Celebrating Dungeons & Dragons' 40th Anniversary

Roll... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 15:10 · Score: 0

I just rolled for initiative!

Re:Roll... by Sponge+Bath · 2014-01-22 15:14 · Score: 1, Funny

My magic die of irrationality came up pi.
Re:Roll... by gman003 · 2014-01-22 16:01 · Score: 4, Funny

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what a human of intelligence 4 looks like.
Re:Roll... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:09 · Score: 0

I'd pay ten copper to see that.
Re:Roll... by dkf · 2014-01-22 21:02 · Score: 1

You rolled the D20 twice for your INT check and came up 1 each time! Must be that low CHA stat...

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"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Re:Roll... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 21:04 · Score: 0

My character rolls a die, and gets i.
Re:Roll... by Rich0 · 2014-01-23 03:45 · Score: 1

I'd pay ten copper to see that.
So, how many electrum pieces is that again?
Re:Roll... by geekoid · 2014-01-23 04:22 · Score: 1

.05

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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:Roll... by jellomizer · 2014-01-23 07:47 · Score: 1

And you got a 19.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Roll... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 08:56 · Score: 0

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what a forever alone virgin looks like.

Roll 1D20 .... by cold+fjord · 2014-01-22 15:11 · Score: 4, Funny

You fail your morale check and can't post this round.

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much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell

Tried playing this game by rolfwind · 2014-01-22 15:12 · Score: 5, Interesting

Got bogged down by the rules.

I always had a lot more fun as a kid playing pretend games (when kids still played those instead of video games) than RPGs with a lot of rules. I think the amount of books and their expense just killed it. Tried several RPGing systems since, BESM and the like.

I learned that I like it a lot better when a computer takes care of all the details.

Re:Tried playing this game by msevior · 2014-01-22 15:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

Clear rules are what makes a good game. It's really frustrating to play a game where "you make it up as you go along" :-)
D&D was awesome as a 20-year-old and its far more fun having people rather then computers to interact with.
Re:Tried playing this game by doctor+woot · 2014-01-22 15:29 · Score: 2

That's a shame, computers are largely limited to what the coder who wrote a piece of software came up with, which, if you're imaginative and have played a tabletop RPG, you'll find ends up missing an awful lot. That's why tabletop RPGs find a wide audience to this day, they give you the flexibility to do what you want even when what you want to do isn't covered by the rules explicitly. In the majority of computer RPGs out there, if what you want to do isn't covered by the rules, tough shit. Either mod it (which does little to sidestep the issue of complexity) or hope someone else does.
Besides, any half-decent roleplaying group will assist you in learning the rules and getting a hang of things. After just a few hours you stop getting confused by stat sheets and the like.
Re:Tried playing this game by DrFalkyn · 2014-01-22 15:51 · Score: 5, Informative

D&D was all about the DM ... if you have a good one, it was a blast, if you had a bad one it was snore. The rules were really only there as a guide, a good DM would learn to ignore a bad dice role (and, occassionally ignore a good one :-) ) .. thats what those screens were for :-)
Re:Tried playing this game by gman003 · 2014-01-22 16:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

As an avid video gamer who's gotten into tabletop gaming, I've found they both have their strengths.
Computers work well for rigidly-defined rules, particularly for stuff like combat. If all you're doing is slaying orcs and such, computers can do a lot of it better.
Tabletop gaming works for less well-defined systems. No game has really, *really* gotten diplomacy right - it comes down to figuring out the right choices to make in a few menus. And clever players will be able to work better in a tabletop RPG - things that totally would work in the real world, but the official rules don't have anything for. With video games, maybe you can find a mod to add a button to let you do something, but with a tabletop game and a decent GM, you'll be able to create "rules" on the fly to handle it.
Example:
My players were fighting a dragon, and managed to wound it enough that it would (logically) retreat rather than keep fighting. He took off, they all fired off ranged attacks while he flew off, except for one. She threw her grappling hook at it, which there aren't specific rules for so I treated it as a ranged touch attack. Success. She tried to climb it (which there is a set of rules for), failed, and then failed an opposed strength check from the dragon trying to shake her off (I improvised the check being necessary, but used the general rule for "two people doing something against each other involving muscle").
I've gotten to the point now where I don't even try to plan things step-by-step, I just invent a scenario and let my players figure out the best solution. For another example:
In the aftermath of the last quest, two of the three players ended up in jail (on charges of public indecency/intoxication and high treason/negligent regicide, respectively). The last had to break them out. All I had planned was what sort of cells and protection each was under, as well as the idea that they would be taken eventually to the court to be judged and they could possibly be rescued in transit. They figured out how to get one out beforehand by bending the bars of the window enough for him to slip through. They then set up a detailed plan to rescue the last guy in transit, having one person in disguise as a guard to disable the guards with drugged treats, with the other standing by on the rooftops to Errol Flynn his way in if combat broke out. Meanwhile, the imprisoned guy was taunting his captors, trying to goad them into dragging him out of his cage to engage in some police brutality (both as a distraction, and to get out of some of his restraints). Their stealth approach failed, but they managed to fight their way through it with the element of surprise. The game starts up again tomorrow with them on the run in the immediate aftermath, and I have absolutely no idea how they're going to get out of this, but I'm sure they'll come up with something.
As a guy who both studied game design and is working on a video game, and as a guy running two Pathfinder* campaigns, both have their unique strengths. A paper RPG that has too many rules *is* doing something wrong, but that's a fault of the specific game, not tabletop RPGs in general. And I think it may have been a historic thing - since I'm far from the first to realize the strengths of the two, tabletop RPGs have mostly gotten simpler and more streamlined since the early days, and having massive multi-volume rulebooks is no longer considered a good thing.
* Pathfinder is basically D&D 3.75. Like with any nerddom, major changes piss off users, so a company (actually the magazine publishing arm of WotC, which was spun off shortly before D&D 4.0) took advantage of the open-sourcing of D&D 3.5 to fork it and make a new game that's basically 3.5 with some simplifications and a new trademark, rather than the major upheaval that is 4.0. I like it because it's just complex enough to be interesting, and it's also like 75% cheaper (you can get into it with just the Beginner Box for $30 or so, and the only book you absolutely need for the full game
Re:Tried playing this game by westlake · 2014-01-22 16:04 · Score: 1

Got bogged down by the rules.
I remember the rules as favoring human player characters over all others, no matter how well played. When the dice are loaded a game stops being fun.
Re:Tried playing this game by reve_etrange · 2014-01-22 16:15 · Score: 1

No edition of D&D has ever favored human PCs unfairly, if all the rules surrounding age, multiclassing, etc. were followed. Most likely, the DM and/or players were ignoring some rules.
But this comment - like the parent - come from a basic problem some people have with role-playing games: the inability to see rules as guidelines.

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.: Semper Absurda :.
Re:Tried playing this game by reve_etrange · 2014-01-22 16:16 · Score: 1

You ignored the most important rule: it's your game.

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.: Semper Absurda :.
Re:Tried playing this game by camperdave · 2014-01-22 16:23 · Score: 1

I was the king of bad rolls back in the day... or I would have been if the tens die had been a 9 instead of a 2. Many's the time when I heard the DM roll, then roll again, mutter, then roll again, before announcing that I'd been seriously injured. I think the bad rolls are what kept me from getting too serious about gaming.

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When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Re:Tried playing this game by msobkow · 2014-01-22 16:25 · Score: 2

A good dungeon master makes all the difference.
Especially one who can make up the game as they go along instead of strictly following "the path" one is *supposed* to be following. Many a night we'd never actually get around to the campaign, because we decided to get drunk at the bar and rearrange the trees and shrubberies in town in our drunken 18S stupors.
He wouldn't even let us play some of the campaigns after we did that because he said we'd been banished from the village for our behaviour. :D

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I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Re:Tried playing this game by Boronx · 2014-01-22 16:33 · Score: 1

D&D only approaches fun for all when the characters are relatively balanced. This screams bad game design to me. An RPG should be fun even with a weak character relative to everyone else. In other words, failure should be as fun as success.
The fact that good DMing in D&D means fudging dice rolls is another sign of this same problem. When the dice hit the table, quite often only some of the possible outcomes don't kill the fun.

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Play Command HQ online
Re:Tried playing this game by techno-vampire · 2014-01-22 16:34 · Score: 1

I got into a game one night with a DM who told us that "things don't always work the way you expect." It took me less than twenty minutes to learn that this meant that anything you tried to do other than what she expected Just Didn't Work, and we weren't going to be allowed to do anything that wasn't in her script. At that point, I closed my books and left, telling the DM exactly why I was leaving. The weird thing is that nobody else followed my example, because most of us were pretty free-wheeling and liked to think outside the box whenever we could.

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Re:Tried playing this game by gman003 · 2014-01-22 16:51 · Score: 2

"Things don't always work the way you expect" would be better advice for a GM than for a player. At least with one set of players (I GM two games), I've found it better to just create a scenario and let them figure out how to deal with it, rather than to come up with one solution and try to lead players to it. Which leads me to think like an adversary - I'll think "OK, so the players are going to try to bust this guy out of jail, now how would the city guard be protecting him? He's awaiting trial for multiple murders, treason and grand theft, so they'd be keeping him in a secure cell. Deep in the dungeons, probably. And in solitary. Probably keep him manacled even in his cell, come to think of it, since they're claiming him to be 'the most dangerous man in the eight kingdoms' and the sole mastermind behind the big attack to mask their incompetence that let the other two escape.". I figured out general guard schedules, equipment and such, but left the details to be improvised.
I make sure that there *is* a viable solution or two (imitate a lawyer to sneak in and meet with him, pass him some kit for him to escape with; actually act as a lawyer and get him off on a technicality (technically it was a different party member who did most of the murders); forge a request for extradition from another kingdom that wants to execute him for negligent regicide (he actually did do that one); hire an army of goons and storm the Bastille; buy a dozen scrolls of teleport and just warp in and out), but I've never successfully predicted one that they've used (they waited until he was being taken to trial, then tried to recreate the scene from The Dark Knight with the police convoy).
Re:Tried playing this game by Osgeld · 2014-01-22 17:08 · Score: 1

we had a mix, where the D&D rules were easily indexed from CD rom and most of the consumables were printed
Re:Tried playing this game by nedlohs · 2014-01-22 17:10 · Score: 1

You played some crappy house rules then...
Re:Tried playing this game by nedlohs · 2014-01-22 17:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

1. It is fun with a weak character relative to everyone else.
2. Failure is as fun as success - notice that almost all old school D&D players have a favorite story to tell in which usually a character if not the entire party dies.
3. Fudging dice rolls is unnecessary. Yes some DMs want a softer game and so do that - which I guess is fine if that's the game you want to play. There's no need to, just don't get attached to that character...
Re:Tried playing this game by dcollins · 2014-01-22 17:56 · Score: 2

Different editions vary a lot. The original edition was the best IMO -- one single box, three small booklets with everything needed to play (monsters, infinite levels, dungeon/wilderness/air/water environments, castle-building, etc. etc.; 1974 white box set). I only got my hands on it myself in 2007. It was truly eye-opening, and it's all I've played since.
Like many things, the business thereafter was increasingly built on unwanted features and unnecessary bloat.

