Dungeons and Dragons

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bummer

I don’t mind a few gruesome fights etc in my games, but most of the campaigns I have ran really discourage only brute force role-playing - I have even made it obvious in the game that doing so wouldn’t be or wasn’t in the party’s best interests.
There are many more and better plots than “kill everything you see”.

I ran a character for years in a friend’s campaign that had all sorts of players of different personality types and all sorts of characters - my character was the extreme pacifist - NO killing whatsoever.
It was hard to be so at times and it took THINKING!

It is only a game, so I don’t get freaked out about characters slaying monsters, etc, but when a player has their character commiting attrocities in gorey detail against humans for selfish and what would be seen as obviously “evil” motivated reasons it just doesn’t suit my tastes.

I think a lot of that is lazy Dungeonmasteringand/or lazy roleplaying by the players - nothing fun is happening, so I will kill for fun. Any dolt can do that.

I try to create an entire WORLD that awaits the players, with intricate and inter-related plots and twists and things to do and places to go and tailor it to the individual player’s motivations, etc.

World building is critical to a good and longlasting campaign, otherwise it gets redundant, “gee another dungeon, whoopie” 😦

The funny thing is, most people don’t even notice that in my campaigns they are subtly steered towards noble actions, causes and not killing on sight - as a matter of fact, sometimes there is little or NO combat encounters in a particular session, depending on the plot and when there is, there is a reason and it is against the “bad guys”, which are not usually even human.

There is much you can do with D&D to tone down the urge in people to kill kill kill and get them to start using their head and reserving battles for when it promotes the cause of good.
It is fantasy, but you can be smart and keep even the warriors pleased without turning things into an immoral bloodbath…

I could go on about this for hours, so

Peace
 
chuckle ain’t that the truth…it does have a reputation to be a time lenngthening adventure game…more the better, but only one day!

Some mornings my son was balling up paper, burning the edges, then soaking it in tea…then blowdrying it…

All for an “old” looking note the adventurers might find…

he was so visual…mainly for me…as i am a visual learner, and he added as much as he could…and i loved it.
 
Hi. Some time ago we had a thread on CAF for D&D enthusiasts, but I don’t know where it has gone. I think some people were trying to arrange an online game - did that ever go ahead?

Anyway, this is the new D&D thread. Post here about funny things that have happened in your games, your latest wacky characters, interesting campaign settings you’ve come up with, any online games that you’re looking for players to join, any discussions about interpretations and clarifications of the rules (The core rulebooks can sometimes be almost as hard to interpret as the bible!), if you’re a new player and want to find out more about the game, or anything.

Funniest thing I’ve seen in D&D yet - an allied NPC made a comment to an ogre about the ogre needing to beat up people smaller than himself to compensate for his small penis (just as a joke / to tick the ogre off). The bard in the party decided to run with this and try to bluff the ogre into thinking that he, the bard, was a penis enlargement specialist. Despite the -20 penalty on the bluff check, he actually passed! Then pretended to lead the ogre back to his office, but of course the rest of the party just surrounded the ogre and beat it into the dust.

Do any of you ever have the problem of the DM drought? I’ve been DMing almost as long as I’ve been playing because most players I know (including me, sometimes) can’t be bothered to actually write up quests and things - it’s much easier if you can just turn up and play than have to prepare.

What sort of campaign settings do other DM’s here use? I don’t think I’ve ever really handled that side of the job ‘properly’, like actually planning out characteristics of a world before writing up the quests, I’ve just thrown in whatever comes to mind as I go, session to session.

What are your favorite base and prestige classes? I’ve recently been reading complete arcane/divine/warrior and there are some pretty cool classes there, like Rage Mage (a cross between a barbarian and a sor/wizard. One thing I can’t quite figure out from the rule description though - can he cast spells while in a barbarian rage or not?) and the Mage of the Arcane Order (wizard with an ability where he can sometimes cast spells even if he doesn’t have them in his spellbook and hasn’t prepared them!).

If anyone has come into this thread hoping to be able to roleplay immediately, I’ll cook up (ie copy from an earlier campaign I ran) a little story for you now.
You are a 1st level adventurer of some sort. A messenger from the village has come up to you asking for help - the village cleric was found dead on the front steps of the local temple of Pelor with an arrow through him. The front doors of the temple seem to be locked in some way (but they are not locked from the outside like is the usual way), and some villagers have reported that they saw someone shooting arrows out of the bell tower, but cant describe what they looked like.
There is another entrance into the temple, it leads into a crypt underneath which no one has been in for a long time. The villagers are afraid to enter it because there are rumors that the undead inhabit it. They’re also afraid of the person who they saw in the bell tower.
That’s why the messenger is asking you, supposedly a brave adventurer, to find some way to enter the temple, see if there is someone in there, deal with them, and unlock the temple if possible. In return they are offering to give you some of the late cleric’s medical items (potions of cure light).
What do you want to do?
 
