Hand on the Door

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (D&D 5E) burst onto the scene in 2014, taking a game that’d been around since the ‘70s and giving it new life. After a huge public playtest called "D&D Next," the creators wanted to smooth over old division and give everyone — whether you’re an old-school fan or totally new — a game that feels both classic and modern. D&D quickly stopped being just a niche hobby and it started becoming more popular, showing up everywhere: streams, podcasts, and mainstream pop culture (Community, Stranger Things, D&D movie). In 2024 the game system was given a major overhaul, providing smaller changes and fixes to various parts of the game. This is now known as Dungeons & Dragons 5.5 Edition (2024) Description In D&D 5E, the players create fantasy adventurers. From elven rogues to dragonborn paladins, while one player takes up the role of the Dungeon Master (DM). The DM is the one who builds and describes the world, acts and voices the non-player characters and controls the monsters and the world around them, acting as both the lead storyteller and generally the rules referee. The heart of 5E is “rulings over rules.” Instead of pages of complicated charts, the DM is encouraged to make quick calls and keep things moving, not letting rules stop the game in it's tracks. The game is built on the "Three Pillars": Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction.  System Overview & Key Features The Core d20 Mechanic The resolution system is unified and straightforward. To attempt almost most action where the outcome is not clearly obvious and there is a chance for failure, the player rolls a 20-sided die (d20), and adds the relevant modifier (either from their main stat or their skill bonus) and the DM's set Difficulty Check (DC) determines whether the attempt was a success or a failure. Advantage and Disadvantage This is 5E’s defining innovation. Instead of making players calculate a dozen tiny modifiers (+2 for high ground, -1 for rain, +1 for a spell etc), the system or the DM simply declares whether the character has Advantage or Disadvantage on said roll. The player rolls two d20s and takes the higher result (Advantage) or the lower result (Disadvantage) and adds the necessary modifiers to the result. Bounded Accuracy In older editions, numbers got out of hand fast. With 5E the numbers increase at a reasonable rate. Armor Class (AC) and attack bonuses rise slowly, so even high-level adventurers aren't always guaranteed to overcome a bunch of goblins. Most encounters can still be a challenge, especially if the amount of enemies is high. The Proficiency Bonus A single, scaling number (starting at +2 and ending at +6) represents the character's training and experience. If a character is trained in using a weapon type, a skill (like Stealth), or a saving throw, they simply add their Proficiency Bonus to the d20 roll. Backgrounds Roleplaying your character is starts already at the character creation. Picking a Background (like Acolyte or Criminal) gives you extra skills and story hooks: Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, Flaws, all concrete details to play with. Resource Management (Rests) The game manages health and class abilities through a system of "Short Rests" (a quick one-hour break to spend Hit Dice and regain some abilities) and "Long Rests" (a full eight hours of downtime to completely heal and restore all spell slots and abilities). Subclasses While players pick a primary Class (like Wizard) at level 1, they branch off into specialized Subclasses (like the School of Evocation or the School of Illusion) typically between levels 1 and 3, allowing for deep customization while presenting progression through incremental steps as the character grows and levels up Additional links dungeonsanddragons.com - Official Dungeons & Dragons website Basic Rules (2014)  - D&D 5E free rules