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Re:Tried playing this game by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 18:36 · Score: 0

You'd probably love GURPS, the gentoo of RPGs.
Re:Tried playing this game by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 18:44 · Score: 0

I think you mean elves, who were both fighters and magic users at first level. They could even cast spells in armor!
Re:Tried playing this game by Boronx · 2014-01-22 18:51 · Score: 1

All this is true with an excellent DM in any RPG, but the D&D rules do not help at all. There are plenty of systems out there that help even newbie DMs create a fun time for everyone.

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Play Command HQ online
Re:Tried playing this game by cerberusss · 2014-01-22 19:12 · Score: 2

Cl
D&D was awesome as a 20-year-old
It's still awesome as a 30-year-old :) I'm playing with a bunch of people who work in the same building as I do. We usually play every two weeks. Sometimes it's old-school AD&D, sometimes the newer 3.5. It's amazing to just forget a bit about work, wife and kid, and play the hammer-wielding cleric.

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Re:Tried playing this game by VortexCortex · 2014-01-22 19:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

Clear rules are what makes a good game. It's really frustrating to play a game where "you make it up as you go along" :-)
This is an anecdotal statement, and I disagree vehemently. The rules only help the GM make a game good. I shall counter with my own anecdote: In my youth I played a wide variety of RPGs in a nearly daily group of about 10 friends, we'd hit up someone's house after school, and summer time was 3 months of non stop RPG building, story crafting, and playing. We had some games that lasted for years, and developed a set of "house rules" for running games. In our experience Role Playing games are far more fun when the Game Master (read: DM) is used as a story teller and the rules are largely set aside to let us focus on the game play, i.e. let us use the available skills and world crafting and thinking in-character on the fly instead of hampering creativity and bogging down battles. If a plausible explanation could be made, we rolled with it -- or rather didn't roll for anything at all. Rules of the game were used to settle disputes between the players and GM, and the GM applied the player's actions to the world according to a general understanding of the character. Anyone could challenge an event to trial by dice, and that's really the only role the strict rules played well. In fact, when the new editions of AD&D came out we just used the settings and monsters, etc., screw all those bullshit rules. GURPS was better for combating power creep anyway (and let us throw in time traveling cyborgs, or characters from other campaigns etc. from time to time).
In fact, some games like In Nomine, embraced this type of game-play where rules take a back seat explicitly. It had a simplistic dice mechanic that called for a degree of interpretation and yielded far more frequent spectacular successes and failures. [2D6 to beat a target number for a skill / ability, blow karma points to lower the target, 1D6 is severity of success or failure, 1,1,1 = Divine intervention. 6,6,6 = Satan smiles upon you -- Either is good or bad depending on who you're working for.] The dice in this use were like an aide to the story teller and players -- To smooth disputes, and let chaos nudge the course while allowing a player's desire to win a dice roll actually influence its outcome somewhat. E.g., A player spends two karma points to really end his foe, and insists on rolling to ensure the GM doesn't tamper with fate:
You rare back and throw every fiber of your angelic form into the punch, nearly tearing the tendons of your corporeal vessel. The blow destroys the treacherous demon's skull will a loud crunch. As the vermin's soul escapes back to hell you catch a fleeting whiff of brimstone and realize that in the scuffle your own flaming sword of valor has set your hair afire. The voice of the Dark Prince himself booms from everywhere and nowhere, "Consider the hair cut a gift for saving me the trouble of finding that fiendish failure. Yes, the diabolical look does suit you..." The 666 roll doesn't have to be terribly bad for the good guys, it can just add character and mood, or it can enhance the plot -- for instance, if the angel falls. The flexible rules allow success and failure to be far more nuanced and malleable to both players and story tellers. A good Game Master uses the rules to make the game more fun, and a good rule set lets them do so. It's why we play after all.

D&D was awesome as a 20-year-old and its far more fun having people rather then computers to interact with.
Then why the hell would you apply strict rules to make humans emulate computers? All the speed and determinism of a human calculator trying to apply complex rule based programs with all the frustration of interfacing with a dumb computer running glitchy logic and neither knows nor cares about what 'fun' is. You picked the worst spot in the venn diagram ever. Creative people make the classic RPGs fun, not the boring rules.
Re:Tried playing this game by Thanshin · 2014-01-22 19:41 · Score: 1

I agree about the need for a good DM. I disagree about the "rules are a guide" bit.
In my experience, the DMs who "didn't stop the game to go find obscure rules, to make it more interesting", just as those who dealt with rules doubts and questions with "It's an interpretative game" were simply too stupid to understand and follow the rules quick enough.
At some point, some people decided that anyone could manage a game where a single person had to read, understand, remember and correctly apply a hundred books of rules. And that was, and still is, false. Most people can't even understand the three page thick rules of a board game. And I'm talking about people who can actually sit at a table and read three consecutive pages.
The problem with P&P RPGs has always been that rules must be systematically dumbed down to turn monopoly grade players into potential buyers.
Re:Tried playing this game by Vintermann · 2014-01-22 20:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

The dice are there to force you out of your prior expectations, and keep you from going down the same old paths.
This was one of the central messages of Kirk Botula's "Complete book of Villains", IMHO one of the most underestimated RPG accessories of all time. Many bestselling fiction writers would have been better for reading that book.
If you tell a person "make up a hero", or "make up a villain", he might make up an original one - once or twice. Then odds are they'll start to resemble each other, and display lack of interesting diversity. Botula's advice was to use die rolls, and try to make sense of them. So your villain has high intelligence but low wisdom. How can we interpret that?
Or you could roll for a villain's motives. Wealth? Power? The need to feel loved? Or even the need to be seen as the good guy?
And as always, of course, not slavishly follow the die rolls. If every villain is super-complex, you get a soap opera. Some combinations just don't make sense (or, at least, you're going to get a really weird world if you always try to force them to make sense.)
Basically, you use randomness to resist your own biases and predictability, and push the limits of your creativity and imagination.

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Re:Tried playing this game by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 20:49 · Score: 0

Clear rules are what makes a good game. It's really frustrating to play a game where "you make it up as you go along" :-)
D&D was awesome as a 20-year-old and its far more fun having people rather then computers to interact with.
Shh. Don't tell that to the people who love nomic games.
Re:Tried playing this game by Koen+Lefever · 2014-01-22 23:10 · Score: 1

Got bogged down by the rules.
Players don't need to care about the rules. They just say what their character is trying to do and roll a dice if needed.

Only the DM has to know the rules, and he or she is not bound by them.

Also: rules are for beginners. An experienced DM does not need them.

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Re:Tried playing this game by M1FCJ · 2014-01-22 23:11 · Score: 1

Bollocks, nothing beat being a dwarf.
Well, apart from the hairy sex. And not knowing if the other person in bed is the right sex until the undies were gone...
Apart from that, yeah, dwarf priests do it with hammers!
Re:Tried playing this game by drinkypoo · 2014-01-23 00:04 · Score: 2

Clear rules are what makes a good game. It's really frustrating to play a game where "you make it up as you go along" :-)
Ever played Amber DRPG? If the storyteller is good, the game is good. If the storyteller sucks, the game sucks. Strict rules are a crutch for shitty storytellers. And as has been noted, it is a pain in the arsehole tracking all the rules. It's daft to play complex RPGs without a computer to mediate unless you've got a group of math savants.

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Tried playing this game by Magius_AR · 2014-01-23 00:38 · Score: 1

1. It is fun with a weak character relative to everyone else.
That's simply not true. I've played alot of D&D, and DM'ed alot of D&D as well -- the players whose actions simply don't matter because they're overshadowed greatly by other players really don't have much fun. Seriously, when you do like 50 dmg, and the next 2 people do 150 dmg + stun + some other ludicrous effect, it's somewhat hard to feel triumphant about your character. And this is reflection on players that were hardcore RPers as well (not really mainly focused on combat).
Re:Tried playing this game by gbjbaanb · 2014-01-23 00:40 · Score: 2

disagree - its not about learning the rules inside out, its about relaxing the rules where you disagree with them, bringing in "house rules" that suit your style of play better.
People who lawyer up on the rules end up just playing a game of who knows the rules better. Those who take a more relaxed approach to having fun, have fun.
Re:Tried playing this game by Chris+Mattern · 2014-01-23 00:42 · Score: 1

The original edition was the best IMO -- one single box, three small booklets with everything needed to play
Er, come again? The original three-booklet edition did *not* have everything you needed to play. It directed you to have a copy of Outdoor Survival to do the wilderness adventures. You could probably fudge that, but what you *couldn't* fudge was that you also needed a copy of Chainmail for the combat rules (or else have a copy of the first supplement, Greyhawk, which introduced new combat rules).
Re:Tried playing this game by msevior · 2014-01-23 00:46 · Score: 2

We were all Physics nerds so I guess that is close enough :-) Not that it was hard to play AD&D in the 1980's. There were tables for everything and the DM had them all on easy to read screens. As a DM I invented my own monsters and dungeons as did my friends when they were DM in their turn. I also bent some of the rules... A good dungeon is one where the players barely survive and sometimes you have to adjust probability to get that :-)
The rules give the game structure. The human element knows when to adjust them. All in all far more fun than a computer :-)
Re:Tried playing this game by ubrgeek · 2014-01-23 00:48 · Score: 1

Or Open D6. Gotta love rolling two hands full of dice to hit a difficulty number of 15 :)

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Bark less. Wag more.
Re:Tried playing this game by msevior · 2014-01-23 00:50 · Score: 1

You missed the point of my post . See my reply to dinkypoo.
Re:Tried playing this game by AmiMoJo · 2014-01-23 01:36 · Score: 1

The problem is you end up with players quoting rules at each other and the DM, and the whole thing degenerates into a court room full of rules lawyers.
I found Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy (yes, there was a roleplaying system based on the system used in the books) good for that reason. Not too many rules, especially in FF's case. Less argument, what the DM says goes.
You have to have a fair DM even with the detailed rules of D&D. They hide behind their screen, add a few hit points to the troll if you are winning too easily, and rules can't help you against that.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Tried playing this game by nedlohs · 2014-01-23 01:41 · Score: 2

You do not do 50 damage, and the next 2 people do not do 150 damage + stun + whatever
A first level character hits with a sword and does 1d6 damage. A 7th level character hits with a sword and does 1d6 damage. One of them might be a fighter and get a bonus for strength if they have a high strength which isn't likely anyway - but that could be the 1st level character.
Now of course the first level character will die faster - which is why they are actually using missile weapons and not making themselves a target. This is balanced by the fact that XP is shared evenly not adjusted by level and thus the lower level character will shoot up levels in a flash anyway removing the "problem" in a handful of sessions.
Re:Tried playing this game by Talderas · 2014-01-23 02:09 · Score: 1

Newer 3.5? 5th edition is coming out. Unless you're talking about Pathfinder being the next revision of 3.5 but Pathfinder was trash that didn't really address most of the issues with 3.5 like it claimed to.

