Dungeons and Dragons

[SlappyMcGee]

I assume this is the correct forum for this, so here goes:

Check out this link for an amazing hand crafted dungeon. Any minatures gamer out there should marvel at these images:

http://www.dwarvenforge.com/dwarvenforu ... hp?id=1048

Furthermore, are there any closets dungeoneers out there that Metanet hasn't uncovered? I know that if you don't go on the Ventrilo, you probably wouldn't be aware of the Pen-And-Paper subculture of the forums.

[blue_tetris]

I have heard of this game.

[Luminaflare]

Slappy that thing is freaking sweet.

[DoctorAperture]

Dungeons and Dragons... maaayyybbeeee

im curious: how many people here approve of v4?

And that dungeon is friggin awesome, i use lego blocks and a ruler :/

[Condog]

That table don't have nuffin on 40k tables.

[Yoshimo]

I don't have it, but I want it. Who would play with me though.

[darkshadow]

That is really impressive. Anyways I haven't gotten a game together in nearly two years but I played a lot during v 3/3.5. From what I know of v 4 it certainly helps the DM who has to deal with the player who refuses to participate unless he's allowed to use every feat from every third party source every published and the newbie who needs his hand held, however I for one certainly enjoyed a small amount of min/maxing every time I designed a new character (I always had terrific DMs who could maintain control of the group and all the experience players would always help out and sometimes act as assistent DM, especially during character creation, so those things were less of an issue in my groups).

[TribulatioN]

I've heard of DaD, but never really knew what it was about. But that looks totally awesome.

[SlappyMcGee]

Basically, for anyone unfamiliar, Dungeons and Dragons is a game where you create characters based on rules set out by the game and then interact in a world where your actions are determined by your role-playing as the character and probability (dice).

It's great fun, and if you have the -time- to commit to such a thing, (Such as regular nights off, such as every Friday) we'd love for you to join us on Ventrilo and play sometime. We can set you up with all of the materials.

Furthermore, I wasn't clear from the beginning, but the minature setup shown in the first picture is optional; we use a program called MapTool to emulate this experience. It is really only necessary for combat, but boy, that sure does enhance the experience.

And finally, my thoughts on 4th edition is that it is not perfect, but it is a vast improvement on 3.5, and the art in the core books is sweet!

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I've been a D&D player for 8+ years. Haven't played much of it at all in the last few years, though. Once you go WhiteWolf, you never go back.

[blue_tetris]

I've been a D&D player for 8+ years. Haven't played much of it at all in the last few years, though. Once you go WhiteWolf, you never go back.

Lol. WhiteWolf.

That mechanic is tres gameable.

[Sniperwhere]

I used to play this game a lot. But when the DM crapped out on us, we couldn't find a new one, and I haven't played since.

Man, what i wouldn't give to play again. I had a great character, with a great background as well.(although it did use the cliche of the evil twin)

[Kablizzy]

im curious: how many people here approve of v4?

Everyone but me, I think.

[darkshadow]

im curious: how many people here approve of v4?

Everyone but me, I think.

Do I not count or something? In case I didn't make it clear, for any game I will run I'll probably continue to use v 3.5. I only think it was an improvement for those groups where the complexity of v 3.5 hindered the campaign.

[AF]

As someone who's new to DMing (I've only DMed, like, 4 sessions), I find 4e to be a lot easier to work with than 3.5. The only problem with 4e is trying to get Kablizzy not to hate every single aspect of it.

[Snuggletummy]

I don't even play D&D, and even I think what that guy made is freaking awesome. Almost makes me want to play it, and, to be honest, the only reason I don't is that part where you role play as your character. I get embarrassed.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I'm pretty sure that 4th Ed was greed. It's a functional system and all, and it does fix a few issues that might have lingered through the 3.0-3.5 transition, but it also introduces many more problems. To me, 4th Ed is no longer a game about roleplaying, but about tactical combat. It's D&D: Tactics. By introducing nifty little things like "make an attack and then teleport 3 squares" at low levels, you've effectively made low-level PCs immune to jail. The mechanics for combat are fine, sure, but roleplay, exploration, spelunking, and generally interacting with things in a non-violent manner have all gotten screwed over because of them.
I'd play in a 4th Ed game with the understanding that the only challenges to be thrown at us is combat, and the only choices made are whom to fight. I can't imagine myself making a 3-dimensional 4th Ed character.

