Finding gifts for Dungeons & Dragons fans can be tough, especially if you’re not a DND fan yourself! Lots of folks out there are wondering what’s a good gift for someone who plays DND or searching for a 2025 DND holiday gift guide to help them decide. But a lot of these recommendations end up looking very similar. Dice. Official D&D books. Gaming accessories. Many DND players have these things already! Plus, it’s always nice to put a little extra thought into picking out a gift that’s truly unique. With that in mind, here is Young Dragonslayers’ 2025 DND Gift Guide!

DND in the 1980s is a bit of an iconic era. But not everybody who plays the game today got the chance to play Dungeons and Dragons in the 80s. This leaves them wondering what DND edition was played in the 1980s, whether DND was popular in the 80s, how DND changed over the years, when DND was at its peak, and, of course, what’s up with the 80s DND controversy. We’re here to answer all these and more as we share about the progression of Dungeons and Dragons from the 1980s to the 2020s. 

Lots of people are poking around the internet for DND Thanksgiving one shot ideas. And why shouldn’t they? Dungeons and Dragons and Thanksgiving have a lot in common. Both a joyous occasion of friends and family gathered around the table to share something together. A DND Thanksgiving adventure is a great way to bring together your loved ones for a shared experience you won’t soon forget! Just to make things fun, we’ve come up with our own Thanksgiving DND ideas to share with you and yours this holiday season. 

The Kids on Bikes RPG is a wildly popular tabletop roleplaying game inspired by the show Stranger Things. As more and more people hear about the game, especially from the world of Dungeons & Dragons, they have questions. What’s the Kids on Bikes RPG about? What age is appropriate for a Kids on Bikes game? What is the setting of Kids on Bikes? And, of course, how do you play Kids on Bikes? We’re a crew of professional Game Masters who run games like Kids on Bikes, XCrawl, and DND for tweens and teens, and we got to sit down with Jonathan Gilmour-Long, co-creator of Kids on Bikes, to hear more about how to play Kids on Bikes. 

Dungeons and Dragons is a key element of Stranger Things. The characters not only play D&D in the show, but the game impacts their relationships, how they see the world, and even what they call the monsters they encounter! There’s also just a lot of natural crossover between Stranger Things and DND. Both have a team of heroes who investigate strange happenings, fight both monsters and humans, and save the day. I got to chat with Jonathan Gilmour-Long, a game designer and Stranger-Things fan who co-created his own DND Stranger Things game called Kids on Bikes. Here’s his story, from exploring the woods and reading DND books as a teen in the 80s to designing games in the 2000s and beyond. 

The game is filled with spells, familiars, and other timeless witchy elements, so of course there are witches in DND. Many players have already modified the core rules to create DND witch classes for their characters. But what about the non-player characters? It turns out that there are plenty of witch DND stats in the official materials, not to mention the rich Dungeons and Dragons witch lore to go along with them! We picked 5 of the coolest witches from the many worlds of DND and dug through their stats and lore to give you the highlight reel of famous witches in DND.  

Halloween is the ultimate holiday for Dungeons and Dragons fans. It’s filled with classic DND elements like witches, monsters and ghosts  – plus, it’s the perfect excuse to dress up as our characters! So, naturally, young DND enthusiasts are on the lookout for DNDHalloween books, spooky DND campaign ideas, or the perfect one shot for a Halloween Dungeons & Dragons game. Over the years, we’ve gathered lots of resources for spooky DND games and we’re here to share them with you.

Going toe-to-toe with wild creatures is a staple of Dungeons & Dragons. And while the classic DND creatures – like beholders, owlbears, and gelatinous cubes – are awesome, there's something more realistic and uniquely exciting about facing fearsome creatures from our world. And dinosaurs are, quite possibly, the coolest creatures to walk the Earth. While dinosaurs do exist in DND, the dinosaur DND stats, while cool in concept, don't have the depth of real dinosaurs (and, as we discovered, are sometimes straight-up inaccurate)! But a team of paleontology research scientists set out to fix that; we’re here to tell you about their efforts.

We're officially in spooky season now, which a perfect time for a Halloween DND one shot! A spooky DND game is perfect for Halloween parties (or even just an excuse to get some friends together). And there are so many great resources out there: DND horror one shots, spooky DND campaigns, and a plethora of Halloween DND one shot ideas. Here are a few of our favorites we recommend for your DND Halloween game!

Running Dungeons and Dragons combat encounters that are exciting, engaging, and fun can be a difficult task – believe me, I know! There’s so much to keep track of, from the DND combat rules to initiatives, hit points, and resources – plus, your players will inevitably throw a wrench in your plans and do something totally unexpected. I’ve learned from experience what works (and what doesn’t) when building and running a DND combat encounter. So here are some examples (pulled from my actual games!) to help you build your own DND combat encounters.

For players of all ages, there are a ton of benefits to Dungeons & Dragons (and games like it). But this is even more true for young players, who are in a prime stage to learn social emotional learning skills. Unfortunately, not all kids are ready to play D&D proper. They may be afraid of the dark or monsters. They may have a hard time sharing the spotlight, taking turns, and tolerating failure. They may not have the cognitive or mathematical skills to grasp the rules and make meaningful decisions in the game. My toddler, for one, doesn’t have the alphabet all the way down; there’s no way they could read a D&D character sheet! But, with some clever modifications, I was able to get them in a game. Here’s how I did it, with help from fellow Young Dragonslayers Dungeon Master and writer of TTRPGkids Steph Campbell.