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"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Re:Tried playing this game by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 02:59 · Score: 0

It's really frustrating to play a game where "you make it up as you go along"
Except Calvinball.
Wait, I take that back. It almost always ended up in frustration for one of the players. Usually Calvin. But then again, just about everything ended up in frustration for Calvin.
Re:Tried playing this game by MitchDev · 2014-01-23 03:04 · Score: 1

With the size of my hands, one handful of d6's and I'd never fail a below 30 or so....:)
Re:Tried playing this game by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 03:31 · Score: 0

Do you think Pathfinder would be a good (re)entry point into D&D/RPGs? In utter coincidence, my daughter and my friend's son have both asked us respectively about D&D in the past two weeks. We are thinking of starting up a game.
Re:Tried playing this game by Mashdar · 2014-01-23 03:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

Hell, as a DM I even lied about rolls with some frequency. Players rolled their own attacks for the excitement of it, but many of the various environmental checks and more bizzare actions taken by players were rolled behind a screen. (Along with many "fake" rolls to prevent metagaming.) Sometimes the lie was just more fun than the actual roll. :)
Re:Tried playing this game by tlhIngan · 2014-01-23 03:55 · Score: 1

I was the king of bad rolls back in the day... or I would have been if the tens die had been a 9 instead of a 2. Many's the time when I heard the DM roll, then roll again, mutter, then roll again, before announcing that I'd been seriously injured. I think the bad rolls are what kept me from getting too serious about gaming.
Thing is, rules are a guide when you're crafting the story, and dice rolls are a guide when determining outcome.
The DM (or GM) has always had the right to adjust as necessary for the spirit of the game (i.e., the fun factor). If a dice roll would have you killed off, but keeping you barely alive makes it more fun, it's the DM's prerogative to adjust the result accordingly. Which may include dragging one's barely-alive corpse through the rest of the game.
And sometimes, some DMs like to inject some "practicality" into the game. Got some super armor? Well, they'd ensure that after a little while, there may be some pungency to it all.
It's a framework for a story telling session where the results may or may not be as anyone intended.
And rules lawyers? There is only one person who interprets the rules and their ruling always goes - the DM.
Re:Tried playing this game by Talderas · 2014-01-23 03:58 · Score: 2

If you're talking 3.5 D&D then you should read up and understand the Tippyverse. It's an application of the 3.5 ruleset in its entirety.

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"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Re:Tried playing this game by Rich0 · 2014-01-23 03:59 · Score: 1

I haven't played an RPG with actual people in eons, but have played computer games, including the Neverwinter games which are probably as good as it gets for a 3.5-based computer game.
The advantage of a ruleset like 3.5 is that it allows for incredible character variety. The downside is that it is basically impossible to balance that variety across all elements of the game universe. Plus, people tend to focus on combat, so if you min/max your characters right and pick every possible complimentary feat/attribute/skill then you can end up with characters that dish out many times the damage per round of a typical player, while being almost invulnerable to attack (perhaps with some glaring weakness that they need another character to buff them for). However, that same character might not be able to do anything useful outside of combat, while some other character might speak 14 languages, or be skilled at exploring, or can create magic items, or whatever.
So, there are pros and cons to a more balanced approach that ends up being simpler, or a more complex approach that allows you to do all kinds of crazy things but at the risk that players can game the system. From what I understand many 3.5 DMs just tell their players they aren't allowed to abuse the rules - if the character min/maxes and picks 37 feats, 4 classes with a -2 ECL, they just tell them to redo their character.
There are lots of spells that are basically useless in a pure-combat or computer-oriented DND universe. Virtually every edition of DND had some kind of clairvoyance/clairaudience spells and when they get applied to a system where everything revolves around combat they just end up giving you some lame modifier. However, in a role-play scenario being able to hear a hushed conversation on the other side of the tavern is obviously useful.
Re:Tried playing this game by dcollins · 2014-01-23 03:59 · Score: 1

False. The "Alternative Combat System" (d20-based hit and save tables) is in the white box, Volume 1, Men & Magic, p. 19-20. (Not in Sup-I, Greyhawk.)

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We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Re:Tried playing this game by geekoid · 2014-01-23 05:30 · Score: 1

false.
It's everyone at the tables game.

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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:Tried playing this game by Creepy · 2014-01-23 05:42 · Score: 1

Even 40s... I still get together with my high school friends and play, at least with the ones that can get away from their kids. Incidentally, I'm the spear wielding cleric (of Odin, otherwise I couldn't wield a spear).
I also played weekly one summer with the co-creator of D&D, Dave Arneson, too, and that was pretty fun. We did Blackmoor as well as D&D mainly. I was never very tight with that group, however, and largely lost touch after that summer (working on gaming night when winter quarter started didn't help).
Re:Tried playing this game by akinliat · 2014-01-23 06:36 · Score: 2

Computers work well for rigidly-defined rules, particularly for stuff like combat. If all you're doing is slaying orcs and such, computers can do a lot of it better.
Tabletop gaming works for less well-defined systems. No game has really, *really* gotten diplomacy right - it comes down to figuring out the right choices to make in a few menus. And clever players will be able to work better in a tabletop RPG - things that totally would work in the real world, but the official rules don't have anything for. With video games, maybe you can find a mod to add a button to let you do something, but with a tabletop game and a decent GM, you'll be able to create "rules" on the fly to handle it.
This was true until 2002, when Neverwinter Nights was released. The buillt-in toolset allows the DM pretty much the same flexibilty as the D&D PnP rules, while the extensive (and C-like) scripting language allows for all kinds of automation. If that's not spontaneous enough, there's also a DM client that allows the DM to manipulate the game with near-omnipotence(create "rules" on the fly). Just like PnP D&D, the DM can assume the role of NPCs while they interact with the party(there's your diplomacy). You can even setup a system that let's you use a MySQL database to dynamically generate new areas while a game is in progress.
I've played D&D since the '80s, and the only real limitation that I could spot with NWN was the fact that everyone needs a computer, so you either have LAN party, and cimmunicate outside the game, or you're limited to typing your conversations (which is just not as fun as talking to people). Well, I suppose you could use something like TeamSpeak, but it's still not as social as the sitting around a table with beer and snacks.
Re:Tried playing this game by gman003 · 2014-01-23 07:08 · Score: 1

Yes, Pathfinder is a great way to get into it. The Beginner Box in particular has everything you need to play for the first few months or so (goes up to level five, and has a decent bestiary, but you'll have to come up with your own adventures after the tutorial dungeon), and it's dirt-cheap.
Re:Tried playing this game by jellomizer · 2014-01-23 07:59 · Score: 1

Well playing pretend, sometimes will get our of hand, and you end up playing by the rules of the guy with the strongest will. "No, I am going to be the Hero! and YOU are going to be the Bad Guy!. Bang your dead, no I have a force shield!"
RPG game rules, helps balance that out a bit. So by having a fixed set of rules it makes sure everyone plays the same game. It also forces the game to be more sophisticated, as your imagination needs limits, to help keep the story and plot working, and less chaotic.
It is like the difference between playing Football/Soccer vs playing Tag. There are more rules, which makes that game more consistent and sophisticated.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Tried playing this game by Boronx · 2014-01-23 08:04 · Score: 1

Exactly, and unless you have a superb DM, that's what the focus of a D&D game is going to be. Even the mechanics of the game, such as the loathsome HP system that has blighted RPGs of all types from the beginning, enforce this.

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Play Command HQ online
Re:Tried playing this game by rk · 2014-01-23 08:08 · Score: 1

I have a world I've been working on for 30 years in the games I've run, and the world is approaching and end-game with three different factions each taking their own approach to saving the world, one that wants to destroy it, and one that doesn't care one way or another but has an escape plan if the world does end, and they're trying to get all the wealth and riches gathered up while they can. I have a set of complex rules I wrote that will determine which path will save the world, and some of that includes random dice rolls to determine whether the method tried to save it will work. That way I can't even subconsciously (mis)lead my players to which answer is the right one, because I don't know myself.
Re:Tried playing this game by nedlohs · 2014-01-23 09:07 · Score: 1

No, I'm talking the sweet point of D&D just before the complexity that 1e brought.
Re:Tried playing this game by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 09:44 · Score: 0

Thanks, ordered. Sure enough, $30 gets you everything.
Re:Tried playing this game by Macgrrl · 2014-01-23 09:47 · Score: 1

My husband and I have written, yeh gods, at least 20+ tournament modules for gaming conventions, we have a mantra when briefing GMs; "No game survives first contact with the players".
What that is supposed to mean is that while we will spend hours trying to think of examples of left of field things the players might choose to do to come up with suggested responses, the players will always think of something we couldn't in a million years have thought of. GMs need to be flexible and try an incorporate what the players think of into the narrative (like the improv rule of always saying 'yes').
My worst con game experience was a GM (who was also the module author) who would use whirlwinds (it was a Toon scenario) to put the party back on the path every time we strayed from her planned narrative. I ended up falling asleep during the session because there was no scope to explore or make an interesting decision.
Even a bad module can be fun if the GM will play along, we had a terrible multi session D&D module at one con where the GM jumped out a 3rd story window in response to how bad it was (he was a rockclimber, when we all rushed over to see if he was ok, he was hanging there by his fingertips). We hammed it up the whole way through the session and he went down to the tournament orgs and said there was no way he was GMing another session of the terrible module, except, he was absolutely doing the rest of our sessions. I particularly enjoyed the characterisations of the paladin who suffered terrible with cowardice and had lined his armour with sheepskin so he wouldn't clank and bought a ring of invisibility - every time we got into combat he would hide. Then there was the princess we rescued who was best described as having issue with personal hygiene and a bad case of verbal diarrhea.

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Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Re:Tried playing this game by dissy · 2014-01-23 10:58 · Score: 1

My own character (who appears whenever I need to advance the metaplot or something) is a Paladin of Khorne, and if you know the lore behind those two things you're probably wondering what the hell I'm smoking)
Khorne the chaos god? A paladin?!
I find what you've been smoking interesting, and would like to subscribe to your campaign!
Re:Tried playing this game by cerberusss · 2014-01-23 18:46 · Score: 1

Yeah I actually meant Pathfinder, thanks. I'm not DM'ing and for some reason, other people bump into the shortcomings but never me :)

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8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Re:Tried playing this game by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 22:34 · Score: 0

Another useful trick, more valuable for a writer than a DM, is the McMaster Bujold strategy. If you don't know what should come next stop and think "what's the worst thing that could happen to this character?"
Re:Tried playing this game by nedlohs · 2014-01-24 04:20 · Score: 1

How are Traveller and Maelstrom (to pick two) blighted by D&D HP system?
Re:Tried playing this game by jp10558 · 2014-01-24 08:47 · Score: 1

I always liked the rules so there was a baseline of consistency - a physics for the game world. So people could have a consistent comparison of physical attributes and skills.
If you just make it up as you go along, it's pretty hard to really have it be a game rather than an interactive story session. Which is fine, but really isn't the same flavor for me.
Plus, as a GM, it's interesting when you have unknowns - otherwise you're just railroading the story even if you don't mean to.

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Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Re:Tried playing this game by Magius_AR · 2014-01-24 10:04 · Score: 1

Perhaps you should have specified the version, because I thought you meant modern D&D (ala 3.5 or 4th edition). I can't speak towards 1st/2nd edition, which had so many problems/bugs, they weren't even worth playing (Polymorph, for instance). But I can tell you that minmaxing in 3.5 _definitely_ leads to the situation I described, around 12th or 13th level, maybe even earlier with the correct builds.
Re:Tried playing this game by nedlohs · 2014-01-27 07:24 · Score: 1

The topic is 40 year old D&D, no?
And yes 1e and 2e are broken (though less so that 3.5 and 4th). The D&D sweet spot is a just prior to 1e.
Re:Tried playing this game by phoenix_rizzen · 2014-02-03 09:48 · Score: 1

I always preferred Role Master for this reason. Everything was based on percentages and tables. You only needed 2 dice (D10). And everything else was left up to the imagination. There were enough rules to keep everyone in line without getting bogged down in minutia.
Of course, the best Game Masters didn't both with 90% of the "rules" and looked at the books more as "guidelines" to keep the action going. The more talking, role-playing, and action, the better the session. If you spent most of your time trying to figure out "how do I ..." in a stack of books, you were missing the point.

