Okay, after playing "Something or other Avalon" (can't recall the name of the game) yesterday I remembered once again that I was going to look into D&D. Anyway, I have a couple of friends who'd play as well (about 5 or maybe 6 in total?!) but we know absolutely nothing about it. And while I enjoy being a geek at times (watching BSG, Star Trek etc and even playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle ) none of that includes my having to go absolutely loser. So - how necessary is it to give up any and all feelings of decency and shame one might have? I assume that's part of the "fun"? Apart from that - where do I start looking? How long does it take to actually enjoy playing the game? (It does seem to have awful amounts of rules - something like 3 rulebooks) Anyway, we're all complete n00bs so any information is appreciated.
I used to play, and can say that the fun depends on the players. If you meet up with nothing but geeks who want to use realistic physics in the game, you're in for a tough time. However, if the only geek is the dungeon master, then it could be great fun from the first minute. You see, only the DM really has to know all those rules. The rest just have to get 'in character' - e..g if you're playing a really dumb but strong one, kick ass in battle but make sure you step into every obvious trap. Or say the wrong things at the wrong time, getting your party in trouble. Don't exaggerate, though, adventuring parties have been known to kill off eachother I used to play 2nd edition ad&d, which had a lot more rules than 3rd, which apparently is aimed more at storytelling and not on rules. That sounds good to me. The only book you have to get is the player guide. You read that once and then just look up stuff if you really need to. The monster manual is off limits, as that has all the statistics for the creatures you encounter, and part of the fun is not knowing what you're up against. Maybe it's a good idea to start with pre-made characters, just have the DM roll 2 for each of you, then pick one to start with. If you're knew, you're bound to get killed sooner or later, and it won't be much fun having to either roll a new character during a gaming session or having to sit by while the others play. That is, assuming you guys sit at a table, with lots of booze and snacks. Not running around in a forest dressed up like convention-geeks. That would mean you're lost beyond any kind of help.
Rules are guidelines..a gaming group can decide how much of it they want to use and how closely they want to follow them. Are you going to be the Game Master or a player? Because if you're a player you need to discuss what sort of game the GM runs before you become a part of it and see if it's your cup of tea. Zel is very story oriented. Rules and dice rolling are as minimal as possible in favor of good story. Some GMs are married to the rules set. I guess the short answer is that it can be whatever you want it to be depending on the types of people you got in your group or the type of group you join up with. Maybe this will help: Official Site: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/welcome Free Downloads: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/downloads
My friends and I taught ourselves 1st edition D&D back in 1978 when we were about 10 or 11. We had a frakkin' blast, but we didn't know what the hell we were doing. Our characters would rarely last through one playing session, much less into any sort of campaign. After a couple years when we'd graduated to AD&D and actually learned the rules, we had even more fun, if that is even possible. I played with friends all the way up through high school- in fact, one of the biggest things I dreaded about going off to college was the breakup of our gaming group. At the time, my step-mom was a budding fantasy writer (she actually got a short published in one of those anthologies, way back when) and she was one of the DM's evah! I still feel that pang of wistfulness when lazy Sundays roll around and all I have to do is watch football. So my advice is get in there with your buds and play. You'll love it.
Just don't tell your trophy wife. I'm pretty sure there's a law that states trophy wives aren't allow to marry people who played D&D. There's actually an idiot's guide to Dungeons and Dragons out there. But you don't have to go the D&D route, there's tons of RPGs out now. If you are a fantasy reader you could choose a RPG with rules and background specifically for a certain setting. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, Moorcock's Elric/Eternal Champion Series, the Thieves World anthologies, Leiber's Lankhmar, Howard's Conan/Hyperborea setting, Martin's Game of Throne, Jordan's Wheel of Time... well, you get the idea. Plus it doesn't have to be fantasy. Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, B5, and Starship Troopers all have their own lines. Gamma World and Darwin's World do a great post-apocalypse. 7th Sea and Deadlands bring magic and high adventure to swashbuckling and the old west, respectively. Paranoia is in a category by itself, espionage has James Bond and Spy Hunter, and GURPS is literally any or all of the above. And the goth horror of White Wolf's Vampire is a bit more socially acceptable to the feminine persuasion. Hell, there's a Toon RPG were you play rascally rabbits and stuttering hunters. But yeah, the big thing is the GM has to know the rules - or at least know the story he wants to tell. The rest of it is just playing in character. More and more you are seeing RPGs getting away from detailed game mechanics, and focusing on the story telling aspect.
