There are so many ways to be a Dungeons & Dragons fan these days. The tabletop RPG mainstay has been synonymous with pen-and-paper adventuring for 50 years now, and 2024 marks a major reworking of its core rulebooks to make the game more approachable. Anyone who’s played even just a couple of sessions knows how easy it can be to covet a friend’s set of custom dice, appreciate the care a Dungeon Master has taken in setting the right ambience for a crafted campaign, or even obsess over their choice of pen and notebook — after all, it’s what you’ll be spending a large chunk of time staring into as you ponder your character’s next heroic action.
But what’s amazing is that you can be a huge D&D fan without ever touching a character sheet. D&D and the Forgotten Realms, home of its most famous stories, can also be experienced in actual play podcasts (in which you listen to others playing through their campaign), movies, video games, novels, and more. Its compendium of heroes, villains, creatures, items, and spells has found its way into the pop culture zeitgeist in ways big and small, from Stranger Things all the way to legitimately cute plushies of horrifying creations.
Point is, there’s never been a better time to get into Dungeons & Dragons, however you choose to express that. We asked the Polygon staff to tell us how they show off their D&D fandom. Here are some of our staff’s favorite picks that we think you’d really love, too.
