Dungeons and Dragons and Table Top Gaming

[Rhom]

I have never played a single session of any sort of pen and paper.  As a kid on a farm with my nearest neighbor being my jock cousin a mile down the road on the next dairy farm over, just kinda hard to ever organize a session. 

However, my love for Dragonlance back in the day had me buy the Dragonlance Adventures sourcebook from Waldenbooks one day in the mall.  It kept referencing the players manual and the dungeon master's guide, so I bought those, and then I bought the Monstrous Compendium Vol 1 and 2.  I also picked up a nice mythologies sourcebook that had many different pantheons as well as the world of Fafrd and the Grey Mouser and King Arthur.  (I've still never read a Fafrd book... but every once in a while I remember that sourcebook and want to go find one.)  I read all of those books cover to cover more times than I can count.

I also picked up long ago TMNT and Other Strangeness.  Read it many times too.  The other day a Kickstarter to release a revised edition of that in a hardback version popped up in my feed.  So I popped down a pledge to get that and the follow up book that I never did have.  I look forward to reading that and once again regaling myself with imagery of the Sparrow Eagles that they roll up as the example characters in the book. 

[Werthead]

I've got the two omnibuses collecting every single Fritz Leiber Fafhrd & Grey Mouser (aka Lankhmar) story, still not gotten round to reading them.

There was a cool story - possibly exaggerated - that Gary Gygax used Leiber, along with Vance's Dying Earth, Moorcock's multiverse stories and Robert E. Howard's Conan, as a primary influence on D&D. In the early 1980s he learned that Leiber was living in destitution in a run-down apartment, so he bought the licensing rights to Leiber's work for several times what they were worth, which allowed Leiber to buy a decent house and live out his last years in comfort. Gygax had zero expectation of making any money and, indeed, the Lankhmar D&D books sold quite poorly. Impressively, after Gygax left TSR, the company honoured this approach by renewing the licence for even more money, so Leiber could continue living comfortably. The 2nd Edition Lankhmar stuff also bombed, but Leiber got his nice paycheque.

I note they didn't do the same for Moorcock or Vance, but they were both much better off, so didn't need the money. Oddly, it was my friend's brother who finally licenced Dying Earth for an RPG in the late 1990s, for Pelgrane Press. Vance wasn't interested in tons of money, just them doing a good job.

[Gertrude]

I have a couple of the Lankhmar books too that I've never read. Apparently it's cool to just show them off on the bookcase, eh?My friend who got me into DnD named the cat my aunt took home - it was Gray Mouser  He lived his life mostly being called Mouse, but I knew who he really was. (despite never having read the books)

[Rhom]

I have now bought the two boxed sets so they can sit on my bookshelf and also not be read!  

[Prince of the North]

I read all of Leiber's Fafrd and the Grey Mouser stories when I was about 16 (mid 80s) and was playing D&D then, too.  For what it's worth, I think they're pretty quick, fun reads and, yes, one quickly sees the great influence they had on all the rogue-related and other aspects of D&D (rogues are probably the class of characters I've played the most over the years). 

I also read all of Gygax's Gord the Rogue (and his barbarian friend Chert) stuff back then and, regardless of Gygax's stating that he didn't notice the similarities to Fafrd and the Grey Mouser, the influence there was obvious, in my opinion.  I always read the Gord the Rogue (Black cat) stuff as a direct homage to Leiber's characters. 

[Ran]

On 11/3/2023 at 10:02 PM, Werthead said:

it was my friend's brother who finally licenced Dying Earth for an RPG in the late 1990s, for Pelgrane Press.

Robin Laws did a great job designing a very flavorful system that felt like it fit right in with Vance's whimsy.

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser has some great stories, but beware the late run of them, when Leiber began to indulge in increasingly raunchy, adult scenarios ( a mixture, I am guessing, of age and the increasing license authors were being given to do adult matter).

My favorite of the stories is "Lean Times in Lankhmar". Has some of the funniest scenes I've ever read in fantasy. Fans of Abercrombie will probably enjoy that one in particular.

[Werthead]

Leiber's influence given his relatively low profile is quite impressive. Pratchett noted that whilst Ankh-Morpork was inspired by a ton of real-world and fictional influences, by far his most direct inspiration for the city was Lankhmar (far more evident in The Colour of Magic than later books).

[Ser Lany]

On 10/24/2023 at 12:26 PM, Gertrude said:

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

We had a full set of 1st and 2nd edition books, back when we were young. Used them to teach my kids to play. Now they all play 5e, so I'm learning 5e too.

Last June I started a neighborhood gaming group. It's a new development with a lot of people from different areas so I thought I would give it a try. Got off to a slow start with 2 people dropping out after 2 sessions. My youngest son agreed to join, so we just kept going. It's a small group with a wide age range: my son is 21 (ha! he was a toddler when I joined this board), a 24,36 47 year olds. with me, the DM, and now the only female, pushing 60 past 40  (lwo late 20's and an early 50's all left the group)

DMing is a lot more work than I remember it being, but I'm enjoying it.  We were all out of practice, so we did the Dragon of Icespire Peak first, then we used the Witchlight carnival to go to Exandria and are doing Call of the Netherdeep. We'll finish it up in a couple more sessions and then drop into level 12 of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, but it will be transported to somewhere in Marquet.

