Roleplaying D&D - Love it or hate it?

[Qlip]

Liked the idea in theory, but mostly it just feels like I'm sitting around, doing math and drinking beer. With all things considered, I'l like to drop the doing math part. It doesn't help that DM I played with wasn't really good, and on top of that would get really drunk by the end of the night, prompting you to get really drunk, because being more sober than the DM just isn't fun.

 

[Valiant]

Alcohol and RPG is usually not a good idea... If it's not light beer or something.

 

[Qlip]

Alcohol and RPG is usually not a good idea... If it's not light beer or something.

The local custom was for each person to make shots for everyone else, until everyone had served a round. So you couldn't leave without doing at least 5 shots. Then usually halfway into the evening the DM would just kind of wander off and do something else for a while.

 

[Valiant]

The local custom was for each person to make shots for everyone else, until everyone had served a round. So you couldn't leave without doing at least 5 shots. Then usually halfway into the evening the DM would just kind of wander off and do something else for a while.

That doesn't sound very inspiring...

OH, something that really bothers me is aspie-like game masters i.e. INTJ/INTP ones. I'm a social gamer and I *crave* the imagination and social game master style of an NF.
Well, some of them can manage it pretty well, but most of them just suck so bad that I want to cry... It's all about battle all the time >.<

 

[Qlip]

That doesn't sound very inspiring...

OH, something that really bothers me is aspie-like game masters i.e. INTJ/INTP ones. I'm a social gamer and I *crave* the imagination and social game master style of an NF.
Well, some of them can manage it pretty well, but most of them just suck so bad that I want to cry... It's all about battle all the time >.<

The new D&D rules pretty much encourage constant battle thing. The combat rules of the game feels like you're playing a video game, and they really don't focus much anymore on skills and stuff for non combat situations. Maybe I outta find a White Wolf group to play with.

 

[Valiant]

IMO, white wolf games suck pretty badly, too.
I've been playing Vampire/World of Darkness a few months last year. It sucked even with a pretty good GM.
Just so unrealistic...
The game I showed you above use the d100 system. That's two dices with 10 sides, one marked with 0-9, and the other 00-90 using double numbers (00, 10, 20, 30, 40 etc).
So, say that you have a skill in your martial art, or just the generic skill "swords" with a value of 15. The normal chance you have to hit is with three d6:es, and you are supposed to get under 15 with that.
If you hit a six, you have to pick up that dice again and add another dice and re-roll, making it harder to succeed.
Anyway let's say you hit the guy (normally high, middle or low but there are also tables for specific areas like head, torso and whatnot)...
Anyway, when you hit the guy, you roll the d100 dices and if you get, say, 65, you hit the chest.
Then you roll your damage with (most often like 5 d6:es or such), and if that value goes over 20, you roll a d10 to see what critical damage you get. Like fracture, severed artery, spine, brain, heart or whatever... The criticals are different depending on where you hit of course).

The entire game is like that, so the fights are really time-consuming, meaning that you usually only fight a little bit. The rest of the game is social.
That's how I LOVE it.

 

[Snow Turtle]

Hmm...

I really want to give DMing another chance but I was so terrible at it last time (See post 10). It really does require a storyteller personality~
Not to mention I probably scared away most of my potential players. >_<

Not really expecting a reply. But would any of you happen to know of any GMless RPG formats? I'd be interested in trying that out with my girlfriend, or another person one day.

 

[Randomnity]

I fall into the hate camp, at least so far. I liked the idea of it in theory but when I finally tried it with some friends who play regularly, I literally wanted to hurt myself after about 20 minutes I was so excruciatingly bored. They seemingly had fun and played for a few hours after I gave up on trying to make it fun, so I don't think it was the fault of the DM or whoever, I dunno. So so so SO boring, and that's coming from someone who devours fantasy novels and used to play magic cards for fun (and still have some fairly nerdy hobbies, although not the extremes)

 

[Lark]

Well my first experience of D&D wasnt actually the game, it was a figure of fun or abuse here, something that rich nerds might be into, there was of course the Dungeons and Dragons TV series, the cartoon but most people didnt link it with the board game.

Then there were the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, they were much more popular in the UK, and ran to a number of different series (the fighting fantasy label itself was really copyright for Ian Living Stone and Steve Jackson's books) including the Way of The Tiger books which made it into Spectrum and Commodore games (not really related to the books) and Lone Wolf and Grey Star series, which were kind of a medieval romance with monastic knights fighting Lovecraft's Elder Gods.

I had my favourites but it wasnt until the Games Workshop arose in the UK with Heroquest, Spacehulk, Battlemasters and later the many, many spin offs and even the Middle Earth/Lord of The Rings battle games.

