Dungeons and Dragons and Table Top Gaming

[Relic]

3 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

I wish I had your ability to do that. I have tried exactly that, and the end result is that I remember nothing. I have to give something my complete attention when I do something. One of my good friends watched ALL of the Arrowverse shows while playing and modding in Factorio, and it just amazed me. I wish I could do what the two of you can, but my brain doesn't seem to be wired that way, frustratingly and unfortunately. 

the powers of undiagnosed adhd, what can i say. I've always been able to multitask. To my detriment some (my mom) might say (probably rightly). 

[IlyaP]

4 minutes ago, Relic said:

the powers of undiagnosed adhd, what can i say. I've always been able to multitask. To my detriment some (my mom) might say (probably rightly). 

Your ADHD is a different kind of spicy to mine, clearly. I can multitask like you, but anything that falls under the rubrik of entertainment? I can only do one thing at a time if it's entertainment. Like, if I'm gaming - I am only gaming. No twitch streaming or providing commentary. No crochetting whilst watching a movie. Etc etc. 

It's such a weird and dumb thing, to me. I can do 8 things at once but not when watching tv on a monitor or something? Tabernac! 

[SpaceChampion]

I think normally campaigns this long would take a year to play, let alone watch.  It was an interesting experiment, and sounds like they intend to do it again (perhaps annually).  On the queue are campaigns in the Wheel of TIme setting, and probably the Expanse setting too.  The channel is a married couple of actors (Nerdy and Clarus) who I first discovered doing reactions to the first season of WOT, before they moved on to a weekly book club covering about 1/6th of each book of WOT weekly.  They just reached the end of the 13th book.  Because Nerdy is a SAG actor he's on strike, so not reacting to season 2 of WOT while that is going on.  They're starting A Memory of Light in a few weeks.

They finished up the relay at 173 hours, with the night shift joining the day shift for the final boss.

Edited August 6, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[Werthead]

I managed Critical Role's Deadlands campaign, but that was because it was a really good visual production (with full costumes, sets, and even an employed actor playing NPCs), it was only 4 episodes and each episode was only 2-3 hours long. It also helps that it was really good, especially the GM's decision to set the adventure in Deadwood and then use the HBO Deadwood version of the characters as a model for the NPCs. The DM's William Sanderson/Mayor Farnum impersonation was spot on (his McShane-Swearengen...less so). Of course, the GM (not Mercer, he was playing in that campaign) later turned out to be a massively abusive piece of shit which makes recommending it now harder.

I did get through the first three episodes of CR itself before concluding that Vox Machina as the massively compressed version of the story was very much the better way to go.

[Relic]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

I managed Critical Role's Deadlands campaign, but that was because it was a really good visual production (with full costumes, sets, and even an employed actor playing NPCs), it was only 4 episodes and each episode was only 2-3 hours long. It also helps that it was really good, especially the GM's decision to set the adventure in Deadwood and then use the HBO Deadwood version of the characters as a model for the NPCs. The DM's William Sanderson/Mayor Farnum impersonation was spot on (his McShane-Swearengen...less so). Of course, the GM (not Mercer, he was playing in that campaign) later turned out to be a massively abusive piece of shit which makes recommending it now harder.

 

Where did you find that? They removed all of the dude's stuff from their channels, given that he was basically stalking Ashley Johnson. 

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, Relic said:

Where did you find that? They removed all of the dude's stuff from their channels, given that he was basically stalking Ashley Johnson. 

I watched it a few months ago, before all that came to light.

[WarGalley]

On 8/8/2023 at 2:23 PM, Werthead said:

I managed Critical Role's Deadlands campaign, but that was because it was a really good visual production (with full costumes, sets, and even an employed actor playing NPCs), it was only 4 episodes and each episode was only 2-3 hours long. It also helps that it was really good, especially the GM's decision to set the adventure in Deadwood and then use the HBO Deadwood version of the characters as a model for the NPCs. The DM's William Sanderson/Mayor Farnum impersonation was spot on (his McShane-Swearengen...less so). Of course, the GM (not Mercer, he was playing in that campaign) later turned out to be a massively abusive piece of shit which makes recommending it now harder.

I did get through the first three episodes of CR itself before concluding that Vox Machina as the massively compressed version of the story was very much the better way to go.

