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D&D Is 30
mainframemouse writes "For those who have not seen the Beeb article, Dungeons and Dragons is 30 years old.
After many years of role-playing is wonderful to see the mother of all RPG's given respect and mention in the national press. There's even a note about the false accusations of the 80's." And for the record - flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me. Combine a familiar with Master Tactician and some rogue levels, and you're off to the races.
Ah, D&D -- the flagship of geek hobbies. Many people do video games or comic books and want to include themselves in the group, but until you've re-written your character sheet 15 times, had discussions about what makes a good DM/GM, and carried around a fuzzy bag full of expensive dice, you aren't the real deal. :)
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
I spent way too much of my life on this game. As stupid as it sounds, I am thankful for my mother thinkng D&D was a satanic cult and grounding me for weeks for playing it. Else, I would be ... not the person I am... and I don't mean that in a good way.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Just last night I printed off a bunch of polyhedra polyhedra for my six year to cut out and assemble for fun.
...
I remember before the Dungeon Master's Guide, Player's Footbook and Monster Manual (which our DM forbade us to read), there was only a thick pamphlet-like book with a few monsters (giant rats, hobgoblin, gelatenous cube), and a sample 1/2 level. There sure were a lot of gelatenous cubes for level 1
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
It was cooler to play it back in the day when hardly anyone had heard of it. Popularity/fame made it a 'dork thing'.
Love, boomgopher
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Now it can finally use the +8 TwoHanded Sword of Thirtysomething!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It still hasn't kissed a girl!
you are a nerd.
And still proudly living in the parent's basement!
Bonus points for whoever knows what the E. in E. Gary Gygax stands for!
And for the record - flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me. Combine a familiar with Master Tactician and some rogue levels, and you're off to the races.
Yep you are a nerd.
Maybe it'll finally move out of it's parent's basement...
'Is there any Mountain Dew? Can I have one?'
The other day with a friend about which type of dice hurt the worst to step on. we decided that, while a d4 was bad (the worst if you step straight down hard), that a d8 was really the worst because it rolled with your foot.
My girlfriend immediately said, "oh my god, i'm dating a nerd."
Thank you D&D.
~dijjnn
If they irritate you, change the rules. One of the things a good GM needs to do is to keep the game from becoming too cheezy. If they players are abusing the rules, nerf them! The 3rd Edition Harm spell is a perfect example of something that desperately needs it.
In my opinion, rules like flanking and attacks of opportunity add a whole lot more tactical depth to the combat without slowing it down much. It's certainly more fun than combat in old D&D.
I find it amazing that it's lived this long...*sigh* I suppose in another 10 years it'll still be here.
:(){
For those who have not seen the Beeb article, Dungeons and Dragons is 30 years old.
Even for those who have *not* seen the Beeb article, Dungeons and Dragons is 30 years old. My state of having seen the article or not has nothing to do with the content of the article.
Sorry to nitpick, but dammit -- illogical writing leads to fuzzy thinking, which results in irrational behavior. And God knows we could use more rational behavior.
-kgj
-kgj
it paved the way for my favorite game, Knights of the Old Republic and really, the whole genre. Makes me want to dust off the ol' board and get the gang back together for another all night game.
Well, if you're missing that authentic "gritty" feel, you can always write your own rules. You won't have to deal with the expense of big glossy manuals, and you can always change things to suit.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
It really works, you know.
I have never really cared for D&D at all... it never sounded interesting to me. I'm almost done reading the LOTR books, and was just wondering if the D&D world was based off Tolkien's world? I know there's some overlap, atleast as far as such things as elves, dworves, etc, right?
Can someone explain the connection, if there is one?
no comment
First "D&D is 30, and still [hasn't gotten laid | moved out of their parents' basements]" joke!
they did not want to start playing it :-(
in boy scouts on a camping trip when I was 12 I got hooked on D&D, and I have never been able to play on a sustained period of time... now I am too old, and the people my age that play are so socially backwards that I think I would just laugh at them. oh well.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
...Ex-girlfriend?
G
http://www.chick.com/bc/2002/dnd.asp
Quote from the link: "The goal of the game [D&D] would be to see who could obtain the most erotic pleasure"
As my friend who sent me the link originally so accurately stated, "I don't know about you, but my D&D sessions were never like that."
Btw... D&D is 30... But what about its other attributes? What's its alignment? Strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc? Okay I'm a nerd.
I bailed out of D&D when they made all of my 2nd edition books obsolete with v3.0.. Then turned right around and screwed me again by making v3.5..
Though you know you're a geek when you watch 'kill bill' and say "that sword must be at a vorpal sword +2" and people laugh.
*sigh*
It was even a cult at a Wisconsin naval base. "At one time every nuclear submarine had a D&D group," says Arneson.
... do you think the Commander-in-Chief knows about this?
- from the article
Nuclear submarines? D&D groups?
My God
-kgj
-kgj
I remember that "expose'" where they made D&D out to be some big satanic training session because (gasp!) there were demons and devils listed in the Field Folio. And then some shooter someplace had a DMG in his backpack or something like that...
Parents just ate that shit up. I think a lot of them couldn't understand why we just weren't spending our time watching TV like normal kids. We basically had to operate under the radar or risk losing a several of our players to easily paniced parents.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
There were no "weirding modules" in Tolkien's world.
Ah Stipe, I remember thee well! Thorin and Flagg! Ye died honorably enough! Cedric, thieving and laughing! If I could quit my job and DM all day long, I'd do it!
"The game was wrongly implicated in a missing persons case, a teen suicide and a number of murders. Some schools banned the game, and many parents refused to let their children play."
It bugged me at the time that for the amount of people playing the game, the incidence of suicide seemed lower than in the rest of the general public, but the press never seemed to report that.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
I just realized that I know nothing of this nerdery, must I return my membership to the Geek Squad.
je suis parce que j'aime
is wonderful to see the mother of all RPG's given respect and mention in the national press.
Well quite, but I must say I prefer throwing high explosive devices than slinging D&D books at monsters in Quake, it's more efficient...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"...Because if there are, I want to do them!" In all seriousness though: I ditched D&D for Shadowrun years ago. No alignment, no classes, more detailed setting and the ability to easily present much more diverse situations were all reasons.
If you really were king of the pessimistic people, wouldn't you be saying "YOU WILL STOP ME"?
This is a tough hobby to get into (well, sort of) because all the rulebooks cost between 40 and 50 US dollars. If you buy all three (PH, MM, DMG) then you're looking at a net outlay of between $120 and $150. For that much, you can get a GameCube and a game or two. That's why most of the people who play D&D now are people who've played it for a long time. I'm one of those people.
At least my mother didn't think it was 'satanic' because I showed her the articles on www.trhickman.com debunking that myth.
Oh well, off to roll up another Grey Elf Wizard/Archmage...
Of course I ripped through all of the SSI games and the Baldur's Gate Series. Then came Neverwinter Nights. A beautiful game, but instead of controlling a party of people, it's just one character and a side-kick. This was a big mistake. However, the fact that one could assume the role of Dungeon Master made this game somewhat revolutionary.
But after playing multiplayer online a bit, I must say, that although I have found some new places to explore (people have spent some time on putting together some very cool levels), it still seems to come down to everyone being 40th level and killing each other. Maybe I'm just not playing in the right places?
Maybe I'm just missing the old days of getting together with pen paper and the dodecahedrons? I don't think so - who's got time for trying to orchestrate that?
And yes, I've tried Everquest and just couldn't seem to get into the flow of it. I couldn't see what the "big deal" was ...
In practice, however, D&D doesn't swipe so many theamatic elements from Tolkien as, say, White Wolf's Vampires game does from Ann Rice.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
My mother was a Jesus Freak and when the anti D&D hysteria hit in the early 80s I was forbidden to play. I lost interest until the mid 90s when I also discovered Vampire The Masquerade. Vampire and D&D helped me to pass many a night.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
on the 30th anniversary of the game, an article about it completely fails to mention the new edition (released 1999) or the revision that came several years later. and you'd think that a journalist would supply sales numbers to support an assertion as to whether or not something is "popular".
ed
That puts it in an age catigory of 4, upping the challenge code to 13.... Sweet! If I get one more RPG and I'll make level 4!
This is not the sig you're looking for
..will argue rules in the DM's Guide better than the highest paid lawyers. You don't know arguing until you watch two more geeks citing obscure sentences in backwater paragraphs as evidence in supporting claims that you would swear held the fate of the world in the balance.
AD&D lawyers have always been the best and worst to play with!
...use the original rules, in the beigish cardstock booklets. Character sheet, what's that? You carve you character's stats into your arm, son.
it's not still living in it's folk's basement like that ST:TOS.
. . . and still lives at home.
> Parents just ate that shit up.
Having been the product of parents, and even attempting the duty myself, I can assure you those who 'ate that shit up' were definitely NOT parents.
Although my friends have all become too "cool" to play D & D anymore (note: we never actually played a full game -- we'd spend hours making up cool men and then about 20 minutes murdering each other and burning down the town tavern before we had even received our quests), the dice still come in handy...
We use the 20 sider to gamble with in the office. And like D & D, I've lost nearly all my gold to my freekin' brother....
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
The best part of the golden D&D years for me was reading Phil Foglio's cartoon in Dragon Mag.
Did the characters ever managed to play Sex&Dungeons&Dragons or did I miss that issue entirely?
I've got the problems of an adult on my head and on my shoulders.
I'm an adult now.
TPOH.
Another trait of geeks is obsessive hairsplitting. I mean my god, man.
Who cares about the obsessive hairsplitting? The important thing is the successful karma whoring.
-kgj
-kgj
...of no content.
Reprint of the Harry Potter satanism email based on the article in the Onion. Gotta love (any seriously marvel at the midset of) anyone who can take this sort of thing seriously:
"I think it's absolute rubbish to protest children's books on the grounds that they are luring children to Satan," Rowling told a London Times reporter in a July 17 interview. "People should be praising them for that! These books guide children to an understanding that the weak, idiotic Son Of God is a living hoax who will be humiliated when the rain of fire comes ... while we, his faithful servants, laugh and cavort in victory."
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
no mention of the "Chainmail" game that existed before D&D was written though. :) I think D&D was loosely based on the Chainmail rules.
