You do not need a finished hero
A character is who you are in the story. Same idea as a video game, except you can be almost anyone. Most games ask you to stay in a genre, and then they get out of the way.
For your first game, skip learning all the rules in advance. Open the book and pick something that sounds like fun, don't read all the rules yet. A fighter. A wizard. A hunter. An elf diplomat who somehow ends up in a gladiator arena (like I did in my first game). If you're playing with someone who has played the game before, ask them how to make basic actions with that one. That's enough.
Creating your first character's backstory
Character backstories are a wonderful thing - they tell other players who your character was, what drives them, they give your Game Master hooks to play with. They can also seem intimidating.
Here's my advice for your first game - if you don't know how to come up with a backstory, don't force it. Instead, come up with two things that make them different from others. Make one of those awesome, and one of those a real disadvantage.
Playing a wizard? Perhaps your wizard never learned high society manners, but can predict the weather for having travelled so much.
Playing a hunter? Perhaps they have friends in the local druid circle, but their shoes take on water easily.
That is enough backstory to start! You can flesh it out later, change it after one game, or decide you want to play someone else and scrap the character altogether. All of this is allowed! If you're playing with an established group, tell them it's your first character and you're just testing it out.
Filling out your character sheet
Depending on which TTRPG system you're playing, you will need to eventually make more choices. Races, classes, skills, features, equipment, scores, spells, powers - you name it. A character sheet looks like homework because most of it is lists and math, and multiple tables to read in a sourcebook, with choices that can seem confusing for the first few sessions.
Filling a sheet from the book, flipping back and forth, is the part that makes people quit before they play. You do not have to do it that way.
If you're playing with an experienced Game Master, ask them if you can fill your sheet as you go. Don't select your spells before the game - select them as you need them. Don't assign skill points ahead of time - boost your skills as you want during play. At the end of the game you'll have a character you created through your own choices, and they will feel more real.
Another option for your first game is making a deal with the Game Master to let you pick everything, and then change it as you play, or after the first game. It takes the pressure off you to make perfect choices without knowing all the rules first - if you can tweak your equipment after the first adventure, the problem solves itself!
Finally, if none of it is possible, embrace the chaos. Create a character based on what seems best in the beginning - and let it be not perfect. Nobody is perfectly prepared for adventure. Perhaps your wizard had a reason to learn a spell that's useful in a workshop where they were working before they found themselves adventuring, and now the spell is there, useless. That's fine! Perhaps your hunter's gear or skills do not make them a perfect fit for what the adventure requires. That's how you become a hero - you try regardless.
Let the sheet do the math
When you have your paper character sheet in front of you, you'll need a pencil and an eraser to manage it yourself. Volvelle makes that easy for you - it walks you through creating a D&D 5e character step by step, with a free account:
- Every choice is in plain words.
- Every step, you can change your mind.
- The sheet does the math, and it surfaces choices when they count.
Other games still use paper, or the free map with the rules in your head. This walkthrough is the 5e sheet.
Volvelle does not teach you how to roleplay. That part is you, and the table. But it will make learning the rules easier, and it will do all the math for you.
When you're done, you have someone to sit down with tonight.
Back to Online D&D for beginners.
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast. Volvelle uses the System Reference Document only.