How many people do you think read the rulebooks?

[Catullus64]

I'd like to garner a collection of anecdotes and opinions about how different people actually learn to play; this was occasioned by learning that one of my players, with whom I've played for several years now, has never actually read the Player's Handbook; pretty much everything she knows about playing is just picked up from play. This got me thinking about the subject. I also realized that I know several DMs who have only stuck their head in the Dungeon Master's guide to look up magic items.

I'm interested in how you or the people you know learned how to play 5th Edition D&D in particular. If you first learned an earlier edition of the game, that may be relevant to your story, but shouldn't be the main thrust. (I also assume that the percentage of people on this site who are veterans of older editions is significantly higher than for the playerbase at large, hence the clarification.)

Part of my goal in starting this thread is to form a sense of how it might affect the game. Does learning pretty much entirely by doing vs. learning from the book impact play style? What rules and pieces of important game text do you think can be overlooked as a result of this? I'm also curious, as a sort of parallel question, what proportion of new players to the game start by DMing, without having played the game first?

One observation that I will offer is that some rules tend to undergo a certain game of telephone. For instance I've heard a lot of fairly experienced DMs and players insist that "you can only cast one leveled spell per turn", when the actual printed rule is "if you cast a spell with a bonus action, you can't cast a spell that same turn except an action cantrip." Some of that may be faulty memory, but I wouldn't be surprised if it stems from only having heard the rule referenced by others without ever putting your own eyeballs on it in print.


I actually played very little prior to 5e, since I didn't get along very well with the only group of players I knew in my high school. I learned 3.5 mostly by piecing it together from the SRD, divorced from the context of actual play. Then I played in a few stand-alone games (a couple at different stores, one at Latin camp). I tried out AD&D once. But 5e's release coincided with my starting college and finding lots of people to play with; but since not enough of these people actually knew the game, I started 5e, and what I would consider my real D&D career, as a DM; I had been running 5e for a year before I was ever actually a player rather than a DM. So I'm close to what I might call a pure book-learner of the game, in that I had already mostly learned the rules before I ever sat down to play. (I say "mostly" because of course I got a ton of things wrong and learned immensely in that first year of play.) I also learned largely by analogy to 3.5; 5e seemed to me to be mostly the same game, but beautifully streamlined; hence there were some things I probably intuited that might not have been immediately apparent to a truly pristine learner who picks up the 5e books before literally anything else.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I played some 3.5 and some Baldur's Gate without the rule book.

I have read most of the 5e books but feel my knowledge is 50/50 from playing and the books. Maybe its me searching for different meanings to words, having a different organizational style or too many years of similar vut different rules but I frequently need 5e rules translated to me.

[J-H]

I read some SRD stuff before making a 1st level character for a one-shot. Shortly thereafter, I picked up the PHB and DMG (don't recall in which order). As far as I can tell, I've read them cover to cover.

Same with (later) XGTE and Tasha's. I think I read the MM cover to cover, but could be wrong about that.

I just start at the front and read until I hit the end of the book.

[Dualight]

I had a long time between being invited to play and obtaining a PHB, and actually beginning play, so by then I had already read the PHB cover to cover. In general, I have so few opportunities to play that I tend to read a book in full between picking it up and the next chance to play.
I have to admit that I am a bit of a bibliophile and a bit of a stickler for clear rules (I have no problem with house rules or other deviations from what the books say, but I react very badly to such deviations if they are not discussed before they come up in play, except for speed-of-play rulings made to avoid needing to look things up).
As such, I am somewhat surprised that people are able to feel like they know a game well enough to play without reading the rules that will (probably) be used in advance.

[da newt]

Any response trying to 'guestimate' the portion of players who have read the PHB vs ones who might have looked up some thing vs ones who only know what they have been told/seen in play is a SWAG, and online resources (some official, many not so much) only blurs the question ...

My SWAG is maybe 20% have read the whole PHB, 40-50% have read parts of it, 20-30% have never held the book in their hands.

I assume a much higher portion of DMs have read more than non DM players.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My anecdotal experience:

* When I was DM'ing for students in a club, maybe 1 or 2 out of the total ever read any significant part of any of the books, at least until they started to DM themselves.
* DM'ing for adults, my experience is that those who are more involved in D&D have a higher chance of having read the books. Being a DM increases those chances. But not to 100%.

I, personally, have read them all in detail, multiple times. But I don't really expect casual players to have even read the PHB, most of the time. It's nice if they have, but meh, can muddle through otherwise.