:) They might just save your rear when the time comes.
:)
My favorite character was the Cleric, I'd usually be the guy turning the undead and healing everyone before they died. If I got powerful enough I could reserect the dead characters. I also liked the Anti-Healing spells like Cause Serious Wounds and Finger of Death. Never make fun of a Cleric because they are limited to blunt weapons.
Ah well, I liked making it to level 36 and then taking the next portal into the underworld and seeing if I could take on the Devil and his minions. Even The Devil fears my characters, and has a good reason to!
Favorite items to mix up chaos in the game:
Eye and Arm of Vecna.
Deck of many things.
Sword of Kaz.
Those four are just way over the top. We had a DM that used them all in one game!
We mostly play Traveller now, a Science Fiction game in the far future. But our GM/DM had us travel into the underworld and changed all of our high tech stuff into midle ages stuff, so it is D&D all over again.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I can't imagine they had much else to do while at a naval base in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin borders on both Lake Michigan and Lake Superior -- both of which are connected to the Atlantic Ocean.
Duluth-Superior is the most-inland seaport in the world. (Duluth is in Minnesota; neighboring Superior is in Wisconsin.)
-kgj
-kgj
Pardon the slight off-topicness... but some friends of mine from college started their own production company, and made a movie called "The Gamers". It certainly ain't no hollywood production, but that's the charm of it. Do yourself a favor and grab the DVD and watch it with your gaming buddies to celebrate D&D's 30th... I promise it'll be a good time. I think they have a quicktime trailer and stuff here.
Then, applying you hex editor and l33t h4x0r 5k1llz (although back then you didn't know it was called like that ;) to set all your stats to 25.
And then realizing that the size of monster parties for random encounters in the wild used your party's stats as a parameter... 300+ kobolds that, while they offered no real risk to your party of 25-all characters, ate a sizeable chunk of your afternoon wiping them out... total boredom :(
One of the guys in our group actually had this really great house, and we had the converted basement to ourselves. His dad would bring down sandwiches from time to time, and we'd game into the wee hours on Friday and Saturday nights. It was great.
Oddly, back in the day we were more into Runequest, Aftermath!, and other games. But now that the d20 system has established itself as the One System, we've all basically decided to stick to the d20 rules. When you're a kid you have all the time in the world to monkey around with rules and prepare for games, but now that our group is officially old, we prefer to spend most of our gaming time actually gaming.
Some 30-somethings play pool or poker to socialize. We play D&D.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I remember a dungeon master who hadn't overlooked the creation of the characters staring in horror as an NPC character he needed for his storyline was pounded down by 15hitpoint damage 4/per-round ninja stars comming from a min-maxed wood elf with 19 strength before he had a chance to speak.
DM: "he tells you you can't do that and you have to do what blackthorn tells you"
Player1: "fuck him then"
Player2: "yeah he's going down"
Player2: "My character shoots a pepper bomb at his mouth so he can't cast any spells" (rolls 20)
DM: "He is choking on the pepper"
Player1: I am throwing 4 shrukien at him, I have a thac0 of 12. (rolls various hits)
DM starts to go pale realising the damage done to the NPC has already technically killed him, you can see the "well he had a few more HP" look on his face as he says: "He's still alive, he is crawling towards what looks to be a newly opened magic portal"
Player1: "I launch 4 more ninja stars... at his throat this time" (3 hit, doing an impossible amount of damage)
Player2: "I am aiming my bow at his ankle to nail it to the ground so the fucker can't crawl towards that portal" (rolls 18, suceeds)
Players are in high spirits from the set of good rolls from their min-maxed characters.
DM: "There are arms comming from the other side of the portal pulling him in"
Players: "fuck off we owned him!"
DM: "they are pulling him through"
Players: "we are aiming at the arms pulling"
That DM never lived that little episode down.
Other cool stuff....
Dark elves with 20 dexterity (racial dex +2 bonus) giving them +4 to missile weapons
strength of 16 = +2 to attacks
then +1 from being an elf (what gives?)
then +3 from master skill in it (3 skill slots)
then a +1 magical bow
then a +2 magical arrows
bracers of archery +3
then a thac0 of 7 (high level fighter)
or an effective thac0 of -9
lets say there is a knight in full plate armour (head to toe steel) with a shield - AC - 0
if the elf wants to shoot him he has to hit the guy (roll over -9 with d20, done every time, only possible to miss with house-rules critical fumble upon rolling a 1)
If the elf wants to shoot him in the eye lets say a normal critical shot is like -4 but this is extra hard, like -10... the elf still only has to roll over a fucking 1 to hit the bastard in the eye.
I remember my players used to min max like that all the time. min-maxing is bad ok.
The rules have to be well made or they are abused.
One guy abused some house-rules martial arts system so every hit with his bare fists was doing over 20 hitpoints of damage. Extra skill slots could give you an extra +1 hp damage. Max out intelligence before strength because the extra skill slots (which accumulate over levels) add way more damage.
More mature people in the group moved on to games such as shadowrun that make every one "human" in the sense that even the most powerful people could still be killed by "beginners" if they planned it right - just like real life.
you might also want to cast a glance towards planescape: torment. there's more puzzles and less combat until the endgame and it's got some very interesting voice acting and superb story, IMHO.
ed
Of course, with the newer editions I'm sure they've tried to make it impossible to play without all 75 books, but back then it was pretty straightforward. Any details we were lacking were pretty darn easy to fill in as an eleven year-old.
I always figured that modules and etc. were created for older players or people with less imagination (and free time).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
If you remember your times long past playing D&D fondly - heck, if you're still playing it - you really owe it to yourself to check out some independent roleplaying game producers. They're cheap, they're great, they're a break from THAC0 and saving throws and god only knows what else. A great place to start is with The Forge, which specializes in such games.
And while you're their, a shout out please for Lumpley, an old friend of mine, and the author of kill puppies for satan: an unfunny roleplaying game. (I'd link directly to his site, but I doubt it could take the slashdotting. Still, I must advise folks to look him up. And send him money.)
I tried to play D&D, fairly seriously, at three different points in my life.
:)
In 7th grade, my next door neighbor declared openly that girls couldn't play. Unfortunately, my female friends weren't that interested. I made my sister play, but having never played myself, I was a rotten DM and kept killing her off.
I had all the books, though, because my Mom was Gary Gygax's divorce lawyer. (He, it seems, thought it was great for girls to play.)
In high school, a few of us were invited to join the gang playing, but the group was too large and unruly, so extremely little RPing actually got done. The (male) leader of the group blamed the girls and told us we couldn't come back.
And then a few years ago, when the last big D&D update came out, I thought I was FINALLY going to get to have a full bore D&D adventure.
Unfortunately, the relationship and social circle exploded fairly dramatically, and I was *not* invited to continue the game. That was the only time it actually felt fair to me, but I was still disappointed. And I've still never ACTUALLY played a game beyond creating a char and playing for an hour or so that day.
Ah well. On the up side, I'm married and have a great life.
Liza
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
This gets modded "Redundant flamebait" yet others who post this get "Funny" mod. I don't mind the "Redundant," but "Flamebait," come on people.
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
as they did 30 years ago.
"I'll just shoot this magic missle down that hallway..."
"I'll ransack the Wizard's castle. He is just an old man, what can he do to me?"
"I see a glowing sword? Must be magic. No need to cast an identify spell, I'll just pick it up."
"It is just Dwarven Meade, I'll drink the whole bottle! What harm can it possible do?"
"I'm not scared of that monster, I got a magic sword +1. Why is everyone else running away?"
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Who remembers stocking their character's backpacks with iron rations, rather than normal rations. I don't know why I did this. Maybe I figured the characters deserved it after their tough fights.
I never knew what it was though. Pemican? I should have asked my mom to make me some for my lunch bag.
Thinking about it now I don't know how we got thirty torches into the backpack either. Did anyone's DM ever complain that there was no way it would all fit?
Another cool item was the "bullseye lantern". Didn't know for years what it was. Anyone remember any of the other strange original inventory items (the mundane ones)?
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Anyone remember when mainstream thought D&D was evil and was corrupting our young minds? Apparently anyone who played it couldn't tell the difference between Fantasy and Reality and ended up killing themselves.
My father (by chance a paranoid hypocondriac) read or heard one such article. This is when I was 18, and not living with him, which of course made him even MORE worried. He tried to sit me down and discourage me from my Evil Ways, and said that he read an article where someone said that people who play D&D can't tell fantasy from reality.
I told him that that's nonsense, and if I ever see the person who wrote that article I'd cast a fireball at them.
So he tried to get me into counselling.
Oh, did I mention my dad has NO sense of humour?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Yup, I sure do have some fond memories of D&D ... My favorite character was definitely Chrrzx. He was a 8' tall Thrykreen (sp?) -- basically a giant praying mantis -- who was a former gladiator. He could jump about 20' straight up and then grab someone with 2 arms and slash them up with the wrist razors on the other two arms (and then make a nice snack out of their head ;-) . Unfortunately, when he finally died the other players decided that rather than ressurect him that they would just cut him up to use his chiten for armor ... the dirty rotten SOBs :-P
don't suppose any of these theses were published online? that would be very interesting reading.
ed
but in college we were playing Chainmail before D&D came out (original D&D evolved from ading fantasy rules to chainmail rules). When we got D&D (and I still have my original white box with the three booklets) I think our whole "strategy club" went for a month with no sleep!
REAL geeks also play Third Reich, w/o even having to look at the rules. ;)
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
I think the real issue here is that you are all worthless linux nerds. Redeem yourself at #Teens4Christ
thanks to the OGL (open gaming license), you can play the game w/out any financial outlay using the system reference document, which can be found here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/s rd35, if anyone's interested.
ed
I must in some kind of a time warp. I thought I started playing D&D as soon as it came out but that would mean I was only 7! My mom said I was wasting my money on all the books and dice and notebooks to keep up with everything. But I think it made me a far better person. Now where is that battleaxe I need for the staff meeting?
Sig temporarily out of service.
I've seen theologists write PhD thesis' about how D&D is not sacreligious.
Then what am I doing with this blood drenched head of a goat?
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
And for the record - flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me. Combine a familiar with Master Tactician and some rogue levels, and you're off to the races.
