Dice books a decent attention span and some creativity. Paper and pencils, modules for the first few games.

Well with the SRD, you don't really need books, but yeah
Dice are good, you need pencils and papers too
I would recommend you stick core only while getting a hang of the game.

>>44335982
>Well with the SRD
>recommending people 3.x instead of 5e
Why do fucking grandpas still act like their version of D&D is the current one?

That shit is 15 years old now and the new, current edition is both drastically better and more popular.

>>44335851
OP you should pick up or download the D&D 5e books. The Player's Handbook, Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's guide are the necessary ones - everything else is an extra. You will need dice of various types - from 4 to 20 sided - which you can easily pick up online or at your local gamestore. You'll need paper for printing things and pen and pencils for writing on them.

You MAY want to consider a module, which is like a pre-packaged adventure. Your best option for 5e is probably Lost Mine of Phandelver. Hoard of the Dragon Queen gets good reviews, but is likely to be a lot harder for someone new to pick up. You can also just decide to not use a module and run the game entirely from the rules and your imagination. You will need someone in the group who is willing to DM, essentially be the guy determining the plot the players are working through.

ALTERNATIVELY do not buy the current edition of D&D and instead buy/steal/borrow one of the much older, simpler editions of D&D or a modern remake - called 'retroclones'. Some prominent ones are Adventurer Conqueror King, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Castles & Crusades, Dark Dungeons, there's like a million. These tend to be a lot simpler and a lot more testing on the players than modern D&D but there are tons of modules you can tap which are 1) easier to run and 2) actually good.

>>44336106
op here, cheers fairly concise reply

>>44335851
Take notes when you think key info is being told to you, be polite and don't talk over each other, and try to come up with stuff for your character as the campaign goes on.

>>44335851
>what is essential to play?
Autism and the ability to play pretend infront of 3-4 other adults without feeling ashamed or aroused

>>44336106
I would honestly recommend 4e over 5e. 5e is good but 4e is streamlined considerably

>>44336954
I have to say, 4e is much easier on the DM than 5e is, but 5e is kinda easier on the players (except the spell casters).

My personal opinion is 4e is how the workload should be since customizing your character and figuring everything out is FUN. (heck it is the one thing I like about 3.pf) but it really depends on your group dynamics on which works for you, especially newbies.

I find 4e combat more fun from both sides of the screen, and outside of combat all the recent editions are basically the same, but that is just my opinion

>>44336954
>>44337170
If you're going to play a recent edition, you should play the one that's currently supported.

>>44337205
Why?

I seriously mean that. What advantage does "currently being supported" provide?

This isn't a fucking operating system which means you are fucked if hackers discover new security vulnerabilities. It just means that all the books that are out (which is way more than you need anyway) is all you get.

>>44337246
It's constantly publicized and has new content coming out. The majority of groups and players you are likely to find will know of and/or play it.

I have no idea why anyone would pick up 4e at this point when the actual owning company has shown massive disloyalty to the game that it was (essentially ruining it over the last 2 or 3 years of its release), the online tools for it are down, and considerably better successor games have been made.

>>44337283
Pathfinder version of 4e WHEN?

As a general rule it's best to stick with the newest edition (5e) since there'll be nice little starter packs and guides, so forth.

If you guys particularly enjoy combat after that, then 4e would be your best bet. Otherwise, I've really liked 5e for its simplicity.

That said, I have no idea why some people love combat so much. Why would you bother playing a CRPG at a snail's pace?

>>44337323
Never, hopefully. Paizo aren't the greatest company.

>>44337390
>CRPG

>>44337283
>It's constantly publicized and has new content coming out.
So it has less content and you have to wait for more?

Or you could play a system that has ALL of its content already out. And the only waiting you have to do is for the torrent to finish/for amazon to deliver.

>The majority of groups and players you are likely to find will know of and/or play it.
Except OP already has a group, and we can infer from him asking us that none of his group knows how to play any D&D or they would have insisted on their edition of choice.

>I have no idea why anyone would pick up 4e at this point
Because it's fun and does tactical, team oriented, grid-based combat better than the editions before and after?

>and considerably better successor games have been made
Please share, I love giving new systems a look.
That said, D&D has a TON of name recognition, I would totally believe that basically every edition has a non-D&D game that achieves that does the same thing but better. But a lot of people want play "D&D" and it is much easier to get those people to play your pet edition than it is to get them to play these better but "not D&D" games.

>>44337465
I'll go to bat pretty strongly for D&D because I really feel there are no games without probably and people tend to hate it out of contrarianism. I've never found a D&D spin-off game that did D&D as well as the actual game does. I think people underestimate that the massive amount of content produced by D&D essentially makes it unique among all fantasy, even non-TTRPG fantasy.

That said, the best 4e successor game is probably Strike! so check that out. Personally I liked DMing 4e, I didn't really like playing it, and I found it got really run-down in the last few years of its life in terms of new content. I'd not recommend it to a new player, but I guess you would.