Looking for others for Dungeons and Dragons

[theweakerbrother]

Yeah, it worked and I watched it...

That seems complicated...How long does it take to get the hang of it?

It takes a couple of games... it depends on how good you are at math. If you're really poor at math, maybe two games. The more you play, the more you learn. The problem that exists is that people who play D&D are often really frustratingly clique-ish and don't have patience to teach new groups. Everyone in our group started out as noobs and so we learned together. We were mostly patient with others who wanted to learn because we were learning ourselves.

 

[Jubbie]

Ok, I found that Dead Alewives has part 2 in audio on their myspace - Dead Alewives on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

Goes along with what 'theweakerbrother' just said about training new people. One of the characters in the audio brings his noob g/f, which definitely means this is based in fantasy land. D&D players have real g/f's?

 

[Libertarian01]

Excuse my ignorance, because I've never even seen a DD being played, but that last part confused me...Are you saying if you are the DM you can dictate who wins? Or at least dictate if you win?

BazookaJoe71,

I am not a rules lawyer but I will respectfully disagree with how the DM (Dungeon Master) has been characterized.

All of what is below is my nevertobehumble opinion:

The DM simply creates the world and people / creatures who inhabit that world. He/she then acts as a judge to respond to your decisions.

Both the DM and the Players should be limited by certain rules. This keeps the DM from simply dictating events. The DM is not God! However, the DM can make reasonable decisions as long as they are fair to everyone. Here is an example:

Your Group:

You: Big strong fighter w/ big axe and platemail armour
Me(other Player): Medium sized ranger who uses a bow mostly & sword IF I have to
Eddie: A cleric (priest) who can throw mostly healing or helping magic
Susan: A wizard who can throw mostly "blast other people" spells and generally sucks in hand to hand combat (actually any combat).

In this scenario your group is traveling from one town to another to deliver a message for the priests church. Along the way is woodsy and you all see some smoke from the north. You see it because the DM makes everyone roll a d20 (20 sided dice) for an easy "Spot" skill roll. Three (3) of the characters roll over a 10 and see the smoke. My character rolls a 5 and we simply decide I was watching more to the south. Oops on my part.

You all decide to investigate w/ weapons drawn and shields out. When you arrive on scene you find a village totally barren. What do you do? Your party can either stay together or split up. We ask the DM if we think anyone is around. The DM asks what skill you are going to use? We will use "Spot" and "Listen". The DM secretly rolls a bunch of dice (he already knows what happened and where the "enemy" is, but we don't as players know). He tells us we don't see anything or hear anyone, so we think it is reasonably safe.

To play it safe we split into two (2) groups with a good fighter in each. You get Susan the Wizard and I get Eddie the priest. As we look around the village the DM may make us make a variety of rolls. He will do this because some things are inevitably found. Tracks, places where arrows hit, etc. However, he knows that in one particular cellar there is a survivor. So for the group near the survivor he may do two (2) things. He may have a map of the village and ask us which section each group takes, or if he isn't so detailed he may simply roll to see who passes the cellar. However it turns out I am in the group that passes the cellar, so he makes me and Eddie each roll a "listen" roll. He has decided that this listen roll is going to be hard (a 15 or better on a d20) because the person is weak and the doors are thick. I roll a 19 and easily hear someone while Eddie rolls a 12 and misses.

When I try to open the door it is locked. He has determined ahead of time that the cellar door is very strong, so it will take a 20 to open it with a strength roll. I roll a 12 and add 2 for my strength, making a 14 and failing. I call to you for help because I know that you are stronger than me.

When you come over to try to help you roll a 15 and add 4 for your strength which is a 19 and almost makes it, but still fails. We work together and make a few rolls but just can't make the door open. In the meantime the moaning has quit. We can tell the DM we are going to search for another entrance, and him knowing there is none may simply say "You guys search for 30 minutes and don't find anything, what are you going to do?"

We decide we still want in so we want you to just beat through the darn cellar door. Here is where the DM may say, reasonably, "Fine. You guys beat the dickens out of that door and after 40 minutes of pounding away you smash through. It is dark and quiet down there. Who goes first?"

To back up a minute let us say that before we all decide to even search for another entrance Eddie pipes up and says, "Look. I don't care who is down there or what happened here. We can report it at the next village. We are being paid by my Bishop to deliver a message, not to get diverted by some darn raiders or orcs. We can come back later and investigate, but for now we need to move on and get this message to Priest Umptyscrunch in Whoville." So we all agree that that is our current mission and what we are being paid to do, so we leave the little village without ever pushing things to find out what is in the cellar or anything else.

The DM cannot force us to investigate! He may have planned a great fight with the local goblins and have the beautiful peasant girl there to be saved from the spit, but too bad for him! Our characters decide we are just going to ignore this and move on to our appointed mission. Now the DM has to decide what will happen! A GOOD DM will not try to make it what he/she wants. The village will simply be eaten. He may make some rolls for people to escape from the goblins and tell their story. If the die rolls allow someone to escape that may be a hook for our characters next time. The local militia may post later for a group to go kill some evil goblins. If no one escapes, then the DM has to decide what the goblins will do.

