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If there is any [[role-playing game|RPG]] that needs no introduction, Dungeons & Dragons is it.  Dungeons & Dragons so dominates the industry that people who have not heard of any other role-playing game have heard of Dungeons & Dragons, and may in fact not be aware that other role-playing games exist; to many people "Dungeons & Dragons" and "role-playing game" are more or less [[synonym]]ous.

(I don't think this is a ''good'' thing, but more on that later.)

At the time I'm writing this, the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons is the fifth edition, hereafter &quot;5e&quot;, and I went back and forth a lot as to whether to include support for 5e in the Wongery.  Certainly when I first conceived of the Gamespace in the Wongery, D&D was one of the games I fully intended to support.  Not only was it the most famous and most widely played roleplaying game, but it was one I had a lot of sentimental attachment to, having like many people been introduced to RPGs through D&D and having played it since the early days of first edition back in the late seventies.

(Well... technically, when I first conceived of the Gamespace in the Wongery, D&D was in its fourth edition, which would have made it difficult to include it since it wasn't under an open license.  There was a pseudo-open "[[Wikipedia:Game System License|Game System License]]", but I'm not sure how feasible it would have been to include support in the Wongery under that license&mdash;one of the biggest sticking points being the injunction against publishing &quot;any product pursuant to the OGL that features the same or similar title, product line trademark, or contents of a Licensed Product&quot;, which could have been a problem if I also wanted to support other systems published under the [[Wikipedia:Open Game License|Open Game License]], which I would have wanted to do.  However, once 5e was released under the OGL this became moot, and if I hadn't before I certainly planned then to include D&D as one of the supported systems.)

But that was before [[Wikipedia:Wizards of the Coast|Wizards of the Coast]], the company that owns D&D, [[Blog:20230109|tried to revoke]] [[Blog:20230127|the Open Game License]] in early 2023... and before it announced the upcoming "D&D One", which at the time I'm writing this hasn't been clearly stated to be under any sort of open license.  Given the company's abominable behavior and the contempt for the community it showed through its shenanigans, and given the imminence of a new edition that might not end up being under any sort of open license at all, I seriously considered omitting 5e entirely from the Wongery Gamespace.

What tipped me into deciding to support 5e here after all was the release of the 5e SRD ("Standard Reference Document", a compilation of licensable material) under a [[Wikipedia:Creative Commons license|Creative Commons license]] in the wake of the backlash against the disastrous attempted OGL revocation.  Because the 5e SRD is now in the Creative Commons, people can and probably will continue to use it regardless of what Wizards of the Coast does in the future with D&D One, and it's likely that for some time other systems will be published based on the 5e SRD (indeed, some already have been).  Whether or not the Wongery includes support for D&D One when it's eventually released will depend strongly on whether or not D&D One is released under the OGL or another open license (a ''truly'' open license, not an open-in-name-only license like the GSL or the abortive "OGL 1.1"/"OGL 1.2").

Still, while 5e is currently the most popular roleplaying game, that's not because it's just objectively better than every other roleplaying game out there; it's because D&D is the oldest and best known roleplaying game and has the most momentum and name recognition, and because it's the one with the biggest company and the most advertising dollars behind it.  Despite my own nostalgic fondness for the game, I have to admit there are a lot of things about the ruleset I'm not crazy about, and there are other rule systems I much prefer even if they don't have the same level of support.  If 5e is the only roleplaying game you're familiar with, I'd ''strongly'' suggest trying out some other roleplaying games.  Maybe you'll turn out to like one of them much better.  Maybe not&mdash;maybe 5e really is the game for you&mdash;but you'll never know until you try.  (Note that there are many other roleplaying games that have at least the core rules available for free, so you don't lose anything by trying them out except time.)  You can, of course, use the list of role-playing games supported by the Wongery as a starting point, but there are of course lots of role-playing games that ''aren't'' represented in the Wongery namespace (either because they're not released under the necessary licenses, or just because we haven't gotten to them yet), and you should be able to find many different games by looking or asking around.

