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D&D

Totenkindly

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Pizza and food is good. I should have mentioned that. :)
Have everyone bring munchies to share, so you get a decent spread.

I agree with you too, [MENTION=15167]Stephen[/MENTION], about the face-to-face experience of tabletop RPGs. This is why they still exist. Computers are convenient, but there's just something so awesome and real, interacting around the table face to face.
 

Totenkindly

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I'm confused. Is pizza not food? I must admit to reading no other posts than this.

Pizza is such a special food it deserves specific mention almost as its own category.

pizza.jpg
 

funkadelik

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I was introduced through friends who already knew how to play, 2 of whom had been playing for 3+ years. You can imagine that they were neck-deep in their ability to work out fantasy scenarios. I was very reckless and dropped into the game playing an evil cleric who was hacked to pieces by some random brawler after putting a homeless person to death just to take his shoes. Then I played as a bard (the infamous troll class), and brought my guitar to sing with a very... er... flamboyant tone. half-elf and all. Playing the bard was the most fun because I used cantrips to cheat at craps. Honestly, I had so much trouble easing in to the role-playing aspect because I would over-role-play; consequentially my friends thought I was of the chaotic evil alignment irl.

Haha! Wait, what? You're not of the chaotic evil alignment IRL??

Honestly, it's going to suck if you don't memorize your stats and character sheets. If I were you I would play multiple times a week. It's also a good drinking game if you're into that sort of thing.

How do you make D&D a drinking game? Other than just drinking beer while you play because it tastes good and goes well with pizza. :p

And we're going to officially play our first game tomorrow night! But I have absolutely NO expectations that it will go smoothly. My ISTP friend I created our characters with is really apprehensive cause he wants all the details worked out in his mind before he goes into it because he's obsessed with making sure it doesn't fall apart. I just want to have fun and play the game. Part of me thinks I should just find a random group in the city to get in on so I can bring back what I learn to my friends. And I keep telling Mr. Grumpass he should do the same but he's way too stubborn. :laugh: But I think with my experience and his attention to detail we might be able to lead our misfit group of friends forward. It's worth a shot! Rome wasn't built in a day blah blah.

Holy shit, I want to play with you. :cry:

Ohhh man...that'd be wicked! :laugh: We should do it! Hmmm...think it's worth it to switch nationalities for a game of D&D? There's no middle ground here - neither of us can "just visit."

It does depend on who you play with, you need people to agree on how "fuzzy" you're going to be with the system. Otherwise you get some players who just want to make things up as they go, vs the rules hounds who are really good at looking at a system and figurin out how to leverage the rules to get the maximum effect of the character they want to play. (This is pretty prevalent in MMOs too; knocking down some stats to maximize the stats your character relies on, having the right gear and skills and spell setups to hit the maximum possible impact of the stuff you want your character to be good at; etc.)

Any type can work, if you can play by that particular agreement. I prefer a more medium approach; I'm decent with systems and knowing how to leverage the rules to do what I want, however I don't like to be dependent on the pure luck and pre-writing of the character, I value the talk around the table, interacting with other characters, making a cool dramatic story together. So typically, yeah, people need to still make rolls, but I think everything bogs down when the GM is checking for encumberance and getting really tedious with checking for EVERYTHING when you just want to walk down a hallway. The one game is pretty rational. The GM routinely asks you to make a Perception check, for example; and sometimes there might be details you'll miss but you won't know what they were; players will play within character and not search harder just because they missed a roll. Basically there's an underlying agreement that players won't abuse rolls out of character, and the GM won't make you roll for every little thing along the way.


To help with characterization, my GM for the Redgate game (that's the city's name) I play had us all pick we don't really use alignment (although my character would be Chaotic Neutral, I think... never played that before). Instead, along with Traits (in the Pathfinder rulebook, which give bonuses based on character background), the GM told us to pick Aspects, which are traits of note about your character's personality. These Aspects typically will dominate in roleplaying exchanges, and when you play into an Aspect of your character, he rewards you with a Fate card. This is a deck of cards (purchased elsewhere) that has a general topic on it, plus an effect, plus four potential scenarios listed. You can then spent a Fate card at any point in the game, whenever you want to improve a die roll OR you want to insert one of the things on the card into gameplay.

