So who here plays D&D?

[Chovexani]

And before you protest at outing yourself as a geek...I saw quite a few of you on those Frank Gorshin threads earlier...you're already busted!! *laugh/snort*

I'm DMing a rather entertaining campaign at the moment, in a homebrew campaign world of mine that is a strange hodgepodge of David Eddings, Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Zelda, and various Final Fantasy games. I'm allergic to 3E and so are my friends, so we use an amalgamation of 1E, Unearthed Arcana, 2E and a handful of retrofitted 3E things as house rules (spontaneous healing spells for clerics, etc). Don't ask, it just works. :D Here's our cast of characters:

-Daeron Anwamane, lvl 3 CG Elven Ranger. The town slut of Kokiri Village. A fact he's quite proud of. :P

-Naeron Anwamane, lvl 2/2 CG Elven Mage/Thief (Acrobat kit). Daeron's bimbo twin sister with an 8 wisdom. Will steal anything that isn't nailed down. Bought a "magic" ring from a gnome named Sleazenose. :crazy:

-Sion Taranduil, lvl 3 CN Elven Fighter/Mage (Bladesinger). The quiet but deadly anti-hero with a chip on his shoulder. He's looking for the Drow raiders who killed his family, for a little revenge. Which brings us to...

-Kariza de'Camyras, lvl 3/3/3 CG Drow Ranger/Mage/Sword Dancer of Eilistraee. Sixth Princess of Zhanduril's Second House, who fled the Underdark with her lover, a prince of a rival house who was eventually murdered by her brother. This same brother of hers also led the raid on Sion's village, but neither Sion nor Kariza knows that atm. It's As the Elf Turns!

-Seung Mina, lvl 3 NG Spirit Folk Fighter. A shapely martial artist they found when she was outnumbered by a band of highwaymen. She has a crush on Daeron and once outdrank an orc chieftain. :beer:

-Niki Pharsalos, lvl 4/4 NG Half-Elven Thief/Bard (Gypsy kit). Daeron's enthusiastic boyfriend. Headliner of the not-quite world famous Niki and the Magical Dreamers, but that's only his day job--he's actually a spy for the Royal Tasnican Intelligence Agency. The group met him while they were working for the Full Moon Traveling Carnivale. The group knows he's a spy, but what they don't know is the real reason he was abandoned and raised by gypsies. He's the bastard son and only heir of the King of Valendia.

The overreaching storyline has them trying to unlock the mysteries behind a strange, magically encrypted map they found during the very first adventure, a simple dungeon crawl. Along the way so far they've been captured by Drow slavers, worked as carnies in a circus, got stoned with a bunch of halfling druids, and lost in the desert. And they're only level 3! :D

[SlavesandBulldozers]

1. geek award

:party: CONGRATULATIONS!

[Chovexani]

2. Whee!

What did I win?! :D

[Book Lover]

3. I must protest the geek award

I only see D20s in that photo. Where's your old AD&D dice set with the D4's and D8's?

[Chovexani]

4. That was a pic I found on Google.

I don't have a digital camera or else I'd show you my dice bag.

Ever step on a d4? I throw them to show how caltrops scatter. :scared:

[Book Lover]

6. Show me your dice bag?

I'll have you know I'm a happily married woman! :-)

on edit: I forgot to say in my original post - I have been trying to use 3 or 3.5, but I just can't easily learn new tricks. Rolemaster is what gets used mostly in my house...

[Chovexani]

7. LOL!

How about if I buy you pizza first? No one has to know. ;)

It's always good to see nerd women can find love. I dragged my poor boyfriend into my geeky lifestyle and the poor guy hasn't been the same since. He actually pesters me to make him anime character outfits. :silly:

[Book Lover]

8. Oh, I've always been with "geeky" fellas

You had the hard road, getting your guy to come over to our side...

[Ready4Change]

15. Not into 3 or 3.5 either.

I used to play original D&D (the tan, pre AD&D books.) I stopped when people started playing AD&D and wouldn't play anything but store bought scenarios. (I prefer using creativity and brewing my own.) I kept playing other RPGs though. Boot Hill, Space Quesst, Traveller, and numerous other wargames.

