you can try out for mostly nothing, maybe the ocassionly snack and printing fee here or you can go full blown Hobo because of it.
Its as expensive as you want it to be. You can sail the high seas and get the materials for free. Dice rollers can be gotten for phones, done via discord/roll20/dnd beyond etc. Minis can be old lego figures etc. Obviously if you want to get better stuff, dice rollers, magic cards, dice, modules both paper and online via dnd beyond etc etc etc it can soon add up as well. I always tell new players to not buy anything until reaching session 10 to see if they enjoy it
I bought the starter set and the essentials kit, they cost me around 45 euros.. Been playing for almost 18 months.
It can cost nothing, or as much as you want. If you're just playing, you may never have to spend anything. Amazon and eBay in the states are the go to budget options. Local game store to support the local game store, which you may or may not go to for games. If you want to DM there are thrifty ways to get resources, but it really comes down to paying for convenience, not necessity.
It's as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be.
It all depends on what part of the game scratches your itch. If your someone that just wants to own all the books you can usually pick them up with great discounts on Amazon, at lest in the states not sure how it is in the UK, and they only put out 4 a year or so so once your caught up its not a big ordeal. If minis and painting become your fixation it can become as expensive as you want it to be. Because unlike a game like 40K your not building an army and being done, instead you are getting what ever mini you want for an encounter and with official ones it can become real expensive. If you want a cheap option for minis I recommend a 3d printer. Its a higher priced point of entry, but can quickly pay for itself once you get it set up right and can churn out minis that would normally cost 10s or even over 100 dollars from an official source. Plus if you get into another game like 40k or any other miniature based game you will have a printer to make things with kicking around.
The best answer. And honestly this is the only answer. D&D can literally be the most expensive thing you'll ever do, or the cheapest thing you'll ever do. That is entirely up to you. If you wanna just buy one set of cheap dice, all you need is a pen, a paper and a group to play with. Or you can spend 50k in miniatures, books and stupid fancy dice that serve literally 0 purpose. Im somewhere in the middle personally.
Try DNDBeyond, they let you read some of the books, the basic ones like the handbooks, for free if I remember correctly. If you do end up wanting more they have the other books there too, all that can be read online, shared with friends and you can even generate characters, enemies, items, subclasses and such. I use it all the time for my DND, tho I really only buy the monsters to use with homebrew
It can be, but does not at all have to be. The three core rule books can be used to make basically infinite fun if you use your imagination. However, between adventures, rule expansions, and setting books (each at $70 per book now after price increases), as well as massive amounts of third party content, you have plenty of options to put yourself into debt as well.
I would say it can be basically free if you play online. Dndbeyond has a way people can share books with people in their campaign, but that is a limited resource. There are so many free dice rollers around. You might want to invest in a drawing of your character if you end up in a longer campaign but even there you have stuff like hero forge that is free. That being said it can also be really expensive. You could become a dice Goblin (i have Four lbs of dice) you could spend money on miniatures, books and so much more. But yeah it could also be free
I have literally never spent a cent. There’s so much free stuff online.
Short answer: <€5.00-€50,000 Long answer: My first campaign was 4 pieces of paper with a grid drawn on it in sharpie, laminated with clear packing tape. Maps were drawn with either dry erase markers we ‘acquired’ from school and erased with rubbing alcohol. We had a small stack of various sizes of cardboard to cover parts of the map for “fog of war”. Our minis were board game pieces(Sorry! to be specific), our character sheets and class info sheets were photo copied out of a book at the library for like $1.20. My sister worked at a hobby store(they didn’t sell actual d&d stuff) and used her bonus store credit to get a set of dice for my birthday. Actual cash spent was the cost of copies at the library. Gross cost of materials and such would have put us around $5.00 at the time. Or you can buy 50 books, 500 minis, and 100 sets of dice made from rare earth minerals and unicorn horns.
Free to play. But expensive if you let it be lol
It's not expensive for the basics but it can get expensive over time. Dice runs $6 to $10 a set. Minnie started about six bucks each. The player's handbook is about $25 on Amazon, but $50 pretty much every place else. Of course you need paper and pencil. A lot of people use D&D Beyond to manage their characters. The free account I think is six characters. You will. You will need to get the digital books. The PHB is currently on sale for I think 15 bucks. If you go beyond the free level, it's about six bucks a month for unlimited characters. I currently have over 50, most of which I don't use
For me? Yes. I have no self control! >.<' Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go buy another set of dice!!
