What is Dungeons and Dragons?

Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) modeled after miniature war games that uses dice rolls, personalized characters, several books worth of rules, premade monsters, and spells to tell a story that the players ultimately decide the ending to.

 To play, there is one person, called the Dungeon Master or Game Master (DM or GM), and a number of player- characters; these are the people who create their individual characters and make the storyline of the campaign, an ongoing game with many continuing sessions, a reality.  The DM, who essentially runs the game, acts as all non-player characters and monsters, as well as describes the setting of the game to the people playing. Essentially, Dungeons and Dragons is nothing more than a fantasy, tabletop, role-playing war game. 

Originally released  in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc., Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) has gone through numerous changes with several new editions being created and released, the most recent being fifth edition (5E).  Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition, now published by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro as of 1997, is the edition that most people play in the present, having six books of character options, rules, monsters, and spells, the most essential two being the Player’s Handbook, and Dungeon Master’ s Guide.  Along with these, there are also books that lay out entire campaign story lines with their own world and countries for the players to explore as well as specific monsters for them to fight.