What is this?

This is a campaign site on which you will find information about a DnD campaign we are running.

What is Dungeons and Dragons?

Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game. The core of D&D is collaborative storytelling. You and your friends tell a story together, guiding your heroes through quests for treasure, battles with deadly foes, daring rescues, courtly intrigue, and much more.

Role-playing is basically pretending to be another person or character. In many ways, D&D is like a video game where you can create and design whatever sort of character you want and play through a story.

There's a notable difference between video game RPG's and tabletop RPG's, though. In a video game, you can only do things that the game makers put in the game - you can run, shoot, climb and open doors - if the people who made the game gave you those options. You are playing a game where the rules and world outside your character are controlled by a computer. And that computer only knows so much.

In a game like D&D, though, the computer you are "playing against" is another person - the Dungeon Master, or "DM". The DM sets up obstacles (a man-eating dragon, a corrupt lord, a booby-trapped labyrinth) and the others portray one or more characters who must defeat those obstacles (a fierce dwarven warrior, a smooth-talking elven archer, a crotchety old wizard). For example, instead of simply opening the door in front of you, you can say "I want to kick it down" or "I want to see if it's locked. If it is, I'll knock." and the DM will use a rough set of rules to determine what happens. The options your character can take are essentially limitless.

Now, it's not exactly accurate to say that you play "against" the DM. Instead, you should be playing with them, Ideally, you, a few other players, and the Dungeon Master cooperate to tell a story. Each player controls a character and the DM controls the people, monsters and world around them.

D&D has its roots in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. It is a fantasy game. Other games use a similar system, but have horror themes, or are adapted for a modern setting, or even a futuristic world.

D&D uses a system where you select a race and class, which have distinct bonuses to certain traits and skills, and varying abilities. When you want to do something that has a potential for failure (jumping across a chasm or attacking an enemy with your weapon) you roll a die, add bonuses or penalties that your character has, and check that number against a number set by the DM. If your result is higher, you succeed, if not, you fail.

The core mechanic is the twenty-sided die, or d20 as it is known in the game. For almost any non-trivial thing you want to do (attack the dragon with your sword, intimidate the lord into letting you pass through his lands, disarm a spike trap), you roll a d20 and add or subtract a number based on the character's skill at that task. The DM compares that value to a set number that he or she determined as the difficulty for the task. If you meet or exceed the number, you succeed! If you're below the number, you fail. Generally, rolling a 20 is considered an automatic success as it's the highest number on the die (in some cases a DM may decide it's a success even if the total value doesn't meet the difficulty value), while rolling a 1 is an automatic failure.