Hello, it’s me, the guy who’s constantly banging on about tabletop roleplaying games on a website that’s supposed to be about PCs. If you thought Black Friday and Cyber Monday were going to stop me, you were sorely mistaken: I’ve been digging up D&D and other TTRPG deals like some sort of polyhedral dice-obsessed badger, and I’ve got the very best ready for your waiting eyes. 

With the big “OneD&D” rules update on the horizon sometime next year, it’s a weird moment for D&D 5e deals. On the one hand, a lot of books are selling at really significant discounts; on the other, it’s because they’re probably going to be made obsolete in the next 12 months. My recommendation? Use the opportunity to pick up some good adventures, which should remain compatible with the new rules, but avoid corebooks and supplements unless you’re at peace with having some outdated material in your library. 

Or, ignore D&D completely, and use this as an opportunity to check out one of the many other fantastic TTRPGs going super cheap this year. 

Getting started with D&D

If you’re totally new to D&D and not sure where to start, the Essentials Kit is the best buy right now by my reckoning. It’s only slightly more expensive than the Starter Set, but contains more stuff that should keep you going for longer. Don’t pick up the core books unless you really want them, as they’ll be going out of date next year—the Starter Set and Essentials Kit both contain everything you need to play, and you can reference most of the core rules for free on D&D Beyond anyway. 

D&D adventures

Almost all the big D&D 5e adventures are getting fantastic discounts on Amazon this year, making it a great time to pick one up. These shouldn’t be affected by the big OneD&D rules update: the new rules have been confirmed to be backwards compatible with content like this, and at worst you’d only need to tweak some stats anyway. 

Other tabletop RPG deals

I’m a huge advocate for playing TTRPGs outside of Dungeons & Dragons—I even made a whole list of recommended D&D alternatives. A ton of my favourites are on deep discount this year, a lot of them offering a more complete experience for cheaper than the D&D products, without the impending doom of a new sort-of edition looming. Here’s my pick of the best of the bunch, but there’s too much good stuff to include it all—if you’re interested in widening your RPG horizons this year, I recommend looking in places like DriveThruRPG’s hub and seeing what jumps out at you. 

• We’re curating all the best Cyber Monday PC gaming deals right here.