by Tom Doolan

Created on: May 01, 2008

Let's face it, just about everyone has a preconceived notion as to what Dungeons & Dragons is. And based on it's representation in popular media and film, that notion isn't exactly a good one. D&D players are seen as the social outcasts who rarely bathe and have no social skills.

Ok, so maybe there is some truth to that. But that's not the point.

Regardless of the popular notion of what D&D is, there are surprisingly many people who just don't understand it at all. So, when asked what D&D is, there is a simple way to go about explaining it.

The easiest analogy to understand is the childhood game of "Pretend." Remember when you were a kid and you would pretend to be an Indian, and your friend would pretend to be a cowboy? Or maybe it was cops and robbers, or superheroes and super villains. Whatever the venue, what you were essentially doing was playing a role-playing game. Now, imagine if that game had actual written rules, and methods of determining the outcome that were more complex and accurate than "I got you!" And instead of dressing up with a cowboy hat and plastic gun, the person you were pretending to be was represented by numbers on a piece of paper. And those numbers represented such things as how strong you are, and how good with that gun you actually are.

D&D simply takes that concept and places it in an imaginary setting, where guns don't generally exist, and instead of cowboys fighting Indians, there are warriors and wizards fighting orcs and dragons.

Ironically, with the release of Peter Jackson's /Lord of the Rings/ films, it is actually easier to explain D&D. Most people have seen those films, or at least one of them. So, remember the part where the group of characters went into the Dwarven caves in search of a way through the mountain? Well, imagine you were one of those characters. What would you have done differently? How would you have handled being attacked by scores of orcs? In essence, that is D&D.

It is a way to perpetuate the inner child, and embrace the imaginary adventure that we all have had at one point or another. Not everyone will relate to it, and few will be more interested beyond your explanation. But virtually everyone will understand it when put in this light.

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