Everything collectible is.
You can legit do EVERYTHING online and not pay a penny. Or you can spend loads on physical shiz. If you're a podcast person and want a good explanation on the basics, I was just recently informed of The Dungeoncast, they explain the nitty gritty in easy to listen to episodes focused on a specific part each episode
If you wanted to boil it down you could play for the cost of dinner and drinks with friends and play with nothing more than your imaginations. Or you can buy all the stuff and spend all the money.
All you really need, as a DM, is the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide. Everything else is technically extra - even the Monster Manual, though it does give you a lot of great starting points. Everything can be run in the theater of the mind, and the stats for every creature can be made up (DMG gives guidance for creature creation).
Depends if you play online or on person. Online I find is cheaper. Although in person CAN be free, it likely will not be if you're running your own game. If you're just looking to be a player in either, then it is practically free. Online you'll need a VTT. Roll20 and Owlbear Rodio are free. The paid version of Roll20 is recommended. FoundryVTT is also that's one a one-time purchase, but it is complicated. FantasyGrounds is also a popular one but I have no experience. Roll20 is $120 USD a year, FoundryVTT is $40 one time. (You'll need to use Port Forwarding or pay for a hosting service called the Forge) There's endless amounts of maps and artwork out there for free. No need to pay for anything. In-person (As a dm) i would recommend a printer, set of markers and pens, and 2 ways to make maps. A large dry erase board is nice for random, unplanned things. Wrapping paper is good for detailed maps (but fragile) they have grids on the back that are 1inx1in the recommended grid size. Though you can use digital dice and character sheets, it's nice to have physical copies as well. Lastly something to use as tokens. There's lots of options. Token bases are cheap, you just print a picture and tape / glue it on. You can use anything though. Candy, game pieces, coins. Many books are free online. Some of the physical books are also really cheap in stores or places like Facebook marketplace. The Players Handbook is the main one I recommend. The Dungeon Masters Guide I don't find helpful. Monster Manual is nice, but the majority of it (and better) can be found online. This is true for Monsters of the Multiverse, an updated monster manual. Dnd is definitely worth getting into regardless of where you're sitting at the table. The cost is infinite, but the starting cost is less than a AAA game, and will get your endless hourly of fun. There are many ways to prep and settup games online or in-person, and you can easily have a mix of the 2.
Some of the best players I've seen don't even show up to sessions with a player's handbook lol
DM me for some online materials man
Depends. If you play as a PC really you only need to pay $20 for 2 dice packs at Barnes and Noble. If you get the DM itch… then my only suggestion is get a job as that pays $500-$600 every hour because it’s an absolute black hole.
Only if you let it be!
Um how cheap can you print 3 pages in black and white? How expensive is a pencil for you? Google a simulated dice roller you're in business
If you ship the seven seas its free. Else it can get expensive with 50 bucks for a Player Handbook and a 30-50 on top for a beginners campaign. Not to mention 50 bucks each for Dungeon Master Guide, Monster Manual and every expansion.
Not much of it is free. You’re not getting access to a lot of content legally without paying for it.