For example, I got a Schadenfreude card last session, with options on it to bring some kind of harm to someone else... like "It stops raining and the crops fail" or "Your opponent trips and falls in a hole" or other one-liners. I used it when I happened to perceive an alchemist who was stalking our group in some tunnels sneaking up with some fragile bottles in hand.... when I played the card, the alchemist of course fumbled the bottles he was carrying and ended up blowing part of himself up rather than us. ANother Fate card basically allowed us to make an NPC part of the ongoing storyline -- in our case, one grunt survived the zombie onslaught upon the town that we were caught in, and ended up being a local hero and moving up in the ranks. The experience left him a bit crazy from PTSD, but now he goes along with us and serves as an extra character of sorts, although the GM controls him.

Aspects win you a Fate card because playing them realistically often leaves you at a disadvantage. For example, our bard is a Know-It-All... whenver there's a chance to learn something, even when inconvenient or dangerous, he still is tempted to get in there and figure it out... or when it would be best not to create conflict, he gets into a pissing match about whether he knows more than an NPC in their field of expertise. So when he plays into that, he gets a Fate card. One of my character's Aspects is Suspicious -- even when someone is being on the level and could be helpful to me, I will usually still be skeptical and wary of their motivations and might even respond in a way that sours them toward me. The Fate cards help balance things out and make the story more interesting because the players actually get the ability to change the plot of the story when playing the cards, rather than the GM being totally in charge. (The GM still decides what specifically happens, but is pretty fair about the outcomes.)


Aspects also can come up during gameplay based on what happens, and the GM might say, "Hey, add this as an aspect," and you can either agree or not. For example, Jessa (my Witch -- it's a Pathfinder class) deals with hexes and focuses on mind spells as well. In one of her initial forays, when some hired guards tried to interfere with us, she hypnotized one with a skill roll so high that it broke his mind and left him shuddering and peeing his pants on the ground; he's never recuperated from the ordeal. She also got partly possessed by an evil dagger and did some pretty nasty things when interrogating prisoners with it; and her latest hex is Prehensile Hair -- no one in the party knew about it, but she had to use it in the last skirmish and wigged everyone out, grabbing enemies with her 10' long hair (the hex makes it grow) and throwing them around / throttling them with her hair. So I told the GM I was going to add "Creepy Vibe" to her as an aspect, which basically means if she plays into her ability to unsettle people, she'll get Fate cards. She really wigs out other people, including the party.

You might not have the card deck, but the same kind of stuff can be built into the gameplay to encourage people to play character. That's all alignment was meant to do anyway. The more you play character, the less focus there is on die rolls and the more interactivity you get in the group.

Thanks Jennifer for taking the time to write all this! Very solid advice/examples.

I learned the system on my own, but I'm an INTP geek and am good with systems and learning the rules/frameworks of things. I think from what you describe, you need at least 1-2 people who are good with rules, to get the rest of you up to speed so you don't get bogged down. It's a pain searching hundreds of pages of rulebook trying to find one piece of information, although the index does help; also, if you can get the online PDFs, you can "search" on them and find things more quickly.

Mhm, for sure. Well, I think it's me and my ISTP friend who are gonna be the go-to rule people. I actually really am enjoying the system part of the game so far (those 3 hours we spent pouring through the books character building were very fun) but I think I'm at a point where I'm tired of just reading alone about all this stuff and want to experience it with my friends. Maybe if we were all reading and discussing I'd feel like we're actually moving forward. But not everyone has the attention span/patience to do what my ISTP friend and I are doing. So I'm just going to hound us into playing as much and often as possible, even if the first few games consist of a lot of flipping through our books and their indexes. I think at this point my ISTP friend and I know enough to a. make character building easy for the others and b. play a very slow, but educational first game.

Typically, along with one Game Master, I'd say 4-6 is the best amount. Once you get past 6, people start butting into each other's business and turns take a long time to commence.

Sweet, we've got 5. Perfect! ;)
 
G

Ginkgo

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Haha! Wait, what? You're not of the chaotic evil alignment IRL??

:burnbum:



How do you make D&D a drinking game? Other than just drinking beer while you play because it tastes good and goes well with pizza. :p

Just drinking beer. :p As long as... you know... you don't start hurling on game mats or go around urinating in public places in-game. (I was stoned like a leper for doing this once; the DM was a karmic loose cannon.)

