The original Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition Starter Set, released in 2014, was a great introduction to the game and included an adventure called “Lost Mine of Phandelver.” This adventure was particularly well-suited for beginners and served as a gateway to D&D for many people, even inspiring podcasts like The Adventure Zone.
Since 2022, the digital version of “Lost Mine of Phandelver” has been available for free on DND Beyond. However, this free availability is coming to an end. Wizards of the Coast released a new Starter Set last year, featuring the adventure “Dragons of Stormwreck Isle.” They have also recently published “Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk,” a longer campaign that includes a modified version of “Lost Mine of Phandelver” as its opening chapters. Starting on October 10, the free version of “Lost Mine” will be replaced with a different free adventure called “Intro to Stormwreck Isle,” which acts as a prologue to the new Starter Set.
Currently, you can still access “Lost Mine of Phandelver” for free. This adventure takes a group of adventurers from level 1 to level 5 and is set in the Sword Coast region of the Forgotten Realms, a setting familiar to players of video games like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. While it does have a somewhat lackluster dungeon climax, it offers a solid sandbox middle section and introduces the village of Phandalin as a useful home base, complete with detailed NPCs and sidequests.
In addition to the adventures, the basic rules of D&D are available for free on DND Beyond. If you’re looking to get into D&D, especially after playing Baldur’s Gate 3, which uses the 5th edition rules with some tweaks by Larian Studios, this is a convenient starting point for your tabletop adventures.