What is Dungeons And Dragons?

Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game published by Wizards of the Coast in which players build characters and take on adventures guided by a Dungeon Master.

Where did Dungeons And Dragons come from?

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson designed the game and released it in January 1974 through their company Tactical Studies Rules, building on Gygax's Chainmail wargame.

What does Dungeons And Dragons mean?

The name points to the game's core setting of underground dungeons full of monsters, treasure, and dragons that player characters try to survive.

How do you use Dungeons And Dragons?

Players sit around a table with dice and character sheets while one person plays the Dungeon Master, describing scenes and ruling on player actions.

Is Dungeons And Dragons still popular?

Wizards of the Coast is still publishing the 5th Edition line that launched in 2014 alongside D&D Beyond digital tools.

Dungeons And Dragons

1974tabletop role-playing gameclassic

Published August 19, 2026

Dungeons & Dragons is the tabletop role-playing game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974, where players build fantasy characters and roll polyhedral dice under a Dungeon Master. It grew from a niche wargame offshoot into decades of video games, cartoons, and internet jokes like the 2017 #GOPDnD hashtag.

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Overview

Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game where players build fantasy characters and guide them through adventures run by a Dungeon Master1. Each player picks a race, class, ability scores, and one of nine moral alignments from the Player's Handbook, then rolls polyhedral dice to resolve actions3. The DM narrates the world, controls the monsters, and consults the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual to shape each session4.

The game runs on shared storytelling backed by rulebooks, dice, and character sheets. Its DNA showed up in fantasy video games, novels, and TV, and Wizards of the Coast still publishes and updates the core D&D line1.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Tabletop (Tactical Studies Rules) / Twitter (viral spread)

Creator

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson

Date

1974

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson designed the first Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks and published them in January 1974 through their company Tactical Studies Rules1. The system grew out of Gygax's medieval miniatures wargame Chainmail, layering character progression and dungeon exploration on top of the older combat rules3.

A children's Basic Set arrived in 1977 next to the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and AD&D 2nd Edition landed in 1989. Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997 and later shipped 3rd Edition in 2000, 4th Edition in 2008, and 5th Edition in 20141.

How It Spread

D&D pushed into computer gaming with Strategic Simulations' Pool of Radiance in 1988 and Eye of the Beholder in 19903. BioWare's Baldur's Gate followed in 1998 using the Infinity Engine, with Planescape: Torment a year later and Neverwinter Nights in 2002. CBS aired an animated Dungeons & Dragons cartoon from 1983 to 1985, and a live-action film hit theaters in December 2000 to mostly rough reviews.

On March 17th, 2017, One Shot podcast host James D'Amato kicked off the #GOPDnD hashtag on Twitter, imagining how Republican politicians would blunder through fantasy scenarios2. Contributors piled on with jokes like locking city gates and casting fireball on visiting elves, or drinking from a cursed "Trickle-Down Chalice" instead of paying for a healing potion2.

How to Use This Meme

A typical D&D session gathers three or more players around a table with dice, character sheets, and rulebooks4. The DM sets a scene, players describe their actions in character, and dice rolls decide the outcomes, with the DM acting as the final rules referee4. Long-running games often span months or years as characters level up through linked adventures called campaigns.