DnD

[Kalvinator]

I know a lot of us play it, I'm not sure if there is already a topic, so I decided to make one. My group started recently, and after a 3 month long hiatus thanks to the one friend we put in charge of planing, we're playing it on Friday, and then going to The Hobbit. So, let us all share our stories of adventure.

[Ben-Jammin]

http://www.brikwars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10409

[Kalvinator]

http://www.brikwars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10409

Alright, I just go ahead and try to delete this, or if I can't... either let it fade into nothingness, or hope a mod deletes it.

[Zupponn]

[IVhorseman]

So I finally got convinced to play a game of 3.5, and I think I can finally understand why people are so frustrated by 4e's class systems. I'm still pretty ambivalent: they both do different things very well, and other things pretty terribly.

Anyways, I'm a pretty standard Halfling Rogue named Yardstick, and as comes with the deal, I've been robbing my party blind. Since I'm the best at finding shit as well as the best at picking locks, I get to open all the chests. Slight of hand has been helping me conceal things like small gems, and by the end of the dungeon I had about as much treasure as the rest of the party combined. I even got to sneak off from the group as they wandered around the halls of the guy who hired us to clear out his goblin infested fortress to go and steal about 1000 gold from the dude's safe. Eventually I broke my lockpick, but had more than enough to buy another ten masterwork lockpicks.

With my new score, I managed to buy a Tibetan Mastiff as a riding wardog, and it's better than pretty much everyone in the party at everything. The bastard has twice as much health as I do (after all, we're only level 2).

[Quantumsurfer]

So I finally got convinced to play a game of 3.5, and I think I can finally understand why people are so frustrated by 4e's class systems. I'm still pretty ambivalent: they both do different things very well, and other things pretty terribly.

I am too.  And anyone with a brain knows what they're getting into if they've given more than a cursory glance at the system.  Each system provides a certain potentially great play experience, if you've a DM and players that know how to get the best out of it and avoid what it sucks at like the plague.  Among RPGs, D&D has always had some of the weakest, most straightforward systems, so it's not all that surprising anyway.

With my new score, I managed to buy a Tibetan Mastiff as a riding wardog, and it's better than pretty much everyone in the party at everything. The bastard has twice as much health as I do (after all, we're only level 2).

3.5 was never very good at balancing that stuff anyway.  If you had been a ranger and had built your character well, you would have had a companion that was more combat able than any player in the party before you hit the dungeon.  But kudos anyway.  

Edit:  Or maybe not, at level 2.  lrn2read, Quantumsurfer.

[IVhorseman]

Oh yeah, that's definitely true. But then I wouldn't get to have sneak attacks  

Or a friggin +12 to hide at level 2.

[Quantumsurfer]

We do love them sneak attacks.

[Silverdream]

How did you guys find groups? Did you just have friends who were really into it or am I just terrible at networking?

[IVhorseman]

Nearly impossible. My first DnD experiences were from being introduced to it by one of my friends, who a) is an enormous flake and won't put in the effort to even make a character sheet, much less run a campaign as he kept saying he wanted to, and b) eventually decided that DnD is too nerdy of a thing, and he's too cool for that. As expected, he's easily the nerdiest and most socially awkward out of my friends.

I've tried running my own games to counteract that, but most of my friends don't have the patience to wait until it's their turn to do things in DnD (or bother even attempting to understand the rules), so it's usually not too good of a fit. I can get my girlfriend to play when she's in town, but it takes more than two to play.

This current group kinda came out of nowhere: one of my newer friends was talking about how he wanted to run a 3.5 game, and I told him I would since I know how hard it is to get other people to actually play with you. He had a friend who was down, i found two who were willing, and by word-of-mouth it's spread to become a party of 6. With that many people it just gets harder and harder to find out when we can all meet up, but we've played without a member or two just fine.

[Quantumsurfer]

That...is a really long story.  I'll try to condense.

I've been part of seven groups, more or less, since I started playing when I was 8.  Some have bled members into others.
I started with my aunt and her husband.

I played with some kids from my neighborhood when I was preteen.  We didn't play D&D, though.  Star Wars by West End Games.  I saved up for it for a couple of months (we were poor but I got an allowance) and sent away for it by mail order.  Christ, that makes me feel old.

Didn't play D&D til I was 16.  Got the core set of AD&D for my 16th birthday.  Got some kids to play during lunch at school.

Set up a group later with a group of friends from that same year (I had 4 diff high schools) of school (except we were friends outside of school).  Remained friends with those guys, played games with them intermittently to adulthood, and occasionally play games with them in person and online still.

In college, met an old friend (J) from one of those high schools who gamed and I didn't know it.  We decided to form up with a guy (Je) I worked with who was always reminiscing about his glory D&D days in high school.  Got the ex to play (which I would come to regret).  Later, met up with an old friend (B) who had briefly worked with me and the other guy at Kroger who gamed hardcore.