Toon was a GREAT game. I only ever dabbled in Gamma World. I'd LOVE to play a post-apocalyptic RPG now. And if only I had a trophy wife... (Mine is cute but way too functional, and she already knows I'm a terminal geek)
I always wondered how you play those games. Do you sit around a table, somebody makes up a monster and then you compare stats? Do you create some story collectively and then play it out? I really have no idea.
I'm pretty much with Cass experience-wise. And so far it sounds like you need way too much imagination (at least for my liking) - I'd prefer to at least have a map and small symbols for each character and monster and stuff like that. And more "objective" stuff (like you actually know how something's supposed to play out - more like Warhammer Fantasy Battle, I guess). I don't think I'd be very much into the whole story-telling aspect (too rational or something) even though I greatly enjoy fantasy literature. It's just... too much, I guess. So what I'm probably more looking for is something like a computer-rpg - only in real life. (And no, I absolutely don't wanna go running through the woods - to go with what Zenow said: booze and unhealthy food should definitely be included)
Pylades - definitely find someone else to GM then. Sounds like you'll have more fun playing. And it depends on the GMs style - D&D came from a paper and minatures wargame, chainmail. If you want to play it like a wargame you can. There's several different genres of play - wargaming, which is just minimaxing stats and working on tactics. That's a lot of fun. But generally you go from that to adventuring, which expands the repetoire and includes more story-telling, problem solving, and often quests and riddles and the like. Then to role playing itself, which is a combination of characterization and improvisational writing. Cass - two ways to play really. A pre-bought module that defines a story for the GM. It gives a story outline, maps, player aids (things such as hand outs from books or data screens in scifi games, often visual representations of rooms, characters or monsters), and lots and lots of stats. The classic example is the dungeon, a level by level encyclopedia of what is in that structure, and hopefully why. Or it can be more story based. In my old Amber campaign, the first thing I'd do is the same as any writer - I'd take a look at the characters involved in the game and map out their motivations, seeing what they would be doing at any given point in time, and why they did what they did. These games were very political, so the action often derived from power plays in their feudal government structure - for example, the Duke of X is looking to corner the market on specific wine crop in order to gain favor with Count Y, a connieseur of those vintages, in order to force a political favor from Count Y who holds control over a certain position in the constabulary, that Duke X needs in order to infiltrate the King's guard for his support of the upcoming coup d'etat of Prince W. Of course, a lot of it was more metaphysical and arcane due to the setting, but it all came down to character motivation. The difference between rpg's and novels is that you don't control all the actions, as the player characters make their own decisions, and often come up with inspired or outlandish actions you never considered. But then, that's half the fun. And that's when understanding the motivations of the NPC's that you control as GM come into play (Basically everyone else). So you can figure out what Duke X will do when the player characters decide to poison Count Y and hold the cure ransom for his continued support of the King.
One cool thing now is that most of the RPGs have been scanned and are available in various torrents as PDFs. This allows you to look through the content of what you are interested in a little more before you decide to make a purchase - the cost of the papers and graphics in RPGs mean they are often in the $30 to $60 range now, so it's worth your time to make sure you want to spend the money. There's nothing like having a book in hand, but damn near any RPG ever printed is available on the net if you want to take a look.
The new Gamma World by White Wolf is pretty good. But I'd say Darwin's World is actually better. Oh, and if you haven't played Fallout and Fallout 2 as CRPGs, go get them now. Best rpg's ever in my estimation. The biggest drawback to CRPGs is they force you along certain storylines and can't adapt to your choices well - I always want to do things the rpg creator didn't anticipate, and therefore there's no code in the program to handle. The Fallout series handled that better than any other game I've ever seen - each challenge has anywhere from 3-7 possible resolutions. And the character system was revolutionary - you might recognize the level based feat system now in D&D 3.5 - they stole from fallout blatantly.