Lately a nephew has gotten interested in D&D, but he's only played some bare minimum version with a single scenario. He found out I used to play, so being a good uncle I got a set of the latest, the 3.5 books.

What a mess. They look real pretty, but poorly organized and it seems like EVERYTHING is handled via special case. Way too much for an introduction for my young nephew.

So, I'm currently boiling together a set of lite d&d rules. Mixing in some old school tan book stuff, some 3.5 stuff, some "this is how I think it should be" stuff. I'm such a game/rules geek I'm having a good time, and we haven't even played once yet.

And yes, i've got lots of dice, but have always kept them in a cardboard box or ziplock bags.

:tinfoilhat: We need a geek smilie. Just imagine the tinfoil with a beanie propellor. :)

[Book Lover]

16. Ooh! Brew your own - I like it

I found that happened in my neck of the woods more when Dragon started Dungeon. I think your idea of modifying rules as a "lite" set is great. One thing I really *do* like about 3 is the addition of feats (or, to those of us who encountered them first in Fallout, perks). I vote you include those :-)

Our dice reside in a wooden bowl, fwiw...

[Ready4Change]

18. What separates feats from skills?

Reading 3.5 I'm not convinced there's a need for a difference?

Thanks!

[politicat]

19. I dragged Mr. Pcat away from NWN to get this description.

feats are special abilities and you get one when you start off and one every 3 levels. You can also get a special ones for class.

A skill is something which most people can learn; there are some that every character class can learn; there are some that are character class specific (like perform for bards and empathy for druids and rangers.) You put points in to better yourself at it (invest the time to learn it).

The other difference is that all skills have a success roll against a D20; most feats don't have that. (Of course, there are exceptions, but Mr. Pcat wants to get back to NWN.)

He says that playing Neverwinter Nights really helped him understand the game mechanics.

(We can't find a local group to play with that won't make us want to poison them....)

Pcat

[Chovexani]

21. I'm boycotting 3.5

What a load of crap. I've read through the core books at my local hobby shops and it's pure, cash-driven marketing nonsense--setting aside the fact that this has come out only 2 years after 3rd edition. 3rd edition I can understand, because it had been years since 2E came out and some people felt things needed to be streamlined. But 3.5 so fast? I heard that the idea was actually floated around WotC during the development of 3E if they needed some quick cash.

My biggest gripe about 3.5 though, aside from the way it nerfed rangers (my favorite class), is that miniatures are now REQUIRED to play the game. I was never a fan of miniatures, it was one more expense in an already piggy bank-busting hobby (and I have several), and I didn't come to AD&D from a wargaming background so I never found them necessary. In my junior high group we used chess boards and tokens to show where we were in combats and it worked for us. The 3.5 books demand that you use them, though--the combat rules assume you use them. This is something that I would not mind seeing in a supplement for those who like minis, but in the core rules? And isn't it funny WotC just happens to have mini lines out now? :puke:

Hasbro was the worst thing to happen to this hobby in a long time.

[Ready4Change]

23. Re-Reading the tan original books was refreshing.

They aren't the best RPG rules I've ever read either. (They were the first ever made, so that's to be expected.) But they made no attempt to be fixed in stone, either. They really invite modifications.

[Chovexani]

25. I confess I've never seen them

I did have the "First Quest" set that came out a while back when 2E was still hot, that I think was basic D&D rules. Unfortunately my fundie mom got rid of it when she tossed out all my roleplaying stuff in high school. :(

I discovered a wonderful site that sells out of print roleplaying games and they have a lot of the old TSR stuff: http://www.nobleknight.com/
I wanted to get some of the old modules for nostalgia's sake: Temple of Elemental Evil, the Queen of the Demonweb pits series with the giants and drow, etc.

[Ready4Change]

28. These are the ones

http://www.acaeum.com/DDIndexes/SetPages/Original.html

Also got some supplements from here.

http://www.acaeum.com/DDIndexes/SetPages/Supplements.html

It's funny. I've realized much of my knowlege of ancient religions and pantheons come right from the supplement Gods, Demi Gods and Heros. Friggen lot of knowledge went into some of those books.