Hmm I saw those Deadwood games right when I started watching CR Campaign 1 and was intrigued a few months ago. Shame about the backstory, I had intended to pick it up after watching it.

I also lost interest in the first few episodes of CR due to the sound and general production. I resumed Campaign 1 at the latter point of S2 Vox Machina (somewhere in the latter 30ish episode numbers). I got hooked there. The friendship and dynamic of the group is charming, oft hilarious and leaving you want to be a part of them in real life. I’m on episode 112 now nearing the conclusion of the overall story and fully intend to go through Mighty Nein and Campaign 2 next. It’s saved me some money not having to subscribe to HBO and Netflix for a few months.

I am amazed how many hours I have naturally put into it given they’re 4 hour episodes.

Edited August 10, 2023 by WarGalley

[Werthead]

I picked up a bunch of Alternity stuff from a local gaming group. Always wanted to run this, but never got round to it.

This was the last thing TSR put out before it went under. It's a science fiction roleplaying game that was released in 1998 and was derived from D&D 2nd Edition, but reworked to be more logical and less random. As with 3rd Edition, they decided to unify the mechanics from 1/2E's weird mishmash of "sometimes roll high, sometimes roll low," but they went with "always roll low," for everything, so you want 1s to be criticals. That's unusual but it does mean that ability scores remain valid (it has the standard 6 stats, and you still want to roll under your stat score directly) rather than some meaningless value as in 3-5E. The game is also level-less, which was very bold for TSR in the 1990s, with you getting improvement points for individual skills and feats (the game borrows 2.5E's optional skill and feat system, before it became codified in 3E) and some ways of improving your hitpoints. I think the levelling system is so archaic and creates so many power imbalance curves that it's baffling D&D still uses it.

Even though Alternity burned briefly, it did burn surprisingly brightly: they had time to get out a ton of sourcebooks (a Player's Handbook, Gamemaster's Guide and sourcebooks on spacecraft and AI/hacking) and an entire campaign setting (StarDrive) with a bunch of adventures, sourcebooks and info. There was also a one-off campaign setting based on StarCraft that was surprisingly credible, if not well-developed (obviously the Internet has provided a ton more resources). StarDrive was later reborn as a campaign setting for the d20 Future game from Wizards of the Coast (a d20 system based on D&D 3E).

I always felt that Alternity was a much bolder and more interesting game than it was given credit for at the time, and was a prototype for a much more interesting D&D 3E than we actually got. Alas, when WotC got hold of the game they decided to go too conservative with the update.

[Arakasi]

On 8/9/2023 at 9:11 PM, WarGalley said:

Hmm I saw those Deadwood games right when I started watching CR Campaign 1 and was intrigued a few months ago. Shame about the backstory, I had intended to pick it up after watching it.

I also lost interest in the first few episodes of CR due to the sound and general production. I resumed Campaign 1 at the latter point of S2 Vox Machina (somewhere in the latter 30ish episode numbers). I got hooked there. The friendship and dynamic of the group is charming, oft hilarious and leaving you want to be a part of them in real life. I’m on episode 112 now nearing the conclusion of the overall story and fully intend to go through Mighty Nein and Campaign 2 next. It’s saved me some money not having to subscribe to HBO and Netflix for a few months.

I am amazed how many hours I have naturally put into it given they’re 4 hour episodes.

I agree their show is very high quality but it’s just too much effort for me. I found CR to me is just too much information to watch casually. I want something I can enjoy and follow but there is so much crosstalk at the table in episodes I’ve seen that it’s pure information overload.
 

Very few times there weren’t two conversations going on. If I watch casually like I do tv shows (checking my phone, taking to wife) then I miss all sorts of details. Add in kids and such and I just don’t have four hours a week to focus full time on a show no matter how good it is.

[Zorral]

The Dungeons & Dragons Players of Death Row
For a group of men in a Texas prison, the fantasy game became a lifeline — to their imaginations, and to one another.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/31/magazine/dungeons-dragons-death-row.html

Quote

 

.... Playing Dungeons & Dragons is more difficult in prison than almost anywhere else. Just as in the free world, each gaming session can last for hours and is part of a larger campaign that often stretches on for months or years. But in prison, players can’t just look up the game rules online. The hard-bound manuals that detail settings, characters and spells are expensive and can be difficult to get past mailroom censors. Some states ban books about the game altogether, while others prohibit anything with a hard cover. Books with maps are generally forbidden, and dice are often considered contraband, because they can be used for gambling. Prisoners frequently replace them with game spinners crafted out of paper and typewriter parts.