First, I don't know what "Master Tactician" is; you are probably referring to "Expert Tactician" which allows you to make an additional attack whenever someone is denied their dex bonus to AC. Since a Rogue also adds sneak attack damage to any attack when the opponent is denied their dex bonus to their AC this is a good combination.
However flanking does not deny the opponents dex bonus to their AC, so the familiar flanking example you used would not work to give you an extra sneak attack as you suggest. Additionally if your familiar is killed there are harsh penalties. You must make Fortitude save DC 15 or lose 200xp per master level (save for half). You also cannot get another familiar for a year unless you raise dead. Since you will be progressing as a Rogue and not a Wizard or a Sorcerer, your familiar will not increase along with you. By level 6 opponents will simply squash your familiar like a bug, costing you 6750gp each time for a scroll of raise dead.
AC: Armor Class, how hard you are to hit in combat.
Dex Bonus: Dexterity is a measure of how nimble a person is, the bonus from this score adds to your AC.
XP: Experience Points, a measure used to determine the level of your character.
DC: Difficulty Class, in order to succeed you must roll a twenty sided dice (d20) and add your relevant bonus and get a result equal or higher.
GP: Gold Pieces.
Back in highschool, a guy in our group would bring his sister to sessions once in awhile. (Hey, what were the rest of us going to say? A real live girl in the group... there's a no brainer).
Anyway, one of her friends (one of the drama group crowd, no doubt) had gotten her into the idea of playing a Wuthering Heights RPG -- no kidding, it does exist) and after much pleading and eyelash fluttering she talked us into "trying it out".
Well, you can use your imagination to figure what happened next...
GM: Kathy, Heathcliff sends you a note telling you he wants to meet you after the dance.
Thylgar (masquerading as Kathy): I have tied Kathy up and stored in her in the kitchen pantry. I write a note to Heathcliff telling him "okay".
Kathy: No, that's not how it's played!
GM: Heathcliff accepts.
Kathy: Stop! Play it right!
Kronos: I sharpen my +5 Vorpal Sword of Wimp Banishment in anticipation!
GM: The dance is over and Heathcliff is wandering the gardens calling for Cathy.
Thylgar (in high voice): Over here!
GM: Heathcliff rolls to spot ambush and failes.
Kathy: I'm serious, stop!
Thylgar: I remove my veil!
GM: Heathcliff appears to be baffled at the change of Kathy's appearance! Rolls to recover from surprise and fails.
Thylgar: Now!
Kronos: I throw my +5 Vorpal sword at Heathcliff's eye!
GM: (Not even rolling) Success!
Thylgar: I pummel Heathcliff with my hammer of ultimate asswhooping!
GM: (No rolling) Success!
Demagon: I kick Heathcliff's ass for being a pussy!
GM: SUCCESS!
Kathy: I'm leaving!
Thylgar: Shit, wait! Wanna go to the dance on Friday?
GM: Rolls dice... Nope, not gonna happen.
[The above account is a true story that has been mostly recreated from ancient memoriees].
----
#SickNotWeak
Doesn't everyone who isn't homeless "live at home?"
(yes, I understood where you were trying to go with that)
When I played AD&D in the 80's with my brother and a few friends on the block, my parents heard about this, and confiscated ALL of our D&D paraphenalia, as well as all of our heavy metal tapes (Metallica, Iron Maiden, and the like).
Fortunately, it only took us pointing out the lyrics to Guns N' Roses (that our mother enjoyed) for them to realize that we really were free thinkers, and weren't at risk of committing suicide.
"...flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me."
Those rules took so much fun out of the game by making combat drag on. There's nothing worse than constantly having combat interrupted by yet another attack-of-opportunity until it gets to the point that D&D rounds take as long as Warhammer 40k rounds to wrap up.
Some kind got shot. Seems he tried to cast a shield spell and his other friend tested the spell with a gun. My mom was all worried reading the story, came to my group and told us about it.
Of course my friend smirked, "what an idiot, he should have used a 'Protection from normal missiles' spell."
My mom turned pale. The laughter gave the joke away and she left us alone after that.
... all we got was this crappy movie.
Bark less. Wag more.
You say "Dork Thing" as if that was BAD... Popularity has RAISED D&D to the status of a "Dork Thing". Today a dork is someone who is just a little brighter and less socially adept than average. Back in the day, D&D was a game for anti-social psychotic sociopath losers. In 1978, our DM stopped going to classes, hid in his dorm room, and didn't bathe for a whole semester. Then he dropped out of school over the summer, and was institutionalized. But while he was still nominally sane, he came up with some gnarly dungeon levels. Best played at night by candle-light. Today's mountain-dew sipping, haven't lost their baby-fat, give up to play Xbox kiddies are just poseurs.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
I think someone even made a flash animation to accompany this audio where goblins trolls and dragons were the players.
I've searched the web and can't find this sound file. Is anyone familiar with it? Would you know where I could go download it?
I remember writing a character-generator on my old TRS-80. It didn't fit into 4k, so you had to run it in two stages, loading part II from the cassette (at least if you were an MU or a Cleric, so you could pick your spells).
Later, when I got an Espon MX-80 printer with the graphics update kit, I was able to create "fonts" (with characters as wide as they wanted to be, so long as they were 8 dots tall) to make the character sheets look better. The last iteration drew little 8-dot-tall swords and skulls horizontally across the top of the page.
Ah yes, those were the days.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
For those that don't know what a D&D game is like, please watch the video
of Mephistopheles, I'd like to point out that the excrement is kept boiling due to Federal regulations. I'd also like to point out that the AC will not, in fact, be spending all eternity in the boiling excrement. Every 10 years, the vats of excrement are switched out. During the 15 minutes that this procedure involves, the AC (and all similar clients) will be kept in a pit of superheated beaver vomit. Again, this is the mandated Federal procedure.
I work in a research lab. We have been studying the herpes virus recently. I was quite amused to find out that it's shaped just like a tiny d20! The shape is quite distinctive in our electron microscopy images. In fact, I showed the principal investigator a photograph of a d20 last week from an RPG web store as a sample of other things with the same shape - he was quite amused and surprised!
... I'm just waiting to see what kind of responses I get.
My blog post earlier today, which links to the same Beeb article, was entitled "30 years of playing games with giant herpes viruses"
i am a soviet space shuttle
Magic: the Gathering killed my D&D group dead.
Speak truth to power.
All the D&D-books are available for download on peer to peer networks. At some point the Wizards of the Coast will start losing big money on this. But somehow downloading a D&D book is different from downloading music. It would feel like stealing from a good friend.
DISCLAIMER: I (and my girlfriend) do not download D&D books nor music from the web. We think stealing is wrong.
People talk about D&D as just the kids playing with friends, but sometimes it was a family affair. My grandmother taught my cousin and me D&D in the late 70s when we were both under 10 years old. All of us sitting out in the garage playing late into the summer night are still some of the fondest memories she has of me and my late cousin.
But man was she a harsh dungeon master.
I'd just like to announce that, for anyone who was wondering. Of course, no one knows what I am talking about, but that's due to their lack of knowledge.
The "rules" are guidelines like stabilisers on a kid's bike: once you get the hang of role playing you can take them off. In that sense there never was any need for second and thrid edition, although TSR generated that need by producing more and more "Modules for Dummies" that encouraged lazy play by DM's and players alike.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
My children just found old basic D&D set I had in the with the board games, and we started playing it this last weekend. It's the big huge one that looks like a board game, and has paper cutout pieces, and a big map to play on. It's basically a rehash of the basic edition, in a bigger box. I bought it when I first got married, to see if my wife would be interested. No such luck.
One of the memories that came back to me was all the time spent making really cool character record sheets. I used to photo copy, cut paste, etc all manually to get them made. I also used my C= 64/128 and Gemini 10X as well. I just remember those sheets being really expensive when I was in elementary school. When we pulled the box out, I still had some of those old characters in there, on homemade sheets.
The cool part is that, now I took one of the books scanned in the sheet from it, and modified it, and printed out a bunch. I was telling my wife how cool it to have such modern technology that wasn't even dreamt up back then.
I discovered D&D in 1981 while at Navy Avionics "A" School in Millington, Tennessee, where it was wildly popular. Having little money, it was a cheap form of entertainment for many of us lowly recruits. On more than one occasion I can remember playing virtually non-stop, from Friday afternoon, when classes dismissed, until Monday morning, when classes began again. I found the game to be very entertaining and especially liked the fact that it did not require any special equipment or huge monetary outlays.
Sadly, it seemed, not everyone could handle the game. One obsessive player seemed to lose his grip on reality. He began to claim that he was haunted by "ghosts". He created pages and pages of "equations" which he believed would defeat them. One evening his roommates stole his equations and burned them. The poor kid had to be hospitalized (the psyche ward, presumeably).
Another student, who lived and breathed D&D, barely graduated because of his obsession with the game. He gradually became unable to cope with life outside of the game. After graduating, he was sent to a squadron. A couple of months later he wrote back to one of his former roommates. The letter was difficult to follow, but it appeared that he had a nervous breakdown one day on the flight line, which put an entire helicopter crew in peril. He was headed for a medical discharge.
While I would not go so far as to blame D&D for these boys problems, there seemed to be something there that triggered a predisposition to some sort of madness.
After I left the school, I nevered played again. I've still got all my stuff though, including some twenty-sided di.
Proverbs 21:19
Back in the late 70s / early 80s, I had a core groups of friends I played D&D with... but when we wanted to introduce someone new to the concept of an RPG, we always got out those little black Traveller books. The character generation system was nice and fast, and the combat rules were easy to follow (we always dumped the psionics stuff). We must have run the 'Alien 1' style scenario twenty times.
