ive always wondered what D&D is, it has always confused and bothered me, like what do you do? do you have a board and play around or is it ....ahhh i dunno...its confusing!

Written by Necrogeddon on 22.04.2008 at 23:32

ive always wondered what D&D is, it has always confused and bothered me, like what do you do? do you have a board and play around or is it ....ahhh i dunno...its confusing!

Think of it as interactive storytelling. The storyteller, or Dungeon Master (DM), imagines a fantasy world complete with monsters, treasure, and medieval civilizations. The DM then writes down everything he has imagined for future reference. The DM will often draw up elaborate maps to depict this fictional world.

The players of D&D create imaginary fantasy characters (Player Characters, or PCs) with personalities, back stories, physical and mental characteristics, magical powers, special abilities, strengths and weaknesses. During the game, players will pretend to be these fictional PCs that they created. For example, in a game of D&D, I would pretend to be Garm the Merciless Barbarian instead of who I really am (Mike the Accounting Clerk).

The game begins when the players pretend to "explore" the fantasy world while being verbally guided by the DM (who explains what they see, where they are, who is approached them, the time of day, etc.) The fun part is that the decisions made by the players determine how the story unfolds. Of course, the DM must refer to his notes and maps whenever he forgets some detail of his imaginary world.

@Orchid: As for the technical part of it, well, there's not much too remember. All you need is a pencil, some paper, and your imagination. Of course I could get into the rules and other aspects but at this point it's not really a necessity.

ahh coolies thanks alot!

So it seems there are several of us here who play D&D. One thing you get when players run into each other is the grand question "what is your favorite character you have played?"

For me, it was Rensor Lemour, the Shadow of the Hemlocks. Rensor, more commonly called 'Hemlock' by the other PC's, was an Elven Ranger/Dragon Stalker with a bit of a disgruntled attitude about working with others. He prided himself on the fact that he lived for half a century with no one ever seeing him, and could disappear in the wilderness without a trace. He was also one heck of a shot having focused his combat skills strictly in archery. With amazing bow skills he carried two great arrows with him (3d8 dmg each!) as well as some poisoned and explosive arrows.

Yet behind the cold blank expressions of this master archer, there was a soft spot for protecting the innocent, especially give safe passage through his woods. Rensor also sought out to kill any Chromatic Dragons that threatened others, for Rensor was a mighty Dragon Stalker. Anyone fool could be a Dragon Slayer and get them selves killed within seconds of walking upon the might beasts, but few could track a Dragon for weeks without the Dragon ever knowing he was there, then strike the beast down with one attack.

Oh...Rensor also loved to smoke pipes and drink ale while telling bad jokes in a low, monotone voice.

SO how about you all? Favorite characters?

Written by Dane Train on 26.04.2008 at 17:03

Oh...Rensor also loved to smoke pipes and drink ale while telling bad jokes in a low, monotone voice.

SO how about you all? Favorite characters?

LMAO at your Rensor... i'd play D& D but i don't know anyone who would like to play with me

My first D&D character was a chaotic evil tiefling necromancer, and we were playing in the Ravenloft setting. My character was from a small inbred backwater village and hated everybody who lived there, so one day he had some sort of conflict with the other villagers, which included killing and burning something (don't remember the details though) after which he fled his village.
That was the pre-game story. He didn't last vey long, so I'm going to tell his story, it may be a bit long, but then again if you don't feel like reading through it, just ignore the following part.

I remember that in the game he and the two other evil characters came across a village that was trapped in time so that the same events would always happen there, the village was also haunted by hostile ghosts and it was impossible to leave the area surrounding the village.
Anyway, we came across a building that was not affected by the timewarp and discovered an old man living there. He told us that the village is cursed and he needs our help with trying to solve the mystery, so that the village would let us go. My character didn't like his tone, as the guy was talking in this cliché "elderly wise man" manner, like he was wiser than my character and that irritated my character, since he had a very low self-esteem and was easily offended, so he (my character) started verbally abusing the guy. He was telling him that he was an useless weak and feeble minded old man and should just drop dead and that we don't give a rat's arse about the curse. We started arguing with the old guy and I got a little carried away and thus my character began taunting the guy with in an extremely offensive manner (nothing vulgar though), so that the DM got pissed off at me and told me that the old guy died because of heart failure, because of the verbal abuse by my character.
We proceeded with looting his body, and mutilating his corpse and my character cut off one of his ears, penis and ballsack. Then we discovered his library, unfortunately one of the other guys who was also chaotic evil set the books on fire, which irritated my character.
I am not sure what happened next, I think that we got in to a fight and parted our ways after that or something like that, I remember that we stopped trying to get out of the village together after some point. I than found out about a young woman who was burned there for being a witch and figured out that her death had something to do with getting out of the village. I collected information from the villagers, and though I had very low charisma I managed to befriend some of them and found out about a cave near the village.
I found this cave and upon entering saw a beautiful young gypsy woman performing some kind of ritual, after which I blacked out. When I came back to my senses I found myself floating in a black void. Apparently, the dm figured that the cave should be somekind of testing ground where you had a slim chance of surviving with yor sanity intact. All of us (we weren't travelling together anymore but we all managed to find the cave) had a different experience. My character had to figure something out to get out of the cave. So my character had to think about the world and his own actions and eventually strted to regret his behaviour, his alignment shifted from evil to neutral and he got out of the cave.
After that he tried to be a nice guy and was tricked into helping an elven werewolf chick and got himself killed by a lemure (a lawful evil infernal creature, the weakest of the devils).