I wasnt really into those, I read the White Dwarf books and loved all the collectables and models but I still am a fan of the fighting fantasy game books. We did make up maps on paper and play our own version of D&D at school though.

 

[Totenkindly]

I fall into the hate camp, at least so far. I liked the idea of it in theory but when I finally tried it with some friends who play regularly, I literally wanted to hurt myself after about 20 minutes I was so excruciatingly bored. They seemingly had fun and played for a few hours after I gave up on trying to make it fun, so I don't think it was the fault of the DM or whoever, I dunno. So so so SO boring, and that's coming from someone who devours fantasy novels and used to play magic cards for fun (and still have some fairly nerdy hobbies, although not the extremes)

I guess it depends on the person, and it also depends on the friends one is playing with.

Sometimes the game session itself (in terms of plot advancement) was frustrating and not as productive as I would hope; but I have some really wonderful memories about crazy stuff people did inside the game, and the fun we had laughing at things as they unfolded, and there was this big sense of weaving this story together, as a group/ensemble, each contributing what we could. But I can see how some might find it boring/not fun, it just is what it is.

 

[Randomnity]

I guess it depends on the person, and it also depends on the friends one is playing with.

Sometimes the game session itself (in terms of plot advancement) was frustrating and not as productive as I would hope; but I have some really wonderful memories about crazy stuff people did inside the game, and the fun we had laughing at things as they unfolded, and there was this big sense of weaving this story together, as a group/ensemble, each contributing what we could. But I can see how some might find it boring/not fun, it just is what it is.

Yeah, that's what I hear from everyone who plays it. It sounds so awesome so it was kinda a mildly crushing disappointment to find out how unfun it was for me. I think I'm just allergic to making up stories, I'd rather play strategy games or something that makes me think logically rather than linguistically, I guess.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, that's what I hear from everyone who plays it. It sounds so awesome so it was kinda a mildly crushing disappointment to find out how unfun it was for me. I think I'm just allergic to making up stories, I'd rather play strategy games or something that makes me think logically rather than linguistically, I guess.

That would have been my guess, from what I know of you.

Have you had good experiences with Risk, Settlers of Catan, etc? Those have clearly defined rules and logic can be leveraged for predictable outcome; I think a lot of tabletop RPGs caters directly to ambiguous "futzing around" and also working with others all without a clear ruleset, so the logical application is only one part of the experience.

 

[Ginkgo]

I'm currently helping create and test a d20 system that includes rolls for gun recoil and other mechanics that tie in nicely with a sci-fi setting.

I think my friends enjoy when I DM because of how goofy and tongue-in-cheek my created environments are.

 

[Randomnity]

That would have been my guess, from what I know of you.

Have you had good experiences with Risk, Settlers of Catan, etc? Those have clearly defined rules and logic can be leveraged for predictable outcome; I think a lot of tabletop RPGs caters directly to ambiguous "futzing around" and also working with others all without a clear ruleset, so the logical application is only one part of the experience.

Risk is ok but have played very very rarely since it takes so long nobody wants to play. I kinda don't like the dice random elements on those types of games. I think I might have played settlers once, I think it was ok, I don't think we finished the game though. I played talisman on the weekend which is supposed to be kinda D&D but board game versioned and I was like, super excited, and then it was completely awful, but I think that's mostly because we played with NINE people so you were sitting there doing nothing for like 10-15 minutes between turns, and it was like 4 in the morning so you're falling asleep anyway, it was kinda brutal. Also pretty random-based for my liking but a few elements of strategy.

I think I just have too short an attention span to be doing NOTHING for that long. I'd probably like it more if I tried doing something else while waiting, and definitely playing with fewer people...

 

[Totenkindly]

That's true, and Talisman has the kind of problems you mention. It's essentially a board game, but each player has a few special abilities; but then if you get too many playing, it's a sloooooow game, yet not enough playing and it's kind of too simple.

Do you have more luck with sports, where the pace is necessarily much quicker?

 

[Randomnity]

sports is kinda derailing now, hahaha. But yeah. this week I'm playing/played turf soccer sunday/gym soccer monday/volleyball tonight/turf soccer tomorrow/turf soccer thursday. One night more than usual this week, slightly insane week.

but there is totally a strategy element, moreso for soccer than volleyball. I'm not skilled at ball handling (at allll lol) compared to almost everyone I play with, and my endurance is still crap despite years and years of playing multiple times a week, but I'm pretty decent at finding a good position to be in depending on the ever-changing situation, and that's an important enough factor that I do well as a defender against people who are much much much more technically skilled than I am. and ok, it helps to be fast enough to get into that position as it rapidly changes, and stubborn/foolhardy enough to stick with people as they try to duck around you/charge at you. I like frustrating people and feeling useful!

but the strategy is the fun part, even if it's not particularly complex or even thought consciously most of the time. and I play with cool people so there's the social aspect, and everyone is all encouraging and praising and so on all the time, it's totally not like horrible sports in high school which drove me to never ever play sports of any kind until midway through university....and I was so so terrible for the first few years after I joined a rec league, and somehow everyone was still nice to me, lol.

