One May Ask, "What is D&D?"

        The book pictured below was my introduction to Dungeons & Dragons a long time ago, though I had played some role playing games before.  Any such book will detail the basics of role playing, but I will clear up some common misconceptions and try to give a brief overview here.  Note: I will write "D&D" for ease, but you could supplant "RPG" in most cases.

        One thing people who have not played D&D before often misunderstand is the very nature of the game.  It is an imaginative collective story-telling game with a set of guidelines.  It is not a competitive game, not even in the way boardgames or table top war games are.

       For D&D the game world is one of high fantasy, think Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Conan the Barbarian, King Arthur.  In every group of people playing D&D there is one leader, storyteller, judge and adjudicator of the game world and the outcomes of the actions of the rest of the players.  This person is called the Dungeon Master (though other games give it a different name).  The players each have a character with both a set of statistics not dissimilar from a video game rpg, mmo, etc.  These statistics and attributes tell the players and DM how your character interacts with the game world through the 'rules'. 
                                    

      For example if you have a high strength attribute, you get bonuses to hit things and lift heavy stuff.  Dice represent elements of chance and difficulty.  The players and Dungeon Master roll dice as prescribed by the rules of the game in order to make the plot of the story less predictable, continuously variable, and suspenseful for all involved.  

         Here is  a brief example of play as one might encounter it at a gaming table:

DM:   As you descend the stone staircase into the darkness, you hear scurrying noises from the bleak stone hallway in front of you.  As your eyes adjust, you can see there is a slight shimmer at the end of a short corridor.  Rats cover the floor in front of you, climbing on top of one another and scurrying about.  (What do you do?)

Player 1:   My character really wants to recover this artifact and isn't scared of a few rats. 

Player 2:  Alright, if you want to go for it,  I got your back.

Player 1:  I light a torch and wave it at the rats.

Player 2:  As he does that my character is going step back onto the stairs, notch and arrow and shoot it at one of the rats.

DM:  Alright, roll your attack to see if you hit the rat.  And I will roll for the rats  to see how they are affected by the fire from the torch. 

(interested parties roll various dice, add various modifiers and bonuses, and the players tell the DM what they rolled.  The DM can choose to keep his/her rolls secret)

DM:  Alright, so one of the rats is skewered on your arrow.   And three run back into a hole you notice now that your torch is lit.  The rest fight over one another to back up from the torch creating a few foot radius around you where there are now no small rodents.  You also see that the shimmer is the lock on a treasure chest at the end of the hallway, which ends in a dead end behind the chest.

Rinse, repeat.

     The other part is the role playing part.  Each player decides for their character what kind of person they are, what kind of adventurer they are, and generally what kind of stuff do they get into.  Are you a Dwarven Fighter using an Axe who has a grudge against the clan that shut down his family's mine?  Are you a young one hundred year old Elven Wizard learning dark secrets that allow you to cast awesome magic spells?  And for any of these characters: How did you come to be involved with the other characters in the group and situation you are in?  In the above example the characters may merely be treasure hunters, but perhaps one is after a powerful artifact they have been hunting down to learn a new spell, or to turn the tide in the ongoing war...

Any questions?