Dungeons and dragons. Admit it, you love it.

D&D, everyone's heard of it. Gary Gygax's fantasy tabletop role playing game is widely considered one of the nerdiest possible past-times. So that's an achievement in itself! But in all seriousness, many consider it the beginning of modern role playing games and therefore the start of the RPG industry. So it really is quite something.

So what made this dice rolling boardgame so appealing? Let's analyse the way the game plays. Players create characters that embark on imaginary adventures in a fantasy setting. One person assumes the role of Dungeon Master, and acts as the game's referee and storyteller, maintaining the setting in which the adventures occur. Players listen to the DMs explanation of their surroundings and possible choices, then describe their actions. These actions generally involve interacting with fantasy world characters, solving problems, battling monsters and finding treasure. Does this sound familiar? It should to anyone who's played a 'traditional' style role playing video game. The idea's exactly the same in computer RPGs like dragon quest for example; just the storytelling is done by the game rather than being assigned to a player as a role.

So so far, the game sounds like a big daydreaming session. However the game's more complex actons are decided on the roll of a dice, rather than players just describing every action. Therefore, there is an element of risk involved in the game, and this random element is similar to the damage element in modern computer RPGs. Characters also gained levels, gaining skills, gold, etc. Consideirng its similarities to popular modern RPGs it is no surprise how popular it is... the main difference being that D&D requires a much larger degree of imagination.