Best D&D gifts for Dungeon Masters, players, and newcomers

Check out beginner boxes, adventures, and new game systems

Dungeons & Dragons players love getting loot, whether that’s a new magic item for their characters in game or a book they can read in the real world. The tabletop role-playing game is a great way to gather with friends or even play with your kids when the winter weather makes having adventures inside a lot more fun than going outdoors, so the right gift can lead to many hours of fun for a group.

We have suggestions for anyone curious about the game after hearing all about it on Stranger Things, for players looking to give their Dungeon Masters inspiration for their next campaign, and even for D&D fans ready to try a totally new system. All of these gifts should make a worthy addition to your horde.

The best D&D gifts for beginners

Heroes of the Borderlands

Wizards of the Coast designed the Heroes of the Borderlands starter set to appeal to board game fans who have never played D&D, packing it with high quality accessories and simplifying the rules to make it easy to jump in without doing any prep work. Even after you’ve completed your first adventure, you’ll want to keep the maps and tokens, which can be useful in plenty of other games.

Buy it on Amazon

Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club

The Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club box set uses the same format as Heroes of the Borderland, but is framed as a campaign written by Hellfire Club founder Eddie Munson. Embracing the retro style of ‘80s D&D in its art, the set features four horror-themed adventures with plenty of nods to the show. The notes from Eddie throughout the book provide tips for new DMs and some funny commentary on the game.

Buy it on Amazon

Nimble 5E

Nimble streamlines the rules of 5E to make it easier for new players and DMs while also creating faster tactical combats that gamers of any experience level can appreciate. The books are small but still hit all the highlights, with plenty of character options, rules for spending downtime, and adventure and skill challenge suggestions for GMs.

Buy it on the Nimble website

The best D&D gifts for experienced players

Eberron: Forge of the Artificer

Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, the 2024 companion to Eberron: Rising from the Last War, provides a major overhaul to the popular Artificer class, with new subclasses and the ability to create more useful tools and items to help their party. Even if you’re not excited about playing a tinkerer, the book is loaded with other character options. While most of the backgrounds and the Dragonmark feats are fairly setting specific, the five new species provide flavorful concepts ready to be dropped into any game.

Buy it on Amazon or digitally on D&D Beyond

Heroes of Faerun

Fans of Baldur’s Gate 3 or R.A. Salvatore’s novels can build characters based on the lore and factions of the Forgotten Realms with Heroes of Faerun. The book features plenty of flavorful and powerful new subclasses, spells and feats plus rules for earning renown with organizations like the Harpers and Emerald Enclave. There’s also loads of information to immerse yourself in D&D’s most iconic setting including an extensive section on Faerun’s gods and a highly detailed map.

Buy it on Amazon

The best D&D gifts for Dungeon Masters

Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass

D&D is a combat heavy game mostly rooted in medieval fantasy. The designers of Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass instead took their inspiration from Studio Ghibli films and the Legend of Zelda to deliver role-playing-heavy stories focused on building relationships, solving mysteries, and exploring a strange world where humans and spirits coexist. The book is filled with gorgeous art, new character options, and subsystems like ingredient gathering and Hero’s Journey boons designed to encourage a very different way of playing D&D.

Buy it on the Obojima website

The Crooked Moon

Legends of Avantris’ folk horror supplement The Crooked Moon had the most successful Kickstarter campaign for a D&D 5E project to date. The massive book is perfect for DMs looking to surprise their players with something weird, offering the chance to play a variety of creepy species and subclasses as they face the horrors of Druskenvald in a campaign that runs from levels 1-13.

Buy it on the Avantris Entertainment website

Making Enemies

The latest entry in Keith Ammann’s The Monsters Know What They’re Doing series, Making Enemies offers suggestions on how to customize monsters for your game. The book will help make a game more challenging and immersive, drawing from nature but also video games to create enemies with combo attacks and multiple combat phases.

Buy it on Amazon

Movies, music, and games based on D&D

Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons

No DM is required to battle iconic monsters like the beholder, red dragon, and mimic in Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons. The easy to learn cooperative game for 1-5 players lets you explore the renowned city of Waterdeep and the dungeon of Undermountain as you save citizens from prowling monsters while gathering the resources needed to defeat the monsters.

Buy it on Amazon

D&D Bardic Inspiration: A Musical Journey through the Forgotten Realms

Looking for some atmospheric music to set the tone for your next D&D session? Bardic Inspiration: A Musical Journey Through the Forgotten Realms provides a soundtrack available digitally or as a double vinyl, with tracks dedicated to the game’s signature villains like Lolth and Tiamat, and evoking iconic settings like Neverwinter and Skullport.

Buy it on Amazon

D&D: Honor Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves beautifully captures the silliness of many D&D games, where unlikely heroes save the day despite making lots of mistakes along the way. The charming film, starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Hugh Grant, can also help you introduce someone who’s never played D&D to the game world and why it’s so much fun.

Buy the Blu-ray on Amazon

Other games D&D players will love

Draw Steel

MCDM’s designers took their experience designing third-party supplements for D&D and developed their own RPG, Draw Steel. The game emphasizes tactical strategy, giving each character plenty of powerful abilities they can use in combat and a system that lets you build towards more impressive attacks over the course of a fight. It also eliminates missing, removing one of the most frustrating things about D&D.

Buy it on the MCDM website

Daggerheart

The publishing arm of Critical Role developed Daggerheart as an alternative to D&D that’s more collaborative. A 2d12 system representing hope and fear means that die rolls can reward your character with a boon that boosts their abilities or give the GM the power to add complications to a scene. The game also uses cards to represent your character’s abilities, providing a highly visual way to keep track of everything.

Buy it on Amazon

Starfinder 2E

Add some science fiction to your fantasy with Starfinder, which is set in the far future of Paizo’s Pathfinder and uses the same system. The blend of genres offers opportunities for a huge variety of adventures from cyberpunk-style intrigue to intervening in wars between spacefaring empires. The character options are equally wild, including androids, warriors who control cosmic forces, and mystics who draw power from their datapads.

Buy it on Amazon