What is Dungeons & Dragons and Why Do So Many People Love It?
Three kids play a tabletop role-playing game with dice, maps, and mini figures, smiling and imagining together.
If you’ve ever heard someone mention Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and wondered what all the excitement is about, this one’s for you!
D&D is part of a larger genre called tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). In these games, players sit around a table (in person or virtually) to tell a story together. Each person plays a character with unique traits and goals, while the Game Master acts as narrator and guide, describing the world and what happens next.
D&D is the most well-known TTRPG and has inspired hundreds of others, from whimsical kid-friendly adventures to deep, story-driven fantasy worlds. In D&D, players build a shared world, solve problems, make choices, and roll dice to see what happens next.
Want to see it in action? In this video Deborah Ann Woll walks Jon Bernthal how D&D works.
What makes D&D and other tabletop RPGs so powerful is their world-building. Players don’t just follow a story, they create it. These games are blank canvases for imagination, where anything can happen and every player helps shape the adventure. That kind of collaborative storytelling builds confidence, flexibility, communication, and connection for both kids and adults. As Deborah Ann Woll says in the video, “It’s as close as you can get to when you were seven on the play-yard, just making up games and stories.”
And while the official rulebooks can look intimidating, the truth is: you don’t need to know everything to play. With a strong Dungeon Master, players start having fun immediately. You learn as you go, just like kids do when they jump into a new video game.
At Jennybird Speech & Language, I love D&D because it’s storytelling with purpose. It invites imagination, teamwork, and laughter. It shows that communication, like adventure, grows through play.
Because in every good story, and every good therapy session, communication is what makes the world come alive.