And we're going to officially play our first game tomorrow night! But I have absolutely NO expectations that it will go smoothly. My ISTP friend I created our characters with is really apprehensive cause he wants all the details worked out in his mind before he goes into it because he's obsessed with making sure it doesn't fall apart. I just want to have fun and play the game. Part of me thinks I should just find a random group in the city to get in on so I can bring back what I learn to my friends. And I keep telling Mr. Grumpass he should do the same but he's way too stubborn. :laugh: But I think with my experience and his attention to detail we might be able to lead our misfit group of friends forward. It's worth a shot! Rome wasn't built in a day blah blah.

It is worth a shot, because there's a certain culture you get from DMs that lets you mirror the gist of the game as it unfolds. Finding a group is an excellent idea as long as it doesn't create too much conflict in the group you're coming back to. Seeing as you're already starting from scratch with the rote facts, I doubt it would be a cause for concern. If you alternate campaigns between two learned and distinguished DMs, it can be a bit like relearning the basics of a part-time job every time a different anal-retentive manager takes over the shift. It sounds like your approach and your friend's approach come together to make the essence of the motion of the game. :)


Ohhh man...that'd be wicked! :laugh: We should do it! Hmmm...think it's worth it to switch nationalities for a game of D&D? There's no middle ground here - neither of us can "just visit."

Chaotic%2BEvil2%2Bcopy.jpg


LOL. I'll be with you in spirit, æther, and shadow. I can't wait to hear about your exploits!
 

Fluffywolf

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I imagine there's a forum or something online somewhere. Something like D&D it's impossible for an internet community that revolves around it not to exist. Finding it might be a challenge though, worst comes to worse, you could just settle for the RPG

Next time I'm bored out of my head, I might consider that. As for the RPG, it's the cRPG scene that was most closely to D&D, unfortunately the cRPG scene, as evidenced by its name (classic RPG) is pretty much dead. :(

There are still fangames being made and such, but they often lack the depth of commercially made games.
 

Andy

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I've done a lot of roleplaying over the years, but unlike a lot of people I didn't start with D&D or AD&D. My first real roleplay game was warhammer fantasy roleplay (WFRP for short because the full name is a mouth full). I have to say, it left me with different expectations. When I did get round to playing D&D it seemed like a very soft system. I was used to a critical hit system that involved or arms and legs being hacked off and absolutely no way to grow them back again afterwards. Healing magic was rarer than gold dust. Oh, and don't forget those insanity points clocking up...

These days, I tend to play white wolf's world of darkness because it appeals to those lingering expectations. Lethal damage is indeed lethal and it can take weeks of even months to recover from a real beating. Ah bliss.
 

Laurie

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I played as a teen at my mom's house. She even had a few dress up sessions. On the other hand my istj christian father apparently burned some of my brother's books they bought with their own money and had at his house. :rofl1: (we lived with dad) Perhaps it wouldn't be as funny if it had been my money. We definitely had interesting influences growing up.

I didn't play for YEARS and then I mentioned wanting to play D&D to my brother and he got me into his 4e campaign. There were already 5 guys playing who each had played for probably over 20 years so I didn't speak up much but I learned the mechanics and the role playing idea. They had some DMs who were combat heavy though, which isn't as fun.

My brother then started DMing a different group but that fell apart because of scheduling issues. I was also playing an ineffective character and getting frustrated with it.

I'm in a new group with my board gaming friends. I thought I had one really experienced player, an experienced DM, me and 3 noobs. It turns out the really experienced player is an NT (INTP? He likes to talk a LOT though) who started playing about 2 years ago and just remembers rules easily. Which would explain his going ahead of the party all the time and scouting and making it boring for everyone else. He is used to everyone else being more experienced and apparently is trying to figure out how to lead. We added another experienced player into the mix and now there is a really weird party dynamic. Our DM is good and works with back stories and does lots of role playing. He really isn't into combat too much.

Weird party dynamic: Our party leader seems frustrated with the way the group is playing (NT splits the party a lot) and the leader also doesn't seem to like all the hand waving the DM does. Four of us hung out until 4 am last night discussing it. Not sure how to fix it though.

