D&D Is 30 763
mainframemouse writes "For those who have not seen the Beeb article, Dungeons and Dragons is 30 years old.
After many years of role-playing is wonderful to see the mother of all RPG's given respect and mention in the national press. There's even a note about the false accusations of the 80's." And for the record - flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me. Combine a familiar with Master Tactician and some rogue levels, and you're off to the races.
Has to be said... (Score:2, Insightful)
Love, boomgopher
House rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they irritate you, change the rules. One of the things a good GM needs to do is to keep the game from becoming too cheezy. If they players are abusing the rules, nerf them! The 3rd Edition Harm spell is a perfect example of something that desperately needs it.
In my opinion, rules like flanking and attacks of opportunity add a whole lot more tactical depth to the combat without slowing it down much. It's certainly more fun than combat in old D&D.
Re:wow (Score:2, Insightful)
what i find interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
ed
Re:my frinds were dorks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The flagship... (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially since my first D&D adventure was pen and paper and my entire party got devistated by a group of drow and a twisted DM who liked to have the spell casters in the party get their tongues welded to the floors of their mouths and spikes placed in their arms. Definatly nothing like NWN.
One thing that seperates NWN from pen and paper D&D is you can not get Array out of Bounds errors on pen and paper D&D when creating an adventure like you can in the Aurora toolset when adding your own content or manipulating it.
Also you have the ability to use your imagination more and drink beer and hang out with cool friends unlike NWN unless your doing a LAN fest of it. Still it's not the same in any way, shape or form.
Re:Has to be said... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it actually made you any cooler back then, it just wasn't well known enough to be a serious "nerd mark". People still knew we were nerds-- they just knew it for different reasons*.
* e.g. glasses, particularly damaged glasses fixed with [tape|wire|epoxy]; posession of calculating devices; reading books we weren't assigned to read; marginal enthusiasm/ability WRT team sports; "practical" rather than fashionable wardrobe; &cetera.
Re:The flagship... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an adult now. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got the problems of an adult on my head and on my shoulders.
I'm an adult now.
TPOH.
Re:The flagship... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's the pre game gab in which the players talk about their characters in first person and about how each saved so and so or nearly died in a running knife fight/chase which took place on the roofs tops of some distant sea port.
during the game you have a stronger sense of comeradery when you can see your other party members accross the table than one gets from watching them on the computer screen.
Then there's the pizza/chinese/what -ever take out order during or after the game where the party notes are taken and everyone haggles over the exact wording of the gaming logs. Not every group does this but in the ones I have participated, keeping a running narrative which reads something like cross between a novel and journal is lots of fun. One group I was in, in which we played 'Champions' the game log was taken from player notes and turned in to news paper articles by the GM. It was a lot of fun to 'read' about your character in the paper; although, it could often be embarasing to read the bits where the hero had to get bailed out of trouble or lost the bad guy.
Computers are nice and computer games are fun but it's not the same as playing with the same group in the same room.
Iron rations and other strange items (Score:3, Insightful)
I never knew what it was though. Pemican? I should have asked my mom to make me some for my lunch bag.
Thinking about it now I don't know how we got thirty torches into the backpack either. Did anyone's DM ever complain that there was no way it would all fit?
Another cool item was the "bullseye lantern". Didn't know for years what it was. Anyone remember any of the other strange original inventory items (the mundane ones)?
Re:Multiplayer Online (Score:5, Insightful)
My best roleplaying sessions, bar none, have been while playing the Amber Diceless RPG. No dice, four stats, just a few powers to deal with, and a point system so every character (which is based on the same number of points) is more or less equal. Even the powers are balanced; In order to be attuned to the logrus (and it to you) you have to be a shape shifter. Hence the Logrus powers which are arguably more powerful than those of the Pattern are balanced by there being a prerequisite. (And people with the pattern can generally see right through shapeshifters if they're paying attention, so good roleplaying can be rewarded by a good GM.)
Ultimately, the game comes down to the storyteller, GM, DM, or whatever they're named in your game of choice. It can only be as good as they are creative. The next thing is the players; are they serious about the game? I don't mean you can't make jokes, but the idea is to roleplay right?
Put another way, the "secret" is to form a group which shares your goals. You sound like you want to roleplay - you need a group of roleplayers. Most computer gamers don't want to roleplay, they want to kill shit. When I play a pen and paper RPG, then the world is open, it can be anything. When I play a computer RPG, this is not true, so I resign myself to killing stuff.
Re:Logic, Logic -- Who's Got the Logic? (Score:1, Insightful)
Even for those who have *not* seen the Beeb article, Dungeons and Dragons is 30 years old.
Ignoring your mistake:
There is nothing illogical about the statement. It is not a biconditional. It shouldn't be read to imply anything about those that did see the Beeb article. It would be illogical to do so.