Not everything the DM does is also limited by die rolls, but a good DM will simply give the players hooks / clues / rumors to lead them into an adventure that the DM has planned for and can thus manage smoothly. In this case he knows how many goblins there are, what their weapons are, has a map of the terrain around their village, etc etc etc.

What will throw the DM off is if we do something he isn't expecting. Say we get to the next village and tell them about what we saw. The mayor thanks us and tells us we need to go back and investigate, because he is "the mayor" and says so! We tell him to bugger off and just rubbing me the wrong way I punch him! Now we are in a fight with this village! The DM really has not planned this village out, it is just a bunch of peasants he put there. He hasn't done any work on this village. To him it was just a farming village on the map. We are better than them but they outnumber us.

The DM is saying to himself "Crap." So off the cuff he has to figure out how to decide who will win. He may decide "OK, you guys are in it. I need time to plan. We'll do the fight next time." If we are reasonably strong he may just say we win against a bunch of peasants, but we'll take some damage from the fight.

It all depends on how reasonable the group (DM & Players) is, how everything flows. The DM cannot just say the village will win. We could run. Susan the wizard could throw a big spell from a scroll and the villagers could fail their morale roll. If the DM doesn't make peasant villagers scared of a "Fireball" spell then he is being ridiculous. If on the other hand the DM rolls (in front of everyone) a morale roll and the peasants roll a 20 then "wow, they decide to stand and fight." It all just depends.

What makes AD&D a great game is a reasonable group of players who can get along and a good DM who is fair and balanced. I have seen a DM who always allowed his wife to do things others couldn't. Wanna guess how many folks wanted to play in that game? Wanna guess how long that one lasted?

AD&D can be extremely educational. I know players who have studied medieval construction to better work on their castle or fort. I know players who have studied ancient ship designs so they could make an accurate map of "the pirate ship" the players needed to attack. It all just depends on the people involved in the game.

Regards,

Doug

 

[Eddie]

Apparently you made the Saving Throw vs Embarrassment.

I just look at it rationally now. In high school, it was something to get teased about. As an adult, well, a guy could have worse hobbies. As far as some of the above comments about gamers having no girlfriends. All of the people I gamed with were married. The group was two women, four men as regulars. Most of us had kids.

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

This is what happened to us, too. We got several of the current books, made the chars, played about 3 times, and then Kira came, everything got put on hold while we adjusted, and 7 months later we haven't started back up yet.

Playing online via a message system of some sort would be cool. Maybe we should start up an INGO D&D group?

Good idea save that D&D is slow IRL.... you really want to take a game which takes longer than Monopoly and to extrapolate it to the even-slower beast of internet-forum PM system? When do you expect this campaign to finish, 2039 or the Apocalypse, whichever comes sooner?

Also, anything beyond Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is heresy. v3.0&3.5 are sluggishly encumbersome with the inclusion of feats and all that trash. I prefer to run my campaigns more civilly and smoothly. I require game mechanics and role-play criterion before taking on PCs just to make sure it's all a good fit between players and DM.

That said, I haven't played or DM'd a good game in months, so....

yeah.

Roll for initiative.

 

[Pami]

Good idea save that D&D is slow IRL.... you really want to take a game which takes longer than Monopoly and to extrapolate it to the even-slower beast of internet-forum PM system? When do you expect this campaign to finish, 2039 or the Apocalypse, whichever comes sooner?

Something like that. Who said it had to end?

That said, I haven't played or DM'd a good game in months, so....

yeah.

Roll for initiative.

3

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

Something like that. Who said it had to end?

3

I prefer my campaigns end... unless you want Jesus of Nazareth DM'ing.

And I rolled a 17. No kidding. Pwnt much?

Biggest problem, I think, would be picking a version....

 

[photoshooter]

Then there's the other reason I like to DM;

When I roll as a character... I suck.

Let me be the dm, and I usually yell "Yahtzee!" when rolling to hit. Rarely are they in the single digits on the d20

(Note to the un-initiated: put a "d" in front of a number: d6 and that is how many sides the die has that you're about to roll. So "Roll a d6 for damage" means that you roll one 6-sided die to figure out how much damage you did to the orc.

As for 2nd to 3rd ed... yeah, the feats make the game way too complicated - but those darn brown "complete" books did that for 2nd ed. I like that 3rd ed finally got all of the numbers and charts going the same way.

(Remember, as a photographer, my math is screwed... half of 5.6 =8 ... so anything complicated required a chart and a ruler)

The d20 was a much easier system to pick up - and adapt. GURPS already had the d100 system in play - and D&D was known for it's d20s. So, a d20 system was a natural IMO

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

Then there's the other reason I like to DM;

When I roll as a character... I suck.