==D&D and the Worlds of the Wongery==
Like other [[fantasy]]-specific roleplaying rulesets, the D&D rules lend themselves better to some Wongery worlds than others.  It's not too hard to get them to work with low-technology fantasy worlds like [[Vlastach]] or [[Gala]].  Adapting the D&D rules to modern or futuristic worlds like [[Gallerra]] or the [[Dupliverse]] is more of a challenge, though not necessarily impossible.  (For such settings, however, it may be a better fit to use a different system.)  For the moment, we've only included 5e pages for the former type of world, although we may make more extrapolative adaptations for the latter eventually.  (Or we may not; this isn't a promise.)

Even the low-tech fantasy worlds in the Wongery, however, have some significant differences from most Dungeons & Dragons worlds.  For one thing, with the exception of the [[human]], none of the standard D&D folks [[Wongery:canon|canon]]ically exist on any world of the Wongery: there are no [[elf|elves]], [[dwarf|dwarves]], [[gnome|gnomes]], and so on&mdash;at least not in the D&D sense, though there may be other [[life form|creatures]] by those names.  That doesn't mean that all PCs must be humans; most Wongery worlds do have other folks that are suitable as PCs, even if the standard D&D folks don't exist there.  Of course, your campaign doesn't have to follow canon, and if you want to find a place on [[Varra]] or [[Diddu]] for D&D-style elves, dwarves, and so on, nothing is stopping you from doing so.
	
Perhaps even more significantly, the worlds of the Wongery have their own [[arcanum|magic systems]] which in general work very differently from default Dungeons & Dragons [[magic]].  This means that, canonically, D&D wizards do not exist on the worlds of the Wongery, nor do clerics, druids, or any other class with magical powers.  The only standard D&D classes that work straight out of the book on most Wongery worlds are fighters, rogues, and barbarians, and ''maybe'' monks, and even for those classes there are some archetypes and abilities that don't really fit.  Again, this doesn't mean that class selection on Wongery worlds is more restricted, only that it's different&mdash;most Wongery worlds will include additional classes to choose from.  And, again, the above only refers to canon, which you're by no means required to follow in your campaign; if you want to have D&D wizards and clerics running around [[Curcalen]] or [[Ecemere]], you can absolutely do that.

Though it's less of an immediate issue than the differences in races, classes, and magic systems, it's also worth mentioning that alignment, in the D&D sense, is not meaningful on worlds of the Wongery&mdash;the only [[esture]] of the Wongery that (so far) has anything similar to D&D alignments is [[Dverelei]], with its [[axiom]]s, and even those are significantly different from D&D alignments.  While D&D-style alignments are provided for creatures and characters of the Wongery, they are given only in case you want to use them in a crossover campaign, import them into a standard D&D world, or modify the rules for Wongery worlds in your campaign.  (And, of course, you're free to change those alignments if you want to&mdash;if you prefer in your campaign for [[Lord Feck]] to be lawful evil, or for [[Horimeis]] to be chaotic good, that's up to you.)  Likewise, some Wongery worlds may have different monster types than standard D&D rules&mdash;in particular, [[dragon]]s of any sort do not exist on most Wongery worlds, and where they do exist they don't conform to all the characteristics of the D&D monster type.  And, of course, D&D monsters, except for the [[animal]]s that exist on real-world [[Earth]], don't canonically exist on worlds of the Wongery: there are, canonically, no gnolls in [[Norg]], no ropers in [[Ranthis]], no blink dogs in [[B'gor]].  (Again, though, there are (well, there eventually will be) plenty of new monsters in those worlds for you to use instead.)

To reiterate, however, all of the above only reflects the canonical assumptions, and you are not in any way bound to follow these assumptions in your own campaign if you don't want to.  Nothing prevents you from running a campaign set in [[Jhembaz]] using all the standard D&D races, classes, and monsters.  For that matter, nothing prevents you from publishing an adventure or sourcebook set in Jhembaz using standard D&D races, classes, and monsters.  It may not be fully compatible with other published material, but that may not matter to you.  Once again, as stated elsewhere, you can use as much or as little as you want of the Wongery worlds as written.