Re:Iron rations and other strange items (Score:4, Insightful)
5 Torches (Long Burning)
100' Climbing Rope
30 Days (Freeze Dried/Iron, pick one) Rations
1 Flask of water
1 Flask of oil
1 Tinderbox
10 Flints
10 Sheepskins
etc.
Ah, Now I have to go home and start a game...
1st Ed (AD&D) (Score:5, Insightful)
The "rules" are guidelines like stabilisers on a kid's bike: once you get the hang of role playing you can take them off. In that sense there never was any need for second and thrid edition, although TSR generated that need by producing more and more "Modules for Dummies" that encouraged lazy play by DM's and players alike.
TWW
Re:Takes me back a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Takes me back a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
And some student would decide to top themselves, because they'd lost their best D&D character. At least that became the plot of one of the detective series that my parents watched.
Of course these days, students top themselves for no reason at all by making themselves sick from binge drinking.
Re:A great game, but sometimes dangerous. (Score:3, Insightful)
Does a game of Fantasy lead to a loss of reality, or are people who have a tenuous grip on reality drawn to games of Fantasy?
Me, I say number 2. Much like violent games don't create violent people, but violent people are probably drawn to violent games....
Random Comments (Score:4, Insightful)
All that said I'm working on a new role playing system that will do two things. First make it more flexible and fun to play, and second to make it easy so that once learned you don't need to keep referencing the books over and over. I'm always looking for suggestions including things people have liked or dislike about a game.
Signed a disgruntled DM/GM
Re:The flagship... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I do agree that doing stupid/bizarre things to blow away the DM's story line was always to most fun!
Re:The flagship... (Score:3, Insightful)
still its a best atempt yet to bring it across to the digital age...
Re:Some classic Christian D&D FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
But one must ask, "Why pretend to be evil people doing terrible things?" which some fellow D&D players prefered. "We burnt the village and raped..." One can call it fantasy, but why fantasize such things?
I had a small number of "guidelines" for my campaigns one of which was very simple. NO EVIL CHARACTERS. PERIOD.
If one defends the harmlessness of D&D by harping about Ph.D. theses and good over evil then why play evil characters doing evil things? Logically if it is so harmless and perhaps even good then shucks why not put your alignment choices where your rhetoric is?
For what it is worth I am a Baptist minister. The son of another minister asked if I could help teach D&D to him and some of his buddies. The parents (strongly involved in the church) know full well their sons have purchased D&D books and want me to teach them how to play.
I agreed at first, but after trying to decipher the 3rd edition rule books informed them that I might not be much help. What the heck is a DC?!?
One final comment. I stopped playing not because I started to question the "morality" of playing D&D. I started to question the wisdom of spending so much time playing D&D when I had other things to get cracking on such as a graduate degree... then a wife... then children... then a coupla jobs...
D&D is not evil. But it might not be the best use of my time and energy.
It Sure Sucks Having a RealLife (tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some classic Christian D&D FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
There are two things (IMO) that a Christian can find objectional. First, the game typically has you roleplay actions which would be considered immoral or unchristian if you actually carried them out - for instance, you kill all sorts of things, including other humans, and your typical treasure-hunting is often outright theft. The argument is that these actions are against God's commandments, and you wouldn't consider doing them in real life, so why is it ok to act them out? My view is "it's just a game". If you find this sort of role-playing offensive, then either roleplay a Lawful Good character, or don't play at all...but you have to question all your entertainment, not just RPGs. That movie you watched, that novel you read, that CD you bought...it may glorify a lot of the same things.
The second objection is that the game often revolves around a complex pantheon of deities. This comes out more in some settings than others, with Forgotten Realms being notable. Many Christians are disturbed at a game that builds on a decidedly non-Christian religious base. In this case, I tend to agree, to some extent. When I DM, it's in my own campaign world. There is no pantheon. Clerics exist, but are either good or evil, not serving specific deities. It's sort of a compromise position. I don't feel that D&D in any way implies that its gods are real, that you should go and make sacrifices to them, or any of that claptrap. But because removing a detailed pantheon does not impair our campaigns in any way, our group has agreed that we're happier playing this way.
Like any other group in society, the loudest members of Christianity are often the ones with the most extreme viewpoints - the vocal minority. You would be hard-pressed to find a more fundamentalist church than mine (Canadian Reformed, if you're interested - a mostly Calvinist branch of Protestants), but I've never run into anyone that didn't end up agreeing with me that there's nothing wrong with D&D if it's played with the right attitude.
Re:The flagship... (Score:2, Insightful)
More recently, I've seen ones where the points are labeled becoming more common. It seems a much easier method for newbies to understand, as they get to look at the top, like any other die.
Re:Speaking of Fringe Gamers (Score:1, Insightful)
I am thinking about joining a NWN guild to see if I can get some gaming in that way, but it just isn't the same as setting down with folks face to face.