Dungeons and Dragons is a game that you either love or you think is stupid. Sometimes both at the same time. But it has been given a pretty negative connotation throughout the years.

Dungeons and Dragons is a game where you created a character in a fantasy setting and go on adventures throughout the fantasy world. This is done by the Dungeon Master or “DM” setting up situations and the players find a way to get through the situation with fighting or using a characters skill to sneak away or talk their way out. The way that you do this by rolling a 20 sided die. Based on what you roll on the “D20” you compare it to a DC or Dice Check which is determined by the DM if you roll higher you succeed and if not you fail.

D&D Fifth Edition is the most recent edition of this game to be released by Wizards of the Coast. This edition was released in July of two thousand fourteen and has been adopted by many players since then. The edition started with only the Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide. But since the release of those many supplementary products have been released through that time with the most recent being Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. But even with new content being released Wizards of the Coast has been vigilant of putting out free play test material to refine their content and still keep the players happy.

D&D fifth edition has been compared many times to other editions of D&D such as three point five edition. Many people still prefer three point five edition or Pathfinder as their tabletop role playing game of choice. That is because they like the customization of skills that your character can gain and the plethora of other skills, such crafting and a player favorite, seduction, that the games offer. But still others believe that Fifth Edition is the superior edition because of the ease of skills and proficiency instead of the many ranks and points that you would have to put into skills in three point five edition or Pathfinder. However even the players who enjoy three point five edition very much believe that Fifth Edition fixed the problems that were found in fourth edition.

As for Fifth Edition as a whole. The system remains the same D20 system that all D&D players have come to know and love. They also have very much improved the skills and defenses compared to fifth edition. Instead of the Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, that acted as essentially different armor classes, which is the stat for your resilience against attacks with a sword. They have gone back to saving throws but instead of the three point five saves they changed them to simple ability score saving throws. The game has fixed many problems by coming up with simpler solutions but none of them seem like they dumb the game down. It’s still the same system and it works with the Dice Checks given in the book. All of the leveling and progression you make let’s you feel as though you are actually progressing as a character and being able to help your team more.

Dungeons and Dragons has a reputation given to people who are not sure what it is. The reputation is that it is a nerdy game which is how senior Gillian Sweeny knows it as: “I only know it from Stranger Things, the idea of it is stupid though from what I heard, it’s like the stereotypical nerdy thing to do”. What the game has done is it has created a generation of people that think that the game is really dumb and not cool when in reality it is very fun and not necessarily as “nerdy” as you think it might be.

The game was designed for no limits and being able to play with the only limit in the game to be you and your friends imaginations. The game lends itself very well to homebrewing and creating your own supplementary content to let you play the game you want to play. With all that said the game has infinite replayability and will almost always be very different every time you play it even if you are playing it with the friends that you first started playing it with.  So over all we give this game a 5/5 stars.