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D&D Online Stress Beta Begins
kafka47 writes "Turbine's much-anticipated MMO, "Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach", is now opening up its stress test to Fileplanet subscribers. The registration is free, and it is a great opportunity for MMO and D&D fans to sign up and try out the game! Paid subscribers get a higher-rez client, but if you're curious about what DDO has to offer (and by all accounts, it's a lot) this is your chance to see it early."
Us Mac users don't really play games. We're obviously too busy going "ooo ahhh" while moving the mouse over the icons in the doc with magnification turned on.
</sarcasm>
Looking at those screenshots, it looks like EverCrack on steroids. I dare not try it. Must... not... try...
Now I only played D&D (the table-top RPG) for a few months on the weekend with a group of friends. I didn't really get into that either (they took it WAY too slow, all had characters in levels 3-4 after playing this certain campaign for easily 3 years), but I don't remember any instances where we had to break into a room, and destroy tons of barrels to find this "hidden" key.
In pen&paper, that's the kind of thing that gets glossed over with a "search check". Or just say that you destroy every barrel in the room untill you find it. It's as simple as the player maybe saying one sentence, and perhaps having to roll the dice once or twice.
If your tabletop DM were to try to run a game like an MMO does, he would have set down miniatures of their characters and each barrel, and the conversation might have gone something like this:
Player1: I destroy all the barrels untill I find the key.
DM: Ok, which barrel do you destroy?
Player1: All of them.
DM: No, which one do you bash in first?
Player1: Alright, I'll play along, the one on the left.
DM: Ok, make an attack roll.
Player2: It's a barrel, it ain't going anywhere!
DM: I have to know how much damage you do to the barrel.
Player1: I'm just beating on it untill it's destroyed!
DM: But you didn't roll to attack, how can you know if you really hit it?
Player3: I fireball all the barrels. Does that destroy them?
DM checks his notes, measures the room for radius of effect of the fireball, then replaces mini barrels with mini piles of ash.
DM: Yes, that destroys them.
Player1: Ok, so we have the key now. I just dug around in the ash untill I found it.
DM: No, which pile of ash are you going to search?
Players all stuff the pile of minis down the DM's throat.