Dungeons & Dragons Anniversary Gets Further Celebration

Thanks to GameSpy for its series of articles helping commemorate the 30th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. Continuing previous articles about the occasion, the week-long feature includes a look back at SSI's Gold Box series (" the first series of games to truly bring the D&D experience to video gamers"), The Daily Show's Stephen Colbert discussing his D&D schooldays ("We were all complete outcasts in school -- beyond the fringe, beyond nerds"), and a feature on Planescape: Torment ("One of the greatest, and certainly the weirdest, RPGs ever made.")

Comments

Bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

They dissed Al-Qadim.

Torment was great

[Ev0lution]

Planescape:Torment was the best of the computer AD&D games and one of the best RPGs ever (only Ultima at its best could equal it IMHO). Conversation was as important as fighting, and the best aspect was the great interaction with the rest of the party - huge elements of plot could be uncovered by talking to your companions. Wish they would make another.

Re:Torment was great

[Anonymous Coward]

Torment is one of the best RPG's I have ever played. Right up there with Baldur's Gate II, Suikoden, Final Fantasy 7, and Knights of the Old Republic.

If you can stand the out-dated graphics, the game will run in a window on Windows 2000. I haven't tried it in XP. You can sometimes find it in the discount software area of Best Buy (the ones that are in jewel cases without boxes) for less than $10.

Re:Torment was great

[ajutla]

Torment works fine with XP, yeah, and I too have seen it at Best Buy in the "dual jewel" set, bundled with Soulbringer.

So much fun!

[fiftyvolts]

I'm not sure why, but rolling d20s is one of the most enjoyable experiences ever.

The past few years I've been lucky enough to have a strong group of DnD'ers to play with. We've been getting several games in a week. I think it's because it has a strong human element, as well as a structured rule system along with lots of possibility for strategy.

Wizards of the Coast has done a great job with the franchise since they bought it from TSR. Both from a marketing stand point and a rules standpoint (NWP's?! THAC0's!? WTF :-]).

If you've never played you should really give it a shot. I assure you that you will have some fun :D

Re:So much fun!

[plover]

I haven't played in probably ten years now, but I agree that it was always a good time. (Except for the rule nitpicking, and our DM would usually solve it the "Paranoia" way. The Paranoia GMs guide has one cardinal rule -- "Action is good, reward it with success. Be boring and you're dead." So, arguing about the rules ended up causing way more pain than it was worth.)

My biggest regret is that I loaned my boxed set of original D&D books (along with another dozen supplemental rule books, monster manuals, etc.,) to a friend just at the end of high school, and I never got them back. I should probably check eBay to make sure he hasn't sold them! :-)

Based on hours spent...

[ConceptJunkie]

I should have received a degree in D&D with a minor in Computer Science.

DnD replaced by MMORPG

[tod_miller]

In my limited roleplaying experience (mainly a few games of paranoia, and mechwarrior) I found the a good structure was excellent. The DM was intelligent enough that we were confortable with his decisions etc. It felt like a true game experience.

You had too many laughs obiviously, especially paranoia, which has an amazing atmosphere.

Take that to the PC. You have faceless people playing games, less laughs, more stats.

DnD used to be small groups of upto 12 (for Vampire games which again I joined out of interest).

MMORPG seem to have lost that element of role playing in their enormity.

How about a LMORPG? Get lots of subscribers, but play mini missions (1 week or so?) where you select a band of 5-6 other players, and really role play, and take challenges.

There should be an API for a human DM in these instances, as it is only their own mission.

Just a couple of eurocents.

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[fiftyvolts]

Even with something like NWN, I don't think you achieve the same kind of "fun & laughs" the parent post was talking about. Playing DnD with close friends is so much more personal than using a computer. With a computer there's no pencil, no paper, no dice, but instead a screen that blinks at you. No matter how powerful a computer gets there is still something much more touching about dealing with real people in real life.

... and I spend a LOT of time on the computer...