My older son has left his 3d printers with me, so I am always making all sorts of things on them.  Lots of dungeon tiles on the filament printer and characters and monsters on the resin printers.

[Relic]

23 minutes ago, Ser Lany said:

Call of the Netherdeep.

How do you like it?  I was thinking of running it a year or so ago, bought the book, but decided it wasnt for me. 

[Ser Lany]

5 minutes ago, Relic said:

How do you like it?  I was thinking of running it a year or so ago, bought the book, but decided it wasnt for me. 

The whole rivals thing is weird and hard. I almost left them out.  The game also requires a lot more actual role play than a dungeon crawl. As far as the story goes, we like most of it. Don't like that they have to actually join one of the factions, not just side with them. I guess that is another way of forcing some more RP.

If you do decide to play and include the rivals, and you use  figurines,  let me know and I can give you the rival figures I printed. I doubt I'll have any use for them after we finish up in a couple of weeks.

[Relic]

1 minute ago, Ser Lany said:

The whole rivals thing is weird and hard. I almost left them out.  The game also requires a lot more actual role play than a dungeon crawl. As far as the story goes, we like most of it. Don't like that they have to actually join one of the factions, not just side with them. I guess that is another way of forcing some more RP.

If you do decide to play and include the rivals, and you use  figurines,  let me know and I can give you the rival figures I printed. I doubt I'll have any use for them after we finish up in a couple of weeks.

Cool, yeah the rival thing seemed interesting, but not sure how it would work in actual play. I like the concept, tho. I didnt really enjoy all the underwater stuff.

Thanks for the offer, but i dont use minis. These days when i DM in person i use roll20 battlemaps on a large screen tv, or a projector. 

[Maithanet]

I hosted my first session last weekend and it was by and large a success.  Everybody seemed to have a good time, and for the most part participation was pretty even.  I encouraged everyone to try to make up backstory and do more roleplaying (even voices if they're feeling bold) and several people said they'd try and work on that before our next session.  We're meeting monthly, and hte next session is a bit more of a dungeon (or rather cave) crawl, so I'm looking forward to it. 

I felt like I was sufficiently prepared for this session, which is nice.  The group is entirely new players and they were pretty worried about how the fight with the zombies was going, even though it was an absolute curbstomp of a battle, the zombies only landed 1 total hit.  I'm curious to see how they'll react when facing something a bit more formidable. 

I like how creative you can be as a DM.  It is at the same time difficult to really flesh out a world just with descriptions, but it is pretty nice when you include some details or something that feels genuine.  It is interesting watching different videos of people talking about how to DM and borrowing various ideas.  The next session has tides effecting how the encounter goes, but at least based on the written description in the campaign book, at no point do I explain what is going on with the tides to the players, or why they might care whether it is high or low tide when they go to the cave.  I'm probably just going to skip it, feels overcomplicated for little purpose.  Although I'm also toying with the idea of destroying their boat at some point, since they don't (strictly speaking) need it and I think it might be interesting from a narrative perspective. 

[Relic]

@Gertrude

Check your discord when you get a chance 

[Gertrude]

On 11/9/2023 at 10:28 AM, Maithanet said:

Everybody seemed to have a good time, and for the most part participation was pretty even.  I encouraged everyone to try to make up backstory and do more roleplaying (even voices if they're feeling bold)

That's cool if they are into it. As for voices, I'd emphasize a frame of mind rather than an actual different voice (unless they are super comfortable with that). Are they talkative or kind or bold or a braggart?

Also maybe give them some simple prompts for a backstory so they have a direction (how did you learn your skills, what's your family like, what's your favorite memory, etc) That way it doesn't seem like they have to write up a whole ass backstory, but they also know who their character is and how they'd react in different situations.

[Maithanet]

38 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

That's cool if they are into it. As for voices, I'd emphasize a frame of mind rather than an actual different voice (unless they are super comfortable with that). Are they talkative or kind or bold or a braggart?

I liked this advice so much I sent it to my players on our text chain.  I'm really hoping we can embrace the roleplaying in future sessions.  I think it would make things a lot more fun for everyone.

[Durckad]

Voices can be fine, but I can understand why some/most might not want to do it. As a DM, I do try to give the various NPC's distinct voices and cadences for their speech (whether I'm consistent with them is another story entirely), but I also don't have to speak in those voices for the entire session/campaign. When I used to be able to play an actual character, I did try doing voices in a couple of campaigns but I would always get tired of doing them after a few sessions. For one, depending upon how different the character's voice is from your normal voice, doing those voices can get incredibly tiring on the vocal cords if you're constantly doing it.

I would agree with Gertrude on frame of mind being more important and emphasizing backstories can help get them in that frame of mind quite a bit.

[Gertrude]

12 hours ago, Maithanet said:

I'm really hoping we can embrace the roleplaying in future sessions.  I think it would make things a lot more fun for everyone.