[Rukelnikov]

From my usual group, I've read the PHB and DMG, the other usual DM also has, the other 4 people I'm pretty sure haven't read anything from 5e outside chargen stuff. They have read stuff from older dnd editions and other systems, though.

[Telok]

Read the whole PH & DMG (both borrowed) once very early on after release. Since then just lookup stuff as it applies to my characters. Did that in 4e too. Not DMing this edition so not doing deep dives into texts, just keeping personal stats.

On games I DM every book I plan to use gets a complete reading at least once and the core material I go full immersion on with stats, spreadsheets, and simulations. I hate being surprised in play when something like a chase subsystem turns out to be trash because of something like running off the base move speed without modifying that speed.

[DomesticHausCat]

I think it depends on what books the player likes and whether or not they DM. As a DM I have purchased all the books that have a lot of subclasses, races and all the monster books. (Plus the dmg and a couple of modules.)

I'm personally a sucker for bestiaries and so I devour all of those books. Maps too, good lord I have too many map resources. But I haven't read all of the PHB, only the need to know stuff. And yeah I only go to the DMG for random tables and magic items.

When it comes to players it depends on how into they are of the game. If they are good at learning on the go it's not an issue.

For sheer numbers I would guess 1/2 of the people who buy the books read all of them front to back.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'd like to garner a collection of anecdotes and opinions In my Saltmarsh group: one very into the books, one was a GM and a good one, but he still needs a bit of coaching for his sorcerer, two very into the books and both are great players, one who has to be reminded to check the PHB and Xan's for her drunken Master Monk.

In my Wednesday group: nephew pretty good at the PHB and MM, brother knows MM well, PHB OK, Monk has to be reminded that the PHB is accessible in r20 if he needs to look anything up (I bought it for r20 compendium for that reason), Sorcerer barely pays attention to PHB, Barbarian is mostly on step, bard very thorough in his prep, Battlemaster needs a little help but mostly knows his class and abilities very well. The rogue had to drop for a while due to RL, but he's very up on the PHB and his class abilities.

In our dead Tuesday group: me (I know my stuff); cleric (pretty solid PHB understanding) rogue seven sessions in was still vague on own class abilities and how actions work, and after significant nudging, coaching and cajoling from the two of us was lost. I left the group for a number of reasons (too many different groups and wife getting annoyed at me being a contributor) but the bottom line for me was that the DM was bragging about being a 'zero prep' DM and it became an obstacle due to the lack of useful input given, and since (from my perspective) one person was not putting forth the minimum effort. Had that been my only group, once a week, I'd have been happy to play the mentor for that player.

In our CoS group: (alternates with salt marsh group): Me (know my stuff); paladin (pretty knowledgeable); Bard (hit and miss but a quick study and a veteran role player) rogue is very solid, and the barbarian has to be reminded of basic class features occasionally, or how action economy works, but embraces the role and is a quick study.

In Phoenix's group: three of us know the PHB well; one played with us for a year and a half and still had not gotten the PHB. (He recently got one, hooray!) He frequently did not know some pretty basic stuff (like "what is in chapter 9") but to be fair is a Quick Study and applies what he learns well.

TO answer your question: it's all over the map.

[Chaos Jackal]

I did, as a matter of fact, read the PHB (and later the DMG), though of course just reading through it didn't mean I learnt all the rules. Experience did that. But I started off with a solid basis.

Fact of the matter is, people don't read the rulebooks in like, anything. Just ask people what Free Parking does in Monopoly or what the Take 2/4 card does in Uno. You're bound to get mixed answers. And those are easy, simple games played for decades.

Now try to imagine people who just wanted to try this new thing their friends are playing picking up and reading through hundreds of pages of rules. It won't happen. They'll learn by experience and what other players tell them. They'll never crack open a book (or opem a website) other than for looking up class features and spells. Which is fine, to an extent; the rules aren't meant to be absolute in D&D the way they are in other games. But still, when people with different grasps of the rules end up playing together, it shows and it can be annoying.

Being a person who always read the rulebook, regardless of the game, I've been in that situation a lot. Hell, I've been in situations where it was my first time playing a game and I realized I knew the rules better than supposed veterans, because from the six people at the table only one had actually read the rulebook. D&D was actually one of these games; in my second 5e session I ended up correcting and pointing out rules nobody knew anything about despite playing for a year. In my PF game I was faced with obvious ignorance of important rules within a month of starting my first campaign despite the DM having run a different PF campaign for two years at the point he picked up mine.