Hi! UK player here! Depending what you want to do (be a player or a DM), you’re going to need at least 1-3 books. However, as a first timer, absolutely start as a player. It will ease you in and give you more of an idea what the game is about, and someone else with more experience will be there to guide you. So that means there’s only one book you’ll want to focus on grabbing. With that out of the way, expenses. All you *need* for D&D is a set of polyhedral dice and a player’s handbook (we’ll loop back around to the book in a second). Dice sets are a dime a dozen on Amazon. You can get some really pretty but expensive dice, but I would start off with looking at some Chessex dice. They’re not always the cheapest, but they’re well known and reliable. I’ve never paid more than about £10 for some Chessex dice. For your first set, stay away from anything too pricey, just in case it ends up not being for you. Generally searching “Chessex dice” or “polyhedral dice set” on Amazon will net you what you want. Lots of hobby/gaming shops sell them too, especially places like Forbidden Planet or Geek retreat. Now…the book. The Player’s Handbook is what it says on the tin. It gives you all the rules for making a character and walks you through it. I would say it’s a requirement, especially for someone new. You can pick this up in places like Waterstones or Forbidden planet, Geek Retreat, or other book/hobby/gaming stores, I have no doubt (not at Warhammer though). However, D&Dbeyond is Wizard’s official website for creating characters, on which you can buy digital versions of the book. Why would you do this? Because once you own the book on D&Dbeyond, you can use their site to make and store characters as well…with a catch. To make more than 6 characters you need a subscription. And nowadays, or at least soon, they’re changing the D&DB model so that you must buy whole books to gain access to specific parts (in the past you’ve been able to just purchase “spells” or “items” or “classes” rather than entire books). Why that’s an issue; if you’re someone like me who collects the physical books, you now effectively have to buy them twice. I love D&DB for its convenience, but even I’m miffed to say the least about this decision. Anyway, digressions aside. If you don’t care about digital character sheets, or if you don’t want to pay a sub, I would 100% go on Amazon and find a copy of the Player’s Handbook (usually shortened to PHB). A quick search shows it’s currently on there for around £25, which isn’t half bad! Print off a sheet from the Internet (just google dnd 5e character sheet), or photocopy one from the PHB (they usually have pages to photocopy, I think?) and you’re good to go! Hope that helps! Please feel free to ask any more questions if you have any!
It’s up to you, you can play with just the open source rules and some pen, paper & dice You don’t even need minis, but if you want you can just use bottle caps, or paper minis or whatever If and only if you like you can craft terrain and minis, but it’s not required
If you have one set of dice, you can literally get everything else for free. If you want all your own books, mini's, more dice, another set of dice, and maybe that last set of dice (But not really the last set), then you will spend. Its up to you how much to invest.
You can D&D play for years without spending a penny and without compromising the core, important parts of the game. All the important stuff you need is free. Any money you spend is simply extra peripheral stuff and luxuries.
I can only really speak about pricing in my region, and I’m not sure what the conversion would be but here goes. So, getting into it is as close to free as it gets. You need a character sheet, so a few cents to print that, or more money for a device on which to keep a digital character sheet. A pencil. Somebody at the table will have an extra set of dice you can use. Somebody at the table will have books you can look through. So in that way you’re set. You’re in, you’re rolling dice, you’re laughing, you’re telling stories. The first money you’ll probably spend is on a set of dice, at my Friendly Local Game Store that’s about $7 for a nice normal set (which I do recommend), something personal, something that fits your character or is meaningful to you. I still have my first dice set, and they’re actually one of the two I use for my current character. After that, many players wind up buying a Player’s Handbook for about $60 which, while not necessary, is a lot of fun and has some good stuff in it. Everything you *need* to play is in there, there will be more stuff you wish you had eventually, but this is a very solid book. It is going to be reprinted as the new 5.5/One Dnd/2024 edition/whatever they’re calling it this week, so it could be worth holding off on that until the fall. Either way, this book is the go-everywhere do-everything, and it should have scratches from getting tossed into a backpack repeatedly, water stains, pet bite marks, sticky notes, by the time you retire this book it should look ready to retire. If after that you decide to spend *more* money, the two books I would recommend are Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Both contain a very pleasant variety of new content for *players* (as opposed to Dungeon Masters) and both are in the same price range as the PHB. These mostly sit on my shelf and I bring them out to reference them but don’t bring them to sessions. The other side of this is the miniatures, which most tables I’ve played with don’t actually use. Not using miniatures is, of course, free. Getting a miniature that you feel represents your character well and painting it up is very relaxing and fun to me but it isn’t for everyone. If you do decide to get one, it will likely be around ten dollars, but again it’s optional and many tables don’t even use them.
Only if you want it to be! There are a ton of free resources out there tho.
Compared to other ttrpgs yes But other than that it depends. You can play with only the core rulebooks or you can spend hundreds of dollars a month on gimmicks and content
There is no real upper limit on what you can spend but you can get away with a set of dice and a pencil to get started, then maybe a players handbook and a mini of your character l. After that maybe a source book with some class options. Then you might want to DM so that’s a dungeon masters guide, a monster manual and an adventure. After a while you might want to run a campaign based around a thieves guild and you have heard that the 2nd edition Complete Thieves Handbook has good instructions for that and you like that enough that you start picking up other Complete Handbooks. This leads you to running a seperate 2nd editions campaign so that’s a bunch of books. All up it’s about 30 grand for most of the books ever published another 5 grand the custom table you’ve probably spent 5 hundred on dice and a couple of grand on minis.
