Dungeons & Dragons

Basically all you need to know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHdXG2gV01k

Ah! Don't say that! As hilarious as it is, it really is a parody.

Okay, only just a little maybe.

I am not a dork! I'm NOT!!



D&D is a fantasy world roleplaying adventure game. You can explore the world, go adventuring in a dungeon, or basically whatever other story your Game Master or Dungeon Master wants to prepare. The DM describes the setting, and you describe what your character is doing within the setting. Things that require skill, from swimming to tying knots to evading traps, require you to roll dice to determine if you succeed or fail. Sometimes, like with the knots, you roll the dice, tell the DM your score, and only he or she will actually know if the knot will hold until you test it out.

The game is basically a handful of friends sitting around the table playing the game, having off topic conversations, laughing, and yeah, usually eating total crap food.

If you want to know anything more specific, you can message me, I'm horrible at checking back in threads.

I'm another D&D player. WildScribe was pretty spot-on. Think of it as writing a novel where the DM gets to write the scene and set up the situation, and each player gets to decide who their character is and how that character reacts to the situation. Then you roll dice to resolve the action.

Most people have "house rules", altering the official rules to fit their particular group's style, and each group pretty much has a culture all its own. But basically, it's you and a group of friends sitting around a table full of reference books and food, each of you holding a piece of paper that describes your particular character's abilities, telling a story.

Also, D&D is just one roleplaying game. There is also Werewolf, Vampire, Mage, Wraith, and Changeling, all set in a company called White Wolf's "World of Darkness". There's also Deliria--but that one, while beautifully illustrated in the manuals and vividly brought to life--can be hard to learn. There's Rifts, which is so freakin' huge it is literally anything you want it to be, and also GURPs, a generic set of role-playing rules you can apply to your own concepts (although, honestly, you can come up with your own concepts in any of these systems--that's part of the point.) There's also Shadowrun, which is a darker, post-apocalyptic type game, and a ton of others.

What kind of game are you interested in?

That chick tract is really funny, great for a laugh if you have a sense of humor like mine, but otherwise worthless, IMO.

If your character dies, you just make another or grab a back-up. The DM just works the new one into the story. No one's going to freak out about it. In fact, some very funny gaming stories involve characters doing something really stupid and getting fried.

And no, you'll not find any "real spells" in the D&D books. You won't learn to use mind control on your parents. Sorry.


Actually, you know what? A while back I created a role-playing game based on a book that I'd done. Both got contracts with a small press, which I later cancelled due to irreconcilable differences and my realization that the first book actually kind of sucked. The game was good, though--we had a blast playtesting it--and it's illustrated, too. It was made with people who have never RP'd in their life in mind, and I will gladly send you a copy if you'd like to try an RPG with zero upfront cost. (Except dice...you'll need ten-sided dice, which you can get online or in a gaming store. But the ms would be free.)

I won't take offense if you aren't interested; there's a ton of different systems out there because different people like different kinds of games. PM me if you want to know more about it--I don't want to derail the thread.

ETA: A funny D&D video that shows a mom freaking out about teh eveel... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM7YhMfN0v4&feature=related Lurve it!

I would liken it to a choose-your-own-adventure novel with a group of friends. Which, I guess sums up the descriptions already given in this thread. The strength of the game, I think, is that it can be anything you want it to be. It can be a simple dungeon crawl for treasure, a game of intrigue, an epic story, or some mix of all of the above.

I really like Dungeons and Dragons and its settings, even if it is responsible for some wall-banging fantasy cliches. I personally can only play with close friends, and even then, it's difficult because I'm quiet and have a hard time getting into the mind of my character when sitting around in a circle of friends, let alone strangers. I have an easier time with text-based or video game adaptations (Neverwinter Nights, Fantasy Grounds, etc).

It's a really great bonding experience though, and my circle of friends has more than a handful of inside jokes that resulted from tabletop gaming.

Hey, I actually found a video showing a real gaming group playing D&D for real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwRxXbcruUg&feature=related

You don't need the big maps and props that these guys use, but this is a good depiction of how it plays out. Of course, usually there's more food involved, and this group is pretty focused--off-topic banter and lots of kidding around tend to be the norm. I don't know how many times our gaming session has been interrupted by laugh-inducing stories about our other gaming sessions--sometimes ones that everyone present was there for!

And it can be kind of a nerdy thing... I admit. But our group has all sorts of professionals who also kick butt in their off time. Despite the stereotypes, it's not just kids who flunked PE hanging out in a basement somewhere...even though the video I'm linking depicts people in a basement. It's not always a basement, dammit!

I don't remember who said it, but someone on here described it as 'collaborative fiction.'

So, there's been an eerie coincidence: yesterday I got invited to play D&D with my friends, a day after I commented on this thread. It was a short adventure session, with the party setting out to a ruined city to recover some books that some group is interested in.

We played in a basement.

Heh. We played 'till late last night--me, my husband, and four of our friends. We got a little crazy as the night wore on, essentially holding a rave in the underdark.

AND WE LIVED.



ETA: No basements involved.

defyalllogic said:

how does it work? how do you find people? what happens? what's it like IRL? do people just find groups and play with them? could i watch someone play? whats the etiquette?

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How it works varies slightly by edition and who's running the game but ti's all pretty much simple math.

You find people who play the same way you find people who do anything else- find out where they hang out at and go there. typically the larger scale comic shops and game stores.

what's it like in irl? really boring to watch but it can be a lot of fun to play.

ettiguette? bring chips but not the kind that leave cheese dust on your fingers. You don't want to muck up the books or someone's character sheet. No, seriously, it's important.

