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The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

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Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest gain: A much larger pool of potential players/DMs. If you limit yourself to other old farts who still have their battered old AD&D 1e books then that’s a pretty elite set of fortysomethings - my D&D Blue Book and my set of AD&D 1e is long gone, after three cross-country moves and one hurricane. Also 5e is AMAZING for giving out a TON of story hooks as part of the character creation process. Sure, you and…

> If you limit yourself to other old farts who still have their battered old AD&D 1e books AD&D/1e (and other pre-5e versions) books are available in hardcopy and PDF, new, today. There's certainly a network effect benefit to 5e today, but 1e isn't limited to people with battered copies from the 1980s.

FWIW I've had more Dungeon Masters/referees for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (a modern horror-themed retroclone of the 1983 Mentzer D&D Red Box) in my home city than any other edition of D&D or any other tabletop RPG.

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#92
If you have tried getting your friends to play D&D and they say, "too many rules," try Dungeon World. It's designed to be in a similar setting but uses much simpler rules. It also allows you to be much more collaborative in story-building, requiring substantially less DM prep.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonWorld/

http://www.dungeon-world.com/

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#93

If you have tried getting your friends to play D&D and they say, "too many rules," try Dungeon World. It's designed to be in a similar setting but uses much simpler rules. It also allows you to be much more collaborative in story-building, requiring substantially less DM prep. https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonWorld/ http://www.dungeon-world.com/

Try ADnD.

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#94
post #6

It's because of Stranger Things. The article sees it as a symptom, but from a lot of people I know, it's actually a cause. Shameless plug: If any of you have ever wanted to try DnD but didn't know how to get started, or if you've played before and want to start again, try playing my fun-optimized rule set, _DnD: TL;DR_ - https://github.com/Miserlou/dnd-tldr

Something as mass-market as Big Bang Theory did a D&D episode years before Stranger Things existed. It's been a much longer process than that.

Something more niche but still network TV (Community) did one a few years before that, even. That's around the same time I started noticing it popping up in more stores in suburban TX.

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#95
post #60
post #30

I think the main thing is 5th edition - it's really good. I briefly tried 4th edition and it just didn't feel right - way too combat heavy and video-gamey. Then 5th edition came out and it was immediately obvious that it had that 1st edition feel but with all the bugs worked out. I play it with my kids and it's awesome.

If you have any, I’d love tips for running a game for kids. (I’ve never DM’ed or played but am pretty familiar from many podcasts)

I would strongly suggest you take a look at "The Lazy DM" by Sky Flourish [0]. He has other books that are pretty good also. This method of running games will get you going immediately and takes almost no preparation. You will stumble a couple of times when you first try it, because it feels unnatural versus drawing everything out ahead of time. But once you get used to it, you'll never go back, and you'll be able to run any number of games with almost no preparation. That isn't to say you shouldn't prepare some things ahead of time: Great adventures and fantastic dungeons are always best created when you have the spark. But this method of running games will make you much, much more efficient with your (precious) time. I have a personal library of drop-in dungeons and adventures that I've created which I wrap with this method of running games. And if I didn't have this method, I don't think I would be able to run, since I just don't have the time as an adult with a regular job. Good luck!

[0] http://slyflourish.com/lazydm/

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#96
post #88

I tried getting friends to play RPG's in the early 1980's but they didn't show much interest until I came across a supply of 6" (150 mm) square pieces of styrofoam (discarded packing material from work) which I painted with gray acrylic paint. I cut some in half and some in quarters and used them to depict the dungeons for use with metal miniatures. After that I had a group which showed up every month for 5 years. I…

Not just empathy - it's also a sense of drama that's required. A DM writes the story in (semi-)real-time, whereas in CRPGs the "DM" (the writers) have to predict player actions in advance and railroad the players a lot more in order to get a good story progression going.

This is the key insight which many new DMs seem to miss. D&D isn't a "game", it's a framework for telling an engaging story together.

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#97
post #75

I'm not sure if it's resurrecting, or just improving it's image, either way it's welcome. Still, it is sad that it is so focused on one game: D&D. It's a decent game, particularly fifth edition, but I can't help finding it a bit... um, artless. Which isn't a problem, sometimes that's fun. But when there are so many amazing and sophisticated RPGs, with game mechanics that expand the form and support interesting play,…

As a total noob to all of this, where would I go to find helpful commentary on how these different games compare to each other and what they offer?

A good start would be the beginners guide on /rpg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/beginnersguide

If you've never seen how a particular game works and want to get a feel, search around and watch an episode or two of the game online. Rollplay on Youtube has a good channel that covers a lot of different types of games. You can also find games on Roll20's channel as well, and many more on Twitch and other channels.

As for game types, many of the ones listed here are very tailored games meant to play a very specific kind of game. I'll try to give you a summary of some of the popular ones.

Apocalypse World (AW) is a game, as you'd expect, about playing as a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic setting.

Night Witches is a varient of AW about a female bomber squadron in WWII.

Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about faithful 'God's Watchdogs' that go around Mormon-esque towns helping the community and enforcing the judgments of their religion.

Fate Accelerated or Fate Core is a mostly generic system meant to tell a lot of different kinds of stories. Fate Accelerated specifically is a very short and very flexible rulebook for whatever you could imagine.

D&D or Pathfinder are games about playing a group of adventurers in a tolkien-esque fantasy world, generally combat focused but you can play a lot of kinds of campaigns in D&D.

Dungeon World is a 'rules-lite' version of D&D based on the AW ruleset, which basically means it has a lot less rules and is more focused on the collective narrative.

Shadowrun is a game about telling cyberpunk heist stories in a fantasy/cyberpunk futuristic city run by megacorporations.

Blades in the Dark is a game about a scoundrel crew building their gang up from scratch in a city roughly based on the Thief or Dishonored games.

There's many more out there, it just depends on the kind of experience your group wants to have. Many of these rulesets are wildly different and the rules are tailored to create a specific kind of experience. Some of these rulesets are more generic and meant to be used to play a wide variety of games. Some are 'rules heavy/crunchy' which involve a lot more mechanics while some are 'rules light' and deliberately involve much less. D&D, Fate, Pathfinder are examples of more generic rulesets, whereas Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Night Witches, or Dogs in the Vineyard are much more specific.

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#98
I always wanted to give it a go, but could never find a group. Now as a careered adult with kids, it is even harder to find time to try this kind of thing, especially since my spouse has few gaming tendencies. Last year or so though, I saw a Pathfinder Humble Bundle for a bunch of rule books and I decided to buy them for fun. And that got me thinking..I started poking around some forums and ended up joining a play-by-post (PbP) Pathfinder campaign over at paizo.com.

I've really enjoyed myself! After a while I joined two more campaigns. A post or three a day is easy to fit in my schedule. It really gives me something to look forward to each morning as I sit down with some coffee.

e.g. http://paizo.com/campaigns/GMNayrsCarrionCrownAP/gameplay&pa...

Re: The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons

#100
post #82
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have any, I’d love tips for running a game for kids. (I’ve never DM’ed or played but am pretty familiar from many podcasts)

Honestly, forget about rules. Just tell a story and let them guide it. You can occasionally throw in some d20 rolls if you want to introduce some risk of failure, and from there perhaps start build in some bonuses which let them customise their characters. But the main thing is just collaborative storytelling (and bad jokes and accents) and the best role-playing sessions I've ever had have involved no dice rolls at a…

This is the truth of it. The gaming system in use is less important than the game world and the story you're telling.
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