The moral of the story: when playing D&D, don't be an idiot - abuse and harass others before they get a chance to abuse or harass you, it's better to be the agressor than the victim. After that I've had some good and neutral characters, who got killed relatively fast, and another chaotic evil guy, (he started out as chaotic neutral but later turned into a lunatic) who managed to cause havoc until I stopped playing D&D.

My favorite character I've made ended up starring in a lot of the rpgs I program since he was so awesome.

Luthodiel Everminte, The Supreme Inquisitor.
He was a lawful evil Ex-Paladin Blackguard with a gauntlet that let him control the future.
I was really into FF at the time, so he looked kind of like Sephiroth with Blue Hair and white armor if you need a visual comparison to anything.
His ultimate goal was to 'create equilibrium', or in other words, kill everything.

A lot of my coolest characters come out of DnD. Egardium, Kvasir, Cserra, Ifadel, Gohld...

My characters were as follows: Cecil (take a guess at what class he was, rise up FF fans), Dracos (half dragon, fighter), Lazarus (Razaru) (Half dragon Samurai), Ryu (human, Ninja), Zanus (druid), Tylderan (elven, ranger), Celestina (drow, arcane archer, sorcerer), and many others...I remember playing when i was very young. Of course I wasn't always creative with names. Favorites are so hard to choose, but probably Cecil because I had recently played FF IV (hadn't been out that long) and adored that character. Most of them reached high levels, all were great to play, in fact I just DMed a game today!

Written by Author on 29.04.2008 at 08:45

Ryu (human, Ninja)

Did you use the D&D 3.5's Ninja class, or the Oriental Adventure's Ninja class?

I've always wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons to try it out. Sadly, no one else I know seems to want to. =/

Written by Author on 01.05.2008 at 07:55

I've always wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons to try it out. Sadly, no one else I know seems to want to. =/

Yeah, that always sucks, I too am in that slump. Well, it's also that I don't have time and the people that I could play with I just don't really feel comfertable with. I have sort of a history with them when it comes to gaming that I would like to forget.

I've been playing DnD for the last 8 years and DMing for the last 4, and i have to say it is probably my favorite game. I just love the creative aspect of it because you are creating the story as a group. I draw a lot of my inspiration for characters off of the music I listen to. For example, as soon as I heard "the inquisitor" by kamelot, I went and made a fanatical lawful good cleric for my players to fight

again i've been wanting to play once more, but just like some of you, i just don't hav or know anyone that would like to play.

@hrothdane: the creative aspect is great, i agree. it's actually like the main line of the game, creating a world and starting to habit it, travel through it and just give it anything you want. that's what is so great a bout it, every game will be different, so it's tough to get bored

Written by tulkas on 13.05.2008 at 09:10

again i've been wanting to play once more, but just like some of you, i just don't hav or know anyone that would like to play.

Well, with D&D 4.0 coming out soon, it is supposed to have online aspects. Maybe we could all get a Metal Storm D&D game going?

Written by Dane Train on 17.05.2008 at 03:46

Written by tulkas on 13.05.2008 at 09:10

again i've been wanting to play once more, but just like some of you, i just don't hav or know anyone that would like to play.

Well, with D&D 4.0 coming out soon, it is supposed to have online aspects. Maybe we could all get a Metal Storm D&D game going?

Fund it!

On a related note, convert your favorite metal musician into a dnd character (for the sake of a challenge, please try to avoid bard unless they are mutliclass)!

EXAMPLE: Rob Halford => Robert Steel, Lawbreaker of Halfordshire level 10 rogue / 10 bard
EXAMPLE: Hansi Kursch => Hanseth, The Guardian of the Blind level 10 bard / 10 loremaster

(yes i know its nerdy, but its a fucking dnd thread, i think we can assume nerdy is allowed here )

D&D 4.0 came out today. Did anyone else get it? The new system is so amazing. This blows 3.5 away.

Written by Dane Train on 07.06.2008 at 02:25

D&D 4.0 came out today. Did anyone else get it? The new system is so amazing. This blows 3.5 away.

I got it first thing (been saving up for it forever). As a DM, it makes my job soooooo much easier.

They really got rid of alot of the extraneous crap and streamlined the system. When you have an entire book dedicated purely to spells (like in 3.5), you need to cut back a bit.

Written by Hrothdane on 07.06.2008 at 05:17

I got it first thing (been saving up for it forever). As a DM, it makes my job soooooo much easier.