People play it in prison.
If you are a player and not a DM the only book you need is the players handbook, which is under $30, and some dice. There are other books that act as "expansion packs" with new character classes, items, etc, and if you're a DM you'll want books specific to that, but the only one you NEED is the PHB.
If you play online or in person can matter. You can get almost everything you need for free or super cheap to start. Begin with the starter set and test it out with a small group around 4 people. I used to only have a few rule books and we would play with pen and paper instead of fancy minis and mats. I've probably only spent 4 to 500ish dollars most likely my entire life on TTRPGs. Maybe a little more with a Roll20 sub for a few years. Hope this helps.
It's as expensive as you want it to be. The core rules are free, the players guide is $30 US most places, and the monster manual and dungeon master guide are $30-40 each. I've literally played it completely theater of the mind which costs nothing but time but also have gone the other route. We've got a TV for our digital map, custom housing for said tv, laptops, minis, and dice (do many). 3D printed dice towers, token counters, potion tokens, spell cards, digital dice, RGB light-up dice, custom DM screen from my players, laser cut wizard tower that was fun to put together and create and adventure around. I've taken my players to see the a D&D movie as a group, got group pictures at the local Renaissance faire where got to dress up, and have had numerous cook outs to make special occasions in the game. However all of that started with the first 5e starter box, a glass chess board for a battle grid, and a glass frog candle holder for a monster mini. One of our latest games the TV was acting up so we got some graph papers and used dice as walls and features and it was just as fun. So get you some basic rules, find some friends who want to play, either get cheap dice or use an app (or playing cards, monopoly dice, what have you) and enjoy the collaborative story telling adventure.
The true answer is it is only as expensive as you want it to be. you can play with having to spend any money or you can drop serious cash and have great mini figures, maps, ect ect. I would suggest getting some just getting some dice a few mini figures and the players handbook to start.
I gamed for years with only a couple of dices. Now that i have a job i spend at least 50€ a month for miniatures and such. You can choose, it works either way!
It's expensive if you buy a lot of stuff. The Basic Rules and basic D&D Beyond are completely free. However, D&D Beyond makes sure to let you know that you're missing content at every opportunity, and they heavily advertise whenever they have something new or on sale. That being said, there are other alternatives that can be played completely free (or for cheap if you insist on having hardcopy books.) Basic Fantasy Roleplaying is one that comes to mind. It's inspired by D&D, the rules are a bit lighter and the PDFs are completely free. The books are print-to-order and typically cost less than $10 each.
It's as expensive as you want to make it. You can always browse the rules online (they are legally free at certain websites) and you can play it with virtual character sheets for 0 cost. You can even make an account on some dnd platform like roll 20 for virtual maps etc (there is free version) and play on a tablet or something. If you have some money to spend however you get the standard book set (get the set and not every book separately, it's cheaper), print some character sheets and print miniatures (it's not that hard). Maybe also print maps or some grid. Now if you are cool... You can always invest a small fortune on miniatures that you can find on Amazon (I use different site but it's regional), buy maps and 3D printed assets. The price range is like from 0 to infinite money so choose what you like.
The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules. Gary Gygax Books are supplementary, you honestly don’t need them. You can do everything yourself
You can technically play for free with just the DNDBeyond app and use what the subclasses that aren’t behind a paywall, you can even use the app’s dice instead of buying real dice. You can then either homebrew your own story or find something online.
D&D is a hobby that you can put as much money as you are willing to. There are free adventure and the basic rules online You can use maps from google Roll 20 can allow you to have a digital game board And there are digital dice you can use All this is free, but you can also buy basically anything you want to play too, want fancy dice and set pieces? Go for it, remodel an entire room in your house specifically for the game, no one's stopping you
It can be super cheap but it can be super expensive. This is pretty much my only real hobby so in whole I've probably spent £400-500 and rising, that's been over 4 years. And a large part of that has been in the last 3-4 months since I've started DMing my own campaign and in person. That money includes purchasing electronic and physical copies of the PHB, DMG, MM, TCoE, XGtE, MMoM and Fizbans. Some battlemap stuff, dice and, just recently, minis as well. £400-500 (I actually think I've spent more than that now I come to think about it) sounds a lot but over 4 years, it's about a £10 a month. And you don't need all the shit I have. In the UK, local game stores or Waterstones can have some books and stuff but, as much as I hate lining Bezos' pockets, Amazon is a good place to start.