[Chovexani]

29. Wow

Thanks for the history lesson. :)

I know what you mean about learning ancient religions from D&D though. I actually had a mythology teacher take me and some other people from the fantasy roleplaying club in my high school aside, because we all got perfect scores on a particular test. We tried in vain to explain we weren't cheaters, we just knew Deities & Demigodes REALLY well. :)

[Ready4Change]

31. But didn't he wonder what you meant when you all said

That Hermes should have had at least 30 hit die?

(I admit I don't have the books handy, so I've no idea what # of hit die the various gods had in those books.)

Seriously, those games, and later ones, have given me reason to use far more of what I learned in public school and college than any job I've ever held. Writing, math, history, science. I've studied up on physics to figure out how fast cars in Car Wars should decelerate. I've hunted down astronomy sites on the web to find out how to convert the coordinate systems sky watchers use into XYZ coordinates in order to create a reality based star map for a Traveller campaign.

One can learn a heck of a lot playing silly old games.

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

26. What's this about miniatures?

3.5e doesn't "demand" that you use miniatures any more than 3e did. It's best if you have something to represent the relative positions of all the characters, but there's nothing to stop you from using the same old chessboard and tokens (though an 8x8 grid is probably too small).

Yes, the diagrams in the 3.5e books assume you're using D&D Miniatures. So what? That doesn't mean you're automatically required to use them. There's nothing magical about the "official" miniatures line that makes them any different from bottlecaps or pieces of dowel.

[Chovexani]

27. Because it shouldn't be core rules

One of the few things that bugged me about 1E was the PHB/DMG's insistance on using inches for everything, because back then most people who played D&D were wargamers with extensive lead collections (including Gygax). I didn't like using minis back then because I suck at painting them and I find them limiting from a roleplaying standpoint. To each their own, but the none of the groups I've played with ever had the kind of mini fetish some people seem to have.

I wouldn't mind it so much if they didn't apply the CCG mentality to their minis--even if I wanted to buy them (some of them do look nice, and the fact they're pre-painted appeals to artistically challenged folks like me), I don't like the idea of spending that much money on a set hoping to get an elven archer and getting some dwarves or something. This smacks of trying to appeal to the Comic Book Guy segment of fandom who will snap up anything and everything as long as it says "Collector's" on it. It might be a sound business strategy, but people like that drove me away from M:tG and I know I'm not alone.

At any rate, I just think this stuff doesn't belong in core rules, let alone as a requirement to play (which IIRC the 3.5 PHB does, in the front of it). It'd be one thing if they included combat rules for minis in a separate supplement akin to the old BattleSystem stuff for 2e, but in the PHB? Eat me, Hasbro. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what they do IMO, because unless they start reprinting the older supplements, they're not getting any money out of me. I passed on 3E because I felt comfortable with the 2E rules and didn't feel like I needed to change for the sake of it, though there are a few things from it I have adopted as house rules in my 2E. I don't like the Monty Haul munckinism 3E seems to encourage. Though, ironically, I like it in the D&D computer games--that system fits video games like a glove because it's streamlined.

[RoyGBiv]

34. My personal opinion ...

...based on nothing but examining the rules sets and seeing how they are being applied is that 3E, particularly 3.5, was developed with video games in mind. As you say, they actually make sense in that kind of environment. 2E rules are hard to translate. Many of the criticisms that do exist with regard to Baldur's Gate revolve around rules implementation and the fact that a lot of stuff that was generally left up to DM discretion in 2E rules didn't translate well into a computer game format.

Personally, I've never been able to play for long with people who don't use some sort of "house rules" system. I've always used the rules system as a guide that I follow pretty closely on the major stuff, but I started playing with the original release, moved on to AD&D, then 2E. My games were always a combination of what I considered the best parts of the gaming system as a whole. I had another friend who DM-ed a lot of games who would build his campaigns around a merged version of SpaceMaster and AD&D. That was freaky, but fun. He was a great DM.

I'm apparently too old to play now. None of my friends have any desire any long, some think I'm just weird, and to younger folks, I'm just a creepy older guy. I think they see me as being like that Simpson's character. :-)

Oh well, as long as I have my computer, I can still play.