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[Creepy Crawler]

If anything, NWN is a really handicapped version of AD&D 3.0 with too many bugs to count.. I'd name them off, but if you play more than 1 hour, you'll find them.

Never the less, to make NWN more enjoyable, I suggest you get NWN, SoU, and HotU along with downloadable pacthes CEP and PrC (http://nwnprc.netgamers.co.uk/). PrC attempt s to fix a lot of bugs, while adding in about 50 new classes, modifying the epic spell system so that it does NOT require feats, and adding of a bunch more feats in general.

I, so far, have played on 2 servers with all of these patches. It's quite interesting to see a floating skull casting magic at rapid fire (demilich class).

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize the irony in referring to D&D as "real life", right?

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[Jeranon]

No matter how powerful a computer gets there is still something much more touching about dealing with real people in real life.

Feh. Real people are overrated. Try dealing with metagaming powergamers who see nothing wrong with it (and technically, there is nothing wrong as it follows "teh roolz"). Burn out happens faster when you're at opposing sides of playing styles.

WotC did a survey where they broke down the player types into what people wanted in their RPG experience. From what I can see from WotC's current products and the computer games coming out, there is currently a bias towards the combat focused side. One could say that about the old Gold Box games, which are classics, but shouldn't games have evolved in the decade since? The critically acclaimed Planescape Torment, an innovative game in which only the ruleset was not, has shown that it's not the industry, it's just that most gamers aren't interested. Lamentation for Torment's poor sales indeed.

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[microTodd]

I realize this is a joke, but I was listening to a commentary on the radio the other day and I realized how relevant this is.

Take any group of guy friends (or gals, for that matter). They enjoying spending time together. "Bonding", if you will. So what do they do? Go fishing? Bowling? Drink beer and watch Monday Night Football? Or get together and play a table-top RPG?

Yes, despite ironic jokes to the contrary, this is REAL LIFE. Real life is spending time with your friends in person, having conversations, participating in activities you enjoy together.

How come a poker club is "socially acceptable" as having a life, but D+D is not? In both cases you are sitting at a table for hours, drinking beer and talking to each other.

Its all about social stereotypes. But as the demographics of the population changes (I'm only speaking for the US...I don't have too much experience in other countries) I think that ideas about these things will change. Are videogames still "geeky" pasttimes? A lot of us who started the video game craze are now in our 30s with disposable income. And as my kids grow up I won't harbor any negative feelings against them for wanting to play a lot of videogames. The same is true for D+D.

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[perlchild]

It's not just sales...

Making a great "brain" game is hard, making a hack and slash fest is "relatively easy".

Any sane PHB worth his salt would stay away from trying to make a Planescape II, even if it HAD sold, simply because if the brain is the game, he'd need to find

1) a group of very smart people
2) a group of very smart, creative people
3) a group of very smart, creative people who work well together
4) a group of very smart, creative people who work well together, and prevent egos from causing cost overruns.

Even Vegas won't give you good odds on #4...

We won't get innovative games until we punish the un-innovative ones with bad sales, VERY bad sales.
At least enough for one company to go under, but it has to be explicit... I just don't see that happening, a lot of casual gamers just don't have the exposure to a lot of the innovative, older games, in order to tell them apart from the new rehashed ones.

What about Wizardry? Bard's Tale?

[dougmc]

the first series of games to truly bring the D&D experience to video gamers

While they didn't actually use the D&D license, I'd have to say that Wizardry and later on The Bard's Tale brought the `D&D experience to video gamers' long before the SSI games did.

But of course, when you're writing a story about D&D and not the copy cats, I guess it makes sense to ignore the copy cats, even if they did it first. (Which sounds really odd. Copy cats usually do something second, not first :)

A truer thing never said:

[Johnny Mnemonic]

From the interview with Stephen Colbert: I put more effort into that game than I ever did into my schoolwork.

If I had had 1/10 of the enthusiasm for my schoolwork as I did for drawing maps on graph paper and figuring the averages of different dice shapes and combinations I could have gone to Harvard.