4e vs. Pathfinder that we are playing now:
I haven't found any reason for people freaking out about how bad it is. The game is about the role playing and the mechanic is just a mechanic. I did have one of the experienced players in my old group say he thought it was boring. He was playing a cleric though ;)

I did have one weird thing happen yesterday. The DM is very physical about stuff and surprise strangled me to show what my character felt. Other people didn't think it was too big of a deal but I was very unsettled. I wrote him an email last night telling him to leave me alone physically and he hasn't written back.

Wow I typed a lot.
 

KDude

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I played as a teen at my mom's house. She even had a few dress up sessions. On the other hand my istj christian father apparently burned some of my brother's books they bought with their own money and had at his house. :rofl1: (we lived with dad) Perhaps it wouldn't be as funny if it had been my money. We definitely had interesting influences growing up.

lmao.. i didn't play much as a kid, but my grandma was like that with any fantasy stuff. i remember she freaked out that i wanted these designer magnets (the thin ones that are like stickers) shaped like dragons and stuff.
 

acronach

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random thought, anyone know a person who's alignment is pretty much chaotic satan? :p there was this 1 guy in a group i used to play with, we made up that alignment just for him :3
 

Laurie

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Chaotic Satan doesn't sound like a team player. Why was he in the party?
 

Totenkindly

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I played as a teen at my mom's house. She even had a few dress up sessions. On the other hand my istj christian father apparently burned some of my brother's books they bought with their own money and had at his house. :rofl1: (we lived with dad) Perhaps it wouldn't be as funny if it had been my money. We definitely had interesting influences growing up.

it shows you how my mom is (she's all heart, no thinking) in that she let me buy all of that stuff growing up -- tons of it -- and went to a very conservative church where they would have all called it the devil's work, and yet she never even made the connection that she should have been concerned. She would have had to have someone basically explain it all to her in excruciating detail why she should be concerned, and then she would have been, and taken my stuff, since she is so steeped in that faith. But she never made the connection, it's just kind of funny.

I didn't play for YEARS and then I mentioned wanting to play D&D to my brother and he got me into his 4e campaign. There were already 5 guys playing who each had played for probably over 20 years so I didn't speak up much but I learned the mechanics and the role playing idea. They had some DMs who were combat heavy though, which isn't as fun.

I enjoy combat as part of gaming, but at least one where you can plan strategies, and also I like games where it's just more "real life" and you're doing a lot of other things too, interacting with NPCs and exploring things. There are a lot of skills in the system that can be leveraged outside of combat to make the game fun, and lots of spells as well that are shunned by the combatmongers that are very useful if the GM is actually playing a well-rounded campaign.

Weird party dynamic: Our party leader seems frustrated with the way the group is playing (NT splits the party a lot) and the leader also doesn't seem to like all the hand waving the DM does. Four of us hung out until 4 am last night discussing it. Not sure how to fix it though.

I dunno. I hate it when it gets to the point where a group splits up, too, if things get that bad. If people can't change their play styles, then it can be disruptive. We actually have two guys in the campaign I like, who have some kind of social disability ... they're actually quite smart, I don't know if they're got some Aspie behavior or whatever else, but they tend to miss all the social graces, talk over people, etc. The one is particularly bad at making sensible group decisions and will do things that get the rest of us in trouble; the one, for example, insisted on shooting an exploding arrow into a tight corridor where I had just managed to pull off this amazing Sleep hex and knocked the cult leader out for two rounds... and he wasted it by having the guy take damage from the backlash of the explosion. EVERYONE in the party said, "Don't do that," and it's not like he was playing in character, he just decided he wanted to use his cool arrows anyway he had just gotten. As a result, the cult leader woke up, three of us immediately got tagged with a bad spell (I got take to 0 hit points and had to flee the encounter to heal myself), and another character had to waste one of our few explosive bombs and risk bringing down the cave around us to take the guy out before he could kill any of us with another spell.

IN the hallway as we were leaving, one of the guys I was with said we had a really good group... "except for those two." I have mixed feelings, because I feel like these two guys really enjoy the gaming sessions, it gives them something to really get excited about, and I doubt there are any other social groups they could belong to where they would be accepted based on their lack of social skills. Gaming is good in that it can bring lots of people together on an equal playing field, to do something fun. Just not sure how to balance the competing needs sometimes.