Even here on the forums, it's obvious. Half the questions in the RAW thread are things that are written down plainly in some PHB page but that the person asking never saw, likely because they never did more than skim the book. You've got people making assertions in various threads for various things despite being patently wrong. You've got broken telephone and outside influence such as the whole "one spell per turn" that someone else mentioned above or bonus action potions because CR. First time I DM'd 5e I had a group of players that were playing for four years at that point and still I practically had to re-teach half the game to them.

People don't read rules, especially in D&D. They might learn, to various extents, if somebody who does read the rules ends up at the same table as them or if they join an online community. But it's kind of a coin flip, assuming they even want to in the first place. For most people, properly learning the rules is a matter of luck (someone else did it for them and they're playing together) and tolerance (said someone else is actually willing to stick to a table where nobody knows what they're doing).

[ff7hero]

I can't say as I've ever read any 5e rule book front to back, haven't had time for that since 3.5 was the new hotness.

I'm still the "rules guy" at my table, and I've read the "important bits" enough to a) be right off the top of my head most of the time and b) be able to find text (or more often with 5e confirm a lack of text...) quickly during play.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Huh. I just assumed *everybody* read the rulebook after playing for a few months or so but after reading this thread I guess not. That would explain...a lot.

[Tanarii]

I feel like it's been something like 1% of authors of YouTube optimization videos read the PHB, maybe as many as 10% of other DMs read critical parts of the DMG (like Chapter 8), and 100% of college age newly converted gaming geeks memorize the damn things better than I do after their 1st session hooks them.

Seriously, running games at gaming stores near colleges, I find it amusing how many players come back to a second session a few days after their first having memorized the PHB. Must be all that last second cramming practice paying off. :smallamused:

[sithlordnergal]

I started out in 3.5, and began to really start to dip my toes into 3.5's rules when I began looking at optimization and making fun/interesting builds, as well as the rules to DM. I still regret that I never got to play my Ranger/Scout/Dervish...It looked so dang fun. Closest I can get to now days would be a dual wielding Swashbuckler Rogue. When 5e came out I was already pretty well versed with 3.5, and began by reading over the PHB. Eventually I began to actually sit down and read the DMG to figure out rule interactions, and the MM to find fun NPCs to add to encounters.

[BoutsofInsanity]

I managed to get ahold of the PHB early before it's official release and I read that bad boy cover to cover.

[NecessaryWeevil]

I'm curious whether generational differences come into this.
I remember in the 80s, every computer game came with a manual. We owned M1 Tank Platoon and that thing's manual was 80 pages at least. I read it cover to cover.
These days, however, people seem to prefer to learn by doing, and developers' attitudes seem to be "Why pay a writer and a printer to make a manual when we can get unpaid volunteer labour to create a wiki for us instead?" And to my puzzlement, the majority of players seem to have no problem with this.
I'm not saying either approach is right or wrong, just wondering whether younger players are similarly disinclined to read RPG rulebooks/manuals all the way through.

[MrStabby]

So I came to this thread thinking it was a sarcastic rant.

I mean, who seriously intends to play a game without having read the rules? I was honestly surprised by some of the answers.


I mean we don't always get stuff right at the table and sometimes we do what is quick, what is expedience or what jus seems to make sense rather than what is "right", but everyone in each of our groups has sat down with the book and got to know the core of the rules. Sometimes some elements will need to be looked up - say exactly which weapons do/don't give disadvantage underwater, but everyone will know that some do if you don't have a swim speed (as just one example).

I get that for some things you can learn by doing, but sometimes in D&D you should try and anticipate likely consequences for your actions and as the rules have something to say about consequences (though the DM has more to say) you kinda need to know the broad shape of whats going to happen.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So I came to this thread thinking it was a sarcastic rant.

I mean, who seriously intends to play a game without having read the rules? I was honestly surprised by some of the answers.


I mean we don't always get stuff right at the table and sometimes we do what is quick, what is expedience or what jus seems to make sense rather than what is "right", but everyone in each of our groups has sat down with the book and got to know the core of the rules. Sometimes some elements will need to be looked up - say exactly which weapons do/don't give disadvantage underwater, but everyone will know that some do if you don't have a swim speed (as just one example).

I get that for some things you can learn by doing, but sometimes in D&D you should try and anticipate likely consequences for your actions and as the rules have something to say about consequences (though the DM has more to say) you kinda need to know the broad shape of whats going to happen.

