What is D&D And Character Creation?

🎭 What the game is

D&D is a storytelling game you play with friends. One person is the Dungeon Master (DM) who describes the world and how it reacts. Each player controls their character in that world.

A big part of the fun comes from roleplay. You speak and act as your character would (Don’t worry, you’re not expected to do voices, paint your face or act). Roleplay can be as simple or as dramatic as you want. Just be yourself and have fun with it.

You say what you (as your character) try to do.
The DM tells you what happens.

When something is uncertain or risky, you roll a 20‑sided die (d20).

If your total meets or beats the difficulty, you succeed.
If not, something else happens. Maybe funny, maybe dangerous.

D&D has a lot of rules, but you don’t need to know them all to play. As a new player, all you need is a basic sense of who your character is. You’ll learn the rest naturally as you play, one step at a time.

🧙 Your Character

At Queer Arcana, everyone begins their adventure with a level 1 character, which means you’re starting at the very beginning of your hero’s journey.

Before you start playing, it helps to have a simple idea of who your character is. A D&D character is basically a mix of who they are and what they can do. You don’t need to know every detail to start, just the basics.

Why have they chosen to become an adventurer and join Queer Arcana, a guild where people of all backgrounds and identities come together to explore, learn, and take on quests?

What species are they? What do they look like?

Try to describe your character in one sentence. Your character will grow naturally as you play. You’ll discover their personality through your choices, not by writing a novel beforehand.

Some examples:

“A nervous wizard who wants to prove himself.”
“A cheerful fighter who loves helping people.”
“A quiet rogue who’s good at staying unnoticed.”
“A microwave with hairy human legs.”

If you can say it in one sentence, you already have a solid foundation.

Don’t overthink it

Within Queer Arcana you are not bound to your choices. You can choose to play a different character every session, or stick to the same character. Whatever feels fun for you!

Your character can try to do most things you describe: Talking, exploring, fighting, sneaking, or anything else that fits the story.

How good they are at this, comes from a few core building blocks.

The key foundations of a D&D character:

Species: Gives innate traits like natural abilities, senses, movement, and special features tied to their heritage.
Class: Defines your combat abilities, spellcasting, skills, and unique class features (like a rogue’s Sneak Attack or a paladin’s divine smite).
Background: Adds skills, tools, languages, and role‑playing flavor.
Ability Scores: Shape how good you are at physical and mental tasks, influencing attacks, spells, skills, and saving throws
Equipment: Weapons, armor, tools, and (magic) items your character carries, which affect what actions they can take.

All of them get recorded on the character sheet. It tells you everything you need to know about your hero, from their ability scores to their class features, so you can use them during play.

At the Queer Arcana Homebase we always keeps a set of ready‑to‑play template characters on hand for anyone who isn’t ready to create their own custom character yet.

🔨 Building your own Character

The basics

Making a D&D character can be daunting. The game has several layers of complexity, which might is seem hard to get into. luckily, there is a lot of helpful material online, which makes the process of learning easy and fun.

You can find one of the best guides here, for both online and on-paper character creation.

Where to find the information?

To build your character you can use D&D source material. D&D source material is simply the official rules that define how the game works. These contain all the official classes, spells, items, and mechanics.

The latest edition of D&D Fifth Edition (5E) from 2014, updated to 5.5E in 2024.

You can find D&D source material in the following ways:

The official books published for the game.
The D&D Beyond website.
Free websites.

Websites that compile D&D rules have one big advantage: they put everything in one place, Instead of having to flip through multiple books or navigating D&D Beyond’s paywalled sections.

Check out the best one for 5th edition and 2024 ruleset.

📜 The Queer Arcana character building rules

When creating your own character for Queer Arcana, keep the following in mind:

You begin at level 1, and characters can advance up to level 5.
Multiclassing is allowed as you level up.
You may use either 5E (2014) or 5.5E (2024) rules. You must choose one edition for your character, but both editions play together smoothly.
No homebrew rules are allowed, but you’re always welcome to add flavour: creative descriptions and personal touches that don’t change the mechanics.
- In rare cases, a DM may reward players with unique homebrew actions, but these are granted at the DM’s discretion.

⚡Character progression

Within Queer Arcana there are several ways to progress your character:

Joining sessions to level up.
Being rewarded after a session with 100g, to spend at the magic item store.
Being rewarded after a session with a boon, a special trick you can use once during a session.

At Queer Arcana, we believe growth shouldn’t be limited to the character sheet. We want players to feel free to explore who they are, try on new identities, and evolve in ways that matter to them personally. That’s why most progression happens at the player level, not the character level.

Level up

Our leveling systems works in the following ways:

Players start at level 1.
To become a level 2 player, you need to play 1 session.
To become a level 3 player, you need to play 2 more sessions.
To become a level 4 player, you need to play 3 more sessions.
To become a level 5 player, you need to play 5 more sessions.

So to become a level five player you will have to have played 11 sessions!