Let me be the dm, and I usually yell "Yahtzee!" when rolling to hit. Rarely are they in the single digits on the d20

(Note to the un-initiated: put a "d" in front of a number: d6 and that is how many sides the die has that you're about to roll. So "Roll a d6 for damage" means that you roll one 6-sided die to figure out how much damage you did to the orc.

As for 2nd to 3rd ed... yeah, the feats make the game way too complicated - but those darn brown "complete" books did that for 2nd ed. I like that 3rd ed finally got all of the numbers and charts going the same way.

(Remember, as a photographer, my math is screwed... half of 5.6 =8 ... so anything complicated required a chart and a ruler)

The d20 was a much easier system to pick up - and adapt. GURPS already had the d100 system in play - and D&D was known for it's d20s. So, a d20 system was a natural IMO

d20 is a good system, but i like GURPs for RP... tired of players getting an arm chopped off and then imbibing something and magically getting their arm back. I melded some aspects of it: I rolled 1d100 to determine hit-area for PCs when attacked and assigned percentages to each... torso with 40%, legs 30%, arms 20%, head/genitals/toes/fingers 2.5% each. It's just an extra roll and not too difficult to do... "The Worg bites your neck, but lets go due to a slip of its jaw..." That sort of thing. It's more realistic and gives the PCs something to role-play... quite different from... "A Worg bites you."

But yeah, GURPs is good, as is d20, with the allowance of modern settings. I think something like a zombie invasion or pre-apocalyptic setting would go over well in our crowd, given how many SHTF-fans we've got, and I'm sure there are more than a few gamers in our midst.... think Pami might be right. Time might well be nigh for an INGO D&D campaign...

 

[Pami]

think Pami might be right.

qft!

('cause i probably won't ever see THAT again)

 

[zip]

This is currently filling my Zombie needs. (EDIT: there may be some NSFW images here) Hallows Eve Designs - Unhallowed Metropolis

You have Zombies, Tesla technology, and is horrendously deadly. it has rules for a death ray that goes something like this. if you are hit with the death ray you die, not saving throw, no damage is dealt, you just cease to exist

 

[Eddie]

Good idea save that D&D is slow IRL.... you really want to take a game which takes longer than Monopoly and to extrapolate it to the even-slower beast of internet-forum PM system? When do you expect this campaign to finish, 2039 or the Apocalypse, whichever comes sooner?

Also, anything beyond Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is heresy. v3.0&3.5 are sluggishly encumbersome with the inclusion of feats and all that trash. I prefer to run my campaigns more civilly and smoothly. I require game mechanics and role-play criterion before taking on PCs just to make sure it's all a good fit between players and DM.

That said, I haven't played or DM'd a good game in months, so....

yeah.

Roll for initiative.

What we did that kept the game going for about five years was this:

We met once a month and played from noon to six pm, sometimes later. We paid one of the player's older daughters to act as babysitter for our kids and anyone else's.

The rest of the month we said that one "game day" would pass for each real day. Players were allowed to send an e-mail once a day or once week to summarize what they were doing.

Keep in mind that we were using GURPs and not playing any sort of "dungeon crawl". Our games were mostly modern and involved a lot of investigation and mystery solving. Typical e-mails were in nature of "I head down to the nightclub and see if Willie is in, if he is there I want to ask him to find information on a new guy in town called Koop."

That meant that the GM (Game Master) had to respond at worse to five or six e-mails a day. Sometimes long conversations would go back and forth a bit.

It worked pretty well for us. We've just had too many people move away, one person is fighting cancer and another guy got a promotion at work that is taking up all his time.

I would be all for putting together some sort of INGO RPG event. Something heavy with modern firearms and lots of shooting for instance.

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

qft!

('cause i probably won't ever see THAT again)

Well, if you'd just be right more often...

(Psst! Also, what does 'qft' mean??)

What we did that kept the game going for about five years was this:

We met once a month and played from noon to six pm, sometimes later. We paid one of the player's older daughters to act as babysitter for our kids and anyone else's.

The rest of the month we said that one "game day" would pass for each real day. Players were allowed to send an e-mail once a day or once week to summarize what they were doing.

Keep in mind that we were using GURPs and not playing any sort of "dungeon crawl". Our games were mostly modern and involved a lot of investigation and mystery solving. Typical e-mails were in nature of "I head down to the nightclub and see if Willie is in, if he is there I want to ask him to find information on a new guy in town called Koop."

That meant that the GM (Game Master) had to respond at worse to five or six e-mails a day. Sometimes long conversations would go back and forth a bit.

It worked pretty well for us. We've just had too many people move away, one person is fighting cancer and another guy got a promotion at work that is taking up all his time.

I would be all for putting together some sort of INGO RPG event. Something heavy with modern firearms and lots of shooting for instance.

Awesome set-up. Not the typical hack-and-slash. Excellent stuff. So, assuming there's interest in this besides we five (I count five people)... who's DMing this and what rule-system are we using?

GAME ON.

 

[ATM]

(Psst! Also, what does 'qft' mean??)

shhh...




(quoted for truth)