Re:When?! by mikerubin · 2014-01-22 15:12 · Score: 2

no, but it is/was fun.
and nothing more.

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I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.

Irritated Dungeon Master by Sponge+Bath · 2014-01-22 15:16 · Score: 1

DM: What class is your character?
Noob: Vulcan! Spock is wicked cool.

Re:Irritated Dungeon Master by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 16:44 · Score: 0

The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo
Re:Irritated Dungeon Master by VortexCortex · 2014-01-22 20:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

DM: What class is your character?
Noob: Vulcan! Spock is wicked cool.
Irritated? Dungeon Master, heh, yeah. What a bore. A Game Master would be Overjoyed. Halflings and Wizards can work with Spock, (hell, he'd be mistaken for an Elf in Shadowrun), and in games like Rifts, or super-rule-sets like GURPS, the more worlds collide the better!
You'd actually be irritated instead of imagining a Star Trek 'away team' going off course on The Voyage Home and winding up amidst There and Back Again? You can't fathom the fun of Starfleet's finest crash landing on Bag End, and being guilt tripped into helping Gandalf take back the Lonely Mountain from a dragon that's been conspiring with dimensional shamblers to bring an evil cyBorg race to Middle Earth?
Closed minds are the biggest reason the medium is in such a state.
Re:Irritated Dungeon Master by DNS-and-BIND · 2014-01-23 02:07 · Score: 1

I fucking despise mixing sci-fi and fantasy and many other people do as well. It lends itself so readily to munchkins. But go ahead and call us closed minds because I guess that makes you feel better about yourself.

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Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Re:Irritated Dungeon Master by CronoCloud · 2014-01-23 02:57 · Score: 1

You'd actually be irritated instead of imagining a Star Trek 'away team' going off course on The Voyage Home and winding up amidst There and Back Again?

It's been done....by TSR itself in the world of Mystara. Mystara was a nice normal fantasy world...until a star-trek style exploration ship called "Beagle" crash landed on it next to a Kingdom called Blackmoor. The First Contact situation did not end well. Eventually some of the ship's crew sold out and started handing out tech. Blackmoor soon became a high tech civilization building up it's military so that it could rule the planet. However...Mystara's magical nature makes nuclear technology unstable. Blackmoor's nuclear devices went BOOM, changing the planet's entire axis and causing the "Great Rain of Fire" sent the planet back to the stone age pretty much. It also means that some Mystaran creatures aren't "magical" at all, but gamma-world style mutations.
The reason why Mystaran Elves are nature-lovers is Blackmoor! They'd become reliant on Blackmoorean tech and when the axis shifted their lands were near the south pole. A group led by Ilsundal decided to leave and return to the old ways. The high tech elves died out as their devices failed and their power sources (they had to switch to non-nuclear) ran out.
Some of the tech survived... some of it was magically altered, but there's bits and pieces around. Notwithstanding Mystara's own native technology. Mystara is rather high-tech compared to the other TSR fantasy worlds, nearing Renaissance level. Mystara is the only D&D world that has printing presses, for example.
Re:Irritated Dungeon Master by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 04:25 · Score: 0

Can I play the KEEBLER ELF??

Rogue by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 15:18 · Score: 0

Now that was a game! Much better than Hack. Damn dog...

Re:Rogue by SQLGuru · 2014-01-22 15:41 · Score: 4, Funny

Who? My faithful dog WandTester? He was awesome.....at least until I found a Wand of Death.

Re:and beanie babies and whatever by rmdingler · 2014-01-22 15:21 · Score: 2

was... obviously just a ploy to pick up chicks.

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Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Ernest Hemingway

Cool by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 15:22 · Score: 0

Excellent video. Ahh the memories. I had owned the first set as well as the early Eldritch collection.

Never understood it by rudy_wayne · 2014-01-22 15:24 · Score: 1

In the early 80s a friend of mine was really into Dungeons and Dragons. He was constantly trying to get me to play and I tried a few times but I found it to be boring and pointless.

Re:Never understood it by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 15:28 · Score: 0

You had a bad DM then.
Re:Never understood it by meerling · 2014-01-22 16:47 · Score: 3, Informative

Gaming isn't for everyone. No big deal. If you don't like a form of entertainment, nobody really cares.
It's like football, or opera, or country music, or chocolate, so many other things. You like it, or you don't. It's just the way it goes.

Unless of course you happen to be one of those ignorant douche-bags that rag on hobbies you don't understand or don't like.
If that's the case, then I'll just point out that I've made a number of those types miserable and horribly embarrassed in front of their peers and have no regrets for the divine retribution they were slammed with. It's rather easy to do with that type, and their 'friends' tend to be the ones to thoroughly enjoy watching it happen.
Re:Never understood it by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 23:56 · Score: 0

Of course, if you play Star Trek characters in D&D 3rd Ed someone has to say "Set phasers to Stunning Blow" at least once in the game.

Q: How many characters lost in Tomb of Horrors? by xymog · 2014-01-22 15:26 · Score: 5, Funny

A: All of them!

Re:Q: How many characters lost in Tomb of Horrors? by zoward · 2014-01-22 21:57 · Score: 2

This. I was the DM for our merry little band of adventurers traipsing through the Tomb of Horrors. We couldn't stop laughing. It was INSANE - no one could survive this. It was like they designed it to torture the players. One thing I'll never forget about it: after one particularly nasty trap that stripped the players of all the gear they were carrying, the text in the book said, parenthetically, "cruel, but most entertaining for the DM". And the same could be said for the entire module.
Second place for player cruelty goes to the Judge's Guild module Inferno, based on Dante. Then again, a lot of Judge's Guild modules bordered on the impossible.

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"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Re:Q: How many characters lost in Tomb of Horrors? by CronoCloud · 2014-01-23 02:40 · Score: 1

ToH is designed to be fun for the "killer DM", not for the players. I think most used it as a "one off" to see how far they'd get. It's a bad module actually, imbalanced. A good module is "fair enough" without DM meddling.
Re:Q: How many characters lost in Tomb of Horrors? by hamburger+lady · 2014-01-23 05:29 · Score: 1

they're still in the crystal eye of the floating skull of the demi-lich.
jesus, i can't believe i still remember that.

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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Re:Q: How many characters lost in Tomb of Horrors? by bugnuts · 2014-01-23 09:57 · Score: 1

One of Gygax's hallmarks as DM was the killing of players and deadly traps. I'd never seen him run in person, but heard many stories. At cons, the players loved the creative ways he'd make them reroll.
Personally, I never enjoyed that much, but that said I actually ran a Tomb of Horrors campaign (sprung on unwitting players), but added a catch... they had the Groundhog Day curse, and woke up every morning exactly the same until they reached a certain part of the dungeon and flipped a switch which progressed them to the next day. They died a lot and it was hilarious, but they never had to reroll characters. Of course, one guy got eaten by the demilich, which was stuffed into a bag of holding, and tossed into a sphere of annihilation. It doesn't get much more "dead" than that.
Re:Q: How many characters lost in Tomb of Horrors? by bugnuts · 2014-01-23 09:59 · Score: 1

Wasn't it the teeth?
I just remember it would rise up and zorch someone, sated only after eating 10 souls. Hooray for villagers.

Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanists? by sandbagger · 2014-01-22 15:27 · Score: 5, Informative

Adults in the 60s, 70s and 80s were smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, getting high on grass and coke before they had kids and now were suddenly worried about everyone's grip on reality.

I was probably more obsessive about Star Fleet Battles than D&D but for some reason fears over D&D caught the wind. Why? Sci-Fi nerds were supposed to appreciate science but not people who were obsessed with dragons. Weird.

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---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.

Used to love D&D... But... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 15:30 · Score: 0

D&D isn't even remotely as good as it used to be--even back in 3rd edition. They completely hosed everything when they shattered The Realms and ever after that, I've boycotted the jagoffs who screwed everything up with their bullshit software versioning shit. I guess their marketing people thought that would appeal to those with ADD and cell phones.

Re:Used to love D&D... But... by meerling · 2014-01-22 16:57 · Score: 1

The Forgotten Realms was just one setting. By the time 3rd edition came out, my groups had mostly moved to other settings. I like the 3.x (3.5 more than 3.0) but they had there problems. (what doesn't?) I was excited about 4th, until I got the actual rules. That was a major let down, unless you were a fighter. Then Pathfinder saved the day. D&D Next (don't know if they will call it 5th or not) looks good. Of course, the still have plenty of time to screw it up.

Currently I'm playing Numenera, which is a completely different rules system.

The various computer rpgs (mmo or otherwise) are cool, but they just don't do a good enough job. They are all to limited and linear, except for the ones that are empty of content and story where you just run around killing people, those bore me in nothing flat. The main advantage of the pen & paper variety (even if you play it online in a chat room or virtual tabletop) is that you aren't bound to a script, and a human is moderating the story. It can respond and change to suit the needs of the game. (And trust me, you try to railroad the players, and they'll go so far off the tracks you won't even freaking know where the tracks even were.)
Re:Used to love D&D... But... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:14 · Score: 0

Dude, you have it all wrong, it was the the Time of Troubles that ruined the Realms, or it was the insertion of the Moonshaes, or it was that time Ed Greenwood blew up the inn...and D&D was ruined when they printed the Greyhawk book!
Sigh, edition wars, will the madness never end?
Like what you like, let others like something different, without thinking it must be bad because it's not what you like.
Re:Used to love D&D... But... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 01:58 · Score: 0

1.) I know FR is just one campaign setting.
2.) I prefer using FR because it's the richest of content, lore, characterization, plots, geography, and much more.
3.) I know nothing about this "Pathfinder" crap nor do I intend to do anything about that simply because I just don't have the energy to waste a bunch of time learning about it.
4.) Regardless of 3.x, 3.5, or 4.x (or even this "Next" shit), it's all about the investments the players and DM make to create a great gaming experience. This shit they keep pulling with all these different versions every so often ruins that because it caters to the ADD personality type who have to have things laid out for them, hands being held all the way through...
5.) 4th is a joke and it nightmarishly undermines everything that was developed until 4th. I'm not even going to waste any time explaining why.
6.) Who gives a shit about computer RPGs? They're a dime-a-dozen and will never match the experience of tabletop.
7.) In an RPG universe, the DM rules over all which essentially means that rulebooks are nothing more than complementary guides which supplement any DMs omniscience over the players playing the game. Because of this, I always find myself shaking my head at people who clamor about whatever distinctions were to be made between 3 and 3.5 and 4, etc. If you have people who nitpick over rules from those books, then you're not that great of a DM.
The changes they made to FR was too much and just goes to show how easy it is for them to screw everything up. Never invest in a company like that. You'll wind up being disappointed every time you do.
Re:Used to love D&D... But... by Gryle · 2014-01-23 03:15 · Score: 1

Having run both 3.5 and 4th, I'd say they have different advantages. 4th ED's emphasis on grid-based combat makes it ideal for military-based games (I ran one game based around a squad of mercenaries in a war-torn area of the world). 3.5 has a lot of interesting prestige classes but indulging that too much means your character needs three rulebooks just to operate. I've play tested 5th and find it interesting, though the stock fantasy setting was a bit of a let-down. Just my two-cents.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein

No save option by stackOVFL · 2014-01-22 15:38 · Score: 2

I could never figure out how to save the game so I always had to start over naked, in the woods, on a dark path where I found a a wood club. Kinda strange how I always had a wood club when I was naked in the woods hmmmm. Wait a minute! Girl DM's go figure.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by turkeydance · 2014-01-22 15:44 · Score: 1

and it did. scoreboard.

