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The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

inlander.com

221–230 of 292 posts

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#221
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have several blind friends who were very successful in text based MUDs. It's possible finding one with an active userbase is getting harder and harder.

These days, the number of non-pay MUDs with an average of 100+ people on them at a time can be counted on two hands.

http://astaria.net/wm_client/webclient.php is still going, but I think it has only a few dozen on average.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#222
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

L oeil Noir! Surprised to know it still lives on. Is the scene very active?

It's still very popular in Germany with new adventures, boxes and also a lot of novels set in the universe being released. As an aside: I also really like the old PC games "Das Schwarze Auge: Die Nordland-Trilogie" (Realms of Arkania in English iirc) but it's a very unique/strange adaptation. It's very close to the game system but has been criticized quite a bit for the gameplay content (I actually liked the storylin…

There's a remake of Realms of Arkania which has been released a few years ago.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#223
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your list is excellent, but wanted to throw one more out there: Cyberpunk 2020.

Definitely a great game too. But there are dozens, if not hundreds, of games I have omitted. There's a lot out there.

I’d probably say thousands of games we both omitted, but it wasn’t my intent to list them all and very likely not yours either.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#224
I got into D&D by chance around 2009. Unfortunately I started with 4th Edition (I know...), but I'm very happy that I did, because all throughout High School I was one of the outcasts, but never had any of these mediums to confide in, and often made fun of "nerds" even though I technically was one. Just playing D&D has given me another way to meet new people and do something other than play video games in my free time. I only wish I had more time in the week. I have too many hobbies.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#225
post #188

My friends and I play D&D because we have no real other option. We used to play Minecraft and other collaborative building games as a group, but then one in our group went fully blind. There is a complete lack of good multiplayer computer games for entirely blind players (admittedly that is quite a challenge), but D&D requires only imagination, which all of us still have. Highly recommend if you have friends with vis…

No real other option? There are dozens of other excellent RPGs available that rely more on imagination than sight. D&D is merely the gateway game. There are of course D&D spin-offs and clones like Pathfinder and 13th Age, old school (OSR) "retro-clones" like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Lamentations of the Flame Princess and many, many others. Then there are the classic non-D&D games like Shadowrun (in its 5th edition now…

Ah, sorry, you are absolutely right. When I said 'no real other option' I was missing the numerous other RPGs that are out there. I did not mean to denigrate them by omission. I meant more that we were forced away from computer games.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#226
post #205

I am still running a campaign that started in 1979, with many of the same players. We can only manage once/month, because getting 8-9 adults together is a scheduling nightmare (thanks Doodle!), but we still love it just as much.

Have the lifestyles of the characters changed with the people who play them?

This is a great question. I can see changes reflected in the characters I want create as I go through different things in life, and I've only been playing for a few years.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#227

My friends and I play D&D because we have no real other option. We used to play Minecraft and other collaborative building games as a group, but then one in our group went fully blind. There is a complete lack of good multiplayer computer games for entirely blind players (admittedly that is quite a challenge), but D&D requires only imagination, which all of us still have. Highly recommend if you have friends with vis…

I was wondering - do you tell your blind friend what he/she rolls or how do you deal with dice?

If we are in the same place, either someone else will roll for him or he'll roll and we'll tell him what he got (and he has little choice but to trust us :)). If we aren't in the same place, he rolls virtually (did you know you can type '/roll 1d20' in Google Hangouts and it rolls?) and gets the result via a screen reader.

For a while he was DMing and he would use a screenreader to access his notes plus the rolls. We don't typically use maps or boards, but instead try to do it all with descriptions of places. It does mean that the rooms we enter all tend to be fairly simply shaped, and it's possible that each of us has pictured a slightly different room, but it all works out in the end.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#229

My friends and I play D&D because we have no real other option. We used to play Minecraft and other collaborative building games as a group, but then one in our group went fully blind. There is a complete lack of good multiplayer computer games for entirely blind players (admittedly that is quite a challenge), but D&D requires only imagination, which all of us still have. Highly recommend if you have friends with vis…

Can you please ask your friend from the blind community's perspective, what their take is on using Minecraft Education Edition as a way to access Minecraft? It is more programmable than Minecraft Jave Edition, and supposedly one can interact with the game completely from within the API. The API [1] looks fairly complete, but I can't tell if it has what a blind game player would want to build from. I just saw a pic-to…

A couple of thoughts on Minecraft, though note I am not familiar with Education Edition:

1. We played Minecraft with the specific intent of making visually appealing buildings. So at some point, when you can't see, that's not going to be fun no matter what you do...

2. Minecraft really doesn't have any accessibility whatsoever. You can scale the UI, but... high contrast mode? If you could even get that working with the base game, it's definitely not going to work with the mods we were playing with. As my friend went blind, it got harder and harder for him to deal with any zombies or anything that was moving, since it took him so long to slowly scan the screen and understand where he was. We considered trying to make mods to make things a little bit easier, but struggled with coming up with any mod that would actually improve things. :)

3. My quick glance at the API suggests that we'd end up with a situation where we were playing the game and he was... programming. That may work for some people, but I think for this group that borders too close on after-hours work...

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#230
post #89

If you enjoy D&D then Critcal Role[1] is a must watch. Matt Merser is an amazing DM. And the other players(all professional voice actors) are really good as well. It’s great sit on the couch for a while or watch while working type of fare. Each episode is multiple hours of great voice acting and D&D. [1] https://critrole.com

Thanks; as someone who has never played "hardware" DnD, this looks very interesting!
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