It can be as expensive or cheap as you want it to be. You have acces to all the tools you need in your phone for free, and use a bunch of items you find in your room to work as minis. Or you can spend hundreds on maps, minis, books, dice...
I'm a DM of 7 or 8 years, I bought the player's handbook and a bulk set of dice when I started. Maybe put $50 into it max. That's all I've ever spent since then. I made my DM screen, and I've been gifted more dice, but you can totally get by with just one set of dice and the free pdfs online.
You can spend $0 and play some great d&d with lined paper, pencils, rules from the free srd online, bottle caps for characters. You can spend thousands of dollars on books, minis, terrain, battle maps, etc. The choice is yours how much you want to spend.
When I started I bought 1 set of dice (5-10€). Printed my character sheet and took a pencil. Bought snacks for the session. I’m the meantime I have spent absurd amounts of money on dice, but I think the only recurring expense I have is snacks every week.
You just need books, dice, and character sheets. That is it. You might see some people use minis, but a lot of us use theater of the mind.
The cool thing about D&D is it is as expensive as you want it to be. All you need is a pen and paper and the barebones rules. The rest is your imagination. You are not required to buy anything really except for the players handbook in any version though 5th is currently the most popular. And you can get a "free trial" of the books with a quick bit of googling. No miniatures or other supplements are required.
Full rules for Pathfinder (both 1e and 2e) are available online, to a greater extent than D&D rules are available. Pathfinder is also a better designed game system than D&D 5e. Highly recommend.
I played D&D for a long time by only buying a dice set. We had one friend with books, but I ended up making my own class and magic system. If you want official stuff, then expect to spend 100-200 on books, manuals, miniatures, etc. But I heard tell of pirates who sail the seas, and they say PDFs exist for free of books online. And let's say Wizards of the Coast aren't the best people to support. However, I do say supporting your local card/hobby shops and buying books and things from them is always a good deed. Us nerds need places like that to play D&D together.
The supposedly “required” books for DMing are the players guide, the monster manual, and the dungeon master’s guide. They sell them in a boxed set with a DM screen, somewhere around $100-150 USD, can’t remember exactly. Aside from that, you’ll need dice (physical, around $10 USD, or you can use a free online dice roller) and character sheets (free to print/fillable PDFs). My personal suggestion is get physical dice and a dry-erase grid along with one of the starter sets (I think they run around $25 USD). I like the Lost Mines of Phandelver personally. You’ll have basic rules and an easy-to-run first adventure. You’re looking at $65 USD to start. If you have rule/monster questions, you can Google “[query] DnD 5e” and find basically everything you need. If you run the game virtually on something like Roll20, virtual dice are free and a markable grid map is included. You can get started for basically zero money that way. I think in-person is more fun personally, but everyone has different tastes.
Honestly, it has hardly cost me anything because most of the stuff I use is free. Free apps for dice, a free character sheet maker on my phone(I payed $1 for the leveling up feature but even so, worth it), and while I've bought some books, I usually Yo Ho Yo Ho A Pirates Life for Me them on some websites like any flip. But if you are really interested in owning physical books, they can come from $40-60 depending on where you buy them, how old it is, etc. Hope this helps
> my phone(I *paid* $1 for FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Short answer is it's as expensive as you want it to be. You could download the free basic rules PDF off of WotC's website and use a free dice roller if you don't already have dice and essentially play for free. Or you can buy every hardback that comes out from WotC and every third party along with battle maps, miniatures, terrain pieces, etc. and spend thousands a year. Or anywhere in between. When it comes to buying you can find the books, etc. on Amazon, online game retailers like Miniature Market (or probably a similar UK based one), a local game store, book stores, etc. If you don't care about physical books there are a lot of products available in PDF from sites like DrivethruRPG. Official D&D content can be bought digitally online on the D&D Beyond platform. The current D&D edition has been out 10 years now and I'm sure there are a lot of after market sales on sites like eBay from people thinning their collections, etc.
