The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents.

Dungeon Master (DM): As you enter the gloomy cave, you spot a single goblin snoring on a pile of treasure. You can smell its stench from across the cave. What would you like to do? Phillip (playing Gareth): I might be able to take it on in a fight, but I want to try to sneak over and steal some of the treasure.

Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories, a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers’ action. Players roll dice to resolve whether their attacks hit or miss or whether their adventurers can scale a cliff, roll away from the strike of a magical lightning bolt, or pull off some other dangerous task. Anything is possible, but the dice make some outcomes more probable than others.

DM: You try to sneak close to the hoard. Make a Dexterity check.

Phillip (rolling a d20): Ugh. Seven.

DM: The goblin is roused by your noisy approach. It suddenly jumps up and screams: “Intruders!”

In the Dungeons & Dragons game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers, played by friends. Characters are distinct due to their class, race and personality, each having their own strengths and weaknesses. Working together, the group might explore a dark dungeon, a haunted castle or a lost temple deep in a jungle. The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure.

One player, however, takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the game’s lead storyteller and referee. The DM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore. The DM might describe the goblin and its treasure, but the players decide what to do about it. Do they sneak over, attack it or try to charm it with a spell? Then the DM determines the results of the adventurers’ actions and narrates what they experience, including playing all the other characters they encounter along the way. Because the DM can improvise to react to anything the players attempt, D&D is infinitely flexible.

The game has no real end; when one story or quest wraps up, another one can begin, creating an ongoing story called a campaign. A campaign might be created by the DM or purchased off the shelf. In either case, an adventure usually features a fantastic setting. Many people who play the game keep their campaigns going for months or years, meeting with their friends every week or so to pick up the story where they left off. The adventurers grow in might as the campaign continues. There’s no winning and losing in the Dungeons & Dragons game. The group might fail to complete a task successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win.

Often the action of an adventure takes place in the imagination of the players and DM, relying on the DM’s verbal descriptions to set the scene. Some DMs like to use music, art, or recorded sound effects to help set the mood, and many players and DMs alike adopt different voices for the various adventurers, monsters, and other characters they play in the game. Sometimes, a DM might lay out a map and use tokens or miniature figures to represent each creature involved in a scene to help the players keep track of where everyone is.