[Tanner]

4e : 3.5e :: action movie : docu-drama

[Kablizzy]

I'm pretty sure that 4th Ed was greed. It's a functional system and all, and it does fix a few issues that might have lingered through the 3.0-3.5 transition, but it also introduces many more problems. To me, 4th Ed is no longer a game about roleplaying, but about tactical combat. It's D&D: Tactics. By introducing nifty little things like "make an attack and then teleport 3 squares" at low levels, you've effectively made low-level PCs immune to jail. The mechanics for combat are fine, sure, but roleplay, exploration, spelunking, and generally interacting with things in a non-violent manner have all gotten screwed over because of them.
I'd play in a 4th Ed game with the understanding that the only challenges to be thrown at us is combat, and the only choices made are whom to fight. I can't imagine myself making a 3-dimensional 4th Ed character.

Precisely why I like White Wolf games. I make dudes, not statpages.

[blue_tetris]

I find that the 4th Edition book places a lot of focus on the combat system because the rest of it falls into place with proper DMing. The DMG has nearly no rules--why should it?--and is all about helping the new DMs know how to run everything beyond the confines of combat.

The thing is, WhiteWolf has created a setting for you and so it has to explain that setting in depth. With 4E D&D, there was no endeavor to create a setting for DMs, instead providing more of a generic ruleset that an individual DM can use for combat and mechanics resolution. So if the 4E D&D set seems lacking in gameworld compared to, say, Vampire: The Masquerade, it's only because the former is more open-ended.

That said, those who say the combat for 4E doesn't run as smoothly or tactically as 3.5E are on drugs. In the 3E model, there was a different mechanic for the 18 different things associated with the 18 different classes. There was no top-down resolution as to what things took precedence over others and it lacked a universal model that you could interpret everything through. The reason Dr. Garfield's boss game (M:tG) works is because there's a small set of staple mechanics and everything else in the game can eventually be applied to those standards. When all other rules and references fail, in M:tG there's a failsafe.

4E has that failsafe. The "Powers" dynamic gives an easy-to-figure prism that all class-based abilities are refracted through. The lack of needless complexity and mathematical analysis given to every possible usage of every possible power means that you don't waste time at the table rifling through compendia, rolling d% for everything, and using calculators. It's DM interpretation. If you're not good with that, I'm sure there'll be some guides for sale that let you forgo making up what happens when a frost beam hits a pool of water. (No, that's not covered in the rules in 4E; they figure a DM can make it up. Check 3E for an unnecessarily detailed analysis of each "cold" involving its interaction with each "water".)

Additionally, powers offer generic combat-implications and leave the rest wide open. It's easy to turn Warlord into Bard with a few creative changes on the part of the player. Likewise, it's easy to "de-fantasy" the game by making the usage of powers more mundane than spectacular. Because the numbers are wholly divorced from the world-building and imagining of the game, DMs and players alike are free to mold the world more to their liking.



Having run over 30 sessions of 4E D&D already, I can affirm to you that the jackholes who used to run all-combat sessions might have an easier time running such sessions in 4E (knowing full well those idiots were already doing it with 3E). But running standard high-roleplay sessions is just as easy.

I have a pretty standard mix of 30% roleplay, 30% combat, and 40% thinking and applications stuff. I haven't lost any ability to do that with 4E. Play a game with me sometime and you'll see a standard Dave game that has been bolstered by an easier-to-use ruleset. Once you get the hang of 4E, it's easier to run games with it, altogether.



I played some D&D, I played tons of AD&D (which was a rules nightmare, if you really go back and look at it), I played a ridiculous amount of 3E, and I can honestly say that 4E is better (albeit a high fantasy evolution--even in the ruleset--of the former editions).



