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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.
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.
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
As someone who built several modules and roleplays a cow on NWN I can officially state my opion as Moo.. errr no. It's not the same.
Especially since my first D&D adventure was pen and paper and my entire party got devistated by a group of drow and a twisted DM who liked to have the spell casters in the party get their tongues welded to the floors of their mouths and spikes placed in their arms. Definatly nothing like NWN.
One thing that seperates NWN from pen and paper D&D is you can not get Array out of Bounds errors on pen and paper D&D when creating an adventure like you can in the Aurora toolset when adding your own content or manipulating it.
Also you have the ability to use your imagination more and drink beer and hang out with cool friends unlike NWN unless your doing a LAN fest of it. Still it's not the same in any way, shape or form.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
No. It's close in many ways but not the real deal. ADnD is about setting around a table (with people you can see) and participating in a grand (hopefully) story.
There's the pre game gab in which the players talk about their characters in first person and about how each saved so and so or nearly died in a running knife fight/chase which took place on the roofs tops of some distant sea port.
during the game you have a stronger sense of comeradery when you can see your other party members accross the table than one gets from watching them on the computer screen.
Then there's the pizza/chinese/what -ever take out order during or after the game where the party notes are taken and everyone haggles over the exact wording of the gaming logs. Not every group does this but in the ones I have participated, keeping a running narrative which reads something like cross between a novel and journal is lots of fun. One group I was in, in which we played 'Champions' the game log was taken from player notes and turned in to news paper articles by the GM. It was a lot of fun to 'read' about your character in the paper; although, it could often be embarasing to read the bits where the hero had to get bailed out of trouble or lost the bad guy.
Computers are nice and computer games are fun but it's not the same as playing with the same group in the same room.
My best roleplaying sessions, bar none, have been while playing the Amber Diceless RPG. No dice, four stats, just a few powers to deal with, and a point system so every character (which is based on the same number of points) is more or less equal. Even the powers are balanced; In order to be attuned to the logrus (and it to you) you have to be a shape shifter. Hence the Logrus powers which are arguably more powerful than those of the Pattern are balanced by there being a prerequisite. (And people with the pattern can generally see right through shapeshifters if they're paying attention, so good roleplaying can be rewarded by a good GM.)
Ultimately, the game comes down to the storyteller, GM, DM, or whatever they're named in your game of choice. It can only be as good as they are creative. The next thing is the players; are they serious about the game? I don't mean you can't make jokes, but the idea is to roleplay right?
Put another way, the "secret" is to form a group which shares your goals. You sound like you want to roleplay - you need a group of roleplayers. Most computer gamers don't want to roleplay, they want to kill shit. When I play a pen and paper RPG, then the world is open, it can be anything. When I play a computer RPG, this is not true, so I resign myself to killing stuff.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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"
Ace of Base!? Whippersnapper. Real music to D&D by considering this the 30 year anniversary, not 10: Rush, Yes, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath....
But I do agree that doing stupid/bizarre things to blow away the DM's story line was always to most fun!
load "windows7"
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