[Ready4Change]

35. Give them time.

My old gaming buddies stopped for a while, as they got busy with famlies, etc. But there was always a dialog on how we should start up again. A couple years back we did and we've been playing ever since, albiet not as frequently as we did when we were younger.

[Ready4Change]

30. It started before Hasbro.

To me AD&D was too commericialized. It just seemed no one would make up their own worlds for adventures. To me the process of creating our own gaming universe was part, if not most, of the fun. (Yah, I like reffing, too.)

I've never tried those hero-clix games largely because it seems they are mostly a vehicle for selling hunks of plastic. Am I wrong there?

[porkrind]

33. Geek Hierarchy

Here is where you fit in ... :)



(Don't worry, I'm on the chart too.) :) BTW, what are furries? Also, I kind of like the sound of "erotic fanfic writers." Where do I meet these people? :)

[Gothic Sponge]

5. I haven't played since high school.

[Lost147]

9. EX DnDer

After a played Baldurs Gate series (video game) I wanted to try the real game and played it a bit with some friends. We could never be serious and just screwed around all night and usually ended up going somewhere else or getting drunk.

[DontBlameMe]

10. Not anymore. Now, it's just Neverwinter Nights.

Occasionally, I break out Baldur's Gate.

[Chovexani]

11. Baldur's Gate is fun.

I just gave NWN another chance after getting the expansions. I'm a little bit into Shadows of Undrentide right now (I'm off to kill that elf lady in the High Forest). It's much better than the original campaign that shipped with the game.

I don't see the computer games as a replacement for old-fashioned tabletop D&D but they're good when I need a fix and my friends are too busy. :)

I like the Baldur's Gate games because there's so many different NPCs you can add to your group. Not to mention all the fan-made stuff out there.

[DontBlameMe]

12. Hordes of the Underdark is by far the best of the three.

Levels up to 40, Epic levels and feats, +10 enchantments, etc.

Also, the campaign pretty much rocks. I highly recommend it.

Oh, also, some of the fan content on Neverwinter Vault is pretty damn good.

[RoyGBiv]

13. Agreed...

The original campaign left me cold, especially since I bought it because I was a fan of BG.

HoE is definitely a reason to buy the game.

[Chovexani]

24. I'm really looking forward to HotU

I'm planning on importing my Undrentide character to it. From what I understand my favorite D&D Goddess finally gets a mention in it. :D (Eilistraee rules!)

I haven't tried any of the fan modules yet but I have downloaded a whole bunch. One of the reasons I love Baldur's Gate/2 is all the great fan-made stuff for it. My absolute favorite mod makes Solaufein from Ust Natha a recruitable NPC that you can romance regardless of your PC's gender, and the dialogue with him is 100 times better written than the official romances. Color me pleasantly surprised when I found out a fan of the mod made a NWN module with Sola as a romancable henchman. :D

[RoyGBiv]

14. Drool ...

It's sad. I salivate when I see a pile of dice like that.

I think one of the things I don't like about 3E rules is that they take away the need for my enormous dice collection. :-)

[Chovexani]

22. I love dice.

Do you have any silly superstitions about your dice? There was a kid I used to play with in junior high who was nuts when it came to his dice. If he kept getting bad rolls with a die he would take it out and smash it in front of his other dice in order to make an example out of it. :crazy:

[RoyGBiv]

32. Well, yes actually ...

I've never taken it *that* far, but I have a set of percentile dice (two 10-siders) that I *must* use, and the clear green one is always high, the solid blue one always low. I once lost this set -- it was hidden from me -- while DM-ing a campaign, and I would swear this was the reason the players were getting away with murder, sometimes literally. The fact it was hidden tells me others had bought into the superstition as well. :-)

I also have this weird thing I can't explain with all 4-siders. Something about them strikes me as very wrong. :crazy:

I have this urge to go play BG now. Downloaded a mod I'd never played before the other day.

[EstimatedProphet]

17. Haven't played in years

But in my younger days I thought of D&D as a vitamin.
I've got a friend who still plays though, and he likes 3E. Said it cleaned up a lot of the problems I had with "micromanagement" in 2E.

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

20. I would, if I had a group.

Sadly, I don't know any other game fans in my area. I just found a great game store downtown, though, so maybe that'll open some doors.