I think (and this is just a guess) that most people are actually pretty darn ok with "going with the flow" and "DM may I". Which is what 5e caters (or catered?) towards with rulings over rules.

I've watched my nephews play D&D where the rules were...fuzzy. At best. And mostly rule-of-cool. And you know what? It worked great (for them) and they had a great time. I've actually seen worse issues when people made a concerted effort to "follow the rules as written" than when people mostly just relaxed and adjudicated things on the fly, occasionally referencing rules when they didn't have a good (fiction or table-fun) based idea of what should happen.

That's alien to a lot of us (myself included) here on these forums, who are (from what I can tell) way more rules-attuned than most. We're here because we care about what the rules say (most of the time). But most people...don't. For them, D&D is the experience, not really anything about the details of the rules or mechanics.

[MrStabby]

I think (and this is just a guess) that most people are actually pretty darn ok with "going with the flow" and "DM may I". Which is what 5e caters (or catered?) towards with rulings over rules.

I've watched my nephews play D&D where the rules were...fuzzy. At best. And mostly rule-of-cool. And you know what? It worked great (for them) and they had a great time. I've actually seen worse issues when people made a concerted effort to "follow the rules as written" than when people mostly just relaxed and adjudicated things on the fly, occasionally referencing rules when they didn't have a good (fiction or table-fun) based idea of what should happen.

That's alien to a lot of us (myself included) here on these forums, who are (from what I can tell) way more rules-attuned than most. We're here because we care about what the rules say (most of the time). But most people...don't. For them, D&D is the experience, not really anything about the details of the rules or mechanics.

I feel a ot more confident in breaking rules I know well than ones I am unsure of. If I know a rule well and have used it frequently, have seen what it enables and restricts I probably get why its there and hence the possible range of impacts of changing it.

I do think more free games are better and that 5th edition supports this well, but I think that the decisions one is likely to make about the rules whilst not being aware of the rules are a bit unreliable.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I feel a ot more confident in breaking rules I know well than ones I am unsure of. If I know a rule well and have used it frequently, have seen what it enables and restricts I probably get why its there and hence the possible range of impacts of changing it.

I do think more free games are better and that 5th edition supports this well, but I think that the decisions one is likely to make about the rules whilst not being aware of the rules are a bit unreliable.

I don't disagree. But I think other people don't know what they don't know. They know "the rules" from playing it with others, so what they think the rules are is mostly based on observation and a lossy transfer of information, a la the game of telephone. But you know what? It mostly works. From personal experience, you can throw out or ignore basically everything beyond the very basics of action resolution and the high level "here's what that class can do" ideas and still have games that run without too many issues. At least as long as people aren't intentionally trying to cause breakage.

[Skrum]

Not a ton. The group I'm in is quite large, and there's a core of people that know the rules quite well, but most of the others are spotty on the rules and probably haven't read a ton of the books.

I love reading the books. I like reading instructions lol. That's my favorite way to learn how to play something, reading the rules from start to finish.

[Schwann145]

As someone who never DMs (for a myriad of reasons), I've tried to avoid reading things that peek too far behind that curtain.
But when it comes to core game rules and class mechanics, I try to make sure to read and understand as much as possible, even if not a cover-to-cover read.

For others? I could probably count the number of people I know who read as much of the book(s) as I do on one hand and have fingers left.
I don't think I've ever known anyone, myself included, who has actually sat down and read anything completely, cover-to-cover.

[sithlordnergal]

I feel a ot more confident in breaking rules I know well than ones I am unsure of. If I know a rule well and have used it frequently, have seen what it enables and restricts I probably get why its there and hence the possible range of impacts of changing it.


This right here: I'm more than willing to break a rule if I know it inside and out, because I know of the edge cases that could make/break the ruling. Its why I didn't allow a Monk I DMed to ignore the disadvantage they had from attacking an invisible creature...despite the fact that they were riding on top of it and trying to cling to it. Would it have been cool at the time? Yeah, perhaps. Would it have made sense in a verisimilitude sense? Certainly. Would it have also set a precedent that would ultimately have screwed over the Gloom Stalker Ranger by bypassing their innate invisibility in Darkness, thereby effectively nullifying their class feature? It most certainly would have.

The Monk wasn't happy, but they fully understood when I explained that if I make a ruling like this, it applies to everyone. Including the NPCs.

[Chaos Jackal]

The primary issue, like I mentioned above, is the disconnect between players with different grasps of rules knowledge and/or care about said rules.