Another month, another big update. Happy April everyone.  We have been busy in the background improving Groupfinder to make it an even better place to find players or groups. But in addition to your finding journey, we have also finalized our current version of the library, which will help you all with discovering old and new tools and platforms, content creators, communities and will introduce you to various game systems.  For those, who might be interested - we recently published an article where we examined the statistics and listed the most popular systems according to your posts and groups. The library This is a big one. The library is a comprehensive collection of various tabletop gaming related resources. Whether you are looking for a virtual tabletop to run your games on, or need help creating a map for your campaigns. If you want to learn more about the hobby and discover various content creators, whether a Youtube channel for second-monitor viewing, blogs to read up on various news, guides, tips or other ideas, artists to hire to commission your character's unique artwork, or even podcasts to listen to - the library is the place to find those. Game systems You know Dungeons & Dragons, but do you know about the other systems that exist? Some more specialized in combat, others with more story-driven focus. Or do you want to run a vampire-themed game? Or something set in the space? Take a look at the various game systems, read about them and perhaps you will head back to your own player profile and add some additional systems that you would like to try out. Tools & Platforms The hobby-space is filled with creative people creating various tools for various purposes: mapbuilding, character creation, virtual tabletops, music and sounds, generators, worldbuilding and more. See if there are tools to make your or your group's life easier. Creators Whether you like to watch Youtube videos, listen to podcasts or read blog articles - this is your place to learn more about the nitty-gritty of the hobby. Whether to keep up with the news regarding the TTRPG hobby, follow along someone else's actual play journey or read about the ins and outs of the hobby. Or if you are looking for an artist to commission for an artwork - we have some of those as well. Communities & Events Hosting a public tabletop-related event and want people to discover and join it? Spread the word. Or if you are running a Discord or other type of a community, whether online or offline - this is the place to get the word out. Gather people and grow with the hobby. /images/general-media/1775848937_OGEqvwGB.jpgThe library is evergrowing. Submit your own projects or entries. All the library entries are sorted by recommended first. The more recommendations the entry has, the better it's position will be in their category. If you are interested in featuring your entry, you can get in touch with us and we'll tell you more about how you can get your post to be discovered by more people. As you can currently see, the library in some categories is quite empty. We invite everyone to submit their entry to it. Read more about how to submit here. And visit the library Layout changes In addition, during the past month we have slightly updated the way player and group posts look. Hopefully this will help you introduce yourself or your group a bit better. If you are curious about how to improve your profile even more - go ahead and read this guide article here. In addition to the post layout, you can see our updated footer, providing a better navigation to various bits and pieces of the platform. Also the creator spotlight section has been updated to provide a more clear layout to learn more about various projects in the hobby space. If you have a project you would like to spotlight, you can read more about the whole process here. These spotlighted projects are what help us keep working on the platform, cover our running costs and help us keep it free forever. We polished the chat with a few visual and functional improvements. Users can now @mention someone in the group chat. You can also react to a post, to show support or your feelings towards whatever thing they said. Wide As you can see, the whole platform is now wider (Or if you are on mobile, you can't see. But take our word for it). This improvement will help us provide a better user experience, as our interface is less busy now. The header has been updated and now includes the link to the library. On mobile, you have a brand new menu - again to provide a clearer visual experience and help you navigate the platform even better. Notifications Want to stay updated when someone contacts you? Or a game/player is added that might be interesting to you? You can head over to the Account page and adjust your notifications there. Notifications in the mobile app provide a better preview of what the notification is all about, so you can either swipe it away or open it, should it be important. /images/general-media/1775849670_l0NrsMZa.jpgDon't let yourself get overwhelmed with notifications or e-mails. Choose what is relevant to you and stay in the loop. Unofficial iOS app If you are an iPhone user, you can now see a message at the bottom of the page, that will guide you towards adding our unofficial Groupfinder app on your phone. It will send you relevant notifications and help you keep up with all the important bits. That wraps it up for now Thank you to all who have found their way to Groupfinder. If you have any feedback regarding the platform, please let us know, it doesn't have to be a long in-depth commentary or structured letter. Just get in touch with us or send me a mail (holger@groupfinder.eu) and I promise to read all of your mails.  Whether to praise us, or to let us know of a feature the platform is missing, we welcome both. And as a final note - if you have found Groupfinder to be helpful to you so far. Or you want to help it become even more popular (so you have more players/games to choose from) - spread the word. Tell people on Reddit, Facebook, X, Bluesky, Discord or any other channel about Groupfinder. We will love you to bits. Till next time.

A FFG Star Wars RPG Actual Play - Meet Kiinon, Shay, Mott, and Ragro as they begin their journey together through Coruscant’s underbelly, navigating savage pirates, an ancient relic, and lost secrets.  Campaigns Edge of the Empire This Edge of the Empire story follows a Human, Twi’lek, Wookiee, and Toydarian navigating the criminal underworld of Coruscant in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi. It’s an anti-hero style adventure where the four chase clues of a mysterious artifact, fight for a seat of power against the other syndicates, and deal with the demons from their past that refuse to stay buried. THE UNNATURALS Our second campaign, THE UNNATURALS, will be a Force and Destiny story arriving August 2026. As Imperial rule across the galaxy begins to crumble, something long dormant awakens in the Outer Rim. A new threat rises from a self-imposed slumber. Will the players recognize their destiny and confront this rising threat, or will they allow the galaxy to fall into unnatural chaos?" Links youtube.com - Podcast playlist spotify.com - Spotify page