Instead, I moved from D&D to MUSHing, and now I post on / in the middle of the day. So it goes.

ps: A 6 sided die has a 3.5 average, for those who had things to do on Friday nights :)

Re:A truer thing never said:

[rune.w]

But what about a d20???? Hell, it's Friday and time is running out, thank you very much...

I have Planescape: Torment

[david.given]

...and it's brilliant. Really. The characters are excellent, the graphics are great, the voice acting is superb (although there's not much of it), it has an atmosphere you can cut with a knife, and the writing --- wow. If you've played it, you'll know what I mean when I say that Morte, Dak'kon and Annah's backstories all hit me at the same time, and I was glued to my monitor for several hours, ignoring the graphics, just reading the text as it scrolled past...

Alas, it's not perfect. The AI ain't great; Ignus, my physically weak but very powerful sorceror, has a tendency to wander up to some huge, horrible monster when I ask him to cast a long-range spell unless I keep an eye on him. (This tends to be terminal for him.) There are some scripting bugs; there's one minor subquest I can't complete. There are some more serious engine bugs, too. If I try and enter one room the game crashes on me, which is a pity because I need something that's in it. One whole section, the Godsman temple, is noticeably poorly written, at least compared to the rest of it.

The worst problem is that it's far too easy to get involved in the story and gallop through the main plot while avoiding the subplots. (I did this.) This means you end up at the endgame grossly underpowered. I'm now wandering around trying to level up so I stand a slight chance against the ...

But the problems are minor. If you like RPGs, get it. It's not expensive these days, and you'll enjoy it. It's the classic RPG; if you think you know about the genre, it's required playing. It's the Hamlet of RPGs, and no, I don't think I'm overstating the case.

It's a damned shame it didn't sell better --- it was probably too intelligent. If it had, perhaps we'd have more games that were that good.

Re:Overhyped

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as realism goes...

Dude, you're talking about a game called Dungeons and Dragons, for Christ's sake... : p

Mods:

[Mongoose Disciple]

The parent post, while short, actually is not off topic. Al-Qadim was a setting for the AD&D game in its 2nd edition, and a computer game was made for it.

The articles' "dis" of it is definitely on topic.

Re:What about Wizardry? Bard's Tale?

[RexDart]

A fairly lengthy story on NPR yesterday presents an 'outsiders' view of RPGs; Includes brief audio from D&D co-creator Dave Arneson and adult players of the game.
They do cover the crossover and influence on computer games, one interveiwee labeling the game "the first virtual reality". Worth a listen.

hahaha

[geekoid]

How can you tralk about flexability and 'ease' in the same sentece as GURPS?

PLease, I have super stupendous skill from the conan the dishwasher book, page 23 top sidebar!

GURPS is full of take this skill, and divide by three. There is very little flexibility, even less as more books get published.

GURPS is a munchkens wet dream.

I am not anti-gurps, and run a GURPS Horror game on mondays. It aint flexable, or easy. I can teach some hero system in 5 minutes, your lucky to know what your doing in gurps after 5 game sessions.

Not to be a party pooper ...

[arhar]

... but I have to comment on this.

Planescape Torment was not such a great game. Now, let me just say I'm not trolling and hear me out.

Sure, it was an amazing STORY. The characters were brilliant, great dialog, etc... but was it FUN to play? Not really. In the end, I abandoned the game and just went to some site to read what happens... boring battle system, bad skill system, apathetic gameplay, uninteresting monsters (a real shame... I have 4 Planescape Monster Manuals in paperback and there are some amazing monters in there).. you said it yourself: you were glued to the monitor, reading the text and ignoring everything else.

And that, I think, is the real reason the game didn't do so well. The REAL Hamlet of D&D RPG's, imho, has to be Baldur's Gate series games ... which didn't have such an amazingly elaborate script, but the gameplay was so well thought-out and balanced that it was just so much FUN you couldn't stop playing.