It’s sort of like reading The Lord of the Rings - but as you read, you get to decide the paths of each character. “I ask the bartender when she last saw the prince,” you might announce, or “I strike the troll with my axe.” The roll of various dice and the DM’s judgment determine the success or failure of any action. The DM also serves as the game’s referee and god.Īs a player, you “play” by describing what your character wants to do. One player, the Dungeon Master, or DM, dreams up the adventures that the players will go on and creates the world, the backstory of its peoples, creatures, magical lore and legends. Each character also has a level - if you’re level 2, you’re still wet behind the ears - and a name, personality and special abilities. For example, you might have a strength of 16 (out of 18), which is good, or a charisma of 3 (out of 18), which is not so good. Each person is a character that has certain powers and weaknesses, represented by statistics that you keep track of on a sheet of paper. You’ll also notice Mountain Dew and Doritos - key provisions for a quest.Īnd, as you can see, there’s no board. There are maps, rulebooks with names like Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide, and lots of strange polyhedral dice. These stills are from a home movie I shot in 1981 and should give you an idea of how the game is played. I first encountered D&D in 1979 when I was 12, and it blew my mind. D&D introduced rules for fantasy role-playing in a swords-and-sorcery world. Then, in 1974, came Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D - a game that changed everything.

Like most kids, I played board games like Risk, Stratego, Mousetrap, Battleship, Clue, Monopoly. I grew up in an isolated New Hampshire town before the Internet, smartphones and social media. What do you do? Rush and attack? Blast it with a magic fireball? Sneak around and find another way in? Try to bargain with it? Or something else? A troll, it’s chained to the entrance gate.

It’s nine feet tall, green and grumbling, and it carries a massive axe. In this mission, who do you want to be? A brave dwarf warrior? A brainy human wizard? A skilled elvish archer? A stealthy hobbit thief?Īs you approach the ruins, you see a creature. You’re a member of a team of adventurers, and your shared quest is to rescue a prince who has disappeared near an abandoned castle.

Cristina Daura You can gain strengths and abilities you didn’t know you had from fantasy role-playing games, says writer Ethan Gilsdorf.

Puzzle and dragons team builder