Teachers, parents, and others are wondering how to teach biology in a fun way. The game of Dungeons & Dragons has already been used to teach social emotional learning, sign language, history, and more. Why not use D&D to teach biology and conservation? Mage Hand Press, creator of custom D&D content, teamed up with the Center for Biological Diversity, scientific advocate of endangered species, to create a totally unique monster manual. In this book, you won’t find orcs, goblins, or kobolds. Instead, each “monster” is inspired by a real-world extinct animal. The Book of Extinction has two versions for each entry. One is the actual creature from our world: its history, biology, and the circumstances leading to its extinction. The other is a creature with lore, magic, and abilities that are inspired by the real-world creature but more suited to the world of D&D. As a team of educators, parents, therapists, and youth workers bringing D&D to young players, we’re always looking out for awesome D&D resources for teachers, and we fell in love with this one immediately. We got to chat with Lucas Zellers, the lead writer for the Book of Extinction, about his journey from D&D player to honorary conservationist.

More and more, young people are drawn towards the game of Dungeons & Dragons, and they’re desperate for a place to play. Some find friends or library groups to play, but many wish for an after school D&D club where they can play with their friends and be guided by a trusted teacher. I know, I’ve met them! I run games of D&D for after school clubs online, at libraries, and in community centers. Though getting things started is intimidating, I’ve seen just how beneficial these kinds of groups can be, and I’m here to help share DND educator resources, tips, and tricks to help teachers, youth workers, and other educators get a D&D school club off the ground – even if you’ve never rolled a die in your life!

During a kind of lunar eclipse called a “blood moon,” the Earth gets right between the sun and moon, casting a shadow on the moon and turning it red! This got us thinking about different mythology, lore, and stories about the moon and its powers – which, of course, are plentiful in Dungeons & Dragons. From playing a D&D moon elf to wielding a D&D moon sickle to casting the moonbeam spell in D&D, there are plenty of cool options for moon-themed characters, stories, and abilities. We looked through the official lore and rules and picked our favorite lunar D&D campaign ideas and inspiration to share with you!

The most complicated part of Dungeons and Dragons by far is the combat. Learning how D&D combat works is a task all on its own, not to mention building an interesting D&D encounter, and how to run combat as a Dungeon Master. But making combat engaging, compelling, and, most of all, fun, is a great way to level up your DMing and run D&D 5e combat your players won’t soon forget! We’re professional Dungeon Masters here at Young Dragonslayers, so we’ve run our fair share of D&D combat encounters and have learned a few tips, tricks, and best practices to run D&D combat online and off. But these ideas aren’t limited to Dungeons and Dragons – they apply to other combat-oriented tabletop roleplaying games like Lancer, Mutants & Masterminds, Shadowrun, Starfinder, and more! So roll for initiative (or your turn-choosing system of choice) and get ready to run an awesome session of combat. 

With the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps in theaters, all of geek-dom is talking about this super-team, and we’re here for it. Like The Justice League and The Avengers, The Fantastic Four exemplify a truth that’s core to DND: when powerful individuals work together, they can accomplish so much more than they can alone. So why not make the Fantastic Four D&D characters? We’ve homebrewed some Fantastic Four D&D builds, tying in and explaining each of the Fantastic Four’s powers. So put on your super-suit and join us for an epic adventure!

We already shared some ideas for how to have an animal companion in Dungeons & Dragons using a character’s spells, magic items, and skills. But what if you knew you wanted your character to have an animal companion from the very beginning? Then you could create a whole D&D build around having a pet! Your character could specialize in communing with nature, creating arcane constructs, or summoning familiars…there are so many options. We’ve gone through all of them to create this list of the best D&D classes for having a pet!

Combat is a key component of Dungeons & Dragons. Of course there are other elements to the game – exploration, puzzles, and social interactions, for example – but the meat of gameplay (and most of the abilities on your character sheet) centers around the D&D combat rules. This can be intimidating; D&D combat actions are complex, with pages and pages 2024 Player’s Handbook devoted to D&D combat rules. This leaves players looking for a way to have D&D combat explained in a way that makes sense. We’ve been playing and running games of Dungeons & Dragons for years, and we’ve seen just about every question, rules clarification, and wild ideas in (and out of) the book. So we present to you our D&D combat guide for new players and old!

Teachers and parents alike are looking for ways to teach kids sign language. And while children’s sign language classes, sign language video tutorials, and family sign language lessons are all great ways to learn, it can be a challenge to get children invested. We’ve already seen how Dungeons & Dragons can be used to teach social emotional learning skills, and some teachers are even using D&D in the classroom – why not use D&D to teach sign language? We got the chance to speak to Rich Oxenham, who, after over a decade spent working with the Deaf community, tried to do just that, and co-created a family business along the way! Here’s what he had to say about his journey to teach sign language with Dungeons & Dragons.

Though dragons are definitely the most iconic creature in Dungeons & Dragons, there are plenty of other monsters to encounter. In fact, there are actually dinosaur D&D stats in the official books! There are detailed attacks, ability scores, and lore for tons of different dinosaurs, all inspired by their actual historical counterparts. Check out our D&D dinosaurs list to compare stats, learn a little paleontology, and maybe even craft your own D&D dinosaur build!