Final note: 3E didn't facilitate adding roleplay elements to characters any better than 4E does. Once you get used to the system, it's just as easy (perhaps, just as difficult) to add in the roleplay elements yourself.

Any disbelievers in the roleplay, skill-usage, ritual-usage, and other "thinker's elements" of 4E may do well to listen in to my sessions sometime. (The rituals, by the way, are masterful. A player in my game is also picking up alchemy, which lets him make up his own concoctions at random just to see what they might do. It'll be fun DMing some of that.)

[blue_tetris]

Oh, follow-up note. "Teleportation" is just a non-shift move across a short distance in the context of combat momentum and "switching places" with people and things. That's the conceptual skeleton of it. For a fey (my version of eladrin), I have described it as a nearly imperceptible shift in the tide of battle, flowing across nature itself--yeah, it's magic, but it ain't unstoppable. As a DM, you have the power to make the flavor of the teleport anything you desire and determine how it functions outside of combat. The book just makes it easier to describe in combat.

A crafty DM puts challenges that properly test the players. I have a fey and they were jammed in a prison. But the fey alone could escape the bars; it wasn't much help for the others. Moreover, that fey alone would've been in the solitary presence of the wardens who could easily have handed his ass to him without the dwarf and the thieves helping out.

It ended up being an amazing scene. The fey chose imprisonment to live the "human punishment" and find the "human escape" from the agents of human law.

[SlappyMcGee]

Look at it this way; 4e brings a lot of bonuses to combat to the table. It lets everyone do their part in a fight, something that was painstakingly boring if you were a rogue in 3.5. AF, when he would play, would often be helpless in some of our early battles, without a sneak attack. Now, in the new mechanic, powers enable you always to have something interesting to do on your turn.

So, aside from keeping non-combat oriented players attentive to the game, it also streamlines combat. The system gives a vehicle for DMs to describe some fantastic things during the combat (Melf's Acid Arrow might not be Melf's anymore, but it is still fascinating to hear about a giant acidic laser arrow soaring through the sky into a dude) which should satisfy the gorehounds, but it also means that combat can be handled quickly. We can then move on to what a lot of Dunegeoners found was missing from recent games, which is to say an emphasis on character development and plot exposition. I'd rather have an easy combat system that makes us all more powerful so I can get back to deciding whether or not I should trust the traitorous Tarsheva.

Finally, as far as making somebody invincible goes, I don't think this system does that. It certainly forces the DM to strategize as much as the player in his attacks on them, though, and that, to me, is a good thing.

Also, kablizzy sucks.

[taaveti]

I don't even play D&D, and even I think what that guy made is freaking awesome. Almost makes me want to play it, and, to be honest, the only reason I don't is that part where you role play as your character. I get embarrassed.

That really depends on the group, the GM, and the particular game. I've never played in a group who made any attempts (well... serious attempts anyway) to act the part of their characters- it's more like telling a collaborative story, with each "author" telling the part relevant to a single character. I'm like you in that I'd be pretty embarassed to try to "become" my character in any RPG, but I've enjoyed being a gamer for over a decade.

[blue_tetris]

So, aside from keeping non-combat oriented players attentive to the game, it also streamlines combat. The system gives a vehicle for DMs to describe some fantastic things during the combat (Melf's Acid Arrow might not be Melf's anymore, but it is still fascinating to hear about a giant acidic laser arrow soaring through the sky into a dude) which should satisfy the gorehounds, but it also means that combat can be handled quickly. We can then move on to what a lot of Dunegeoners found was missing from recent games, which is to say an emphasis on character development and plot exposition. I'd rather have an easy combat system that makes us all more powerful so I can get back to deciding whether or not I should trust the traitorous Tarsheva.

Tarsheva reaches for the cuff of your sleeve, but to no avail. She seems to be composed of vaporous ghoststuff. Perhaps it wasn't all lies, after all.

[DoctorAperture]

I read something about a game over vent that you guys are running. Could I join?