That group eventually morphed into a larger group.  The friend from college (J) brought in a friend (W) of his from his work.  In turn, W brought in C, briefly.  B brought in A for a little while.  I had a roommate (Ja) who played for a little while and brought in his old friend (Ch), who stayed with us for a long time but eventually moved to LA.  Somehow or other, a lot of us knew a guy who worked at the local arcade (Bi) who joined us for several years until we booted him for being a manipulative twat.  A left with him.  I don't know if I accounted for everyone, but at one point we had 9 people in the group, which was unwieldy as fuck.  At some point W and I got into a huge fight, the group splintered and dissolved.

B, the ex, and I had ended up as roommates during that time.  B was my roommate until last year and was the only person to survive the transition to my new group, which I put together in 2008.  I broke up with the ex, weirdly suffered her continued presence for a lot longer than I should have, and met my wife soon after.  My wife willingly joined, being interested of her own accord.  I worked at the local theater for awhile and there met a guy who played with us for a session but introduced us to T, who remains with us now.  A shift manager there (Jac) joined us for a couple of years and brought with him a friend of his (R).  Both are on hiatus now.  W and I met and made up and he joined our new group, bringing C with him after about a year.  At one point or another, we've had 8 core members and 8 guest players who played everything from a single session to an entire game with us.  Friends of friends all.  I organized this group far better, though.  I set up a schedule, a facebook page, and a master log to record our games and pertinent group info.  We've also had a meeting or two just to talk about how we want to approach this thing and what we want out of it.  We've even got a pretentious sounding group name.  It's anal, I know, but I've had far more luck with completing games, having fun, and still telling good stories with this group.  We're a lot more cohesive than any of my others because our communication is so much better.

So, most of my experiences have been friend of a friend happy accidents.  But none of them would've happened (except for my introduction to Roleplaying) had I not taken charge and persuaded someone to play with me.  (Heh.)

[Arkbrik]

I talked about my gripes with 4th edition in the last thread, but it's not a bad system. It's just too complex and combat-focused for my liking. Then I found the B/X D&D books, and the playstyle of those rules were more interesting to me... but the system was very disparate. Weird saving throws, sometimes you want to roll high and sometimes low, etc. So I combined the simple and all-encompassing conflict resolution mechanics from 4th edition with the rules-lite B/X, and got... well, you can see for yourselves in the RPG thread.

This is my favorite D&D blog, by the way: http://www.dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com

[Silverdream]

So basically I'm just a terrible networker.

[Keldoclock]

Please don't play Rogue in unmodified 3.5! You've gimped yourself.

You're doing well now but in a few levels the casters of the party will start to be able to duplicate all of your abilities, do more damage, and in general make you obsolete! However- if you can Op well and your friends cannot, you may yet be able to salvage this.

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Halfling_Hurle ... r_Build%29 (this is a good optimized build, without going nuts and pulling from a million sourcebooks so that you are not a 30-limbed monstrosity that can cast 9th level wizard spells and shit dragons)

[Quantumsurfer]

So basically I'm just a terrible networker.

Oh, I don't know.  I'm not exactly a social butterfly, mate.  Like I said, most of my connections are made through other people.  I strongarm/persuade/get lucky enough to find someone and then just remain amenable to most of their suggestions for players.

I have no idea how it is where you are but there are a fair few gamers around me.  We had some failed gaming stores in the relatively small city where I live and that brought us into one another's fields of view for a time, so I've seen quite a few other groups form up in various ways as well.

If there is a gaming store near you, you might try hanging out for awhile and joining some of the in house games there.  Depending on the store, you might have more luck easing into it by playing whatever is popular and then finding out if anyone RPs.  We had one store here that was very wargame (40K, mostly) focused and one that was very card game (magic and yugioh/pokemon) focused.  I've seen large D&D groups spring up out of the card gamers especially.  And you'd have a place to play, if you don't mind the noise.

We have a store here called Hastings.  Its a chain but they like to do a lot of local stuff.  When I worked at ours, we had a group that got together often to game during and after hours.  Then, it was mostly MageKnight.  I'd forgotten to mention that group...I also ran a couple of RPGs with some of those guys for a little while.  Now, the store hosts a D&D game for kids...which is super boneriffic and run by a total neckbearded idiot, but still.  Sometimes, in addition, places like these will have bulletin boards for people seeking group members.  I found myself at my first (and last) LARP this way.  But its not always a bust.

I don't know if you work anywhere, but that's always a good place to drop the line.  Could be anywhere, though.  I've found that mentioning D&D in casual conversation gets all kinds of people excited.  A lot of "oh, I've heard of that" and "I've always wanted to try!"  Only about a quarter of those people ever follow through, but still.