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Tell Us Your D&D Memories as Game Enters Hall of Fame - General News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Tell Us Your D&D Memories as Game Enters Hall of Fame - General News
Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons & Dragons have been honored by the Toy Hall of Fame and the enshrinement of the tabletop RPG series. The Toy Hall of Fame is in Rochester, New York. D&D is part of the class of 2016 that also includes Fisher-Price's Little People and the swing.
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거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
I have been watching E.T in the cinema , and the kids (in the famous D&D scene) were playing this game. And I was fascinated. But me and my friends had no idea what that was.
So we went and reverse engineered a game from what we seen there. Basically we created our own D&D without knowing how it actually works.
And the game was fantastic. It was combination of board game and card game ... ironically something that is quite popular now.
... Anyway
I only stumbled upon D&D years after when I found "Rules Cyclopedia" in a book shop.
It was fantastic EUREKA ! Moment. " So that is what they were playing in the film !!! "
I have been D&D DM and geek ever since - 40+ years and counting
I agree that it was groundbreaking, and not just for the "imaginative play", but also for being built upon cooperation opposed to all the competition-based games before. Not to mention it was story-focused, needed interaction, teamwork, decisions, etc. and first of all a good GM. Too bad most of those were slowly eroded during the transition into the computerised iterations, and mainly what's left is combat. And more combat. Which is kinda sad.
Still, 45 years... huge. Just as its impact on the world and gaming. Not bad from a small game which was born just for a couple buddies having fun with
Currently am I working on a FR campaign called "Luskan High" where the players will join a magical school in Luskan as teenagers, mixing in a bit of Harry Potter with high school comedy, intrigues and classical fantasy adventure... The main bully is a half-orc and I have a mean Crinti (half-drow) Cheerleader as well as a bunch of other interesting characters, will be ready to run in a few weeks.
First time I played D&D (it was not the first RPG I played) was in 1986, there was a Swedish translated version at the time and my English wasn't the best. The first English game I played was TSR Star frontiers a year or 2 later.
I was honestly not impressed with the D&D base game, after playing a Swedish game using the Basic roleplaying mechanics (like Runequest and CoC) I found the system rather clunky. We played it for a year or so before moving on to other systems. The whole thing with levels seemed a bit stupid to me.
It wasn't until a few years later when a buddy introduced me to Forgotten realms and AD&D that I really started to appreciate the system and particularly the great game worlds made for it (besides FR Dragonlance and Ravenloft also stands out).
Part of what made D&D so great is that it was first but I think without those campaign worlds the game would be a small footnote today. The books by Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, R.A Salvatore, Elaine Cuningham and the rest have helped a lot as well.
I can honestly say that I am impressed that D&D have been the top dog for so long even if Pathfinder probably have beaten it the last few years in number of players. My favorite P&P game is Shadowrun.
Although not playing too much anymore, i still enjoy the lore of these books stick with the 3.5 edition of the rulebook (not the 5e) and the 3th edition Forgotten Realms(because that is the forever best edition for me).
My fondest memories were while playing the massive series that started with The Village of Hommlet leading to the Temple of Elemental Evil then on to the Slavers series leading to the Giants series leading to the Drow series and then concluding with my favorite of all time, The Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
I ran a campaign in Lankhmar which was also super fun. We spent nearly over 2 years in that city and surrounding areas.
I also ran a Dragonlance campaign for a few years when it came out.
Fun times!
That way, if he gets angry, he's a mile away and barefoot.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
If I played again I would mod the heck out of it. Wouldn't require mages/clerics to memorize spells. Wouldn't require them to make concentration checks when getting attacked. I would keep the spell limits though. Probably would give the warriors the ability to taunt in order to protect the mages/rogues.
This style was what I loved so much about Elder Scrolls. You could finally play a spellcaster without feeling like you are giving up anything.
I you have a hard time to get everyone playing you could play through the net... Tabletop simulator have great tools for it to mention one good program. It is way easier to get everyone play a few hours from home then to gather everyone at the same location after all and when you can see character sheets, roll dices and even use on screen miniatures it is at least close to being in the same location.