My old D&D stuff (from 76-84) is around the house somewhere... but I know exactly where those Traveller books are. Anyone up for a game?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
1. The typical customer is male, unattractive, and socially handicapped
2. Both are frequently enjoyed in dark basements
3. The size of your collection is obscene
4. It's not a good idea to talk about either on a first date
5. Both revolve around fantasy and obtaining the unobtainable
6. The artwork depicts images impossible in the real world
7. When purchasing either in a store, you always ask for a bag
8. It may be fun to make your own at home, but rarely turns out as good as the professionally produced stuff
9. If you saw a woman buying either, you'd probably want to ask her out
10. Extra excitement can be added with the use of props and / or costumes
11. Low quality versions of both can be found for free on the Internet
12. Countless Usenet groups are dedicated to both
13. In either case, a gang of heavily-muscled men in leather with whips spells trouble
14. Everyone uses a silly, made-up name
15. It is not uncommon for participants to assume the opposite gender
16. Both are frowned upon by the conservative right
17. You usually take interest in both around age 13
18. New purchases are usually looked at once, then put on the shelf
19. The best and worst examples of each was produced in the '70s
20. The German versions of each are the most bizarre
21. Both are plagued with bad dialogue
22. You usually spend a lot more time enjoying each alone than with a group of friends
23. Everyone's called in to work sick at least once to stay home and enjoy one or the other
24. Both make excellent bathroom reading
25. There's always a big finish when you get to fire your gun
26. Hollywood's attempts to mainstream both have been largely unsuccessful
27. The hero's prized possession is his big, black gun
28. Plots are often present only to serve the action scenes
29. The story can be set anywhere from spaceships to dungeons
30. While the person directing the action is usually blamed for a bad experience, it's usually the fault of poor writing
31. Characters can have either high APPEARANCE or STAMINA, but rarely both
32. You can tell the climax is imminent when the characters start screaming
33. Candles and music enhance the mood
34. You can meet your favorite B-list stars at the annual convention
35. One word: Dwarves
Ah, memories indeed... I remember I first got into D&D in 5th grade (late 1970s) after school, then later progressed to later night sessions at friends' houses in junior high, and finally to wargaming clubs in high school.
D&D itself wasn't played much in the clubs, or at least not in my club -- most of the folks there disdained it for one reason or another. There was a lot of other fun stuff going on there, though... WWII combat sims, Family Business, and of course the Steve Jackson games, which are great. I especially liked Ogre and Illuminati (I'd still be playing Illuminati today, except I'm having trouble finding players). Remember getting the Orbital Mind Control Lasers and beaming the Semiconscious Liberation Army so they'd be Peaceful?
There was also one other game that I'd love to find, but I can't remember the name of it. It was a wargame set in medieval Britain between the Elves and the Trolls. The guy I used to play it with told me that the company went out of business sometime in the 1970s, but I still harbor hope that someday I might be able to find an old copy of it on eBay. I've tried Google searches to find out the name of the game, but no luck so far.
It's hard to believe D&D is thirty years old, jeez... kind of serves to remind me that I'm getting old, too.
> "For those who have not seen the Beeb article,
> Dungeons and Dragons is 30 years old.
So does that mean that For those who have seen the Beeb article, Dungeons and Dragons is not 30 years old?
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
That being said, I still have all of my copies of all the manuals (1st edition). My original Player's Handbook, Monster Manual & DM's Guide are even signed by Gary Gygax.
D&D (and AD&D and D&D 3rd) will always hold a special place in my heart and mind. As a child, it was one of my first expressions of individuality and it taught me the basics of critical thinking.
And as other people have noted, it's the benchmark against which all RPG's (be they paper or bits) are rated.
It also led me to gaming conventions, where I made lifelong friends who later got me jobs, helped me out of tough times, etc... And yeah, sure, I might have gotten the same thing out of being a Rotary Club member, but I didn't have the grades, and besides, they never give you a +5 dancing vorpal blade to fight that 15d8 monster ... at least, anymore.
I met Gary Gyagax at Imaginecon 2000, and despite all the stuff said about him over the years, I found him personable and approachable.
I still have all my D&D stuff. It's worth over $3000 in cover price, but I think in actual current value, maybe $600 (and only because I have some first edition stuff, like the "Deities and Demigods" with Melnebonie and Cthulhu mythos in it). I can't bear to part with it because I feel I owe it so much, it's like an old friend ... in several boxes ... in a closet.
Man, I felt like Dahmer there, for a second.
I started gaming when churches actually allowed it in their function rooms, along with the civil war gamers and chess players. Then in the 1980s, they connected the game to some poor sucker who got lost in university tunnels or something, then it got this Satanic cult label, and then it was fun to play it because you were an outsider! Woo hoo!
I stopped gaming when I got married. I just didn't need it anymore. I now had a steady job, social life, and the game was just too time-consuming. I have run a game or two here and there for old times sake (mainly to show my teen son what it was like). Recently, I was with my son's school group at a Science Olympiad, and a girl there had a bunch of the 3rd Edition rules. I thumbed through them, and thought, "Jesus, this is even more complicated than the Slackware manual! How EVER did I memorize all those rules and terms?" She was just impressed I knew 90% of the monsters.
Is a guy named Jack Chick. All of his tracts (they're not really comics) can be found on his website. He's got some zingers, including some real anti-Catholic stuff. I recall somewhere seeing someone publish some anti-Chick tracts somewhere. Guy's a recluse that no one has seen in a long time.
I did once create a small campaign world for the original Gamma World rules; but tanked it when the 2nd edition came out with it's GREAT world. I also played Top Secret SI and Marvel Super Heroes (and I still think their "feat" system is about the coolest thing I've seen). My favorite RPG of all time, however, is TMNT. I had a mutated possim that I played like Nick Fury (he liked to read comics). TMNT was just dang fun and always seemed to move faster than D&D to me.
Just wanted everyone to know that not all "Jesus Freaks" are idiots living in shells.
Since clerics could not cast spells that directly harmed people; I cooked up a spell call Hemmorage. It doubled the amount of blood in the victim's body until they started causing damamge. Would cause death after awhile. The victim could slash his wrists to spare himself a lot of damage, but charisma would take a hit because everyone thought he tried to commit suicide.
My character has sorta shitty ability scores but more than makes up for it with his prestige class.
Ability Scores:
STR 14
DEX 13
CON 15
INT 10
WIS 15
CHA 15
Race: Wild Elf (Magically altered to be an Elf of Vera-Tre [Scarred Lands CS])
Class Info: 9 Druid/6 Shifter
Shifter is a PRC from the Masters of the Wild splat-book. Every level I gain shiftes-per-day and a new shifting form. Currently my character can turn into the following:
Diminutive - Giant ~ Humanoid, Monsterous Humanoid, Animal, Beast, Magical Beast, Plant
Next level I get Abberition and Ooz as well as Huge size category. By the time I complete the PRC (10 levels, 4 left to go) I will have the ones listed above as well as Undead, Ousider, Dragon and construct and will be able to do collosal size. Not to mention I will have unlimited shifts per day. Durration of shifts is equal to total character level.
I would like to add that I do enjoy 3.5, flanking is fun. =) I am very much enjoying the Scarred Lands campaign setting.
See www.mortality.net - Adlon, the sites owner is our DM so you can immagine we have a good game.
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." -D. Adams
Ah memories of the 4 sider....One of the first Gamma World sets had a sharp 4 sided.
A friend walking across wood flooring in the living room stepped on it. He screamed of course and jumped up into the air.
Unfortunately the 4 sider was impaled on his foot, so that he drove it in deeper when he came back down on it.
I should have felt bad, but it looked so ridiculous with the martial arts leap into the air....
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
There are lots of 30 year old virgins on Slashdot!
You have not truly reached the pinnacle of geekdom until you have fought over dice.
One of our players has a tendency to "acquire" other player's dice whenever we play. Eventually his collection grew quite large and other players began to notice and demand their dice back. He was quite adamant that the dice were his until one of the other players pointed out the "Bicycle" stamp on their D6's indicating that he had been stealing their dice.
I doubt that he was doing it on purpose, but it was still quite hilarious that we were arguing over hundreds of pieces of plastic.
You never can get enough D8's though in those pound-o-dice bags off E-bay. Anyone else have that problem? (You need them for playing Star Wars D&D especially as every weapon does D8 dmg usually).
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
I think CHA was always the one we lowered to increase our other abilities, like wizards and INT, clerics and WIS. Anyone else do this?
I, too greatly enjoyed WN. I was wondering if other slashdotters might help me with the origin of one of my favorite bits. It's quite OT, but if you feel up to it, please read on...
There was the WN that detailed superhero RPGs, poking fun at the various super powers, inlcuding worthless ones. One panel had the caption "Gazebo Boy finds his singular power of metamophisis useless against the evil Termite!" and a sketch of a gazebo with human eyes looking on in terror as it is ripped apart by a 15 foot tall termite. For years I had always assumed that Gazebo Boy came straight out of the fevered depths of Foglio's imagination. I came across some references on the net recently, though, that make me wonder if it was a running joke in the comic community that Foglio simply picked up.
So, does anyone know the origin of the Gazebo Boy joke? Failing that, does anyone know the origin of Gazebo Boy himself (I presume there was a laboratory accident or radioactive wood boring beetle involved somehow)?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
As a regrettably young player, I've only played the game for ten years, through various incarnations: Basic D&D with a garage-sale old set, Basic D&D with a 2nd edition Monster Manual and 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide (still probably the best RPG book ever written), full-blown 2nd edition AD&D, experimenting with late-2nd edition Skills and Powers rules, and, since summer of 2000, D&D 3.
By far, my favorite incarnation is D&D3. Sure, some of that is because I only had 7 years' experience with Thac0, but still, from an early age I was taught to recognize and value a system that is at once both intuitive and complex, easy but not simplistic, and through that, I am able to love the d20 system of D&D3. Is it perfect? No. But whether I attack a goblin with a sword, avoid being burned in a fireball, or try and bluff my way past a evil wizard's guard, I roll a d20, add my ability modifier (since all stats are now equal--yes, even charisma), and add my class bonus/ranks/whatever that I've built up into it. Higher is better. I'm trying to beat a certain number: 10 is easy, 15 is average, 20 is a little difficult, 25 is challenging.
This is a system where if you say "I wanna disarm my opponent" the DM doesn't have to either fudge the rules on the spot or look things up for ten minutes. It's a simple mechanic adapted from attacking a person--you try to at least touch them (as per the ease of touching a weapon to a weapon), and then you make opposing dexterity checks. If you spent a Feat on disarming, you're better at it than most.