.... The men in Ford’s D.&D. group struggled to bring their gaming world with them to Polunsky. When they arrived, they found that many of their belongings had gone missing or been confiscated. They lost game notes and hand-drawn maps, spinners and character sketches. And now they could not sit at a table together to play. They had to rely instead on a variety of clandestine communications, including written messages called kites, passed from cell to cell.

For Ford, there was one silver lining. At Polunsky, he could finally play D.&D. with a death-row legend: Billy Wardlow. ....

.... Unlike Ford, Wardlow never played Dungeons & Dragons before prison. But months later, another man on the row handed him a book full of fantasy names and magical creatures. “This is the game,” Wardlow remembered him saying. “Be ready tomorrow.” Over the next two decades, Wardlow went on to play dozens of games with many characters. One he became known for among his death-row peers was Arthaxx d’Cannith, a magical prodigy. Though his home planet, the war-torn Eberron, was an established setting among D.&D. players, Arthaxx was Wardlow’s creation — a character he developed through pages and pages of game notes and hand-drawn illustrations.

Born to a professor and an inventor, Arthaxx had a twin sister who died as a baby. After the girl’s death, Arthaxx’s mother refused to let the tragedy derail her academic career. Instead, she threw herself into her work, leaving her son to be raised by tutors. They gave him all the tools for magical greatness, and after graduating early from a prestigious wizarding college, he got a job with a top guild, where he invented secret weapons for war.

Arthaxx could cast spells to control the elements, manipulate electricity or send walls of fire raging across enemy battlefields. Every day, Arthaxx used his gifts to help the higher-ups of House Cannith perfect the invention they hoped would end a century of war. At night, he came home to his wife, his childhood sweetheart.

Arthaxx was, to some extent, a version of Wardlow whose mother was not shattered. Whose parents loved him and sent him to a prestigious school. Whose proficiency with electricity earned him a comfortable living. Whose best options never included running away. Whose worst mistake never landed him on death row.

“ ‘Friends’ is a loaded word in prison,” Ford wrote to me in a long, typed letter sent three years ago. “So many people have been betrayed by their ‘friends.’ What we have around us are more associates, close associates.”

But D.&D. turned associates into a crew. After they started playing together at Polunsky, Ford noticed that when Wardlow was in charge of the game, the other guys didn’t bicker as much. As Dungeon Master, Wardlow created vast and intricate worlds. He could play without books or hand-drawn maps and could run the game on the fly, improvising the narrative as he went along.

Some D.&D. crews on death row liked to play at random times, diving into a fantasy world whenever the mood struck. But when Wardlow ran the games, he liked to set a schedule, usually starting around 9 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, sometimes playing until they fell asleep. It was the rare activity Ford and his friends could look forward to, a time when no one would talk about legal cases or lost appeals.

Sometimes, through their characters, they opened up about problems they would never otherwise discuss — abusive parents, fractured childhoods, drug addictions — unpacking their personal traumas through a thin veil of fantasy. “With Billy, D.&D. has become our therapy,” Ford wrote in 2019.

Death row didn’t offer any of the educational or mental-health programs available in regular prisons; rehabilitation isn’t the goal for those on death row, and special programming is not always logistically feasible for people held in solitary confinement. For these players, the games served as their life-skills course, anger-management class and drug counseling, too. Like Ford and Wardlow, a lot of the men on the row came to prison at a young age and never had a chance to be adults in the free world. ....

 

 

[Toth]

Had another one-shot game at a convention... and I must admit, I'm astonished at the difference a DM makes. The goblin campaign last time was quite fantastic, with our group figuring out ways to accomplish our task and methodically going about to do them. This one-shot had a similarly focused premise and time window, with us being guards tasked with busting some kind of illegal trade, though not knowing who or what is involved where and when. But we very quickly ran into the brick wall of the DM simply saying "No, can't do that" to pretty much all of our ideas how to approach the situation. Is that... a common thing that happens? It just felt super counterintuitive.

