The Basics of Dungeons & Dragons

It has come to my attention that I have some readers of this blog that has never played Dungeons and Dragons, and has "no idea what this blog is about." Well, in an attempt to serve as an ambassador to the non-roleplaying community, I wanted to offer a short primer on what a roleplaying game is.

The best way of thinking about a Roleplaying Game is that it is a cross between improvisational theatre and a cooperative board game. One of the players is in charge of creating the imaginary world in which the game takes place, and presenting the story. This player is called the Game Master (abbreviated GM) or specifically in Dungeons & Dragons, the Dungeon Master (abbreviated DM). The other players each create one character that they play (Known as the Player-Characters).

The Dungeon Master is responsible for describing the situations the characters find themselves in, acting out the parts of any person or creature the chararacters meet, and using the rules to arbitrate any actions the characters take in response to those situations. The players are responsible for acting out the parts of their characters and in doing so overcome the conflicts presented them by the Dungeon Master.

These are the basics of actual play, and of course the rules of the game are more complicated, but I will not attempt to explain them all here. For anyone interested in learning more, I definatly recommend purchasing a copy of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monstrous Manual for Second Edition Dungeons & Dragons. These are the three basic books needed to play the game.

The other thing that is needed to really understand alot of what I am talking about in this blog is a brief understanding of the history of Dungeons & Dragons. Originally created by E. Gary Gygax, and Dave Arneson, Dungeon & Dragons was created in 1976 as a evolution to the minature war games of the day. This was very successful, and the company Gary Started (TSR inc.) created a number of basic versions of the game before creating Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AkA: 1st edition). Gary was an amazing designer, but not a good business man, and in the 80s TSR was in financial trouble. Eventually, the company was taken over, and Gary was ousted. After which the company released a new version of the game that (in my opinion) improved upon Gary's work. This was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd edition.) This edition lasted until 2000, when the company came up on hard times again and was bought out by Wizards of the Coast.

Wizards of the Coast, created a totally new game with only a passing resemblence to the older editions, and called it Dungeons & Dragons (3rd edition). Shortly there after they released an edited, fixed version of this game: Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. These were the begining of what I call "Modern Game Design". Most recently (2008), Wizards of the coast revamped the game again and created Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, which while being a very well made game, only resembles the early editions in theme.

My last games were run with the 4th edition rules, but as I explained in an earlier blog post, I have tired of it and returned to the edition I first started playing: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd Edition). So much of my blog is written with that experience in mind, and discusses the changes made to the game in those intervening years.

I hope this gives some of you at least a slight understanding of what I am doing here. I have enjoyed Roleplaying games for the majority of my life, and I hope that even if you never play I am able to share some of that excitement and wonder with you, my readers.