What is D&D for 9-Year-Olds

[I was prodded into this]

To play Dungeons and Dragons, one person is chosen to be the Dungeon Master, or DM.  The other players then pretend to be characters, like those in a story.  These characters are made up partly by the players and partly by rolling dice.  The DM watches the players roll and acts like a referee, making sure everyone follows the rules.

Different parts of the player's character say what the character can do.  We learn how strong or how smart the character is, or how tough or limber.  We learn how much damage a character can take before dying and how hard it is to hit the character.  We also learn all the things the character can do, and all the things the character owns.

Then the players pretend to run their characters in a place that the DM makes up.  It can be any kind of place: a city or forest, an underground labyrinth or a desert, whatever the DM decides.  The DM describes what the players see and where they are, so that the players can say what their characters do.  In a way, the players pretend that they are in the actual place the DM describes.

There are lots of imaginative settings the DM can invent.  The DM can invent lots of different imaginary persons for the player's characters to meet.  There are lots of different things the characters can do.  They can talk to the imaginary people (the DM pretends to be each person) or they can wander through the world to find things.  The players can fight other people or they might meet monsters they can fight.  If the player's characters win a fight, they can grab the stuff other people or monsters had in their pockets or in the places they were living.  If the player's characters lose a fight, they could die ~ and then the player has to "roll up" a new character, who then joins the game in progress.

There are many rules that explain how to run fights or what sorts of things can be found and taken.  There are also rules about things the characters can try to do and possibly fail at ~ like jumping between high places and possibly falling, or trying to climb a wall and succeeding.

The game is a lot of fun when the DM makes up a place that is interesting.  It is also good if the players want to get something special and it is possible, but challenging, to get.  It can be fun to chat with all the strange people and creatures the DM can invent.  In a lot of ways it is like be a character in a movie, who starts out to find something and then meets friends and enemies along the way; or discovers strange monsters; or gets trapped in a bad place; and then has to figure out how to get out, beat the monsters, defeat the enemy and get a lot of treasure at the end.  Sometimes the players' characters can come home and receive a parade.  They might even be allowed to marry the King's daughter or son, or become a member of the King's guard.

It is up to the DM what's possible and it is up to the players to succeed.  It can be hard to succeed, since everything might depend on a die roll or on making the right decision at the right time.

When people start playing, it can be very simple ~ a lot of fighting and hauling away the loot.  But as people get better at the game and the DM becomes more imaginative, it can be as BIG and as REAL as your imagination will allow.  There's no real limit to how complicated everything can get.  Even the rules can change if everyone agrees it will make a better game for everyone.  It really is different than any other kind of game!

You can even pretend that everyone that goes to a D&D bar will be smiling!
No one ever goes to bar unless they're happy.