Dungeons & Dragons
first fantasy tabletop role-playing game / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dungeons & Dragons is a paper-and-pencil roleplaying game. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons in the year 1974.
Many people today think that role-playing games (RPGs) are only played on a computer, but that is not true. From the early 1970s, role-playing games have been played by people sitting together at the same table, using their imaginations and the written rules of the game to play (as well as dice to generate random numbers when needed).
Players of this type of role-playing game play as imaginary characters that go on heroic adventures. The characters can be many types: a strong warrior, a wise wizard, a skilled thief. One person in the group acts as a moderator, or referee (called the "dungeon master," or DM, in Dungeons and Dragons and "game master", or GM, in other games), of the game. This person is responsible for making sure there is a fair use of the rules and is often also in charge of designing fun, interesting adventures for the other players.
There are now many types of fantasy role-playing games, both traditional paper-and-pencil games and computer games. Many genres of games are played (fantasy, science fiction, horror, war, and so on), and there are hundreds of companies that produce their own written rules systems and software products.