4e vs. Pathfinder that we are playing now:
I haven't found any reason for people freaking out about how bad it is. The game is about the role playing and the mechanic is just a mechanic. I did have one of the experienced players in my old group say he thought it was boring. He was playing a cleric though ;)

ROFL! The one time I played (the playtest module), I got stuck being a cleric, and geez, was it boring. It was only for a night, and I couldnt' tell what any of the difference was just based on gameplay. I'm happy with the 3.5/3.75 stuff too, and I come from a history where I'm used to very COMPLICATED games, so I'm happy with 3.5.

I did have one weird thing happen yesterday. The DM is very physical about stuff and surprise strangled me to show what my character felt. Other people didn't think it was too big of a deal but I was very unsettled. I wrote him an email last night telling him to leave me alone physically and he hasn't written back.

Wow I typed a lot.

You had every right to tell him to not touch you. That's simply uncalled for. Were there other women in the group? Not that it matters, because YOU felt uncomfortable, but honestly I wouldn't like people to violate my space either like that, without my permission, and especially not for that kind of thing.
 

Totenkindly

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Chaotic Satan doesn't sound like a team player. Why was he in the party?

I think if everyone is playing in character, then any huge disparities in alignment will end up dissolving the group.

And heck, even when they're the same (such as a bunch of chaotic evils), then they constantly need to be threatening and abusing each other just to win each other's compliance.
 

GinKuusouka

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I don't play D&D. Not table top anyway. However, a friend and I have used the books to get creative about our own roleplays. Basically we come up with our own characters, a beginning setting, and take it from there. The books (and some other things) work as spring boards to get the creative juices flowing. :3 However... My suggestion would be to allow some freedom and let the players be creative. It'll be your gut which tells you when they're over the top with things. Otherwise, I'm sure that they would greatly appreciate the freedom.
 

kyuuei

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I think having enthusiastic friends is the important part. If you're all too shy to role play, it'll be awkward and boring. you have to be comfortable around the people you're playing with. We have quite a bit of fun when we play Warhammer fantasy (similar to DnD).

I also suggest starting out with characters that are similar to yourself and your own personality--roleplaying yourself is an easy start to everything, and helps you transition in. If you're a shy, meek person, I wouldn't start out with a crude barbarian, for example. Doing those sort of things is what makes newbs back out too soon.

If you're ALL new at it, including the dungeon master, play a pre-written campaign. It does all the thinking for you, and this game is literally what you make of it--arguing a rule? Come to a decision, make it so, and move on. The flow of the game is more important than knowing whether this is that or whatnot. Don't make things more complicated than they have to be.. if you don't know all the gods yet, just declare two or three of them 'valid' in the game. Simplify it and just keep moving forward.

Also, snacks and food. We usually had everyone bring something for a snack and ate a big meal about halfway through the game when we took a break. Not having to leave the house inbetween playing helps a lot.

Have fun with it! I really love playing tabletop.
 

ZPowers

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Hopefully you don't get into a group that's too serious to joke around while playing, because I find a level of levity key to making the game engaging and fun. At the same token, goofing around too much just stalls the story dead in its tracks. Going wildly out of character can also stifle the game. You'll probably develop a natural balance (though sometimes different people within the group may disagree on that balance). Your DM really needs to reflect your level of seriousness in how he runs the game or how difficult certain parts are, without making it too easy.

It's good to have a DM who is invested in the story and is hopefully the most creative guy in your group, because the story provides a lot of the sole. At the same time, he needs to have a sense of pacing in terms of giving you a while of investigating, progressing the story, or just doing what you please for a short while around town and combat. Too much of either gets stale. Combat can be really exciting (especially oif you're already sold on the story) and the non-combat parts can also be engaging but a bit more silly, but a game that consists of only one or the other can get tedious. If you can think of a solution your DM didn't, and s/he rewards that, chances are you have a good DM and a good, creative group.

Basically, if these people are your friends and you trust them to do fun stuff in game and the DM to provide a fun scenario, then you're gonna have fun.

Expect that the game won't move incredibly fast. In part because it's so reliant on die roles and other rules (which, at first, you'll probably be looking up a lot), but also because it has very few limits on what a player can do. Toss in 5 or 6 players and things can take a while, but it also allows for things to happen that are huge surprises.

Finally: if someone in your group wants to play as choatic evil, just say no.
 
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