What is Dungeons & Dragons?

Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D for short, is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game created by Tactical Studies Rules in 1974. There is typically a minimum of two players required, with one being the “Dungeon Master”, or DM for short. The DM creates a story that the players (everyone else) adventure through via their characters in a 1-20 levelling system. When designing a character, players can pick through a list of fantasy races and classes to help customise their character, utilising various weapons, magics and skills to react to situations.

As characters and NPCs (other beings controlled by the DM) grow and develop in their world, they will experience a lot of interactions with enemies, allies and each other. This is another important skill that is developed during play. A large part of D&D is the roleplaying, getting into the personality of your character or a villain fighting the party. This can feel awkward at first, especially if you put on different voices for characters to really immerse yourself, but it is equally important in building social skills. Even a shopkeeper that the players will encounter once can turn into some of the most memorable moments through creative descriptions and funny interactions. I’ve found that shy people I play with really take D&D as an opportunity to be bolder, and have even translated that skill into real life, the experience of D&D getting them used to being more outgoing. This applies to everyone  but is more impactful to children as they’re still getting used to these things.

The Maths & Strategy Of Combat

Creativity and social skills are useful, but not the only things children gain from D&D. Even for groups that are less excited to roleplay, the combat involves a variety of skills through a decent amount of dice rolling and calculations, as well as strategy between players depending on how hard the encounter is.

The maths is nowhere near overwhelmingly difficult, mostly being large amounts of addition and subtraction between smaller numbers when working out attack damage and health lost from attacks.

Not only is this a very fun way for children to improve maths skills, but these combat encounters encourage teamwork and even moral dilemmas depending on what the DM wants to do, remember, the limit of what can happen in D&D is entirely up to the imagination. I don’t think I need to explain how all these skills can be valuable to a child; teamwork is one of the most sought-after skills in workplaces nowadays and I’ve only just scratched the surface of the lessons people learn from this game. There is the planning that goes into sessions from DMs, complex puzzles and arguably most importantly of all – the friendship strengthened through these games.

To Summarise

Overall, D&D is often misjudged as potentially a bad influence, but it can prove to be incredibly useful for young people as it teaches many different life skills, as well as being a foundation for creativity and potentially a good stepping stone into other creative media like writing or drawing.