This goes beyond D&D as well. Playing Monopoly for years with the fines being placed in the middle of the board and collected by whoever ends their turn in Free Parking, only to sit with a couple people who are aware that Free Parking does nothing and play it this way is of minor importance but a discordant experience nonetheless. The Take 2 card in Uno has actually been repeatedly clarified to make the affected player lose their turn and not allow "stacking" of more Take 2 cards, but many people have never played it like that, aren't even aware of it and I've seen it lead to some friction, particularly when I was younger and somebody brought out Uno in a more loosely-connected group. Same deal with the rotation of the dynamite in Bang! or whether it can be played "on" an opponent. Or whether excavating cards in Smash Up reveals them to everyone. Little details that nonetheless can cause bigger or smaller problems, depending on who's sitting around that table.

And yes, it is also a problem in D&D. Someone who knows and follows the rules is aware certain things aren't possible and won't even go for them, neither will they build or account for them. And that can and will lead to sudden and unpleasant realizations in the game. I've seen a few DMs run unarmed strikes as dealing 1d4 damage, for example, and being eligible for two-weapon fighting. It wasn't an announced houserule, they just ran it like that because they thought it was how the rules worked. To the chagrin of a monk player at a time, who saw people essentially having her Martial Arts as a free feature. Another example was using dispel magic to end a powerful monster's ability (not a spell), the DM simply going "yeah, you instantly dispel it as it has no spell level". There was another caster in the party who had but didn't use dispel magic the previous turn because he was aware that the spell didn't work like that and didn't want to waste their turn... except, as it turned out, he was left staring. I've a long list of such examples, of disconnect between players, DMs and tables, and while sometimes it's of little note, others it can be a very unsatisfying experience, especially when it involves decisions made at character creation.

Different rules means there will be people playing on unequal footing. Games are supposed to be fun and playing by the same rules is part of the fun. If there's someone on a different page, things aren't ideal. That's the point of making and following rules in a game. Keeping a common framework so everyone knows where they stand and what to expect.

Can you have fun without rules? Of course. We used to have fun playing mock battles with sticks and I've yet to see an imaginary gun actually fire in order to determine whether or not you hit your friend on the other side of the yard, yet that never stopped children from playing make-believe. But at some point the inevitable arguments will grow tiring, even for children. At some point, you're gonna grow up and go for paintball instead. Or D&D. So you can finally decide once and for all whether you hit.

What matters isn't the content of the rules. It's that everyone uses the same. You can get the entire rulebook wrong so long as everyone else at your table also gets it wrong in the same way. Reading said rulebook is good not because the game is necessarily better or worse when played in a specific way but because it's one of the most reliable ways to ascertain that players who did so will be using the same framework, the same rules.

[Mastikator]

I'd say a solid third of the people I've ever played with have seen the inside of a rule book. Of those only half did more than read the title and maybe skim the description.

Personally I only read the bits that are relevant to me, either because I will include it as a DM or my character has it.

I think many of the issues that I've seen arise, issues people have with 5th edition D&D is because they didn't actually read the rules in the first place. When I DM I try to run by RAW even when it "doesn't make sense" and have found that it actually works out better than if I try to "fix" the issues. This is also my experience as a player. Game design is hard and the designers have done a better job than what most people can do on the fly.

I don't fault people who don't read everything, nor if they only read the titles. I know I thought it was massive and daunting to read a bunch when I first started with 5th edition.

[Porcupinata]

For 5th edition in particular, I downloaded the playtest documents, read them, and started running a game. When the books were printed I bought them and read them, and the campaign switched to using the books.

For the rest of my group, most of them don't own the books, so they learned how to play 5e by me explaining the rules to them. We do character generation communally during Session 0, so we all used the same set of books for that.

A couple of them have since bought the books, and have presumably read them, but others still have their only knowledge of the rules being what they have picked up during play.

As far as I know I'm the only one in the group who discusses RPGs online and none of the group watch or listen to Critical Role or similar other-people-playing media.



For D&D in general rather than specifically 5e, I was invited to a game by a schoolfriend and had the rules to me explained as we went along, and then after having played that single session I bought the boxed set (this was back in 1981 so it was Moldvay Basic), read it, and - as with 5e more recently - taught my other friends the rules by running it and explaining things.

[Telwar]

My group is mostly old* facial-haired grognards from a college gaming club back in the day, and we read the damn books to understand what we can do.

Mostly. A couple of the newer folks are bad at reading the books and knowing what they can do.


* - Mid/late 40s. Something something lawn.