Want to run a monster as a character? Since Savage Species and 3.5, it's easier than it ever was in 2nd edition. I remember DMing a game when a PC wanted to play a Minotaur, and no matter what I adjusted, he was far, far too powerful for the group. In the ease of 3rd edition's streamlining, things are made so that the strength is balanced out, just like all the classes.
Which is probably the most important thing. Thieves/Rogues no longer advance twice as fast as almost everyone else. Humans are worthwile as characters. Playing 3 classes at once is not as min-maxing useful as it once was compared to focusing one's efforts in one class. Dwarves can be (and are quite good) wizards, and Halflings will do well as more than just Rogues. Things are made equal.
Sometimes I look back at 2nd edition, and wonder how I ever played such a system filled with such a lack of mentally aerodynamic rules, rules which forced the mass exodus to other systems from the mid 80s to late 90s. I feel sorry, actually, for those who learn to play 3rd edition without knowing 2nd or 1st--not that they're missing out on a better system, but because they don't know exactly why 3rd is so spectacular, why it is so mind-blowingly magnificent.
They don't know the years some of us spend in the trenches of 2nd edition, waiting for something better to come along, not knowing that something ever would.
MOD PARENT DOWN.
He's quoting the Chick publication seriously out of context. Go read it and see.
So, you say D&D is 30, whether or not the reader has observed the BEB article. This, however, implies no interaction between observer and observed. Schrodinger's Cat would disagree... if it weren't too busy trying to lie down on my copy of the DMG while I was reading it.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Kids as far back as the '40s (probably earlier) were playing a role playing game called "cowboys and indians". D&D was the first RPG for kids too fat or lazy for all that running around and yelling "BANG".
Well, not the original, but then again, the whole "original" concept is fraught with all kinds of legal peril, is it not?
Im gonna get modded down for sure but no-one here care about sex when they were a teenager? sure geeky things are important but the priority list goes: "girls, geeking, getting around to world domination" and come to think of it casting spells does seem a little more tragic than even kernal configuration!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
D&D is good old D&D. Yes, we all know it. I actually started with the good ole german DSA in 1984, which then was an amplified D&D with more diversity, but D&D-like nonetheless. We actually still meet 4 times a year to play. That's 20 years! No shit.
Yet what amazes me to date is that people still consider (A)D&D or DSA a good RPG system. No geek would use CPM over Linux or MacOS X today, but you meet a dime a dozen who say AD&D is a good RPG. Just a few weeks ago I met a guy who said the new AD&D got better because the Ranger is better now. I just stood in bedazzlement and couldn't say anything.
D&D is nice to remember, but it's nonetheless the classic CEH - Characterclasses, Experiencelevels, Hitpoints - pain. All three of which don't exist here or in any fantasy world and actually get in the way of any good RPG system. Hitpoints maybe not so much - but the other two definitely. Nearly every RPG that came out since around about 1990 takes that into account. Yet them (A)D&D zealots still act as if they are cream of the RPG scene. They probably are in the shops because they spent the most money on books. And it _is_ no sweat to spend 5000$ to 6000$ on (A)D&D books.
People calling (A)D&D as good a RPG as Torg, Harnmaster or Runequest, or Shadowrun as good a RPG as Torg, SLA or Gurps sound to me like the guy who fancies WinNT over Solaris as a Network OS. I have a hard time taking them for granted.
Just had to be said.....
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Dungeons and Dragons - 30 years old and still living in the parents basement.
Mom didn't share any lurid stories -- I was only about 11 at the time. And it would have been unethical for her to tell me anything confidential anyway.
:) ) So she would have had a reasonable claim on about half the value of his share of the game rights. And the company. Assuming that both were created during the marriage.
But IAAL, and as such, I'm sure that the game rights were hotly contested marital property. And most likely the most valuable property the Gygax family owned at the time. Although it would probably have been my Mom's job to argue that the game rights weren't worth that much and anyway shouldn't go to the wife.
But Wisconsin is a community property state, meaning anything acquired/earned during the marriage is considered to be equally owned by both partners. (With some exceptions, just to keep it interesting.
Incidently, doing Gary's divorce didn't make her less suspicious of RPG activities. I think she was relieved I couldn't find anyone to play with.
Liza
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
All that said I'm working on a new role playing system that will do two things. First make it more flexible and fun to play, and second to make it easy so that once learned you don't need to keep referencing the books over and over. I'm always looking for suggestions including things people have liked or dislike about a game.
Signed a disgruntled DM/GM
That's Christian for "I'd like to be buried with you. Up to the balls".
Someone please give a kick to the pants of Bioware, Black Isle, WOTC, and Atari and tell them to work out the legal crap and get them motivated to make a new BG game.
Although BG2/ToB was a far cry from PnP, it was still the best D&D type RPG I've ever played.
Even if a new BG game has nothing to do with the orginal characters...a game in that world, with that ruleset, with a similar (but improved) engine, the great modular control over skills, spells, and grouped NPCs, the immersion, the incredible music and diverse actors' voices, the in-depth storylines, the nonlinear nature of the quests, the replayability, etc. etc, etc.
IMO the BG series was the best computer RPGs ever. And that was 1997-98 technology. NwN, meh. Make a BG3!
p.s. Happy 30th D&D.
(You can only really do that when you are reasonably well assured of meeting and bedding a new girl any night you decide to hit whatever scene you hit.)
D&D is this generation's Poker Night. The harsh reality is that only good looking guys with well-built bodies get a regular stream of the kind of girls all teen-aged boys sweat over. Everybody else starves. Oooh, boo hoo. Life is sooo unfair.
For everybody else, (and we're talking 95% of the male population), there's D&D and if you're lucky, a good girl friend now and again.
-FL
>the mother of all RPG's
Tunnels and Trolls goes back to at least '75 so
saying that everything followed from D&D is
imprecise.
My mother said I'd play D&D "over her dead body." So, I had my D&D occult friends take her out and we used her for natural terrain.
But seriously, she never seemed to mind me playing Magic cards. Now I've been playing D&D off-and-on for 7 years. I play weekly now, in fact, tonight. And for those who think D&D is "social suicide," only one in the group is a social outcast. The rest are prison correction officers, and then me (a programmer.)
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
I'm a Christian, and I play D&D. I know many other Christian D&D'ers. It's embarassing how most Christians react to PnP gaming, especially D&D. It's been my experience that most do not take the time to evaluate something on their own, but just take their pastor's word for it, or believe whatever book is the best-seller at the Christian bookstore. That's the problem - most don't really think for themselves on issues like this. Perhaps one day that will change. Just know that we're not all idiots. If anyone does start going off on how D&D is satanic, etc, just calmly ask "why", then ask for evidence, etc. Once they realise that they don't really understand the topic, then you can explain what it's really about.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
I remember me and a buddy convinced our girlfriends to play D&D with us a couple times back when we were around 22. Neither of them had played before, but I remember being surprised at how well they took to the the role-playing aspects. In fact the role-playing aspects came so naturally that it didn't seem particularly fun to them. We ended up not playing much.
If I let myself be a sexist bastard I would say it is because most women tend to role-play in real life a lot more than men; by controlling people's perceptions of them with acting. So most women don't really see the point of setting aside time to put on an act.
Despite that this seems to work well in practice it sure undermines many of my romantic ideals.
Cheers.
The whole mess is tied up in court over ownership between Gary Gygax, David Cook, some original investors in what used to be TSR, who filed a law suit following the sale to WoTC, and Hasbro INC, the newest 'owners'. Hasbro brought in BIG LAWYERS and claimed ownership over EVERYTHING involving D&D, even stuff which was taken from public domain, or history texts. Much of the legal battle involved the Bioware engine and the rights over use of names and such in electronic publishing. The 'NEW' Pools of Radiance game and publishing house did not help to clear matters at all. Spell names and character names in the background that were allowed for use to Gary, or David but never allowed for transfer, Many things involving games used at CONS that were NEVER licensed for commercial use, or things from the old dragon/dungeon mags that were adopted into the game or offered for non-commerical use to GM's were co-opted by WotC or Hasrbo. In some cases the true owners were even legally threatened by either company, and they did not even know the source of the material they were claiming.
I have been playing since the blue book days and have numerous modules and other minor components published under TSR's aegis, or used at cons or tournaments, and yes I have run many GENCON games as well as RPGA tournaments , that were then 'adopted', used, modified, and then my name was eventually removed totally, while they continue to use the items and spells bearing the characters' name I own and created. It is frustrating and somewhat insulting but I never expected make a profit, I did it for the 'love' of the game. I had an EQ char's last name changed following a report by 'someone', when I am in fact the legal owner. I've had ZERO luck getting the name back as Sony Online Entertainment claims OWNERSHIP of everything that passes a chat screen in EQ.
Sadly the 3rd ed system is aimed at the video game crowd and rather silly in many places, we speculate jokingly that the authors were obviously playing Diablo2 during the development period of the new system. Our long time gaming group, the Saturday Knights, playing continuously for 20 years now, has adopted the GURPS system and we continue in the same game world we've been playing in for almost the entire time.
BTW we are always looking for good roleplayers, we are listed on Steve Jackson's find a game/player service or can be reached at the above email, make sure to put a RPG reference in the title or it will likely get de-spam'd. We are located in California, East of SF, meet at least once every 2 weeks for 8+hours sessions, require mature gamers but age is not the primary factor, and have a family environment to play in. Our group consists of several married couples as well as some younger singles. We've tried remote play but have not found any medium which can yet support the needed presence to really make ROLE-PLAYING possible, and We DEMAND roleplaying over stat-playing. A good guideline to our game style is the Char's disadvantages DEFINE them, and EVERY action has long term consequences in game. Uncle Figgie's guide to power gamers is recommended reading, and you should 'KNOW' what type of player you are
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I was going to construct an elaborate rebuttal, but I have to go out, so instead I'll just point you (and everyone else!) to ENWorld. Easily the best online community I've ever seen - if you want to go debate the finer points of d20 vs. other games, that's the place to do it. Anyone else here who's been out of the loop for a while and looking to get back into D&D, it's the perfect place to get up to speed on what's happened. Plus D&D/d20 is open source gaming, so it's the perfect game for all the Linux geeks around here.