I suggest that rather than going out and finding people who already play, you start a group of your own.

Every gaming group has its own sort of mini-culture, built around the preferences, attitudes, and skills of the players, and each has its own in-jokes, etiquette, history, and interactions.

If you try gaming with a group whose mini-culture bugs you, you aren't likely to enjoy the game. Pencil and paper RPG's are very collaborative, making it important for there to be some agreement amongst the participants, and the atmosphere, history, and "hanging out" stuff is just as important as the rolls of the dice.

You only need to gather three people--one to run the game and two to run characters. Whoever is the most interested in RPG'ing should run the game because it takes the most effort: DM's have to read the source material, help everyone build characters, and then set the scene. It's their job to tell people when to roll the dice (and what dice to roll, and how many). They get final say on what that dice roll means and what happens next.

I've played with my younger brother (who's seven years younger than me) and my son and had a blast. I've also gamed with my husband's parents. You don't have to limit yourself to like-minded people of your own age or usual social set. You might be surprised how easy it is to put a group together. Just ask around and see who wants to try a pencil and paper RPG night--although, you might avoid mentioning Dungeons and Dragons to some people, because there really has been an attempt to demonize it, as has been demonstrated upthread.

For that matter, the White Wolf games that I mentioned above are a little simpler in rules set and a more interesting read, in general, than the D&D stuff. The only problem with them is that it seems the organization of the books is deliberately obtuse, so that the DM has to read everything before they can start a game. But they might be easier for beginners, and they have a wide enough variety of "flavors" to interest just about everyone.

Just to get started, if you've never gamed before, you might want to "run a module". A module is a pre-made game, where everything except what the player characters do is already set. There are maps, and background info for the DM to read out loud, and the traps/monsters/encounters are already detailed out for you. It can be fun--but in all honesty, I've been gaming around 15 years and have run through a module exactly four times, one of which being my very first game.



*Whew* I guess I'm more of a dork than I realized...I don't know when to shut up about gaming, apparently. I think I'll wait for the OP to come back before posting again...

Rocks fall. Everyone dies.

"Only plus 8 strength? Kelsey what kind of broken buff mage are you?"
"One who's also casting immunity to fire on everyone and persistent haste on 8 people."

Ogres?

I gotta knife that's +9 against Ogres!

"And the mage draws her two handed sword."
"We're in trouble."
----
"I have an announcement to make. I am not really an elf. Yea werily, I am a tree. I have come to the human lands to
observe you and your kind, but now I am going back to the forest because, after observing you, I have decided that
all humans are completely insane."
--Ed running Oethnar in the final session; or, "What happens when you break up with your girlfriend
and leave your PC in somebody else's hands"

^Just some quotes from teh intrawebz.

Insomnia again

WildScribe said:

I am not a dork! I'm NOT!!
.

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Embrace your dorkitude! It is neither a fault, nor that to which to be afraid. Nor should you worry the fear of never finding a wife, because most dorks are swans and women want swans, not pigs that would do anything that can't run away, or coyotes that at least give the targets the option of running away...even if they seem to, until they hear the biological clock ticking...Dorks survive. Wild pigs and coyotes get hunted.

LOG said:

"And the mage draws her two handed sword."
"We're in trouble."

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sorcerer 6 / abjurant champion 5 / knight phantom 9

1 sor Otherworldly, Combat Casting, [Summon Familiar]
2 sor
3 sor Still Spell
4 sor +1 cha
5 sor
6 sor Power Attack
7 kni [Somatic Prowess]
8 kni +1 cha
9 ac Arcane Strike, [Abjurant Armor], [Extended Abjuration]
10 ac [Swift Abjuration]
11 ac
12 ac +1 cha, Extend Spell, [Arcane Boost]
13 ac [Martial Arcanist]
14 kni
15 kni Persistent Spell, [Aspect of the Phantom]
16 kni +1 cha
17 kni
18 kni Heighten Spell, [Countenance of the Phantom]
19 kni
20 kni +1 cha

Hooray for 3.5 ed.

Bah. Hate big hate everything past 2nd ed AD&D plus years of house rules.

Ok, jokes aside: this is how dungeons and dragons works:

you get one person who wants to lead a group of friends (or strangers) through a story, letting them choose how the story goes.

The rules establish a framework for the story's mechanics.

Everything else is just people interacting with each other through an agreed-upon creative filter in place in their minds.

The demonization of Dungeons & Dragons during the 80s "Satanic Panic" was more or less traced to the first edition of the Deities & Demigods supplement, which featured statistics of a bloodthirsty Aztec deity. A concept that was rarely used by players, but the moral panic crowd jumped onto it, while vaguely referencing it, forsaking it's (historical) context, which lead to the presumption that blood sacrifice and baby eating was standard in the game.

This interesting blog entry explains it fairly well:

http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/10/tlaloc.html

Wise Child said:

The demonization of Dungeons & Dragons during the 80s "Satanic Panic" was more or less traced to the first edition of the Deities & Demigods supplement, which featured statistics of a bloodthirsty Aztec deity. A concept that was rarely used by players, but the moral panic crowd jumped onto it, while vaguely referencing it, forsaking it's (historical) context, which lead to the presumption that blood sacrifice and baby eating was standard in the game.

This interesting blog entry explains it fairly well:

http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/10/tlaloc.html

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What was that you were saying about human intelligence Monkey?