White Wolf is doing Gamma World now? I gotta look that up! Lately Zel and I have been playing Time Lord/ Dr Who. Fun stuff.
The DM will create a story that involves several monsters, characters, and locations. Depending on the DM, the story could be rich and incorporate the backgrounds of all your characters, or just be a straight dungeon crawl (no plot, find grail, etc.). Pyl, depends on the group. Some groups make maps, some DMs provide them. Alot of people use grids for combat, and have little figurines. For example, this isn't just for show.
Anyone play Paranoia? That was a cool RPG! I did AD&D 2nd Edition for a spell too, and for pure space opera, we played Traveller.
We own Paranoia, but I haven't played it yet. We have a room with like 3-4 bookcases full of games and materials so I haven't palyed nearly close to all we got. We just got Space Opera the other day to add to the collection. Sort of reminds me a bit of Star Frontiers.
So the whole game is pretty much an interactive story? That makes sense ... somewhat. Tho I have a hard time imagining how I'd keep track of the action.
Battles take place according to initiative (a variable depending on your stats and rolls). It's alot of bookkeeping for the DM, but the players, not so much.
One of the fun parts for the DM is anticipating the group's actions when you prepare the adventure. A properly prepared one, imho, takes at least as long as it takes to play it, often a lot longer. It's basically like you play oblivion, except with more freedom. You set up a quest, your players accept it (at least you hope the lazy buggers accept it) and you start. You can prepare actions beforehand, keep a sheet of stats for your enemies/monsters (you don't have to make them up, they are books filled with all kinds of monsters, including great artwork to show the players). While writing the 'script' of the adventure, you have to keep in mind what the main NPC's want - developing them as characters in important (and why I liked it so much) because the players may not (and most likely will not) follow the script you have prepared, and you will have to improvise how your NPC's or your gameworld will respond. It's one thing to put a small wooden cottage somewhere in a forest, put some traps in it and a puzzle that will open a secret door leading to an underground laboratory. But it's something completely different when your players decide in the first minute to torch the place Of course, you can work with dreams and signs to try and steer the players in a certain direction. If you put a lot of work into it, you set up a timeline, preparing external factors that will influence the game to happen at a certain time, or put triggers in the game: if the players do this or that, one day/level later this or that will happen. It's easiest to get the hang of preparing a dungeon, as your group can't wander off, but essentially they are free to go wherever they want. Pushing them in the direction of your carefully prepared adventure can be quite a challenge. A good thing about these sessions, is that they never last long enough to finish a big adventure. There's usually so much discussion going on within the group that an adventure takes several gaming sessions. If there's a battle, that can take up hours as well. So in between gaming nights you can adjust the adventure based on what has already happened. Of course that's 'cheating' from a player's point of view - but the job of the DM is to make the adventure as much fun as possible. you're God, after all. It does take some fantasy, but no more than imagining the characters of a book. But it can be a hell of a lot of fun. It's an interactive adventure, but at a level no computer can yet achieve. Yes, you simply sit around a table. But then, with a computer you 'simply' sit in front of a screen, pushing keys to influence variables and alter screen output.
Back in the primordial says of First Edition D&D (the only one worth playing, IMHO...too much stuff to keep track of in later editions), me and my friends had a campaign that went three years. Characters went from hungry nobodies to demigods. Best time we ever had was going into Moria and cleaning it out... That took like two months.
I'd like to learn how to play too. I wish there was a way we could do this online. At least it smells good in the computer room, and I don't have to actually SEE those greasy pimpled losers in real life. Speaking of rules, isn't Elder Scrolls based off D&D rules?
Pylades, you might want to try out a game called Hero Quest with your group. Not as much actual role-playing, mostly hack & slash type stuff. Then once you commit to D & D, stick with dungeon crawls for a while. They can be limiting, but it controls the action more for a new GM.