A couple things I learned by Krishnoid · 2014-01-22 15:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

The concept that alignment describes behavior along multiple axes and how the differences between wisdom and intelligence are explicitly called out, are a couple things that shaped my perspective on the world.

Re:A couple things I learned by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 15:57 · Score: 1

That's why I grumble about 4E where alignment is just one axis now, and the interplay between law and chaos versus good and evil is lost.
I miss DM-ing. I still have a pretty large campaign from the 1E days, and may end up rewriting it for Pathfinder.
I also miss how hard it was to score even a +1 item. In newer AD&D releases, a player can just rustle up junk, carve up one. In 1E, it took a very high level wizard who knew the enchant spell, and permanency, not to mention the cash for a very well made weapon to unload the spells on. Anything more took a wish spell to fix enchantments. Damn hard, because it took a LONG time to get to the ninth tier of wizard spells back then.
*shrug* Guess I'm an old fart. With MMOs, someone can just fire up WoW or EVE with an anti-social, griefing nature of play and have quite a measure of success without any meaningful interaction with others, getting their rocks off by podding or camping graveyards for their entire gameplay.
Re:A couple things I learned by reve_etrange · 2014-01-22 16:31 · Score: 2

In newer AD&D releases, a player can just rustle up junk, carve up one
And pay steep materials and XP costs. Don't expect the game to balance if the DM doesn't charge the players for spell materials and XP costs.

In 1E, it took a very high level wizard
In 3(.5)E, you have to be 5th level to enchant weapons, 9th for rods, 12th for rings and staffs. Those levels are minimums; the actual requirements depend on the features of the items. In practice in 1E, it was almost impossible to ever create any kind of magic item. The slightly lower requirements in later editions were designed so that it would be possible for characters in medium-length campaigns to create something.
That said, the zeroth rule of role-playing games is: it's your game. Don't complain about the rules when you can just change them. Personally, I mostly play in ultra-low magic games, in which the requirements to cast spells and create items are far in excess of those even in 1E.

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.: Semper Absurda :.
Re:A couple things I learned by meerling · 2014-01-22 16:59 · Score: 1

No, you just had a stingy GM.
Re:A couple things I learned by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 16:59 · Score: 0

That's why I grumble about 4E where alignment is just one axis now, and the interplay between law and chaos versus good and evil is lost.
I miss DM-ing. I still have a pretty large campaign from the 1E days, and may end up rewriting it for Pathfinder.
Alignment to other people was a pointless straitjacket that they removed themselves. So...yeah, to each their own.

I also miss how hard it was to score even a +1 item. In newer AD&D releases, a player can just rustle up junk, carve up one. In 1E, it took a very high level wizard who knew the enchant spell, and permanency, not to mention the cash for a very well made weapon to unload the spells on. Anything more took a wish spell to fix enchantments. Damn hard, because it took a LONG time to get to the ninth tier of wizard spells back then.
*shrug* Guess I'm an old fart.
You are, because you're complaining about something you don't like...as if you didn't have the ability to change it, if you're willing to consider the implications.
Many people in earlier editions gave out magic items (aka Monty Haul), but had no idea how to deal with that, so that warped the game. Now the game makers are taking some role and consideration into that, and working with it...in a way that differs from how Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson did things. Sometimes that doesn't work out well, but then that was true of what those original DMs did too, just look at the wackiness of the monk, assassin, and bard classes.
So y'know what? I like that people can play Paladins if they want, without meeting extreme stat requirements. I like that magic items are a more intrinsic part of the game, and I like a lot of things that have changed.
But you don't? Fine with me, just don't be a complaining old fart about it. You won't hear me complaining about your game because your style is different.

With MMOs, someone can just fire up WoW or EVE with an anti-social, griefing nature of play and have quite a measure of success without any meaningful interaction with others, getting their rocks off by podding or camping graveyards for their entire gameplay.
You don't know much about MMOs on a real level, or you'd know how there are dedicated groups that work together to achieve actual success, and how that gameplay you talk about, is nearly meaningless.

Re:When?! by dreamchaser · 2014-01-22 15:47 · Score: 3, Informative

Thankfully it's also a myth. It never stopped me at least. I haven't played in years now except occasionally, but from about '76 through '86 it was one of my favorite non-sport pastimes, and it never got in the way of getting girls :)

I guess YMMV.

Re:When?! by aevan · 2014-01-22 15:48 · Score: 4, Informative

Considering we had several girl gamers in our groups, and several married that spat out kids over the years we gamed...
*shrug* but sorry, you were on a non-fact rant, apologises for interrupting you with some.

Ah yes, the good ol' days of D & D... by SpankiMonki · 2014-01-22 15:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

...when disaffected nerdy kids could lock themselves away to play for hours and hours and hours without fear of getting sent to Chinese rehabs.

Of course, players back then had to worry about being burned at the stake.

Re:When?! by LordLucless · 2014-01-22 15:55 · Score: 1

They probably stopped caring when they left school, and "being cool" stopped being their life's ambition.

--
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face

Pathfinder by SteveFoerster · 2014-01-22 15:57 · Score: 3, Informative

That's why my group uses Pathfinder, a fork of third edition D&D that is still supported and thriving. And all your third edition supplements are compatible.

--
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org

Re:Pathfinder by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 16:22 · Score: 0

Agreed. Pathfinder is the only version of D&D I can honestly recommend. I used to prefer 3.5 over 2nd edition (and certainly over 4e which was D&D in name only), but with the coming of Pathfinder, there's simply no reason to put up with the nagging flaws of 3.5 anymore. Paizo saved tabletop gaming because god knows no one plays GURPS.
Re:Pathfinder by CrashNBrn · 2014-01-22 17:01 · Score: 1

GURPS only problem that I know of, is the whole system pretty much falls apart when/if your Character gets 16+ in a prime stat. That, and perhaps there is enough evidence that a few more primary attributes would help the system.

So likely not that difficult to fix the main problems GURPS has - leave the reliance on 3d6 rolls to another feat/resistance roll type system, and consider how a couple (2/3/4?) more Primary Attributes could be worked into the existing skill system.
Re:Pathfinder by Talderas · 2014-01-23 04:19 · Score: 1

PF is a terrible fork. It outright fails to address any of the major glaring problems with 3.5. Rather than fix the issues at 3.5 it seems like it's only purpose was to make life even more difficult for martial characters while leaving spellcasters as overpowered as ever.

--
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by SteveFoerster · 2014-01-22 16:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

Meanwhile, I played as a kid, and now I play with my kids. It's actually a convenient parenting tool, because you can let them perish from the consequences of their poor decisions without being arrested for child neglect.

--
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org

D&D Anecdotes by LordLucless · 2014-01-22 16:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, this seems to be the place for sharing anecdotes (which, I think, is the big pull of D&D - the ability to create shared moments that you can look back on, talk about, and laugh at).

There was the time the party was sneaking in to a goblin warren. The rogue volunteered to try and scout out the entryway, and slipped in. Sure enough, there were two goblins on watch. When spotted, he managed to kill both goblins before they raised the alarm. After this impressive feat of martial prowess (and lucky dice), he signalled the rest of the party that the way was clear by blowing his signal whistle (which the player had included on his sheet, and was looking for a reason to use), thereby alerting the whole warren who promptly swarmed out and mobbed him. After the party had rescued him, and beaten back the goblins, the paladin smashed his signal whistle.

Then there was the time the ranger decided to try and activate the mystic weapon-orb at the top of a tower under siege by the undead, because the party's wizard was being too slow and cautious. It activated, destroying the undead, but also blew the ranger off the top of the tower. He had the ability to reduce falling damage though, and survived the fall. Running up the tower to meet his companions, he forgot about the flame trap the party had avoided earlier, and got scorched into the bargain. Finally he stumbled out onto the towers roof, interrupting the party leader's impassioned eulogy.

--
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face

Re:D&D Anecdotes by reve_etrange · 2014-01-22 16:43 · Score: 2

Once, the party was investigating an abandoned Dwarven mine, when we stumbled into a beholder's laboratory, littered with odd, incredibly life-like statues of heroes in various horrifying poses. The beholder came home while we were rifling through his treasures - leading to a desperate battle in which the creature used telekinesis to pin the cleric to a wall, and heat rays to begin dissecting him. We soon discovered the provenance of the statues, when our brutal lizard-man warrior was turned to stone.
The rest of the party managed to escape. We then quested for months in search of a Wand of Stone to Flesh, eventually obtained by burglarizing a powerful wizard. In the course of these adventures, the rogue was forced to become a were-rat (on pain of death) in order to join the upper ranks of the Thieves' Guild, the ranger was seduced and nearly devoured by a vampire, and the wizard was driven mad by a Gibbering Mouther who tempting him with a Book of Vile Darkness. He became meglomaniacal, and imprisoned the souls of an entire lizard-people village before we pinned him down and burned the evil tome in front of him.
Wand in hand, we returned to the beholder's lair, leading to a second desperate battle which was won only when the rogue was able to trigger the wand and restore the warrior, who surprised and killed the beholder while it was trying to dissect the cleric again.
The rest of the PCs elected not to tell him about the escapade involving the souls of his kinsmen.

--
.: Semper Absurda :.
Re:D&D Anecdotes by meerling · 2014-01-22 17:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

Here's one for you. The party had decided that the Merchant was actually a thief (now known as rogue) and tried to force him to open a chest in an empty room. He figured it was a big obvious trap, and refused, also taking offense to being called a thief. They responded by putting a crossbow to his head (and other weapons pointed at other body parts) and forced him to open the chest.
So he wouldn't try something, and so they'd be there to grab the loot, they went in the room as well. To avoid getting caught in the trap that must be on the chest, they were all 15' back.
The merchant wasn't very happy about that. Seeing no other options that included possible survival, he unlocked and opened the chest.
At this point, the entire floor of the room, except for the chest, and the tiny area in front of it collapsed into a very deep pit trap. All of the party except for the merchant were seriously injured by this.
Taking advantage of the situation, the merchant spotted a handful of large gems in the chest on top of the coinage, which he promptly pocketed before yelling down to see if the party survived.

