How to get started
Starting out as a player
If you are comfortable with or can get yourself to talk to strangers and meet new people, find a local group and play. There will be a Facebook group for D&D in your city or vicinity, feel free to ask for suggestions there, folks will be happy to help. If meeting strangers is not something you can or willing to do, talk a bunch of friends into playing.
You'll need 4-5 people to get started and one of you will need to be the DM. Note that if you are talking others into this, it's likely that you'll need to take DM'ing onto yourself.
Anyhow, if you end up being a player what you need to do is read up a bit about classes and races, choose one that you like, show up for the game, and follow your DM's instructions.
Starting out as a DM
There are many approaches to D&D, mine is all about story and narrative, any rules are only means to an end and provide a framework. My suggestions abide to this. Also, it's important to have the expectation that learning DM'ing takes quite a bit of time. You can go easy but still, if you like doing it, it will consume a fair amount of your free time, like any hobby that you like doing. (And if you don't like it, well, then you'll ditch it anyway.) So, with these caveats in mind...
10 steps to get into DM'ing
Watch Starter Kit - D&D Edition to see how a game session looks like.
Buy the Starter Set and read the material, make this your first adventure.
Stick to the ruleset of the Starter Set, which is even more simple than the Basic Rules, but that's only for the better, it helps to start easy.
Listen to Your Pocket GM's Dungeon Masters Guide To Lost Mine Of Phandelver podcast once, which guides you through the whole campaign and gives a narrated overview of everything that you've already read.
Listen to How to D&D's Lost Mine of Phandelver DM Guide podcasts as you progress with the campaign, which helps to add more thought to certain situations, characters, and encounters. When there are multiple videos for the same thing, always choose the shorter one.
Listen to Lutes & Dice's Lost Mine of Phandelver Villains podcast, which is an insanely good guide to add more flavor and color to your NPC characters that you roleplay as a DM. I'd say alway listen to the next one becoming relevant in your story, but personally I couldn't resist to listen to the whole lot, they are just so good and help to be a better DM.
Casually listen to Jorphdan's Forgotten Realms Explained podcasts from time to time, which tells you a whole bunch of lore about the world your game is set in. It helps to tell a better story when you know more about the context you live in. I went through this while travelling, taking a shower, going for a walk, so it's a perfect backdrop.
When there's a new race coming up in the story, read up on them on The Monsters Know. It helps to create more realistic and intelligent combat encounters.
Read the Dark Elf Trilogy. I found reading books set in the Forgotten Realms enhance my imagination about the world, teach me about the rules and races in a narrative way, and give ideas about how to tell a story well. And who to better learn storytelling from than R.A. Salvatore. Also, there's some sort of thematic connection to the Lost Mine adventure, but no spoilers here.
Have fun and try to win! Every NPC, monster, encounter, and situation that you throw at players is not only about the player's experiences. Play those NPC's, live them, and when they are fighting the players try to win. The monsters would want to. And if you are having fun playing like a player would you'll like DM'ing more, too.
Optional but recommended +3 steps
Print maps for your game sessions. You can get high resolution maps for all dungeons of the campaign on Mike Schley's website. You can print them at the right scale with the Rasterbator, which slices up your large image to many pages of paper sheets so that you can print and then stitch them together. This is awesome to put on the table and play out major encounters with your players, they'll love it.
Buy miniatures for combat. With the maps at hand you'll also need some miniature figures to play out the combat encounters. Find a local store to buy minis, they are likely to offer the best price overall. The best minis that I like using are from the series of Nolzur’s Marvelous Minis and Pathfinder Deep Cuts. You can also get great minis from board games; for the Lost Mines adventure I suggest getting The Legend of Drizzt, which has perfect minis for all of the pre-generated Starter Set characters and some monsters especially at the start of the campaign. (Besides, you'll also have a great board game.)
Buy a DM screen. It helps to keep your notes, dice throwing, and general assets confidential, and gives an overview of some basic rules readily available. You'll likely put a bunch of post-it notes on it with some personally more important notes pretty soon, but at least you'll have a board to stick those notes on. I love the official and basic D&D 5e DM screen because the large dragon image on the outer side sets player's moods beautifully for the game. And last but not least, having a DM screen makes you feel awesome and reinforces your self-identity as being the mystical DM behind that DM screen.
Resources
What is D&D? Overview from scratch on the official site of Wizards of the Coast (publisher of D&D). Should be continued with the Races, Classes, and Locations articles. This is a very brief jumpstart, easy read.
A beginner’s guide to playing Dungeons and Dragons Article on polygon.com. Has the essential intro and links.
Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set Official box set by Wizards of the Coast. Includes a good story, pre-made characters, one dice set.
Starter Kit - D&D Edition 6 episodes video series on Geek & Sundry's YouTube channel. A beginner party of actors and musicians play. Fun way to ease in, the DM is pretty good, sometimes there's background music, they fool around, light weight content.
Basic Rules A free, online edition of the rules of D&D that's perfectly fine to run a full adventure.
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