by Shawn Schafer

Created on: July 08, 2011

As a child, did you ever "play pretend"? Most people probably did at some point, whether it be pretending that you were army commandos with nerf guns, saving a princess from a dragon, or even the simplistic "don't touch the lava" game. Dungeons and Dragons is kind of like all of that, except that there is a more clearly defined ruleset governing its play.

Typically, 3 to 6 people gather around a table with weighty books,dice, and pieces of paper representing their characters. 2 to 5 people are players, controlling their own custom built character. One other person is the Dungeon Master, or DM; he runs the game. The DM creates all of the dungeons and other areas the other players will explore, deciding what monsters, traps, and other challenges they will face.

What makes D&D so much fun is partially what makes other tabletop games like Monopoly and Scrabble fun: it gives friends and/or family a chance to gather around a table and socialize, doing something they all enjoy. What also makes it fun is also what separates it from these other tabletop games; Dungeons and Dragons requires extensive use of the players' imaginations. The DM describes what is going on, the players build mental images of the action and figure out how to react. The DM then tries to figure out what would happen due to these players' actions; through rolling dice, math, and creativity. 

Dungeons and Dragons is the arguably the mother of all roleplaying video games. This is true both of theme and mechanics; if you were to look at the code of most RPG's you would find that it dictates behavior very similar to tabletop RPGs like D&D. It stands to reason, then, that video roleplaying games and Dungeons and Dragons share many of the same reasons for popularity. A huge one is that you get to create a hero or a villain. Most of us don't think of ourselves as heroes and villains. The most heroic thing one of us might do in a day is to open a door for someone; the most dastardly thing we might do in a day is tell a lie. Our decisions; good or evil, usually don't seem to affect much other than ourselves and friends and family. Decisions in a fictional Dungeons and Dragons world, or a video game world alike, might affect the population of an entire city, nation,world, the whole universe, or perhaps even multiple parallel universes. Meaningful decisions, those are what make Dungeons and Dragons appealing.

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