We scatter and try to cover the whole city searching for clues. One player wants to sneak past some mobsters guarding something in the harbor. "It is the middle of the day and there is no cover anywhere, you can't sneak."
Player wants to set a fire to cause a distraction. "People here recognize the use of magic instantly, so the mobsters immediately go searching for you."
I'm trying to befriend other guards, hoping to get a grasp onto what kind of contraband has been seen recently in the city. "There are no guards in the tower, you'll have to try something else."
I go around, he tells me I find a park with several suspicious mobster going about.
I try to play up being a funny foreigner seeking a good time, he just points me to the tavern two other players already were at.
Those other two utterly fail at listening in to conversations because everyone just stares daggers at them the moment they entered, because they didn't belong. Eventually after some helpless flailing around, he allows one player to change her character's backstory into being a criminal, so that she can actually start a conversation with some important mobster. Of course they then immediately runs into the next brick wall of him simply not wanting to talk about their plans to them... and the DM telling them off twice from rolling skill checks, saying it won't matter because the the character simply won't tell them no matter what.
Just as they were about to give up, I arrived at the tavern, interjected myself at the conversation, claiming to seek a job (hoping to insert myself into the trade this way).
DM: "What can you do?"
I: Let my character flex the bizeps on his bizeps as I developed a charismatic warrior, telling them they can count on me doing any heavy lifting.
DM: "They tell you they are only hiring mages and see no value in you."

At that point I gave up as well. Eventually the DM told us to just go ask around in the next tavern, where some rivaling gang told us everything we needed to know and with that the campaign ended. At that point I completely gave up contributing anything, given how I realized the campaign didn't involve any combat, so all my combat skills were pointless and since the DM didn't even let me do a single charisma based roll, it seemed impossible to figure out a way how to roleplay my way into getting what I wanted. Yes, we were really stupid about it, I'd still be very curious how exactly the campaign was supposed to go.

[horangi]

31 minutes ago, Toth said:

But we very quickly ran into the brick wall of the DM simply saying "No, can't do that" to pretty much all of our ideas how to approach the situation. Is that... a common thing that happens? It just felt super counterintuitive.

Matt Mercer's "you can certainly try!" is a good approach.  This just sounds like a DM with poor improv skills.  In the games I've run, I try and reward creative solutions even when it can sometimes spoil some of the pre-planning (though rarely in such a way that you can't get back on track.)  Sure, if a level one monk says he is going to levitate to the top of a tower using his willpower alone, I'm going to respond back that he has collected some curious glances from nearby strangers who are witnessing a monk standing in the street, eyes closed, and veins bulging on their forehead.  Most of the scenarios you mentioned though should have been 'run with it' opportunities.

Edited October 23, 2023 by horangi

[Underfoot]

Yeah that sounds like the worst game of DnD ever. Agreed with @horangi, there was plenty of space for the dm to let you run with your ideas and ideally reward creativity. I'd have been very frustrated 

[Toth]

7 hours ago, horangi said:

Matt Mercer's "you can certainly try!" is a good approach.  This just sounds like a DM with poor improv skills.  In the games I've run, I try and reward creative solutions even when it can sometimes spoil some of the pre-planning (though rarely in such a way that you can't get back on track.)  Sure, if a level one monk says he is going to levitate to the top of a tower using his willpower alone, I'm going to respond back that he has collected some curious glances from nearby strangers who are witnessing a monk standing in the street, eyes closed, and veins bulging on their forehead.  Most of the scenarios you mentioned though should have been 'run with it' opportunities.

Yeah, as someone whose main connection with D&D has been watching Dimension 20 with Brennan Lee Mulligan as a DM, this kind of rigidness seemed quite alien to me. But sleeping another night through it, I remember him at the end pointing out that everyone except me got a magic character with spells that could have been handy for tailing people. So I come to the conclusion that he was just really annoyed at us trying to walk up and talk to all the suspicious mobsters he kept putting in front of us. I admit, when the first player did just that, we were kinda narrow-mindedly set into approaching every situation with a similar mindset and it's hard to break out of that pattern and see other options. And my character completely min-maxed into fighting and being gregarious, so to me specifically I only had that one hammer to use on what looked like nails to me.

3 hours ago, Underfoot said:

Yeah that sounds like the worst game of DnD ever. Agreed with @horangi, there was plenty of space for the dm to let you run with your ideas and ideally reward creativity. I'd have been very frustrated 

Yeah, that swung with it quite a lot. The others laughed it off as us just being brick-headed and not seeing the obvious solutions, but like I said, after my offer to work for the mobsters failed, I just sat back and did nothing for the rest of game. Except one time suggesting to just go to our employer and get new orders when the others wanted to rush into busting the trade ourselves, which apparently was exactly what the DM wanted as he eagerly sided with me that we should do that.