Now you might think the GM was pulling a fast one to punish a party that turned on one of their own for loot and broke their vow to not harm one another. Well, we all pretty much thought that, including the player of the merchant. So we called the GM on it. He laughed and pulled out his map of that small area, and pointed out the room, and the trap notations. He didn't fudge a single thing. That's exactly how that trap was supposed to work.
The GM thought this was hilarious. After seeing that the GM didn't pull a fast one of his own, the merchant player did to.
On top of that, his character ended up with more valuables than the rest of the party did combined on that little delve, and he couldn't have done it if they'd have just trusted him. (Actually he wouldn't have even tried to steal those gems, except for the threats to his life. They convinced him that he needed some just compensation for their blackmail and attempts to kill him.)
Re:D&D Anecdotes by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:15 · Score: 1

The DM raises his eyes, disbelievingly, and said: "Wait - you want to have sex, now, right behind the desecrated altar?"
"No." I replied. As he breathed out a sigh, I continued, "I want to have sex ON the desecrated altar."
I got bonus experience for that one.
Best part - I leveled from that xp.
Re:D&D Anecdotes by techno-vampire · 2014-01-22 19:09 · Score: 1

Two words: "camo sludge." I was on a dungeon crawl once, running a rather eccentric female cleric named Simple Aimee McPherson, who was chaotic neutral and buy-sexual. (If it was sexual, she'd buy it.) At one point, in a cave, we ran across some brown mold. Nobody was sure how to deal with it, but we knew it fed on heat. Then, Aimee had a "bright" idea: she pulled out a vial of green slime that she just happened to have and poured it on the mold. This sent the DM into a trance for about a minute as he worked out what would happen. (Kids, don't try this one at home!) The slime started to eat the mold, generating heat, which caused the mold to grow making more food for the slime. It was touch and go, and we ended up having a Rod of Lordly Might fall into the goop, ruining it, but we eventually managed to get out of their alive. We had enough sense left to go back to town and report on what we'd done before there was enough gunk to get out of the cave and start digesting the whole world. The town's elders finally used a wish to make sure that the people they sent to deal with the situation would have enough of the right equipment to do the job properly.

--
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Re:D&D Anecdotes by Gryle · 2014-01-23 03:24 · Score: 1

Our paladin was a descendant of a long-collapsed civilization and had a personal grudge against the death god in that campaign (she took his leg, longer story). We stumbled across one said civilization's ancient ruined cities to find it now housed worshipers of said death god. After clearing the lot of them out, the paladin took it into his head to destroy the altar of the death-god in the chapel, figuring to sanctify the city on the way out. Unfortunately his warhammer wasn't cutting it so he pulled out the biggest spell in his arsenal. This ended up leveling the chapel and destroying one of the last remaining vestiges of the paladin's ancestors. He was rather grouchy with the GM for a while after that.

--
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Re:D&D Anecdotes by cusco · 2014-01-23 05:52 · Score: 1

Had joined an established group when I moved to Florida, I believe the prior lowest level character in the party was a 7th level cleric. Needless to say, my 4th level magic user was seen by the rest of the group as more of a source of amusement than anything else. In our first game the entire party was of Evil alignment except for my Neutral/Neutral magic user. Aethelred went out of his way to save a group of brownies from being massacred by the psychopathic Chaotic/Evil 9th level fighter/thief, who in a fit of pique proceeded to use a magic missile wand on him at random intervals until he had 1 hit point left. Something random (fall?) took Aethelred to 0 hit points, at which point the rest of the party stole everything but his spell book (no spells they didn't already have) and abandoned him to bleed out.
Unbeknownst to the other players the DM let Aethelred live, nursed back to health by the grateful brownies. The next weekend there was a message waiting for the fighter/thief that some NPC they really wanted to meet had summoned him to a meeting in a nearby grove. The previous night Aethelred had used his highest-level spell, Dig, to excavate a hole and cover it with an Illusion spell. The high-level character fell in the hole and ended up immobilized by a Stinking Cloud, and Aethelred proceeded to magic missile the shit out of him. When he complained that the flames from the magic missiles should be dissipating the Stinking Cloud the DM started to agree with him, until I pointed out that hydrogen sulphide is not only flammable but explosive. The resulting damage to the character's lungs killed him, and Aethelred was treated with a lot more respect when he joined the rest of the party in the tavern with the dead fighter/thief's equipment.

--
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Re:D&D Anecdotes by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 10:17 · Score: 0

My best D&D memory was when playing a Paladin in a world that actually had something like Christianity as a religion. I was investigating a castle and had to strip off all of my armor to swim through a tunnel into a cave area underneath (but did get to take my sword). On the other side, there was a eerie room where some clearly satanic rituals had taken place, and there was an upside-down cross on the wall. Naturally, I got attacked by animated skeletons, and they overwhelmed me. With just a few hit points left and the certainty that I was going to die, I decided instead to turn around and destroy the upside-down cross. A big explosion resulted, and I woke up hours later with the scattered bones of the dead skeletons around me.
It turned out that the DM was so impressed with that in-character move that he improvised the explosion.
Re:D&D Anecdotes by kaatochacha · 2014-01-24 12:43 · Score: 1

Expedition to the Barrier peaks Module, which involved a crashed spaceship.I was the DM.
A friend of mine, running a paladin, was always just blundering around. He was a strong character and usually survived it, but everyone was growing tired of it.
They came into a room with sparking electrical wires. I tried to describe them as a person of the time might see them: Colorful strings hanging in bunches from the ceiling. There are little bits of fire in the ends of them giving off the occasional light with a loud noise, and the ends appear metal.
If I recall correctly, each wire did some horrible amount of damage. The Paladin proudly states " I run up and grab as many of them as I can into my arms!".
I tried to let him out of it: "they're strings. with flame on the end, and metal inside. Are you sure?".
"Of course! They might be valuable!"--not very Paladinlike, but whatever.
I gave him one last chance by rolling the damage, but even when halving it, it was still something like ten times his total HP.
So the paladin in his big suit of armor melted.
It became a running joke; "I run up and grab them!"

Let's hope 40 looks better than 30 by Aeonite · 2014-01-22 16:11 · Score: 2

http://books.slashdot.org/stor...

No, Marcie! You didn't have to do that! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 16:13 · Score: 0

The startling truth about Dungeons & Dragons!

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.ASP

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by reve_etrange · 2014-01-22 16:18 · Score: 1

Good point. Also it teaches imagination, logic, basic arithmetic and the ability to write neatly in little boxes.

--
.: Semper Absurda :.

Bally made a pinball game 27 years ago by Joe_Dragon · 2014-01-22 16:21 · Score: 1, Offtopic

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cg...

They should try that inlane/outlane system in new games.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by SpankiMonki · 2014-01-22 16:26 · Score: 1

Why? Sci-Fi nerds were supposed to appreciate science but not people who were obsessed with dragons. Weird.

I'd go a little further and say that another reason was that adults at the time were familiar with Star Wars (and the elements of Christian allegory therein), but were ignorant of D&D game play. As a result, it was a simple matter for fear-mongering elements of certain religious persuasions to raise a ruckus about the game.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by msobkow · 2014-01-22 16:29 · Score: 2

Yeah, but the same people who were ranting about D&D were also claiming Ozzy Osbourne was the devil himself, heavy metal was the end of society, and so on.

Nowadays the descendants of those nutbars blame it all on the gays, the muslims, etc.

There are always whack jobs looking for someone to blame for their own problems.

Which reminds me of a good post I read recently:

Believer: God, the troubles in this world -- it's all because of the gays, isn't it?
God: Yes, yes it is.
Believer: I knew it!
God: You misunderstand. It's the way you treat them.

--
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.

Started a game to celebrate the 40th... by elashish14 · 2014-01-22 16:36 · Score: 1

And I'll celebrate the 50th when it's over.

--
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.

I only ever played about 30 games by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 16:36 · Score: 0

I only ever played about 30 games of this, in my mid 20's (I never played as a teen, and got to know some die-hards in my late-youth). One guy had a character he called "Beast Rider". We (ok it started with me, but later adopted by others till everyone was doing it), mispronounced his characters name so instead of "Beast Rider" we would say "Bee Strider". He wanted his character to be mighty and huge, not something that rode on the back of a tiny bee. He later changed his character with a magic spell so that it could change size from "killer of 50 orcs with one swing, protected by a 20 level magic spell", and *poof* could sneek through a dungeon by crawling through cracks and crevices. Ahh, those were the days.

Re:When?! by meerling · 2014-01-22 16:37 · Score: 1

Gotta link it :D

http://youtu.be/jFhgupR565Q

Ah... the memories... by Tolvor · 2014-01-22 16:54 · Score: 2

You stand in front of the Cave of Alborath, and the signs point that the orc raiding party definitely passed this way. There is a fresh orc-clan sign written in blood to the left of the cave entrance. You hope that the blood is not of the town captives that you seek to rescue.

From the cave mouth comes a slightly rotten stench. Light from the late afternoon sun allows you to see about 30 feet into the cave (60 with infravision) and you see a rough opening about 10' wide, with a 5' wide path around the larger rocks, strewn with fist-sized rocks fallen from the cave roof.

How will you proceed?

Re:Ah... the memories... by CimmerianX · 2014-01-23 02:29 · Score: 1

Ulmic Thogu the fighter lights his torch and takes lead, followed by the cleric, magic user, halfling thief, and the paladin brings up the rear. They proceed into the cave.

but they keep breaking shit. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:03 · Score: 0

Used to be?

I'm Gygax was smoking something when he came up with the Monk. No armor: okay, gets natural AC. Best hand to hand combatants in game, even getting special damage bonuses: but could only use shitty weapons. Most damage in Hand to Hand combat! (Except Rangers vs giant classed humanoids) but helpless against vermin only hurtable by magic/silver weapons. lastly no armor, masters of hand to hand combat, gets natural AC bonus, but gets D4 for hit points and a max of +2/die because they aren't Fighters.

Then there were the no swords for clerics, except elf clerics in Greyhawk, who according to the PHB could only be NPCs.

Rangers +1 to hit and damage vs Giant Classed Humanoids. Rangers don't need a hammer of thunderbolts.

Unearthed Arcana fixed some stuff, like allowed elves to be Rangers and Clerics. But broke a shitload more: Barbarians.

Unfortunately breaking shit that wasn't broken in the previous books was a trend that has continued: Fix 1 issue, break something unrelated, then introduce a shitload more issues. This trend has continued ever since.

I may do Pathfinder one day, but there are other more interesting games out there.

Re:but they keep breaking shit. by Thanshin · 2014-01-22 20:05 · Score: 1

Your thoughts resonate in my mind and I do suggest you to try Pathfinder.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:05 · Score: 0

>I was probably more obsessive about Star Fleet Battles

Ah, clearly a man of impeccable taste. Hail and well met, fellow captain!

Re:When?! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:13 · Score: 0

Yeah, but all that not-getting-laid... how fun was that?

I banged Magnys Carter the Barmaid/Whore in the ass, and it was mildly fun. Then you were born. I am your father.

nerdiest game ever by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:19 · Score: 0

D&D nerdiest game ever!

Requires friends.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:25 · Score: 0

Yeah, I remember that.

Missing Gary Gygax by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:29 · Score: 1

Right now I'm missing Gary Gygax.

He put so much into Greyhawk, not the books, but the source material. I so want to know what his vision was for the areas that were mentioned, but never fleshed out or even alluded to any anything but a minor footnote. I don't want fucking meta-plot of other late 2E bullshit or even the details that others came up with; I just want to know what the man had in mind when we wrote the original Greyhawk setting and left so many things on the map as ambiguous footnotes without anything other than a name as an adventure seed.