Then make sure you leave some room for it in your campaign  Maybe an NPC can start up a conversation instead of just being an answer machine or quest giver. Ask them how they set up camp or describe a weird event that happens while traveling (not something that looks like a hook for distraction, just an ice breaker - the horse is spooked by a coyote and needs to be calmed, or it starts to lightly rain and describe how cold and uncomfortable they are becoming. Get them bitching about it.

[Werthead]

Apparently Ben Riggs is planning a second book on the history of D&D, focusing on the Wizards of the Coast years (or at least up until now). As part of his research he's disclosed the sales figures for each edition of the Player's Handbook, the biggest-selling book in each edition of the game:

• 1st Edition (1978-1989): 1.5 million
• 2nd Edition (1989-2000): 1 million
• 3rd Edition (2000-2003): 800,000
• 3.5 Edition (2003-2008): 300,000
• 4th Edition (2008-2014): "considerably less than 3 and 3.5E"
• 5th Edition (2014-present): 3 million

That's quite interesting. That's PHB sales only, not the Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual etc, and of course many more people have played the game than those figures estimate (since a group with 6+ players might well have only 1 PHB). But they do seem lower than expected.

It's also worth noting that the cumulative sales of all AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition core materials came to around 4 million, but was comprehensively outsold by the BECMI sets of OG D&D (the famous red/blue/black boxed sets of the 1980s) at over 6 million.

What would be interesting is seeing how Pathfinder 1st Edition compared to that.

It's also interesting given the perception at the time that 3E was a massive-selling mega-colossus, a return to form after 2E's disappointment, which clearly it wasn't. But it might be that the RPG market overall severely contracted in the period before 3E's release (impacted hugely by the advent of CCGs like Magic: The Gathering, not to mention video games), so D&D returned to dominance in market share even if its overall sales were down. D&D was sometimes as low as the 3rd or 4th-best-selling RPG on the market during 2E, but 3E returned it to the best-selling.

[TrackerNeil]

On 10/24/2023 at 1:34 PM, Maithanet said:

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. 

Hey, good luck!

I'm DMing a campaign right now, but I almost never plan things. Seriously. Unless I know there will be a fight, I don't bother, for two reasons:

1) I find that the more I try to control things at the table, the worse things get. In gaming as in life, when you most feel the need to clamp down is exactly when you should let go.

2) I have great players who possess a wealth of creativity and experience. So when we meet an NPC, I'll often ask a player to make up something about them. When the PCs spy out terrain, I'll ask for a skill check (say, Survival) and let whoever makes the roll tell us what is seen--the better the roll, the more control the player gets in determining the lay of the land.

When it comes to combat, sometimes I'll turn things over to a player. For example, the PCs were surveying land for a settlement, and along comes a pack of worg-riding goblins, intent on mayhem. This happened at the end of the session, so I asked, "Who wants to DM the fight next session?" One player, who had never before DMed, stepped right up, because it was a way she could be introduced to running a session without the stress of taking on an entire campaign. She did a bang-up job, BTW, and I played her character for that session. (I did a less bang-up job at running the character,  oh well.)

This won't work for everyone, admittedly--my group is terrific--but it sure takes the stress out of DMing.

Edited November 20, 2023 by TrackerNeil

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Hey, good luck!

I'm DMing a campaign right now, but I almost never plan things. Seriously. Unless I know there will be a fight, I don't bother, for two reasons:

1) I find that the more I try to control things at the table, the worse things get. In gaming as in life, when you most feel the need to clamp down is exactly when you should let go.

2) I have great players who possess a wealth of creativity and experience. So when we meet an NPC, I'll often ask a player to make up something about them. When the PCs spy out terrain, I'll ask for a skill check (say, Survival) and let whoever makes the roll tell us what is seen--the better the roll, the more control the player gets in determining the lay of the land.

When it comes to combat, sometimes I'll turn things over to a player. For example, the PCs were surveying land for a settlement, and along comes a pack of worg-riding goblins, intent on mayhem. This happened at the end of the session, so I asked, "Who wants to DM the fight next session?" One player, who had never before DMed, stepped right up, because it was a way she could be introduced to running a session without the stress of taking on an entire campaign. She did a bang-up job, BTW, and I played her character for that session. (I did a less bang-up job at running the character,  oh well.)

This won't work for everyone, admitting--my group is terrific--but it sure takes the stress out of DMing.

There's some good ideas there. One of my groups outsourced worldbuilding to the group back in the 1990s, so as the resident dwarf I designed the dwarven home kingdom, which was pretty cool. The same group DM had a nifty trick he'd play on having my character replaced by a doppelganger, so I'd have to roleplay the doppelganger impersonating my character (and not deliberately give the game away), which required some DM-player trust. The DM realised he couldn't give me XP (my character was in chains in a dungeon miles away the whole time) so bought dinner for me instead.

I have done some campaigns where players brought on board some of their real-life expertise to the game (someone who worked on the railway noted the safety features in modern trains, which the DM extrapolated to explain an out-of-control monorail bullet train thing in a futuristic SF setting).