I loved D&D - It gave me and my friends something to do in a small town before we all got AppleIIes in the mid 80's. Even after I moved to the "big" city and went to college we all still managed to get together to play on the weekends. I happened to live with a guy whose mother and father worked for TSR, which gave us access to copies of every thing ever printed. All was gravy until one of our group joined a cult(and I do not mean a mainstream religion) and "decided" it was the tool of the devil. Now we're all in our 30's and married - we still play once in a while - tho kids and wives make for some disjointed and often interupted sessions.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
he played the best damn drunkern dwarven cleric I have ever seen.
So what class and species of character did he play?
D&D is 30, as are Rush? Secluded science-fiction-lovin' dorks rejoice!
Dammit, why won't it grow up, get a hair cut and get a REAL job? And would it kill D&D to clean up all those Mountain Dew cans for once?
Its deadliness wasn't especially well-balanced either. Your strength score dramatically reduced damage. You would get even techie and pilot PCs with super-buff strength scores just because they didn't want to have to make a new character after every combat.
Meanwhile, the high strength Wookie or combat droid would be just standing in a firefight absorbing dozens of shots harmlessly, any one of which would kill or mortally wound a normal human. I know they're supposed to be tough, but there are limits.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a closet WEG fan and probably still consider TORG to be one of the best games ever made, but I can't honestly say d20 Star Wars isn't better than the d6 version in a lot of ways.
Or maybe 2d12 and 1d6.
was more my experience! Nothing like an RPG that emphasizes your essential helplessness against a hostile universe. Still my favorite after all these years.
I still have my white box set as well. I've passed on all the rest of my stuff but am now making up for it with GURPS and Heros. Since having a kid, no more going out to bars and such. Might as well do something on a Saturday night.
I drank what? -- Socrates
you insensitive clod!
Out there somewhere is an mp3 with the voiceover of doom talking about how D&D is evil and ruining people's lives, leading kids to the devil. Meanwhile, the voices in the background of geeks playing D&D were stupid-funny! I want to cast a spell, no you don't have that spell, I want to cast it anyway, no you can't, where's the Mountain Dew, in the fridge, no it isn't.....
Knowing what THAC0 stands for is the easy part. The hard part is being able to calculate the to-hit roll quickly in your head. Sadly, I can still do that to this day. Then again, considering that I was the human calculator for my gaming group for a couple years, this maybe isn't so suprising.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I was the only one in my high school with the patience to learn enough of the rules to DM. We'd do gifted class, lunchtimes, etc. I remember reading a novel back then, that I've looked for since with no luck. It featured a group (high school or college, can't remember for sure) with a teacher for a DM, who sends them into the game for real. Featured a boy in a wheelchair who becomes a dwarf; a girl priest with a robe that reacted like a concrete wall; etc. What I remember most is the 'realistic' treatment it tried to give the situation, as far as the characters' feelings and reactions to being inside the game. Can anyone help me ID (or ID&D) this book? Thanks!
Guardians of Order is releasing a new edition of "Empire of the Petal Throne" in July with the full support of Barker, the game's creator. With Tekumel, Amber, and Nobilis under their belt, GoO is becoming a clearinghouse for underappreciated and brilliant games.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Me, I know I never want to encounter something with a "10d10+15 cornhole" attack.
fencepost
just a little off
Here's a link to the true story that became the legend.
Sample:
"You may have heard the urban legend about that student who died playing a "live" version of Dungeons and Dragons in the steam tunnels at Michigan State University. How about the one where the RPG player killed himself because his gaming character died? These stories have been adapted into a pretty funny Chick Tract, a thriller novel, and a made for TV movie."
I actually really enjoy playing D&D, though persoanlly I perfer GURPS. The problem is that it seems everyone udenr 30 these days wants to play one of the white wolf systems.
I suppose white wolf has created a very detailed back ground but I simply can not stand the system. There is no play balance, everyone playing it would be better off going and reading a book. but the only groups of gamers I have managed to fall in with plays it 90% of the time.
Any ideas how to get them on to a better system (AD&D or GURPS)?
just as an aside, many D&D nerds are still living in thier parents basements but some of us have gotten married and moved out. Seems unreal but it is true.
There is no situation you can not make worse. -Jim Lovell
A few months back, I found a copy of Avalon Hill's WILDERNESS SURVIVAL (Or was it OUTDOOR SURVIVAL?) at a thrift shop.
It was not only complete, but OVER complete. It had two map boards!
This was very important, because as old timers out there know the original D&D called for a copy of this map for wilderness (outside of a dungeon) adventures.
There was a note that the ponds on the map should be treated as castles. The whole point of the game seemed to be to put together enough wealth to be able to afford to buy a castle and hire men-at-arms.
This makes sense when you remember D&D's roots in minatures games. All that dungeon delving and monster fighting was just a prelude to playing CHAINMAIL miniatures games with your Superhero (Fights as 10 men+1) leading the way.
Stefan
Long, long before I could program my way out of a sort routine, much less before I started writing about Linux, I played D&D in its very, very first days.
Since then, I've played many other kinds of games, and yes, I still play D&D, albeit D&D 3.5 these days. But, still I look back at those days of Chainmail and those three booklets and... I don't know that things have gotten that much better.
Well, OK, yes they have, until the very first RPG supplment, Grayhawk, came out, the rules were painful even by a die-hard gamer standards. Still, there's no time like the first time that you take imaginary sword in hand, kick open the door, and adventure began.
Steven
Has a bit of everything in it, elements from different RPG games. Vampire: The Masqerade, for one of them. ;) Vampires in the Traveller universe.
;)
We also fought Cylons, Terminators, Warewolves, Mechs, and many many more from other games, stories, etc.
Our referee invents this stuff up as we go along. It may be more like GURPS than Traveller.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Mod the parent up please, he's not a troll, and he was commenting on some wienie talking about not spelling something right.
Offtopic of course, but troll? Do you idiot moderaters even know what trolling is?
This was on cruel.com a couple days ago to the same theme:
http://www.cybermoonstudios.com/8bitDandD.html
It's quite cool (and quite realistic I might add)
I was rumaging through stuff from my recent move last week and I came across eight D&D manuals, a couple of modules, some old character sheets and even a box full of miniatures from the early 80's. I haven't played pen and paper D&D for about seven years now but I still pursue role-playing games in the form of MMORPG's and CRPG's, it's not quite as good but it's hard to find time to get a half dozen of my friends together all at once now that we are all married with children. Anyways to give credit where credit is due, if not for D&D there would be no RPG's these days... what would I do with the little spare time I have if that was the case? ;)
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
you can not get Array out of Bounds errors on pen and paper D&D
You enter a 10 x 10 array. You see a Null Pointer Exception guarding an Object of type Chest. What do you do?
Ya know, I've always preferred "Who Will Be Eaten First?"
(It's a shame that the author got a nastygram from Jack Chick's lawyers, and you can't find it on his site.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you actually read the article, you'd see that the author is comparing carnal lust with the lust for power. It's a hypothetical game that involves the quote where you inserted D&D.
But yeah, it's a poor analogy...FUD indeed.
And while it's hard to argue that D&D doesn't encourage a "must find the +5 vorpal blade so I can kill Ztha the dragon and reach level 15" mindset, that's not really likely to encourage a megalomanic rush for glory - play D&D, become obsessed with being elected President...or a subsequent decline in family values.
This was fixed in the latest revision. In the 3.5 PHB, whirlwind attack specifies that "when you use the Whirlwind Attack feat, you also forefit any bonus or extra attacks granted by other feats or abilities (such as the cleave or the haste spell)
Starring Tom Hanks, so you know it must be good! If you can find a copy of this at your favorite rental store, pick it up. Full of all that wonderful fear that playing "Monsters and Mazes" would destroy the youth of America.
Why is it that all the greats are destined to be screwed over? Here is a summary of what happened to Gygax and TSR. Such a shame.
Expert Tactician [General]
You are skilled and turning things to your advantage.
Prerequisites: Combat Reflexes, Base attack bonus +2, Dex 13+
Benefit: You may make an extra melee attack a round, against one foe that is within range, and denied Dexterity bonus against you. This attack occurs before or after your regular attacks. Special: Only one such attack may be made a round unless you have the Combat Reflexes feat. Attacks used with Combat Reflexes count against the total number of Attacks of Opportunity you may make in that round.
That book was called "The Sleeping Dragon", and can be picked up on Amazon
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
...and nobody's gotten the Head of Vecna to work yet.
This sig is only here so people stop skipping the last lines of my posts.
but am now making up for it with GURPS
Oh Yeah... still have all my GURPS, and that evolved from The Fantasy Trip, and the line started with a couple of Pocket Games called Melee and Wizard. Man did we waste a lot of hours with those two!
It's a silly game with stupid names for spells and a system that sacrifices too much detail for speed, but I remember buying it at a con in 1980 when Michael Stackpole (yes, that Michael Stackpole) cut me a deal and sold me the game and a couple of modules cheap. It was a fun alternative, and, although it never became my main game, it provided me with an interesting alternative perspective on gaming. Then came Runequest...
although I prefer the definition from the original Deities and Demigods book.
man rtfm
Some of the fanatically obsessed D&D players you run across playing NWN could probably very easily fit into that category. The only difference is, you don't have the smell to give you the early warning of how incredibly fucking dumb they are.
the game book you speak of in the second paragraph was (is) "Fantasy Wargaming" by Bruce Galloway. isbn 0-85059-465-0
One of the most erudite treatments of the genre ever complied.
Adrian
Jack T. Chick has spoken!
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
You just described the first program I ever wrote on the first computer our family owned! You're not my cousin, are you?
My program even let you purchase initial equipment, and printed up your sheet at the end on our Epson dot matrix printer.
Was yours a mess of GOTOs like mine was?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Whine that it's all MS's fault and reboot.
A buddy and I wrote character generators for the TRS-80 also.
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
As a DM, I never used HP as a "battery" of how many hits a character could take until he was down for the count. HP was essentially a measure of skill in avoiding attack damage, or deflecting the brunt of an attack. Higher level fighters have more hit points than lower level fighters because, in my mind (as the DM), to be that experienced meant you were much better at dodging or deflecting attacks. An attack that did 5 HP damage against a guy with 50 would be interpreted as a cut on the arm or similar location- the same damage against a person with 10 HP would be, say, a VERY nasty gash across the chest.
