I was raised in a religious household in the 90s so of course things like D&D were haram. I even went to an evangelical college (that's a whole post there), so I was never exposed to TTRPGs.
And it sucks, because from the little I know about them, I know I would have loved to play them.
But... how do they actually work? I think I have a very basic framework. I know you have one character you control/play as. You roll to... make things happen? Or they determine things that happen? I know there's a game master who doesn't just read a story out loud... they actually influence things?
I'm gonna eventually get into Disco Elysium and I feel like actually understanding TTRPGs would help. And there's a game store near me that hosts games, I'd like to show and not be a total noob.
It depends on the game, but generally your character has a set of Attributes like Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and so on. Those Attribute ratings often serve as modifiers to Skills, such as high Dexterity giving a bonus to Lockpicking. Some games use only Skills and no Attributes.
So, the Game Master is the leader (often with much player input) in determining how players interact with the world. Supposing that a player wants to pick a lock, the GM would establish how difficult the lock is to pick. Then the player would roll their Lockpick skill (rolling dice, plus or minus their Lockpick modifier) to find out whether they pass the threshold for successfully picking that lock.
Different games handle things very differently though. They range from extremely detail-oriented to extremely freeform