There’s a lot to it! But I think I have a good start…
In DnD, you and a group of people are imagining things + crafting a story together.
As a player, you can be any type of character in this story, though there are often boundaries that depend on the group (for instance, youre unlikely to be a 43 year old human computer programmer with a hobby of collecting faberge eggs if the story you’re taking part in happens to be in a Lord Of the Rings’ Middle Earth-style world - instead, you might be a svelt dwarf with a peculiar love of elven music).
You determine what your player does in a variety of situations, from mundane to fantastical. If there’s something you’d like to do, there’s a way to do it that’s (somewhat) balanced and fair for everyone else participating. For instance, you can’t just declare you’re the strongest and destroy all of the goblins - you have to prove that by rolling dice. Players interact according to guidelines and rulesets.
One of the people in your group acts as the Dungeon Master. Ideally, they essentially control everything else about the game - the setting (they’ll describe the city you’re in, how a cavern wall feels cool to the touch, the scars on the face of an orc you’ve battled before, the enormity of rhe giant in the distance, etc) and, when interacting with aspects of the game (shopkeeps, opponents, wildlife, sentient flora, elder gods, ferrymen, etc), they’ll become those aspects of the game and role play accordingly. These also follow the same guidelines and rules you follow - so a goblin horde cannot just overtake your party, they’ll have to prove that by rolling dice and the like against you all in combat.
There’s a lot to it! But I think I have a good start…
In DnD, you and a group of people are imagining things + crafting a story together.
As a player, you can be any type of character in this story, though there are often boundaries that depend on the group (for instance, youre unlikely to be a 43 year old human computer programmer with a hobby of collecting faberge eggs if the story you’re taking part in happens to be in a Lord Of the Rings’ Middle Earth-style world - instead, you might be a svelt dwarf with a peculiar love of elven music).
You determine what your player does in a variety of situations, from mundane to fantastical. If there’s something you’d like to do, there’s a way to do it that’s (somewhat) balanced and fair for everyone else participating. For instance, you can’t just declare you’re the strongest and destroy all of the goblins - you have to prove that by rolling dice. Players interact according to guidelines and rulesets.
One of the people in your group acts as the Dungeon Master. Ideally, they essentially control everything else about the game - the setting (they’ll describe the city you’re in, how a cavern wall feels cool to the touch, the scars on the face of an orc you’ve battled before, the enormity of rhe giant in the distance, etc) and, when interacting with aspects of the game (shopkeeps, opponents, wildlife, sentient flora, elder gods, ferrymen, etc), they’ll become those aspects of the game and role play accordingly. These also follow the same guidelines and rules you follow - so a goblin horde cannot just overtake your party, they’ll have to prove that by rolling dice and the like against you all in combat.
I hope that helps a bit!