In my own defense, I'm also legally drunk. :-P

Re:Missing Gary Gygax by CronoCloud · 2014-01-23 02:34 · Score: 1

I don't miss Gygax that much, considering how his intentionally archaic writing style obfuscated some of the rules too much. It also made his Gord books un-fun reads.
"Do I ken the Archimage Zigglwilvkypy? Aye, that worthy is a demiurgic wielder of puissant dweomercraft and thaumaturgy." Course Gygax was such a munchkin with his own characters that half of them were demiurges, half-gods, or were invested with puissant planar energies of some kind. Read the "power-up" scene in the Gord book where Gord gets invested with power from some demi-powers/gods/whatever. That whole "son of the cat lord" thing got out of hand. I remember seeing the cover of the first Gord book and thinking to myself. "That guy reminds me of the Cat Lord"
Re:Missing Gary Gygax by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 05:43 · Score: 0

Maybe you're just illiterate.
Re:Missing Gary Gygax by CronoCloud · 2014-01-23 06:35 · Score: 1

No, it was hackneyed tripe. His RPG mastery book sucked too. The man wasn't so good at names either, or having a coherent world that made sense! Abeir-Toril, Mystara, and Krynn are far far better worlds than the mish-mash of Greyhawk was. Even "Hard Fun" and Planescape with their "Darker and Edgier" 90's aesthetic were better.
Re:Missing Gary Gygax by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-24 09:23 · Score: 0

In other words, you failed your creativity skill roll at "fleshing out the Greyhawk campaign setting", and therefore decided the grapes must have been sour.
The problem here isn't the setting, it's you.
Re:Missing Gary Gygax by CronoCloud · 2014-01-25 05:21 · Score: 1

I'm not some 15 year old with a lot of free time during the summer on my hands. The reason why we have pre-made worlds and "modules" in the first place is to lessen the load and preparation time so that people can play more and spend less time bookkeeping.
Now if you're a wannabe fantasy writer with years of notes/stories you've written over the years. well then you can use your notes as basis for a campaign world like M.A.R Barker and Ed Greenwood did....but most of us aren't them.
So, having Krynn, The Realms and Mystara being more fleshed out, meant less work for the DM. Sure there was stuff not covered, but you had more to work with which saved time.
Time is what kills tabletop gaming groups/campaigns more than anything else.

Where are the Cheetos? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 17:52 · Score: 0

Where are the Cheetos?

Re:Where are the Cheetos? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 18:15 · Score: 0

Can I have a Mountain Dew?
Re:Where are the Cheetos? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 01:45 · Score: 0

Yeah, just go get one.
Re:Where are the Cheetos? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 01:48 · Score: 0

Where are they?
Re:Where are the Cheetos? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 01:49 · Score: 0

They're in the fridge, duh!

Re:When?! by dcollins · 2014-01-22 18:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com

--
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes

Another one by Okian+Warrior · 2014-01-22 18:00 · Score: 2

The game master would give XP for making an impressive joke, or figuring out a difficult puzzle, or whatnot. We also used to refer to the "Detect Magic" spell by the initials "D.M." (as in "I cast D.M.")

After we had finished cleaning the room, a female player casually remarked: "Ok, now I'm going to blow my D.M". To which he replied: "you get 1,000 XP".

We were rolling on the floor for at least 30 minutes...

40 years? Never heard of it by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 18:20 · Score: 0

What is 'Dungeons and Dragons"?

Re:40 years? Never heard of it by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 05:37 · Score: 0

Seriously?

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by bob_super · 2014-01-22 18:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

You may have forgotten how the first edition did have spec for all the major devils and demons.
That's what freaked out short-sighted people. To them, it wasn't about how you were going to kick demon/devil butt, as much as the horror of seeing kids throwing scary names around.

When Harry Potter came out, an otherwise very smart engineer, who spent too much time in church, told me that they had a discussion about the books and their influence on children. They had a witchcraft specialist (I think he said a witch) comment on how the spells JKR wrote down were too close to the real magic and children shouldn't be familiar with them or run around casting them at each other.
I honestly wish I was making this up.

So yeah, the bad rep of the game was because some people get scared at the mere mention of some dark elements of their religious mythos.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by cold+fjord · 2014-01-22 18:50 · Score: 1

Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanists?

I don't think that was generally the claim, but rather that it would be a diversion leading away from God and the church, and potentially leave one vulnerable to harmful influences of various sorts, including spiritual. Weren't there some people that committed suicide after their characters were killed in the game? I don't think time spent studying the monster manuals or magic would be of much aid in the actual spiritual journey we face on earth even if you could make various other claims of benefit.

Adults in the 60s, 70s and 80s were smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, getting high on grass and coke before they had kids and

Also, I doubt that very many devout Christians, reference above, were getting high on coke.

--
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 18:53 · Score: 0

It also doesn't help when Dieties and Demigods lists Jesus as a monster next to Buddha and Thor.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 18:55 · Score: 0

and the ability to write neatly in little boxes.

(this skill is less useful now than it used to be)

Party Time! by laejoh · 2014-01-22 19:06 · Score: 5, Funny

I put on my robe and wizard's hat!

Re:Party Time! by DarthVain · 2014-01-24 02:19 · Score: 1

Nice... funny how you can forget something yet with a simple turn of phrase remember..LOL!
I forget, what was that from #BASH or something like that?

Re:and beanie babies and whatever by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 19:08 · Score: 0

Call bullshit on this if you want to, but I was DM of an ongoing campaign party that consisted of 4 "chicks" and 3 guys.
And they were not just WAGs, but real players that kicked butt.

In celebration... by Loki_1929 · 2014-01-22 19:14 · Score: 4, Funny

bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey...
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 chicken of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don't see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don't f*ck with me bitch, I'm the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don't ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik's evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it's getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?
--------------
BritneySpears14: Ok, are you ready?
eminemBNJA: Aight, yeah I'm ready.
BritneySpears14: I like your music Em... Tee hee.
eminemBNJA: huh huh, yeah, I make it for the ladies.
BritneySpears14: Mmm, we like it a lot. Let me show you.
BritneySpears14: I take off your pants, slowly, and massage your muscular physique.
eminemBNJA: Oh I like that Baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
BritneySpears14: I swear if you do it one more time I'm gonna report your ISP and say you were sending me kiddie porn you f*ck up.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
eminemBNJA: damn I gotta write down your names or something

--
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Re:When?! by Thanshin · 2014-01-22 19:45 · Score: 2

I did fuck some of my female players.

Wait... Were you on one of those "only men allowed" RPG groups?

Re:When?! by Thanshin · 2014-01-22 20:04 · Score: 3, Funny

I banged Magnys Carter the Barmaid/Whore in the ass, [...] Then you were born. I am your father.

You seem to have a fundamental misconception about certain key points on human reproduction. Or elementary anatomy. Or both.

Have Amulet of Life Restoration by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2014-01-22 21:17 · Score: 1

Can anyone tell me where Gygax is burried? :D

--

Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

None. Never played that one. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 22:10 · Score: 0

I was Basic (blue edition) which my little brother got for his christmas present, then went through the Basic/Expert/Companion/Master set, then the Compendium.

Tomb of Horrors was AD&D.

caffeine.. by crossmr · 2014-01-22 23:13 · Score: 2

Holy shit this guy could make a giant mech battle at a strip club sound like doing your taxes.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by ultranova · 2014-01-22 23:14 · Score: 2

Weren't there some people that committed suicide after their characters were killed in the game?

Please tell me you're joking, and don't actually think Dark Dungeons is a documentary.

I don't think time spent studying the monster manuals or magic would be of much aid in the actual spiritual journey we face on earth even if you could make various other claims of benefit.

It's amazing how many people have apparently completed their own journey despite still inhabiting their mortal coils, which they obviously must have because they have the time and wisdom to worry about the effect other people's pasttimes might have on reaching their destinations.

Also, while each life stage certainly has preparing for the next as an important component, that isn't the only component. You are a living being, not just a production facility for your future self. The latter is committing the fallacy - and sin - of thinking people as merely tools to be used and discarded, with no value beyond their utility.

Also, I doubt that very many devout Christians, reference above, were getting high on coke.

From what I've seen, the "Christian" drugs of choice are hate, lust for power and fear. Frankly, coke would be less harmful to the spirit.

--

Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

Tomb of Horrors by Discopete · 2014-01-22 23:19 · Score: 1

The better question, at least in my case, is how many characters have I killed in ToH. I think I've lost 2 as a player but killed 50-75 as a DM. And some groups just keep coming back to get b-slapped more than once.

Re:Tomb of Horrors by JeanCroix · 2014-01-23 03:37 · Score: 1

Exactly. Being that I was DM, I lost none, but bagged plenty. "I crawl into the tunnel." "You're gone. No saving throw."

Re:When?! by Zaatxe · 2014-01-22 23:20 · Score: 2

No, I don't want fries with my order, thanks.

--
So say we all

Re:When?! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-22 23:43 · Score: 0

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Satanism was a big deal in the 1970s by swb · 2014-01-23 00:38 · Score: 1

There seemed to be a whole Satanism industry by the mid-late '70s.

There were a ton of movies like "Race with the Devil", the whole backwards masking "expose" in rock music not to mention the literal threat posed by Black Sabbath and the existential (or is it metaphysical?) threat associated with cults, ironically many of which were Christian-based.

I'm not sure if dope smoking Baby Boomers were ever really the source of the Satanism backlash, I think much of it was the generation before the Boomers who had come of age before a lot of the cultural upheaval of the late '60s and were still reacting to the upheaval of the 1960s and a lot of the dramatic political shifts of the early 1970s. Cue the rise of the Moral Majority, evangelicals and the election of Ronald Reagan.

Ahh, D&D's 40th Anniversary.... by runeghost · 2014-01-23 01:19 · Score: 2

...guess I'll go play some Pathfinder to celebrate.

Actually, I have a straight 1st Ed. game scheduled with some friends. But it is kind of sad that the name has been so badly handled by the current owners at Hasbro. I can't even find anything at their website to acknowledge, much less celebrate, the anniversary.

Brooklyn by Renzogracieacademy · 2014-01-23 01:41 · Score: 0

Brooklyn is the most popular place in New York City with denser populated area, famous for its unique culture, bridges, sports activities, various languages spoken by their residents and for martial activities provided by gym centre’s to every individual.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 01:43 · Score: 0

I honestly wish I was making this up.

Nope, he was. Unfortunately he didn't realize it.

So yeah, the bad rep of the game was because some people get scared at the mere mention of some dark elements of their religious mythos.

Except there was nothing to do with any actual accurate detail to it, so...yeah, they should go get scared of papercuts.

Re:When?! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 02:02 · Score: 0

You imply, then, that your results are typical?

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by DNS-and-BIND · 2014-01-23 02:05 · Score: 0

Go back and look at the cover of the Player's Handbook where there's a gigantic demon on there. Another book was entirely dedicated to telling kids how to worship pagan deities. Then, your kid that plays the game is pretending to be a thief. A real thief. After that, your kid tells you that the object of the game is to murder people with green skin and take their stuff. But go ahead and think it was all needless fear-mongering.

--
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

Re:When?! by Xeleema · 2014-01-23 02:05 · Score: 1

He's implying you're a drip-baby. *whoosh!*

--
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."

Re:When?! by Nyder · 2014-01-23 02:20 · Score: 0

I did fuck some of my female players.

Wait... Were you on one of those "only men allowed" RPG groups?

Yes, i was. I'm glad to hear you got lucky at your Tranny RPG group.

--
Be seeing you...

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Nyder · 2014-01-23 02:26 · Score: 4, Funny

You may have forgotten how the first edition did have spec for all the major devils and demons.
That's what freaked out short-sighted people. To them, it wasn't about how you were going to kick demon/devil butt, as much as the horror of seeing kids throwing scary names around.