:-)
In my book, HP is just another metric of character competence, and augments armor nicely.
Doesn't mean I didn't occasionally fudge the hell out of my DM rolls to smack down or spare a player.
Did we forget about those?
How does your game handle superpowers? I loved the Hero system but hated having to buy a bunch of power modifiers that were rarely used, or needing one I didn't have. I did a preliminary "port" of the Hero concepts to the White Wolf storyteller system, with the end goal of making power modifiers dynamically allocatable- they came out of your overall level, so you could do creative things with an attack for less of the brute force value. It worked on paper, but I never got around to play testing it. :P
I was indoctrinated into the world of D&D while getting computer technician training at Keesler AFB, MS back in '77 (made less than $5k income that yr). Some of us spent much of our free time trying to make saving throws. That carried over to my next 2 yrs at Offutt AFB, NE...nothing else worth doing in Neb anyway. I've still got all the books & dice, but haven't played since about '85...went back to college, got married, had a kid, became a responsible adult (YUCK!). Now, nearly 25 yrs later, with a household income nearly 40 times what I made back then, I think I was enjoying life alot more in my D&D days :-(
Just another day in Paradise
This is definitely a trip down memory lane.
I got into D&D as a sidebar to military wargamming, starting with Risk and moving onto several Avalon Hill games (Third Reich, Blitzkrieg, 1776 (I got massacred by my brother at this one), & Squad Leader).
When I went to the hobby shop to see what other cool games they had, I saw a box for the original Basic Edition of D&D, together with the 1st Edition Monster Manual. The DM Guide was released just a little after that, and trying to get polyhedrial dice was almost impossible. We actually used the old chit system at first to generate our characters becuase we couldn't find any polyhedrial dice at all. When I finally got some dice, the d20 was badly misshapen in manufacturing, and gave some really wild results when used (I wish I still had it now).
The best fun I had was a week at Boy Scout Camp where we also turned it into a week-long D&D marathon. The logistical planning for this was something that could only be done by a bunch of hard-core D&D players that were also boy scouts. The D&D manuals were smuggled in with the camp kitchen supplies, talked our parents into a week's worth of munchies & pop (with some extra money on the side for buying stuff that wouldn't keep in the cooler for more than a couple of days), and took off to camp looking like a group of real trustworthy, loyal, helpful (etc.) boy scouts our parents thought we were. We also hid miniatures, dice, DM screens, map graphs, and pens & paper (that was more out in the open.. . but in retrospect our parents should have realized that we took too MUCH paper and too MANY pencils with us).
Our Scoutmaster (actually an assistant who could get the time off from work) was this young guy that looking back now was just totally snowballed by us boy scouts. I was about 16 at the time, and he placed a lot of trust in me as a junior leader. I did what I could, but this adventure took a life of its own that this poor assistant SM couldn't keep under control.
After about 5 P.M. we would finish up our camping chores every evening and start playing D&D. In addition to the munchies, we brought along 4 gallons of Camp Fuel for the Coleman lanterns we placed under the tarp and played well into the night with the group of about 10 scouts in our troop. My younger brother was the D.M. for this whole affair, but there were several experienced and hard-core players, as well as a few totally new initiates into playing D&D (the kids who were really there to attend Scout Camp for real).
During the day some of these new initiates would get a chance to read the rule books and get them explained as we were building fires, cooking breakfast or supper, and doing the other camp stuff (like swimming, firing shotguns, making crafts, etc.)
For this experience, we decided to try out the Gary Gygax module series (Giants & Drow stuff) that we bought (because it was from the grand master... we bought everything from him at the time) but we always seem to put it off doing other stuff when we were normally playing D&D. I didn't realy how awful they were until after we really started to play them, and I knew just what Monty Haul Dungeons really came from.
The sad part was the aftermath to this whole event. Needless to say our parents were absolutely pissed at us (my dad was the regular Scoutmaster and was unable to attend camp due to some other things that came up in his personal life). Some of the scouts in our troop also failed to complete any merit badges while at camp, and the D&D game was directly blamed for it. (I think we did make up an "unofficial" D&D merit badge for the event, however.) One set of parents totally forbade their kids from ever playing D&D again (the born-again Pat Robertson follower type), which was quite sad. My parents were more of the attitude that neither I nor my brother should "corrupt" the minds of the innocent, but they would rather that we pour our energies into D&D rather than dating or drugs or cars. In that respect D&D was a rather cheap hobby by comparison.
Svirfneblin Monk with the Vow of Poverty feat from the Book of Exalted Deeds. Such a high AC, he can't even hit himself. ;-)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I had a player once who always seemed to have what was needed for an adventure, to whom I always gave a few bonus XP for being prepared and blowing gold on mundane items instead of weapons and armor. Mapping a maze? He had chalk to mark the walls. Starting to rain? He had oiled cloth. Need a bit of light? He was always ready with flint and tinder.
Then one day, for some reason or another, the players had a need for a bird cage, when the player produced one, I was a bit baffled, how could he have thought to have brought one. I asked to see his character sheet, and found that he had spent every last gold piece on mundane equipment... but had neglected to account for weight. Needless to say he aquired the nickname "General Store", and lost all of his wares in the dungeon when suddenly his loop-hole strength failed him.
Back in the day we either played Basic D&D, or AD&D but ignored lots of the more complex rules (essentially it was a Basic/AD&D hybrid). Now with d20, I see all these modifiers you have to account for (feats, skills, situational modifiers, what-have-you) that we just didn't deal with back then and that I have no desire to deal with today. Especially with all the extra responsibilities and junk I have to deal with now.
"Quag Keep" by Andre Norton was also an old Greyhawk-related fantasy book. bkr
You meant Tactical Studies Rules, right?
"Sure you've got your Evercrack players getting counciling and stuff..."
Yeah, that stuff just being death binges in front of their computer, right? The best you can do is a homeless guy??? HA!
You need a FREE iPod Nano
...this?
I'm always looking for suggestions too...
I guess I came to D&D a little differently, but today all but 5 of my best friends play D&D. Those 5 play Ultimate with me and one is brother of aFanatasy artisit! I have known one of my D&D buddies since 1980. I met him in 1980 at Texas A&M while on my orientation. My folks and I came in the the MSC (Student Union) and I begged my parents to let me join them. For some reason, they said yes. I guess they wanted me to make friends. I remmber after that, my Dad told me I was not sent to college to play games. Greg was my best man at my wedding. And all three of the guys in the wedding were RP Gamers.
h tml). One day after this in Nan's Toy Store in the Galaria Mall in Houston, Texas, I saw the first boxed set of D&D. I bought it on the spot. What I would not give now to have that box and its contents today.
;-)
In High School, I had acccess to a PLATO-IV terminal. I played Orthanc and the Mines of Moria (http://compmuseum.narod.ru/history/gam_hist/5-3.
In HS I played some, but it was never as cool as opening that box the first day and playing the adventure. After that, I was the default D/GM because I had read the rules. But all these HS kids were posers! In college, I found the serious RP Gamers. So serious, I played only with the fringe groups (what an image - fringe gamers). I was not seroius enough to commit to and last through a campaign. In Grad School, I became a D/GM for Warhammer RPG and Earthdawn. Even after I started my career, we continued to play.
I really don't remember the games as much as I do the friendships. But the legends that came from the games, they will last forever. Some I was part of, while others I sat and listened to for hours. For me, it was like living a book and meeting the characters.
In Grad School, one of my roommates and later groomsmen, wrote a computer game and years later sold his company for millions. I remember my Dad asking me if I could use all that time I had spent playing games to make money like my friend. (Parents - now I am one.)
At 42 years old, I run a campaign of 3e for a 15 year old (my daughter), an 18 year old and a 13 year old (kids in my Sunday School Class), two of my 30 something year old gaming buddies, my wonderful wife of 11 years, and the father of the other two kids who has been playing longer then I have.
Now D&D is a family event. Good play is rewarded, from a parental perspective. Lessons are built into the adventure. Often times they are filled with ethical dilemas and role models.
I played 2 years of EQ and loved it, but our communal life interfered with my wife and me having play time. Now we shoot for once a month, and balance the time against school work, movies and the mall.
I plan on playing some CoH with my friends and see how far I get. But I doubt I will ever stop playing D&D. I can not imagine it. I keep looking around as my daughter gets older, to see who I will recruit next. Perhaps I can transform a poker night somewhere with my coworkers?
Peace,
PaGeN of the Disarming Smile
When a Ball Dreams, It Dreams it's a Frisbee.
You cannot truly create your own world, with your own design for character classes, ways of improving characters. All of the character creation MUST come out of WotC's 'd20 Core Books'.
That's not very open to me.
I play with a group of about 5 players, including myself. With our work schedules, plus the fact that one member (who also part-time DMs) has two kids, we can only play on Saturday nights from about 11pm to 2am. At the end of the week, we are tired from studying and working, so our games are really just dungeon crawl slash'em. No role-playing at all, alignment rules are thrown out the window. We're just about XP. Except for me, because my character is a drunken monk, and we do drink. I'm not knocking it, it is a lot of fun and allows us to get together on a weekly basis and catch up on each other's lives.
As an adult gamer, I've found schedules with other mature adults to be very hard to co-ordinate for some serious D&D games. Does anybody else out there have the same problem?
Ben, you've become an UberGeek! Take me as your padawan!!!
The parent post is little more than opinion and ranting. For example:
> Hasbro brought in BIG LAWYERS and claimed ownership over EVERYTHING involving D&D, even
> stuff which was taken from public domain, or history texts.
For anyone who's actually followed the evolution of D&D over the last 10 years, this is so wrong as to be funny. *WotC* has never been this litigious or over-reaching in its claims, although *TSR* _was_ almost that bad for a while. In the late 90's, TSR had an arguably draconian policy on people making derivative works (their own D&D materials), to the extent that many online D&D ftp sites shut down under legal threat. WotC, on the other hand, has not only been very friendly to fan-created works, but has made (virtually) all of the rules _downloadable_!
Similarly, TSR was claiming many terms or ideas as their own that were not - I remember searching out the etymology of "drow" to rebut a TSR claim that drow were obviously their creation and property - but WotC has been pretty reasonable with that (just Beholders and a couple of oddball things like those).
