DragonQuest has been defined by many people in many different ways. For those unfamiliar with the game, the following is quoted from the 2nd Edition.

Fantasy role playing, as a way to spend one's leisure time, has come of age in the last five years. Since the days when a small group of devoted die-hards first uncovered an enjoyable fantasy role-playing game, the idea has attracted an ever-growing body of people whose divergent tastes demand innovative and original new works. Thus, enter DragonQuest.

Three general themes guided the design and development of DragonQuest and make this game different and (we think) an improvement on all other role-playing games. First, DragonQuest was designed to impose as few artificial restrictions on the Gamemaster (GM) as possible. For example, a character is not limited to a particular group of abilities (known in the genre as a "character class"). A character class imposes certain arbitrary restrictions upon a character, forcing him or her into molds which have to fit, regardless of the inclination of the player. These classes came into being in other games as balancing tools, to make it just as advantageous to be a human fighter as to be a dwarven priest. In order for a character in a DragonQuest world to have as much freedom of choice as possible, anyone can be anything. Of course, the player who tries to have as versatile a character as possible will be correspondingly handicapped when he tries to rise in power. The important effect of this theme is that any character from the pages of fantasy literature can be re-created (in game terms) without causing aberrations in the game system.

Second, almost all creatures and magics are drawn from sources existing in myth, legend, or literature. We do not pretend that our fantastic inventions can compete with those reaching across the gulf of time to us, being the stuff of our heritage. Rather, we have attempted to imbue as much verisimilitude as we could, to allow those who play DragonQuest to live on a gaming table those worlds they have only been able to vicariously experience before. The fantasy of northern Europe is prevalent in these rules, because it is the common reference point shared by most of the people who will play DragonQuest. When a specific mythic creature or type of magic is reproduced, it is given all the characteristics ascribed to it in legend. When discussing the imaginary, brief mentions were often thought to be sufficient; in such cases, we try to explain as best we can. The few liberties taken were to fill the logical "holes." Norse legend and the Lesser Key of Solomon (to name but two examples) are not entirely compatible. We have attempted to give the GM a solid base to which he may add his own or other cultures' legends and magics.

A third concept in mind during the design process was to maintain the game's flexibility, and allow the GM and players to expand on the original rules. The modular presentation of skills and magic colleges makes the introduction of new ideas easy; adding a new skill or college does not necessitate changing the original ones.