The Quest Connection

D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) is arguably the world's most famous table-top role-playing game of all time.

First published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), a company founded by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the original creators of the rules, the system aimed to enable players to create and control an individual character, written to the player's liking, instead of a military formation with little personality of its own, as was common in the wargaming systems of the time.

All of a sudden, you could play a mighty warrior, or a powerful magic-user, or the clever and sneaky thief! Fight monsters, collect treasure! Make your mark on the world that you and your friends make!

Of course, as times changed and people thought of better ways to set up the rules, and to expand on the number of classes and races, the editions of D&D marched on. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, a more rules-heavy edition of the system, was published in 1977, while the lighter, more beginner-friendly basic rules continued on its own path.

Eventually, the two systems merged back together in 2000 with the release of the third edition of the complete ruleset (also known as "D&D 3e", for 'third edition'). An incremental release of the third edition, referred to as "3.5e", came out in 2003, and was massively successful.

3.5e was so successful that when, in 2008 the fourth edition of the rules came out, many players reacted vehemently, as may of the popular rules and content were changed drastically or dropped completely. So visceral was this backlash that Paizo, Inc., then publisher of Dungeon and Dragon magazines for Wizards of the Coast (who bought TSR in 1997), took Wizards' Open Gaming System (OSR) and created Pathfinder, an alternate and competing tabletop system that is still massively popular today.

Wizards, realizing their mis-step, spent the better part of two-and-a-half years developing D&D Next, their next planned version release, which became D&D 5e, released in late 2014.

The rules were streamlined, much content was pared down to make the game easier to pick up and play, and made much more beginner-friendly. Wizards makes the OSR version of the rules available, for free, on their website; in addition, the Basic version of the rules is freely available to all.

In 2017, in partnership with Curse, a subsidiary of Twitch, Wizards of the Coast released D&D Beyond, a site for official (and homebrew) Dungeons and Dragons 5e content of all varieties. Users can sign up for a free account and, leveraging an integrated instance of the Basic rules, step through a character creation wizard (no pun intended), ending in a print-able character sheet that can be taken to an in-person tabletop session.

Further iterations of Beyond enabled users to purchase digital versions of official D&D content, including the Player's Handbook, which expands the amount of choices available during the online character creation.

Dungeons and Dragons, especially with the fifth edition, is an easy-to-learn role-play system that is fun and immersive. Come join us and delve into a world of adventure!

On the D&D 5e side of Quest Connection, we host character sheets on D&D Beyond. It's free to sign up for an account; with a new account you get to create up to six characters. When you join the campaign that we've created for adventuring, you get access to all of the purchased content that we own, including the Player's Handbook, to give you more options during the character creation process. After joining, please read the house rules and the character creation forum post to get started.

We also recommend that you consider joining our Discord server. Not only do we meet to socialize, we also communicate initiative and posting order, enemy health, area maps, and associated topics.

In-character, we ask that you have consideration for others. We don't mind unusual or odd characters, but when interacting with others in a way that's outside of societal norms, we ask that you approach the other character(s) and get buy-in from them about how you want to play with them.

While we're here to facilitate fun and memorable adventures, we're also not going to tolerate bad behaviour. If you're unsure of whether your potential actions might cause concern with other players or the GMs/mods, please ask.