As for D&D 3.5 I can recommend Pathfinder to you, it is based on 3.5 with several of the original creators of D&D 3 and 3.5 among the devs, the difference is that it is friendlier for customization and a bit better balanced. I only use the core book and the advanced players book myself, like D&D they have released a bit too many optional rulebooks that messes up the balance (not as bad as all the 3 & 3.5 extra books, I hated when a player showed up with some specific weird book, often by a third party publisher, and wanting to use it for min-maxing).
Taunts are generally avoided in P&P games as skills, you either need to RP it or just use tactics to stop the mobs from getting to your weaker party members.
Try Shadowrun, no memorization and no specific spell slots, all spells have a drain you save against instead so you can basically cast infinite numbers of spells if you soak good enough. Shadowrun is the best system I ever played and I played a lot of P&P games.
Another system that is closer to TES is Palladium, rather different but fun.
Changing too many rules of a basic system require a lot of work if you want to keep the balance of the game and there are many good systems besides D&D that already done all that. If too many things of a specific system annoy you it is usually easiest and most fun to find something closer to the gameplay you enjoy instead of house ruling too much.
Original D&D spawned a generation of game designers. The ambiguous, murky, haphazard rule set needed constant interpretation and added development. Every game master was a defacto developer. Personally did not care for the ongoing direction of the D&D designs. Too shallow, too hidebound. AD&D 2nd edition was also my favorite iteration, but didn't game with that much either.
I've played with some stellar GMs over the years, including some best selling authors and some D&D/TSR developers themselves. Funny thing, the D&D staffers ran Hero systems, and rulesets of their own design.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Gary Gygax himself said that the "Rules" were just guidelines and that players/gm's should tailor the games how they saw fit.
For me, I always wanted to keep the excitement and story moving. Too many dice rolls and charts always ground things to a halt so I just made sure that everything was always quick and supported the story.
And we had a great time at it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Gary Gygax's Afterword (DMG 1E Pg 230)
AFTERWORD
IT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME, NOT THE LETTER OF THE RULES, WHICH IS IMPORTANT. NEVER HOLD TO THE LETTER WRITTEN, NOR ALLOW SOME BARRACKS ROOM LAWYER TO FORCE QUOTATIONS FROM THE RULE BOOK UPON YOU, IF IT GOES AGAINST THE OBVIOUS INTENT OF THE GAME. AS YOU HEW THE LINE WITH RESPECT TO CONFORMITY TO MAJOR SYSTEMS AND UNIFORMITY OF PLAY IN GENERAL, ALSO BE CERTAIN THE GAME IS MASTERED BY YOU AND NOT BY YOUR PLAYERS. WITHIN THE BROAD PARAMETERS GIVEN IN THE ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS VOLUMES, YOU ARE CREATOR AND FINAL ARBITER. BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE. MAY YOU FIND AS MUCH PLEASURE IN SO DOING AS THE REST OF US DO!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Our party was taking a break after a long journey and half the group was arguing with each other about where we should travel next. I was a half orc ranger with terrible aim. The wizard and I became restless and he thought it would be funny to make an oil slick under my feet. My roll saved me from slipping and I ended up throwing him into it.
He failed his roll and kept falling down. I stepped it up a notch and lit the oil on fire, causing the wizard to take some pretty severe fire damage.
In retaliation he cast a spell that was supposed to temporarily blind me but he got a natural 20 and it permanently blinded me. I started firing arrows wildly and accidentally shot a gnome in our group.
That's when they realized what was happening and broke it up. My wizard friend had 1hp left and I was always shooting my friends instead of the enemies after that.
Was so much fun.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
My sister playing the big dumb barbarian scream and charges in so obviously I ask what everybody else does. The halfling thief says "I close the door" He died 28 turns later when the barbarian cleaned the room (I mean skeletons for a lvl 12 are just decorations.
We all had a good laugh. He rolled another toon and we moved on.
Cheers,