/epic blathering derail, sorry. as the stereotype goes, nerds are allergic to sports (although most of my nerdy boy friends play sports with me! we're cool like that!) so this is probably an exceptionally inappropriate thread, lol.

 

[Qlip]

[MENTION=206]Randomnity[/MENTION]..

I don't usually choose to play tabletop or strategy games, except tha tI have an INTx friend who loves them and forces me. Tabletop strategy games that I have found tolerable are: Race to the Galaxy, Tigris and Euphrates, Pandemic, Stone Age and Dominion. He pretty much makes it a full time hobby to test almost every game out there.

EDIT: We got together one night to play the Game of Thrones card game, it took almost an hour to get through the first turn with 5 players. I wanted to kill myself.

 

[Randomnity]

[MENTION=206]Randomnity[/MENTION]..

I don't usually choose to play tabletop or strategy games, except tha tI have an INTx friend who loves them and forces me. Tabletop strategy games that I have found tolerable are: Race to the Galaxy, Tigris and Euphrates, Pandemic, Stone Age and Dominion. He pretty much makes it a full time hobby to test almost every game out there.

EDIT: We got together one night to play the Game of Thrones card game, it took almost an hour to get through the first turn with 5 players. I wanted to kill myself.

I have heard that Pandemic is good! From what little I know it sounds like it would appeal to me - you can/have to play coop, right? I played dominion once with my sister and her fiance, it was ok. the first time is never all that fun because it takes forever to go over all the rules, and opportunities to play don't really come up all that often. It is an idea that appeals to me a lot in theory, and I'm hopeful that one day I'll actually enjoy playing a strategy board game like I enjoy all the word-based games (e.g. boogle, scrabble, etc).

 

[Qlip]

I have heard that Pandemic is good! From what little I know it sounds like it would appeal to me - you can/have to play coop, right? I played dominion once with my sister and her fiance, it was ok. the first time is never all that fun because it takes forever to go over all the rules, and opportunities to play don't really come up all that often. It is an idea that appeals to me a lot in theory, and I'm hopeful that one day I'll actually enjoy playing a strategy board game like I enjoy all the word-based games (e.g. boogle, scrabble, etc).

Yeah, Pandemic is primarily Co-op, which is interesting. It's can be pretty fast paced and challenging. Hah, don't force yourself to get into it.. I decided that board games just aren't my thing, it's just that everybody I know seems to be into them. I may as well steer them away from the ones I dislike the most. I really hate learning the rules to a new game. *sigh*

 

[Snow Turtle]

Risk is ok but have played very very rarely since it takes so long nobody wants to play. I kinda don't like the dice random elements on those types of games. I think I might have played settlers once, I think it was ok, I don't think we finished the game though. I played talisman on the weekend which is supposed to be kinda D&D but board game versioned and I was like, super excited, and then it was completely awful, but I think that's mostly because we played with NINE people so you were sitting there doing nothing for like 10-15 minutes between turns, and it was like 4 in the morning so you're falling asleep anyway, it was kinda brutal. Also pretty random-based for my liking but a few elements of strategy.

I think I just have too short an attention span to be doing NOTHING for that long. I'd probably like it more if I tried doing something else while waiting, and definitely playing with fewer people...

That's insane! Tailsman is a game best with around 4-5 people max.

Are there any board games in particular that you were really fond of? At the moment, it just sounds like you'd ultimately prefer doing other stuff than boardgaming with others. I think there's probably a difference between people who play it as a hobby (i.e. chess) and those who play it but are more there for the socialisation aspect of playing together. Then there's the whole issue of competitive vs cooperative based games. Sports are usually the latter unless it's 1v1. What do you think of tennis for example?

When it comes to DnD... There does seem to be a massive variation in how things are played. My history teacher for example, didn't really place much emphasis on the mechanics, where as at my university, I was watching people roll for pretty much everything. Got to admit, I much prefer the idea of not having too much rolling-mechanics otherwise I'd just go play a computer game imo.

But I totally get what you mean about the making up a story problem. What was your gaming session like? I'm kinda curious now as to what you thought was wrong with it and all that.