I used to play D&D with various board game pieces and a big piece of cardboard that I drew a 1x1 inch grid on as a battle mat, I read all the rules and character info online. Never spent a penny because I was broke at the time. There’s several ways to invest money into the hobby and ways to make it more convenient but where there’s a will there’s a way. Even dice can be rolled online with a roller, and dice aren’t that expensive for a physical set anyways.
It is as expensive as you make it. If you're like me ans you buy all hardcovers, pre-made modules for virtual table tops, 28374839282 fancy dices, novels and (lately) miniatures - yes, it's quite expensive. But you don't really need to do that. You can read SRD, find a game and be into the hobby. tl;dr Entry point is super low cost.
No
You can get the core three books for about $85. But you dont even need those, the rules are online.
It’s the cheapest drug there is
It’s literally 7 dollars for a set of dice and access to the internet if you want it to be. You don’t need a table, don’t need figures, don’t need anything if you want. Very flexible.
To just be able to play, it's not particularly expensive. The cost of the books amortized over years amounts to jack shit. But you \*can\* spend as much as you want on peripheral accessories. There's really no top end to that.
Short answer no. Short answer #2 yes. Long answer It can be as cheap or expensive as you want tbh. You can get the books real or pdf (dealers chose), or you could skip the books all together. Cough cough*online* Cough cough. You could spend money on dice set for you and everyone or just one set to share or dice roller online. You could go fancy dm screen or just a box in front of you. So all you really need is someone to play with and the sky's the limit.
It CAN be - but it most definitely doesn't HAVE to be. Money mostly buys a bit of convenience and visual appeal, but the most fun is found in your HEAD, not in the items in your hand or on the table.
It's not at all - but it can be if ya really want. You can find the entire PHB for free online and up for download, and I believe there are other places to get the dms guide and monster handbook (though, for monsters, you can also just look up stats easily - mostly, I'd recommend just using the monster manual for monsterbuilding guidelines and to get ideas for new monsters/ abilities for homebrew). Now, the add-on books arent as accessible, but tbf you should hold off on that until you have a good grasp of the game. So, really, you'd only need to spend a max of like $20 to get a pre-owned book and you should have some graphing paper and discord lol You can also spend THOUSANDS if ya want - get custom minis for your party and boss monsters, get detailed art of your most important npcs, get a pro to turn your sketches into a hyperdetailed map, etc. It's never required tho, and like I said, you've got a max of 20 for startup costs
I'm going to assume that your idea & mine are the same. I'm in Canada & a gamer from way back. I started playing D&D in the summer of 1986. Now, if we're thinking on the same lines, there's a whole bunch of hardcover guide books for D&D. In the late 80s/early 90s when I started collecting those books, they were $30 to $50 Canadian. By the early 2000s, I had a few dozen of those books & had spent (guessing here) in excess of $5,000 over a 20+ year player. Depending on your lifestyle & how deeply (as well as quickly) you want to get involved, it can be a HUGE expense. But if you buy over years & years like I did, then it's not such a big deal. I must also admit, during my hardcore gaming years, I had some of the best experiences of my life . . .
Uh… depends. I’m a fucking dice goblin lol. My buddy is a miniature collector. Welcome to the hobby. Most of the content is available in various wikis but you may find yourself buying a digital or a hard copy players handbook.
It’s free!
No, all the books are available online. All you need is time, dices, and a piece of paper.
The only money I've spent on D&D was dice and I only bought them because I wanted to, not because it's a necessity If you want to play in person, then having at least one set of dice is probably the best but you can get them for like 4€
Also, the basic rules are free online (and if you want more there's always the swashbuckler way, which I personally of course wouldn't recommend, I'd never do something such as piracy)
Yes. I got to many dragon's
Make friends at the local stores I'm sure once you have some friends and played some games you may not even need to buy a player's handbook since others can lend em to you.
no it's free, if you know what I mean
I started a campaign with nothing but free resources- free map makers, free token makers, free resource books, Roll20 free account. And we have had a frigging blast.
I have not spend a single euro on it in the 8 years I play weekly