Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is a paper-and-pencil roleplaying game. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons in the year 1974.

Many people today think that role-playing games (RPG's) are only played on a computer, but that is not true. From the early 1970s, role-playing games have been played by people sitting together at the same table, using their imaginations and the written rules of the game to play (as well as dice to generate random numbers when needed).

Players of this type of role-playing game play as imaginary characters that go on heroic adventures. One person in the group acts as a moderator, or referee (called the "dungeon master," or DM, in Dungeons and Dragons), of the game. This person is responsible for making sure there is a fair use of the rules and is often also in charge of designing fun, interesting adventures for the other players.

There are now many types of fantasy role-playing games, both traditional paper-and-pencil games and computer games. Many genres of games are played (fantasy, science fiction, horror, war, and so on), and there are hundreds of companies that produce their own written rules systems and software products.

Versions of Dungeons and Dragons

Several versions of Dungeons and Dragons have been released. The first version was just called "Dungeons & Dragons." Several rule books were available, depending on the levels of the characters. The first books dealt with characters from levels 1-3. As characters got stronger, players had to move to the more advanced rule books to manage their characters.

After Dungeons and Dragons came Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. This was a new ruleset that was unrelated to the original rules. A second edition of AD&D was released, which is still popular today.

After Wizards of the Coast bought the rights to Dungeons and Dragons, a more streamlined version of the game was released, called Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. This version had simpler rules. Most die-rolls were done with a 20 sided die, instead of different types of multi-sided dice.

The 3rd edition rules were eventually revised, and version 3.5 was released.

A 4th edition of the rule books was published in June 2008. This is the currently used version of Dungeons and Dragons.