What’s DnD?

For those that have no idea what DnD is, it’s a tabletop role-playing game. But that’s such a drab way to put it.

Really, DnD is about story-telling in a fantasy setting. It’s about theater of the mind and creating characters and improvising and imagining. It’s cool and nerdy and wonderful. It’s almost like experiencing a shared dream with your fellow players.

A question I get often is: How do you play DnD? In the simplest form, you get someone (your Dungeon Master or “DM”) to run a made-up plot (a “Campaign”) for which you create a character (a “Player Character” or “PC”) to interact in the DM’s world.

You pick a race (ex: a half-elf) and a class (ex: a wizard) for your PC and then fill the character out with a personality and background.

The follow up questions I usually get: Is there a game-board? How do you actually play? There isn’t at traditional game-board but there can be a play mat for use in battles, travel, general ambiance. For actual play, the DM essentially poses situation that your PC has to respond to. For example, the DM tells us that during the PCs travel through the dark forest they see a light off in the distance and hear music; what do they do?

Each player then responds with what their PC wants to do (e.g.: run toward it; continue on; make camp to check it out in the morning; etc.) It’s a lot of world-building, character development, and good old fashioned imagination. I highly recommend it.