I’ve played a little D&D and many other systems, it’s good fun 🙂

3rd Edition just doesn’t have the same spirit AD&D2e had (even if that spirit was the ghost of Terribly Broken Rules). It’s not as enjoyable, though with a good group it’ll do. I prefer to play rogues and sometimes mages – the one thing I really did like about 3rd was the shadowdancer prestige class.
 
I still have my first edition Gary Gygax D & D game which came out in a little box in the mid-70s. When AD & D came out in the late 70s, I ran a campaign game as DM for over ten years with a bunch of really creative people who knew their history; knew their mythology; and loved the game. Geeks? Hardly. The game is another matter entirely when your players are as well versed in history and mythology as you are. A campaign game which goes on for over ten years encompasses an entire world and an empire. We’d probably still be playing today except that one of our closest friends (Bill) died suddenly at age 32 of an aneurysim.

That took the wind out of all of our sails. I still have boxes and boxes of DM notes. Fond rememberances of every third Saturday at Bill’s. God rest your soul my friend.
 
Timidity said:
Why credit the typist and not the creator? “Dave Arneson’s D&D game…” sounds much better.
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Possibly because Gygax survived. To my knowledge, they’re both listed as creators. Certainly Gygax continued the series. At this time, I was more interested in Avalon Hill and the SPI games - still have a whole slew of them too. I haven’t been to a Con in years. I wonder how much I could get for my Art of Siege Warfare?
 
D&D was mainly an 80’s fad that has gone the way of so many other fads. Of course even when it was a fad it wasn’t exactly something that was mainstream. As for the moral question, it’s a game. A rather silly one in my opinion, but as a game it’s really up to the people playing it were it goes. By nature some people will take it to extremes, just like people take everything else to extremes. Someone that is going to go out and worship the devil or practice magic is predisposed to doing it anyway, a game certainly never made anyone do anything.

The more important question at hand is whether in an increasingly obesse and detached soceity if sitting around pretending to be someone you’re not is of any value? I don’t want to step on toes, but frankly the kinds of people (especially younger ones) that are predisposed to these “fanatsy” games would be benefited by getting away from fanatsy. I was a kid during the 80’s (born in 82), had an older cousin that started getting into D&D. My uncle made him some sort of offer and he agreed to put up the D&D stuff and wrestle for a season. He lost quite a bit of weight, made new friends, discovered the fun of atheltic competition, and well frankly stopped being a dork. Needless to say D&D lost it’s appeal. I tend to think this would be true of quite a few role playing game players if given the chance.
 
CCM08 said:
D&D was mainly an 80’s fad that has gone the way of so many other fads.
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:rotfl: That’s what you think 😉 It’s still very much around, and the 3rd edition ruleset is quite popular although I personally can’t stand it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other systems too.
The more important question at hand is whether in an increasingly obesse and detached soceity if sitting around pretending to be someone you’re not is of any value? I don’t want to step on toes, but frankly the kinds of people (especially younger ones) that are predisposed to these “fanatsy” games would be benefited by getting away from fanatsy. I was a kid during the 80’s (born in 82), had an older cousin that started getting into D&D. My uncle made him some sort of offer and he agreed to put up the D&D stuff and wrestle for a season. He lost quite a bit of weight, made new friends, discovered the fun of atheltic competition, and well frankly stopped being a dork. Needless to say D&D lost it’s appeal. I tend to think this would be true of quite a few role playing game players if given the chance.
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Ever read Tolkien or the Narnia books? Same principle – going someplace else for a little while for fun. Of course, people can obsess over anything, and obsession with RPGs is no different from any other. That doesn’t reflect upon the games in any way.
 
I spent a lot of time as a kid participating in activities – Girl Scouts, church, choir, even charm school! But no matter how much I did, I still wasn’t part of the group. (Although I didn’t get beaten up or taunted during extra-curriculars, which was an improvement on school.) My gaming group was the only group I was in during my childhood where I was truly accepted and allowed to be myself. (Heck, even the Quiz Bowl team thought I was too geeky. And they were all geeks.)

And in this increasingly detached and distracted world, isn’t it a good idea to spend several hours staring at your buddies, with nothing else to do but roll dice or think of Cunning Plans?

So long live gaming, in all its forms.
 
Mintaka said:
And in this increasingly detached and distracted world, isn’t it a good idea to spend several hours staring at your buddies, with nothing else to do but roll dice or think of Cunning Plans?
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I heard of one group that used narrow tubes, rubies, and Continual Light to build laser sights for their bows…
 
Mirdath said:
I heard of one group that used narrow tubes, rubies, and Continual Light to build laser sights for their bows…
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Haha cool idea. How would it affect the mechanics of the game though? The DM could rule that the chance to hit something with a bow is not dependant on knowing which way the bow is pointing (everyone can see which way they are pointing by looking down the arrow shaft) but more about holding the bow straight when you fire, luck, understanding wind effects, etc. and hence not give you a bonus on attack rolls (or a miss chance reduction in cases of concealment) despite the laser sights.
 
I had a good friend in high school who played in the early 1980s. It was too complicated for me. He is now a priest strong in the faith.
 
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