D & D 5th edition: experiences.

Post Reply New Topic

But rules are part of the game. If it's only role playing, why are books involved? And yes, poor rules can have an impact on the experience.

Gary Gygax has always said that his original intent was to give players (and DMs) a framework from which to start with, and then leave the DM to judge the outcomes of any of the infinite possibilities the PCs could come up with outside of the confines of three small booklets. Heck, even the actual rules have sections titled "optional", and encouraged DMs to change anything they didn't agree with. And who, in their right mind, plays P&Ps without at least one house rule?

AD&D, he said, he came up with in order to have more "official" rulings for tournaments and the like.

In my personal experience, the most boring games we ever play are the ones where the DM refuses to take authority and make up their own calls, and we end up spending a half-hour arguing over what each of us thinks the rulebook says, or what conflicting information a supplement book might say.

Me? I just picked up a copy of Moldvay's Basic D&D and I'm hoping I can get some people together for a good old-fashioned all-nighter or two.

...I'm going a little bit off topic, aren't I?

Nice! I hope you have a lot of good times with it. I am using the latest D&D Next playtest packet. So far it seems to work. My son is a dragonborn mage and his friend is an Elf rogue (assassin). They play at least weekly, they have friends who join in every few games--a Halfling rogue, a Half-elf Paladin, a Dwarf mage.

I made my own setting and found most things work perfectly well. The DM advice in the D&D Next packet is very good. I pick a DC and ask for a roll when it seems like a good idea to let chance rule a certain situation, and I create opportunities to move in the right direction when necessary.

I hope that they do a better job of explaining the rules in the final version and a sample walk through for generating and playing a couple of character types would be nice. On the whole, the system seems usefully flexible and in keeping with the Gygaxian ideas you mention.

I hope so. It's getting increasingly difficult to get everyone together, and the weather as-of-late certainly isn't going to help.

I do have a group of friends that I hang out with weekly, but I don't know how enthusiastic they'd be...they have a habit of getting burnt out on P&Ps pretty quick, especially when the rules slow things down and everyone gets impatient waiting for their turn.

But in the mean time, I'm going to really pour over as much information as I can...the few times I've GMed a game, I was pressured into it, and didn't understand the rules well enough (or at all). Players took advantage of this and the experience suffered because of it =) But they always whine that adventure modules are for babies and I would like to show them a good time and prove them wrong.

The only time I've ever really played D&D, was about 3 years ago when my dad brought out his old Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st edition books and DM'd a scenario for me and a few of my friends. It was pretty fun to say the least, and the process of rolling characters and such was fascinating, though my dad never really continued our campaign nor taught any of us how to DM due to how busy he often is, so I've just kind of been sitting here itching to find someone willing to learn how to DM so I can get back into it.

I could potentially learn how to DM, but that takes creativity along with an in-depth knowledge of the rules, and I'm not all that good at coming up with the elaborate scenarios required for a decent campaign.

Grab the DM's guide and get crackin'

I don't know if 1st Edition is the best place to start, though...I have a copy of the PHB and read through the entire thing (and most of a PDF of the DMG) and there are a lot of great ideas, and Gygax goes to great lengths to explain why certain rules work the way they do, and why certain things just shouldn't be allowed (like allowing PCs to be monster classes)...but I feel like a lot of it is just "too much", and some of it just seems silly and unnecessary (like the assassin class). Obviously, you don't have to know or use everything in the books, but it does feel a little overwhelming.

From what I've seen, and what little I remember from when we used to play, 2nd Edition tries to make everything from 1st a little easier to understand, with more examples and etc., and tries to fix some of the sillier bits, but is still pretty complicated.

I'm really enjoying this part of Basic so far. Most of the silliness is not here, and anything that I would need for a game that is not in the books, it seems like house rules, or rules from later editions, would fit right in there without any issue...or, as is suggested, I could just make a judgement call of my own (though I would rather have something more set-in-stone for common occurances).

Just to clarify, when you say 1st edition isn't the best place to start, are you talking about Advanced 1st edition (which is really edition 1.5), or vanilla 1st edition? There is somewhat of a difference afaik.

Talking about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition.

The original, non-advanced line didn't really have "1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. Edition". They had the original set (OD&D, or white box, or 1974, or whatever you like to call it) plus supplements, and then Basic, B/X, BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia, etc...

So, if I wanted to learn how to DM, where would a good place be to start? I'm aware that there are other tabletop RPGs besides D&D, but I kind of want to learn how that system works. I've heard that Pathfinder is supposed to be pretty decent, and it was based heavily on the earlier versions of D&D.