They really got rid of alot of the extraneous crap and streamlined the system. When you have an entire book dedicated purely to spells (like in 3.5), you need to cut back a bit.

I totally agree! The DM's book is so easy to use. I love the section on the different types of players. Such great insight is finally down in book form.

Oh, and what you were saying about the spells, so true. Everything is so stripped down. Instead of 47 different types of elves, we have 3.

And no more gnomes (for now, at least). Did you ever know someone who played a gnome? I don't.

I just love this new system.

Written by Dane Train on 11.06.2008 at 23:48

Written by Hrothdane on 07.06.2008 at 05:17

I got it first thing (been saving up for it forever). As a DM, it makes my job soooooo much easier.

They really got rid of alot of the extraneous crap and streamlined the system. When you have an entire book dedicated purely to spells (like in 3.5), you need to cut back a bit.

I totally agree! The DM's book is so easy to use. I love the section on the different types of players. Such great insight is finally down in book form.

Oh, and what you were saying about the spells, so true. Everything is so stripped down. Instead of 47 different types of elves, we have 3.

And no more gnomes (for now, at least). Did you ever know someone who played a gnome? I don't.

I just love this new system.

I played a game of 4th edition last sunday, and everyone was quite happy with how it went. Character creation went really fast considering none of us had done it before and the combat was soooooo much faster.

They have stats for playable gnomes along with many other things (minotaurs! doppelgangers!) in the back of the monster manual. I actually have a friend that plays gnomes all the time, so he is quite happy. Personally, I'm really excited about the dragonborn.

Oh yeah, Dragonborn! So amazing. Way better than the Half-Orc. What do you think of the Eldarin vs the Elves?

Written by Dane Train on 12.06.2008 at 03:06

Oh yeah, Dragonborn! So amazing. Way better than the Half-Orc. What do you think of the Eldarin vs the Elves?

To make the transition easier, I'm just calling eladrin high elves and the elves wood elves. I think those two races embody the ideas that all those 50 billion different elf subraces were trying to get at before (with the obvious exception of drow).

I do have to say though, that Eladrin encounter power that lets them teleport is ridiculous. My group had an Eladrin rogue, who quickly figured out he could teleport into any place as long as he had a large enough window, crack, or hole in the wall rest for five minutes to get it back and teleport out...

Yeah the Eldarin are pretty much the High Elves with the normal Elves being sort of the Wood Elves. It is so nice not having the Red Mountain River Stone Elves and crap like that.

What do you think about the 30 levels now?

Written by Dane Train on 13.06.2008 at 01:02

Yeah the Eldarin are pretty much the High Elves with the normal Elves being sort of the Wood Elves. It is so nice not having the Red Mountain River Stone Elves and crap like that.

What do you think about the 30 levels now?

I always liked epic levels just because there are some truly epic and horrible challenges there, but thought the power level of the characters got ridiculous too fast. Now, it seems like there is a much more gradual power curve since they integrated epic levels into the base system better.

I do love however how there is an epic destiny called "demigod." That is very metal imo

Written by Dane Train on 30.04.2008 at 17:43

Written by Author on 29.04.2008 at 08:45

Ryu (human, Ninja)

Did you use the D&D 3.5's Ninja class, or the Oriental Adventure's Ninja class?

Oriental Adventures of course

Written by Dane Train on 07.06.2008 at 02:25

D&D 4.0 came out today. Did anyone else get it? The new system is so amazing. This blows 3.5 away.

Man I am jealous, I have to get it as quickly as possible. I hated having to get used to 3.5 and stuff after AD&D, I HATE CHANGE!! haha

Written by Author on 05.07.2008 at 21:25

Man I am jealous, I have to get it as quickly as possible. I hated having to get used to 3.5 and stuff after AD&D, I HATE CHANGE!! haha

4.0 blows 3.5 away. Combat is so much easier and faster. Instead of 40 some skills it is like a dozen. The classes are so much more even now. Pretty much everything is better.

Written by Dane Train on 05.07.2008 at 21:45

Written by Author on 05.07.2008 at 21:25

Man I am jealous, I have to get it as quickly as possible. I hated having to get used to 3.5 and stuff after AD&D, I HATE CHANGE!! haha

4.0 blows 3.5 away. Combat is so much easier and faster. Instead of 40 some skills it is like a dozen. The classes are so much more even now. Pretty much everything is better.

Wow they changed the skills huh? That's impressive. I always considered the classes pretty even (well most classes, but then again at high levels any class can become amazing, even a bard), but they must be even more even now

Yeah, the skills are amazing. Instead of a look, spot, listen, etc checks there is just one 'preception' check. Same with things like stelth, acrobatics, athletics, etc.

So far I'm really enjoying 4.0. You really can see the influence the modern MMORPG has on the game though, not sure if I think that's a good thing or not yet.

The one thing I'll say about 4.0 is that if you don't normally use minitures in your game you are going to need to start. It is really hard to play 4.0 rules without them.