RPG System Overview: Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons The one who started it all. The one RPG by which all others are measured. Say what you will, D&D is the granddaddy of all role playing games. Everybody plays D&D. It's the standard game. If you're in the hobby long enough, you'll play this at some point. Everyone is familiar with it, and most of the time it's the easiest thing to get everyone to agree on. It also established a lot of the conventions that other games follow.

D&D tends to do pulp fantasy very well. There's a Tolkien-esque flavor to the system, but high fantasy isn't really it's strong suit. The new edition is a fairly big departure from past versions, and may manage to do the LotR style better, but I haven't had enough experience with it to come to a definite conclusion.

D&D, more so than most games, tends to encourage a very strict division of labor within a group. Players must choose a class when they create a character. Only certain classes can cast spells, and those classes aren't very good at fighting. Only certain classes can wear heavy armor, and those classes aren't very good at picking locks or sneaking past guards. Despite this, characters are still fairly customizable, though there isn't the room for versatility that there is in a pure point system.

Characters take damage in the form of lost hit points. 3e and 3.5e had no penalties for losing hit points as long as you were above 0hp. 4e has some game effects that occur after a certain fraction of a characters hp have been lost, but it's still very cinematic. Armor makes characters more difficult to hit, so characters must exploit holes in the armor, rather than trying to pierce it.

The magic is integrated into the system, and a party would have a difficult time surviving an adventure without using magic. This is less true for 4e, but a lack of magic users would still be a handicap.

Dungeons and Dragons is the progenitor of the role playing genre. It was also my first RPG. It's not my favorite system, but some of my best gaming memories were made playing this game.