Finally, there's no need to take my word for this - there's _abundant_ evidence of this attitude of TSR's saved in Usenet archives from the time, which anyone who doubts me is heartily encouraged to check out (groups.google.com, rec.games.frp.dnd).
while (!asleep()) sheep++
Wow - you actually play traveller? I just ran across my dog-eared, thoroughly beatenup copy ofthe rulebook... You don't live near Washington DC, do you?
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
I'm just saying...
I always found it odd that our Dungeon Master could slay a dragon with the flip of a single die, yet the rest of us would have to roll furiously just to take out a a couple of measley tree squirrels. On top of that we would come away with severe damage while he walked away without a scratch.
Wow...
I remember learning to play D&D starting about the fall of '74 or the winter of '75.
The coolest part was that the original manuals were printed on 8.5x11 paper that was folded and stapled in the middle to make these neat little pamphlets. I don't think I ever saw the original pamphlets. Everyone just took out the staples, ran them through a copying machine, folded them and stapled them.
I wrote a program on our Univac 1108 to roll characters according to the D&D rules and made my self popular by showing up at games with stacks of 2 or 3 hundred character sheets all ready rolled and printed on fan folded green bar paper.
I stopped playing about the time I graduated from college and got married. Now, my son (who is 20) plays D&D. Several of the people he plays with are 2nd generation gamers. At this rate the 3rd D&D generation should be showing up pretty soon now.
That this silly little game would develop into a family activity and a cross generational bond in families is amazing.
Stonewolf
www.stonewolf.net
Since you brought the rodents in question, they are clearly your allies, or at worst non-combatants.
Whirlwind clearly states that you only get one attack per "opponent" within reach...
As a DM I'll happily reward (or at least play out to it's logical conclusion) creative *in-game* thinking, but take an equally dim view of exploitatively "creative" *meta-game* thinking. You should be there to have some fun with your friends, after all, not to come up with rules-lawyer applications to make the game not be fun anymore.
You've got a point I'll admit but I think my homeless guy still has you beat. I've known him since high school and I'm 38 years old. He was a couple of years behind me so I'm guessing he's around 36 years old now.
Since roughly a year into college (He dropped out and began his nomadic existence at about that time) he's been pretty much as I described him. He had an apartment from time to time through his early 20's. At one time I know his roommates kicked him out and kept his precious manuals as collateral on money he owed them (they got paid) and shortly after that it was life in the cab.
When you get an Evercrackhead living for the game as long as Jade (yeah that's his name, hippie parents I guess) then maybe the video versions are coming into their own. Until then D&D is still the king.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
When I first started playing D&D in the 80's, my Catholic school thought it was Satanic as per the hysteria and tried to discorage us from playing it.
Thanks be to my Awesome and Unholy Masters Cthulhu and Baal that this was all just hype and it blew over.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Weird coincidence that I read that right now; I recently found Rosenberg's compilation of the first three Guardians of the Flame books in the local library (a bit careworn, it is :); haven't read the series since the fourth, and decided to pick up on them again. I bought the first three books way back when; in the fourth book he 'apparently' killed off the hero (Karl Cullinane); at that point I was into a lot of other things and lost the series, partially because I thought he was ending it. Silly me :)
.
:)
However, Joel has written quite a few more books in that series. (Wow). You can find a list at the unofficial fan site here. Quite good, even if he has stretched the storyline out a little much, but to someone looking for a great series of fantasy work based loosely off of D&D, they are worth looking into. You can request the books in the series at most libraries if you'd care to sample (even in my rural hamburg I can get them all thru interlibrary loan); I would suggest starting with the original books, however, he builds quite a history, and all the books from the first one are good, and pretty realistic.
Joel seems to be one of the popular-unpopular fantasy writers these days. I rarely see him on the store bookshelf, but he has quite a following. You can also find some chapters of his latest book in the GotF series on Baen's website here
Enjoy. He's not traditional, but if you are/were into D&D, they can capture you quite effectively.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Doh, I should have dropped the spoiler in that first paragraph. Sorry :)
:(*
Stupid me.
No gold star for shadowbearer tonite
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I wrote a weather generator in excel for the World of Greyhawke, which took into account the altitude, longitude and terrain.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
And for the record - flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me.
Try playing using minis and a battlemat - once you do, AOO and flanking suddenly starts to make sense, as does overrun, bulls-rush, charging and any area of affect spell.
Our regular campaign group includes 3 rules lawyers, an aerospace engineer and a HR rep. Using m,ini's has significantly reduced the number of rules debates we have and has speed up combat by nearly 50%.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
The core rules are available online (http://3point5srd.com/) as part of WotC commitment to the Open Gaming Foundation.
Called the Standard Reference Document (SRD), it contains 98% of the text of the commercial rules books. They have kept as 'closed content' the experience & leveling up rules and certain monsters $ spells.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I am going to tackle the Wizard to prevent him from casting the Fireball!
Roll for initiative and you too Wizard. The orcs are completely surprised.
The wizard wins, everybody make a saving throw...the room is 10x10.
Played AD&D like crazy in my teenage years. Monster Manual, Monster Manual 2, Deities and Demigods, Dungeons Masters Guide and Players Hand Book. Throw in some figures and dominos. Had a subscription to Dragon magazine also.
A always remember my players favorite character Max dying. He had just fought a type 6 demon in a dungeon. He was close to dying and ran away. But he accidentally fell into a pit trap with magic spikes. Amoungst the spikes was green slime for more damage.
Then on off weeks we would change the theme and play Traveller. Cannot find much on Traveller or Game Designers Workshop. But they sure generated allot of credits...
I prefer Decivilization. :P
Blatant self-promotion: Jerek.net
We went from MtG to D&D then broke up cause D&D sucked. And by sucked i mean this:
MtG is a science. All technical, no art involved: simple.
D&D is both an art and an artistic medium. Conflicting interpretations, vision, style: very messy.
http://www.darkholmekeep.net/crusade/dd7.cfm
Thats right. On a 1200 Baud modem, I ran an RPG BBS that basically consisted of a bunch of message boards in ASCII text (no color) and THAT WAS IT. My storage consisted of two 1581 3.5 floppy drives and two 1571 disk drives daisy chained together for a SWEET (at that time) 4 megs of storage. Only one person at a time could log on. At 1200 Baud you could actually kind of see the text print out character by character (well, 300 Baud was probably more prone to that).
The phone ringing at all hours of the night and the "EEeeeeEeeee-oooOooo-KrrkrrRrrrR" carrier signal would drive my parents crazy.
Once we got into the 90's I got into running MUDs (my fave was Island MUD), but before that, some people would go really nuts on the BBS's and get 26 phone lines and hookem up to 26 HST 14.4 modems running Searchlight or Wildcat software.
i think it is SYSTEM reference document.
I've been playing 3rd ed. D&D over a blog, and it's been working out awfully well.
We've got some downtime at the moment, since the DM's on vacation, but generally, it's been a very active blog. And the blog format allows people with real jobs to play, even if they're geographically separated. (I'm in a different country from the rest of the group.)
I thought that this would satisfy my long-suffering D&D jones, and it almost does -- but now I want to start my own campaign. Once a DM, always a control freak, I suppose. :)
Thank you for cracking me up.
My pleasure is to make women happy. I'm glad I succeeded.
One of the best gaming groups I played in was run by a woman. In fact, I'd say most of my gaming before her was with guys only and were simple hack-n-slash. Co-ed gaming really opened up the Role Playing aspect. I've been sold on Role Playing since then. It makes the games so memorable.
I'm 32 and I've been playing since I was 9. Role Playing really opened up for me at 19. I feel like I've lived decades of romance and intrigue and yet feel like it was just yesterday that I started playing. It is a wonderful feeling if you get a good GM.
Sterling Keener
MCSE, CCNP
sckeener@yahoo.com
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
...who still misses the THVAC table? There used to be a reason for the fighter to carry five different weapons--and there was once a time when the knight in plate armor would laugh at the thief that was trying to fight him with a dagger.
Thank you for observing all safety precautions.
Thank you everyone, your replies were incredibly helpful.
I remember playing AD&D 1st eddition in the 80's then 2nd ed. came out. It seemed more fun then, no more asking the DM what a 4th level thief needed to hit a 12hd monster with an AC of -5. I loved the THAC0 concept just add or subtract the enemy's AC to your THAC0 and roll.
I never did like modules though some of them weren't too bad. The best games were when the DM just shot from the hip or had a basic outline for a plot of some sort. Modules though like the rules are not carved in stone. I like them for the maps and stuff.
Rules lawyers are a pain though. I figured a real novel way of dealing with them. Let them have what they want for a time even throw them a bone or two, then they find a box.
Senerio:
DM: you find an unlocked box (somewhere).
Thief (aka rules lawyer): I open it and look inside.
DM: you see a little man looking down at something.
Thief: I try and see what he's looking at.
DM: you see a little man looking down at something.
Thief: I reach in at take what ever he's looking at.
DM: you're sucking into the box and find your self floating around in nothing.
Thief: I use my ring of three wishes and wish myself out of the box.
DM: It doesn't work you're still in the box.
Thief: I wish I hadn't found the damned box then.
DM: doesn't work you're still in the box.
Thief: But I don't understand it nothing is more powerful than a wish.
DM: really tell that to Loki (or some other appropriate diety) because I don't think he/she really cares.
Thief: I start praying to Loki to get me out of here.
DM: "We're sorry do to the extremely high volume of calls to the God of Mischief, all lines are busy. Please hang up and try your prayer again later. And thank you for using the Loki hotline."
Meanwhile back in the dungeon...
Fighter: Hey what happened to the thief?
Cleric: I thought I saw him over there by that box.
Those where the days. My gamming buddies and I basicly ignored those fear mongering religious twits who wouldn't know a demon if it scored a crit with a +5 Unholy Avenger to their pea-brained skulls. They're ones living in a fantacy world if they think their religious dogma can stamp out D&D or any other RPG. I suspect though D&D will one day go the way of ENIAC, where the once reveered books will lay in a room collecting dust only to be revived for a brief period of nestalgia.
Long live D&D.