When Harry Potter came out, an otherwise very smart engineer, who spent too much time in church, told me that they had a discussion about the books and their influence on children. They had a witchcraft specialist (I think he said a witch) comment on how the spells JKR wrote down were too close to the real magic and children shouldn't be familiar with them or run around casting them at each other.
I honestly wish I was making this up.

So yeah, the bad rep of the game was because some people get scared at the mere mention of some dark elements of their religious mythos.

Ya, I was given a D&D set when I was like 13 back in the 80's and got it taken away when the church told my parents it was "of the devil".

Oddly enough, a couple years later I got a nice new wave hair cut with a tail, and my step mom cut off the tail because it was "of the devil".

I like this devil dude, he sounds like my kind of guy.

--
Be seeing you...

Re:When?! by i+kan+reed · 2014-01-23 02:43 · Score: 1

In spite of how it's completely absurd given D&D is a game, your tone still reads like a manager describing how they had sex with some of their female employees by abusing their power. Tone is an odd thing.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 02:54 · Score: 1

Born in the 60s. Grew up through the 70s and 80s. Played AD&D 1st edition.

Picture of a demon on the cover - big deal, that is called art.

Play as a thief. It's called make believe - just because you play as something does not make you one. We also played cowboys and indians. I am neither a citizen of the USA or a native american.

Pretended to kill non-existent "people" of a non-existent race with green skin. Yes. Again, make-believe. It didn't actually happen in the real world.

Are you truly that stupid?

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by spacepimp · 2014-01-23 02:56 · Score: 2

There was a statue on the cover. There were also a bunch of dead lizard men who used it as a place of worship. There were also characters stealing the gems from the eyes, who presumably had killed the flesh eating Lizard Men. Which part was Satanic? Killing the flesh eating disciples/worshipers of the Demon God or stealing the gems from the eyes of the idol?

Creating a taxonomy and giving hit points and an alignment to such evil demons as Garl Glittergold shows a kid how to worship a pagan deity.?

How so?

Re:When?! by MitchDev · 2014-01-23 03:02 · Score: 1

Fantasy Football. D&D for Jocks

Still playing... by Sir_Eptishous · 2014-01-23 03:18 · Score: 1

I first started playing in '79, with the old "Blue Box" my friends big brother had. Then I saw the first AD&D books and they blew my mind... When I was in HS I played with guys who were older, college aged. The D&D scene was totally different back then, more DIY and less conforming than it is now that everything is instantly at your fingertips. Players and DM's HAD to be more creative as there was much less to draw on.

I played(DM'd mostly) regularly from then to the mid 90's. Then, for various reasons, I stopped. In '08 I got a wild hair and decide to start again, and have been back at it with a good group where three of the players each take turns DM'ing their own campaigns. All three are on Greyhawk, and we have a blast. This is AD&D 2nd Ed. Were old skull gamers and the WOTC "versions"(excuse me while I clear my throat...) of D&D don't sit well with us, as they are more tuned towards players who want their table top RPG's to be more like video games.

The key thing a lot of people don't realize about table top RPG's is how much laughing and smack talking goes on. That is a big part of why people play it. It really is fun, IF you have a decent DM and players who aren't power-gamer deuchebags. Sitting around a table with people and playing this game is fun as hell, and can be funny too.

--
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 03:27 · Score: 0

Unlike in the real world were we spend as much as the next 26 nations combined on military
and 24 are our allies, and we have over 700 bases in over 100 countries.

We have events like "Operations Northwoods", "Operation Gladio", "Operation Condor",
and a whole host of others.

I think ppls priorities are totally backwards on what the "real" problems are.

Bernays had them rename the Dept of War to the Dept of Defense for a reason...

Re:When?! by Saint+Fnordius · 2014-01-23 03:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yeah, you're better off playing Illuminati or GURPS or Car Wars or Traveller or Warhammer or any of the other games. 1st Edition AD&D was just my gateway drug.

Re:When?! by aevan · 2014-01-23 03:50 · Score: 1

With as much evidence as the person responding to, sure. Albeit my sample size isn't the largest (think I've gamed with about 50 people in total from when I was 16 until 30), 45 had active sex lives (talking while we played, not 'years later when they grew up' so this includes teens), and 2 I'm sure will die virgins. Of course one can then move the goal posts and say "but were they hot/rich/asian porn stars*"... but at least the partners weren't paid by the hour :P

So, until they study of 10,000 gamers and percentages of "virgins over 15/18/30" are out, I'd say yeah, it's typical. Eat/breath/sleep gaming, sure - any obsessive becomes less attractive (and indifferent to other pursuits). But kick back Sunday afternoon with a bag of dice and some friends? That isn't stopping your Fridays or Saturdays evenings at all.

*that said two went into porn and one was a stripper for uni money. Pretty sure that part wasn't typical

But how many of you built your own dungeons? by whitroth · 2014-01-23 05:57 · Score: 1

As opposed to buying the modules?

mark, whose oldest character is neutral, the *only* other choices being lawful or chaotic....

Youtube Channel by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 06:12 · Score: 0

IDJester may be doing a dedicated video on his youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/idjester) on Sunday. In fact he may even do a live stream, so check out his channel to find out more.

Re:Anecdotes by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 07:35 · Score: 0

One of my proudest moments in role-playing occurred just a few years ago. I was playing a halfling rogue (D&D 4E rules) travelling with a motley group of characters. Some of the players (one of which has since left the group) were huge on meta-gaming and would always try to "win". This goes against everything that role-playing should be in my opinion. Anyway, the party was assaulting a cult of Asmodeus for some reason I cannot recall and we had managed to fight our way into the antechamber of the temple. A ceremony was going on on the other side of the door from us in the main chamber and we were discussing how to proceed. The meta-gamers started drawing up complex battle plans. This wasn't so much a problem until they started arguing over which character should do what based on individual stats and powers. Leroy Jenkins was still fresh in my mind at the time so in a fit of exasperation, I opened the door to the main chamber shouted "ASMODEUS IS A PUSSY" at the top of my little lungs and promptly slammed the door shut again. While the resulting double-encounter was punishing, we only lost the cleric.

DnD Party! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 07:44 · Score: 0

I'm so glad I checked /. today. I just started getting my Anniversary game together, inviting everyone I can remember playing DnD with, and anyone who's played DnD with them. We're going to get an online game of 1st edition going this Sunday, and so far the guest list 27 people. I'm most excited to throw more aggressive character and story design to the wayside and just put my friends through a dungeon.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by DNS-and-BIND · 2014-01-23 08:14 · Score: 1

The part with the gigantic demon could reasonably be construed as Satanic. Come ON, are we deliberately being ignorant now?

We're not talking about Garl Glittergold, way to cherry-pick the single least silly deity from the entire volume. Look at the others, for fuck's sake. The Norse deities should have been left out as the Nazis had only been in their graves for 29 years when D&D came out. Some goddamn sympathy would be nice.

--
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by DNS-and-BIND · 2014-01-23 08:15 · Score: 1

Yeah, so we make-believe to genocide greenskins. That's cool. It didn't actually happen, so it's OK. Newsflash: RPG players simulate what they really wish would happen.

--
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

Re:and beanie babies and whatever by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 08:52 · Score: 0

Celebrate good times

I think I'll watch the whole series, all ten hours of it.

Re:When?! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 08:59 · Score: 0

Yeah, sure it didn't. I bet your girl Rosy Palmer and her five friends were lots of fun.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by psithurism · 2014-01-23 09:29 · Score: 1

giving hit points and an alignment to such evil demons as Garl Glittergold shows a kid how to worship a pagan deity. How so?

Well, you asked:

1) The people scared by this stuff live in a world where God and Satan are omniscient, they pay especial attention to your words and thoughts. So talking about, thinking about, or having art about demons is like saying, "Voldemort." Also remember that all pagan dieties (all good gods in D&D) are masks of Satan just might answer to his name. Better just not to do it, and especially important not to let your kids do it, who might not know what to do when Satan literally shows up to answer some innocent statement a kid said.

2) Many religious rituals, involve talking to spirits who aren't there or re-enacting old events. Christianity talks to God & Jesus, occasionally angels and in most faiths no one pretends to be them, but in pagan (remember to these people this means satanist) religions rituals are almost indistinguishable from live action RPG games. I'd say it's coincidence, but you also have to remember that to a very religious there is no such thing; there are forces of God and forces of the Devil and God only commissioned one book.

3) Violence. Even in the modern, I thought we were done with this kind of BS, age, DnD got blamed for either instilling or showing the violence in the Columbine shooters, and had even my otherwise very progressive mother was a little worried about this aspect.

Of course, the fear mongers go waaay farther than the points I made above into ludicrous territory. "What is the difference between saying 'I cast a fireball' and learning real magic?" Or just completely making up satanist bullshit instead of actuallt looking into what the games are actually about.

Since this is probably the only post I'll make in this thread, let me throw in this real anecdote from my court interpreter stepmom: A prosecutor is telling the court how the defendant has a propensity for violence which you can see because he likes DnD, like the Columbine shooters, and continues to describe the horrible violence in this game. The judge shushes the prosecutor and announces "I know quite a bit about this game, I'm a fifth level elven mage in my gamer group."

Re:When?! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 10:23 · Score: 0

No, he was just taken to the cleaners for banging her in the ***. She told lots of guys they are the kids father.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by dissy · 2014-01-23 11:07 · Score: 1

I don't think time spent studying the monster manuals or magic would be of much aid in the actual spiritual journey we face on earth even if you could make various other claims of benefit.

I don't think the time you personally spend posting to slashdot is of much aid in real life either.

You stop all of your hobbies at my request, and we will talk about me stopping mine at yours.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 18:30 · Score: 0

To most religious people something leading you away from god and the church must by definition be the work of Satan.
What other powerful being could stand up to God and steal you away from his Church?
They were also probably shit scared people who hadnt been indoctrinated quite enough yet, would realise there were far more options to choose from in picking a magical sky daddy to watch over them.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 19:07 · Score: 0

From what I've seen, the "Christian" drugs of choice are hate, lust for power and fear. Frankly, coke would be less harmful to the spirit.

Don't forget cock. A lot of conservative types love the cock. They just don't want you to have any, or find out that they are getting it.

Re:When?! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 22:52 · Score: 0

He has much fondness for alimentary anatomy though.

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by spitzig · 2014-01-24 01:08 · Score: 1

Yeah, it had the stats for devils and demons, but could you actually play them? Now, tieflings are standard characters. And, I'm sure there are full-blooded devils/demons you can play as monster characters pretty simply. The fools had no idea of the True Power of the Darkside! Or, of mixing metaphors!

Re:Recall how it was going to turn us into Satanis by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-24 07:46 · Score: 0

If your kid had such a poor grip on reality that he couldn't keep Arundor Fadeleaf, Chaotic Evil Elven Rogue separate from himself, then the D&D wasn't the issue. He would've found something else to be psychotic over.

Re:When?! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-24 23:35 · Score: 0

Sounds like someone is projecting their problems onto others ;)

Nights at the Round Table by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 07:48 · Score: 0

Fans of D&D and tabletop gaming should check out "Nights at the Round Table" a gaming romcom compared to Spaced!

http://tinyurl.com/nightsep1

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Celebrating Dungeons & Dragons' 40th Anniversary

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