[baxus]

12 hours ago, Toth said:

But we very quickly ran into the brick wall of the DM simply saying "No, can't do that" to pretty much all of our ideas how to approach the situation. Is that... a common thing that happens?

My experience with DMs is fairly limited, having played with 3 DMs over more than 20 years, and myself occasionally dabbling in DM-ing. I've never encountered this type of a DM, and I would react pretty much the same as you have and just waited for the end of the session never to return.

12 hours ago, Toth said:

Those other two utterly fail at listening in to conversations because everyone just stares daggers at them the moment they entered, because they didn't belong.

I must admit that I do think that DM shouldn't just let everything slide and that every setting, whether one of the popular ones or home-brewed, should have its rules and limitations. Still, characters should know these and not be caught unaware every time they try something.

I mean, there could be a thief guild in town and they could have their own prerequisites for joining or initiations or whatever, and a character just having a level (or more) of rogue class does not qualify them to be on good terms with guild and its members, it could be quite the opposite. Still, the rogue should know the way to contact the guild and proper way to behave and all that as well as if the guild in that town is relatively friendly or hostile to outside people.

In this case, it depends on whether we are talking about a busy trading town or a hamlet in the mountains. If people in that tavern are used to seeing unfamiliar faces then it's just plain stupid to have them behave this way. On the other hand, if they have been isolated for a while, and are not used to having visitors then them attracting attention would make sense. Obviously, attracting attention doesn't mean everyone is staring daggers at them.

12 hours ago, Toth said:

Eventually the DM told us to just go ask around in the next tavern, where some rivaling gang told us everything we needed to know and with that the campaign ended.

This DM seems to me like he's had a vision in his mind on how he wants you to do this adventure and wouldn't allow you to do it any other way. And yes, that's stupid and you should definitely try to find a better DM.

The most fun we've had playing D&D over the last 20+ years was when we improvised and had no idea what we were doing. That's the stories that we recall, the twists and turns and the improvisations, not when we guessed DM's route and everything went according to plan.

[Mentat]

1 hour ago, baxus said:

This DM seems to me like he's had a vision in his mind on how he wants you to do this adventure and wouldn't allow you to do it any other way. And yes, that's stupid and you should definitely try to find a better DM.

While I mostly agree, in a one off session within a convention where the adventure needs to be concluded within a certain (usually brief) timeframe, I can be more understanding of the DM more or less gently steering players away from ways to deal with the situation which they think will be long-winded, useless or counterproductive. I agree the DM in Toth's anecdote seems to have been too blunt and unwilling to improvise or entertain how the player's ideas might be effective or fun. They might have designed an adventure based on combat or infiltration rather than social skills and just weren't good enough at DMing (DMing is by no means easy) to adapt on the fly.

Finding a group where you gel with the DM and (just as important) the other players, is not easy (but it's very rewarding when it does happen!).

[Gertrude]

3 hours ago, Mentat said:

Finding a group where you gel with the DM and (just as important) the other players, is not easy (but it's very rewarding when it does happen!).

[Jace, Extat]

22 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

Gertrude plays DnD... 

That's like finding out your auntie plays the Finger Dance. 

[Gertrude]

The first D&D book I bought with my allowance was the original monster manual. :p

[Maithanet]

So I am going to be DMing my very first session of D&D in a couple of weeks.  We have a group of 5 players (plus me) that all say they're excited to try out D&D.  I am a little nervous as I have very little experience as a D&D player (just a few sessions ~ 20 years ago) and zero experience as a DM.  I'm using one of the precanned D&D starter kits (Dragons of Stormwreck Isle) to make things a bit more manageable. 

Nonetheless, I am a bit nervous about how this is going to go.  I did a dry run with my wife (playing just 1 character) which was good practice and fun, but I think managing 5 players will be a very different challenge.  Obviously things will go a bit more slowly with 5 than with just 1, so I won't have to be talking quite so much.  But I am nervous I don't know the rules that well and it was difficult for me to introduce clues/story elements without it being super obvious/transparent about introducing a quest or something.  Subtlety is not easy, although I suppose for a first adventure there are worse things than being too obvious.