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The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

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Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#231

Post by dkersten »

Moru wrote: post #212
dkersten wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about text based games for blind people, but since I don't know any blind people that I can easily ask this, I'll put it here in the hopes that somebody who knows the answer will notice it: Presumably, text based games are played with a screen reader. Would music and sound interfere with the persons ability to play? I was wondering if you could mix text and 3D audio to create a richer environment.

That is different from person to person. As long as it's not overpowering the voice it should be ok for most. Many preffer to be able to set the reading speed though (2x and 3x not uncommon) and to be able to skip to the important part of the message. Especially important when you can't use visual pattern scanning on text that shows up often. Mabe use the browser to create a textbased game? The tools exists there alr…

Thanks.

I’m especially interested in creating a 3D soundscape, maybe something similar to what is described here: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131900/playing_by_ear... but not necessarily instead of text, but rather to augment it. Based on what you’re saying, it would probably work well enough: have separate volume controls for music, ambient sound and sound effects (as most games have already anyway — many games have a voice volume too, but I guess voice should be left wholly up to the screen reader and it should control the volume/speed).

Using a browser sounds like a good idea. Definitely wouldn’t want to implement screen reading capability yourself!

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#232

Post by bluntfang »

gambiting wrote: post #144
tomc1985 wrote: post #66

What a shame that all this attention goes to D&D. There are so many other good tabletop games with exquisite worldbuilding, languishing for attention... Vampire: The Masquerade, RIFTS (my personal fav)

I mean, in a casual discussion I'd frequently say that I "play D&D all the time" even though I have never in my life played Dungeons and Dragons - we usually play derivatives of DnD and other roleplaying games. But DnD is something that most people at least recognize so for me it became a generic term for roleplaying game, just like hoover became a generic term for a vacuum cleaner.

dnd is the kleenex of table top RPGs?

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#233

Post by lscotte »

mcv wrote: post #188
hellepardo wrote: post #61

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…

Nice to see mention of Traveller, I thought I was the only person that even knows about it anymore. I think I spent more time designing ships than actually playing it, but I have fond memories of both Traveller and Car Wars (and still have the sets along with my AD&D books and modules).

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#234

Post by pull_my_finger »

hellepardo wrote: post #225
mcv wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about MUDs? There are a lot of choices with screen reader support these days.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#235

Post by Rooster61 »

hellepardo wrote: post #227
Eupolemos wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I love theater of the mind sessions. Maps have their purpose, but it's so much more fluid and imagination-intensive when your boundaries are visualized by your mind. The game loses something when you tie it down with predrawn environments and grids.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#236

Post by thebouv »

beefsack wrote: post #157

I've tried and failed to get into some RPG campaigns in a few different systems (my general anxiety didn't help) but I listen to and absolutely adore The Adventure Zone podcast[1]. There's scope for some really wonderful collaborative storytelling in these systems, and the TAZ group are a few brothers and their dad and they gel together perfectly. Helps that they have lots of podcasting experience too, very high qual…

I used to listen to TAZ but once the story started getting more and more away from traditional fantasy or even high fantasy, I got bored with it. Specifically the Crystal Kingdom arc drove me away. Just couldn't get into it.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#237

Post by Rooster61 »

I love DnD 5e and its approachability/newb-friendlyness. That said, the game I have become enamored with here recently (one that I feel is underrated) is Shadowrun.

It gets a bad rep (somewhat deservedly so) because of its overwhelming depth and detail/learning curve, and the pretty horribly written core handbook. But once you get past the pointy bits and really learn the utility of the system, it's a pretty fantastic game that really scratches that itch for cyberpunk fantasy.

It isn't just DnD plopped into fake leather trenchcoats and hacky-hacky terminals (it has those things, of course). The gameplay is set up differently, and has a heist-movie like flow, consisting of "shadowruns" which are follow a meet client->make plan->prepare->execute flow, and lends itself well to one-off sessions.

Give it a shot if someone around is interested and has played it before. You might like it.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#238

Post by mcv »

VLM wrote: post #218
mcv wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warhammer (Fantasy Battle and 40K) is a beautiful but incredibly expensive hobby. But Cubicle7 Games has just published the 4th edition to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, so that aspect of Warhammer is back too.

Fairly cheap per hour. I think it realistic to be less than 25 cents per hour. I suppose it depends how much effort you put into detailing, and playing.

How much it is per hour depends entirely on how often you play it. A Warhammer army can easily cost hundreds of dollars, and over $1000 is not unheard of. It can be cheaper, but RPGs can be completely free and eat up as much or as little time as you want.

Though I suppose if you count the time spent painting the minis as time spent playing, it's likely to end up fairly cheap per hour.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#240

Post by mcv »

lscotte wrote: post #233
mcv wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nice to see mention of Traveller, I thought I was the only person that even knows about it anymore. I think I spent more time designing ships than actually playing it, but I have fond memories of both Traveller and Car Wars (and still have the sets along with my AD&D books and modules).

Traveller definitely still exists, but I have no idea how many editions there are these days. I'm not sure anyone knows.
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