Dungeons And Dragons

1974tabletop role-playing gameclassic

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.

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.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions