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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
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!
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...
quit fooling yourself, it was a "dork thing" back then as well...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
'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.
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.
It really works, you know.
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
Ernest.
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.
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.
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
Birth Name is "Ernest Gary Gygax" http://www.amiannoying.com/(k5qimjztujzkgibrsu53to va)/view.aspx?id=9673&collection=821
Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.
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
I think so too. However, I don't expect that D&D, or tabletop RPGs in general, will survive the deaths of the generation that first started playing it. So give it another 30 years, and I think D&D will probably be like tabletop paper-counter wargaming is today--a tiny niche hobby.
D&D was certainly heavily inspired by tolkien's LOTR work: enough so that the tolkien estate sued the publishers, TSR (tactical studies review). but the key thing to remember is that there are a number of worlds in which the D&D game can be played, published by current publishers, wizards of the coast (of magic: the addiction fame), as well as by a host of other publishers in the RPG industry.
RPGs are the activity, but the world(s) in which they are played are the setting.
hope that answers your question satisfactorily.
ed
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 ...
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
It's a rarity that I don't rewrite rules for the games I play. I think the only one I've never really modified much was Cyberpunk 2020, but even that got some tweaks on automatic weapons fire.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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!
it's not still living in it's folk's basement like that ST:TOS.
. . . and still lives at home.
I don't think it actually made you any cooler back then, it just wasn't well known enough to be a serious "nerd mark". People still knew we were nerds-- they just knew it for different reasons*.
* e.g. glasses, particularly damaged glasses fixed with [tape|wire|epoxy]; posession of calculating devices; reading books we weren't assigned to read; marginal enthusiasm/ability WRT team sports; "practical" rather than fashionable wardrobe; &cetera.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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?
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 think one of the first modules released by Gygax was Blackmoor, set on the planet Oerth in the campaign world Greyhawk (named after the main city in the world). In fact, the creator of D&D later wrote a series of novels (first published by TSR, later by another (i forget) when they let Mr. Gygax go called 'Gord the Rogue' series) about the Greyhawk campaign.
;)
The poster above is correct: Tolkein did not invent any of the fantasy elements he included in his works, he just set them down on paper so eloquently to tell a story (and create a language) that he might get credit for them nowadays (especially with the movies being so popular). They were all mythological devices long before Tolkein used them in his novels.
For instance: try reading Beowulf.
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
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.
And sometimes, D&D gives back:
~wavylines~
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
http://www.ifilm.com/filmdetail?ifilmid=220487
Warning, it's so funny you may wet your pants.
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.
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"
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
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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."
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
One girl saying, "Look at this circular-metal-band my fiancee gave me!" Another guy going, "How do you get circular-metal-band around the collar out?" and then lastly, someone screaming, "Hey, the phone is circular-metal-banding, anyone want to get that?"
(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
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 know this isn't your fault, and I know I should care, and I know that was probably based on 2nd edition rules... but.....
..damn... stupid nitpicking....
must...resist....
DWARVES AREN'T ENCUMBERED BY ARMOR.
gah, no!
I'll be in the corner hanging my head in shame.
if someone can, please prove me wrong so I don't have this on my concious....
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
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").
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
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?
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.
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
Jack T. Chick has spoken!
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Whine that it's all MS's fault and reboot.
Use of weird linguistic formats, e.g. "&cetera" instead of "etc."
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
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++
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.