Dungeons and Dragons - Any one here play

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Here's Onyx Path's webpage. They're the makers of Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, Mage, and Exalted among other things. The games tend to focus more on social interaction than most D&D games which makes sense given that D&D was born out of those army simulators of the 70s.

Onyx Path

Oh hey... that looks kind of awesome. Thanks!

No problem, you can find most of their stuff on DrivethruRPG.

I've played some Pathfinder through Pathfinder Society. As a D&D game I like the fact that it is not overly balanced, and it retains some weird heritage of how it evolved through the years. 5th edition seems a bit too balanced for my taste.

So far, half the time I played, I played in the mentor wizard role, both in game and outside the game (I was helping to introduce newbies), and I must say that the advice based on knowledge rolls and my own knowledge and leadership of the party often turned out to be at least as deadly as my spells.

The 2013 reprint of the original D&D books (the first three) are finally in PDF format! I bought them, but I'll probably only use them for reading and not for playing. I prefer Basic/Expert.

I've actually considered writing my own, but I'm not very good with DM'ing, so we've never really got a game off on the right foot. I suppose it would be an opportune time to say that anybody with experience, it would be great to get some tips or ideas to help with playing. Right now, I hardly even know where to begin.

I had played for a long time, but never tried DMing, so just being able to experience so many different people running different games in different ways, I was able to take mental notes of what I liked and what I didn't like...as well as things that slow the game way down, things that speed it up, things that just plain don't work, etc. But heck, sometimes the players just aren't in the right mindset, and the game is doomed from the beginning =)

As for the rules, I read through both books (for player and for DM) and tried to at least keep mental notes on things that I thought would be important during play. I also wrote down a bunch of quick notes for stuff like random encounters, and combat, etc. Most of it's also on the DM shield that I printed out, but I think it sticks a little better when you write it down, like they teach you in school.

Other than that, I think the only way you can really get good at DMing is with practice. Hopefully your friends will understand that you're still learning and will take it easy on you.

Gary Gygax has a lot of great tips and information in the AD&D 1st Edition DM's Guide, if you can get a hold of one. A lot of it, I think, can really be applied to any P&P game. He also wrote a book or two on the subject, but last time I checked, they were not at all easy to get a hold of.

But I think the most important thing to remember is that no matter how hard you prepare, or how great you think your campaign story is going to be...the players will usually never do what you expect them to =) You just kind of have to go with the flow and see what happens.

I'm pretty sure that version of the DMG can be found on Drivethru RPG if you're willing to read a pdf copy of it.

Right, but I was thinking more along the lines of borrowing it from someone, or maybe if the public library has a copy...a lot cheaper that way

Or, uh, you know...maybe 4shared or something... *cough cough*

I think that's very helpful, thank you. I tried playing with my brother as a one to one kind of experience, but I just couldn't get into the DM role all that well. I think I'd do better as a player, but simultaneously feel like I'm the only one out of all of us that could be bothered to bear all the rules in mind, so DM is the better position for me. It may make more sense if there were more people.

As you say, learning from experience may be the best way to approach things. Perhaps from there, it gets easier with time. I'm new to the whole thing so I'm kind of lame at pretty much everything, including roleplaying and such. I just hope I gather the motivation to try everything again.

Something mentioned in the book I read (a condensed, thirty page manual) was that the best way to play is to just improvise. It also mentioned what you had said here, that players never really go for the route you'd expect them to. It could be off putting, and it certainly was for me.


Anyway, I'll see if I can get back into the entire thing. My first experience did put me off the idea a bit, since it was so short lived and felt very dull. I hope next time I can improve, at least a little. Maybe get some people together to play as well.


Thanks again for the advice.

Oh yeah, finding people to play with you is definitely an important first step =) Although 2-player D&D is certainly not unheard of.

Back when we were kids, we used to LARP a lot (except we didn't call it that), so transitioning from that to something where we sat down with dice wasn't that big of a change for us. Not really sure about any tips for people who are new to role-playing... I know a lot of the books (maybe even some of the free ones) have a page or so with a transcribed "example of play", but I don't know how helpful that would be.

As an alternative to multiplayer, there are single-player games out there, like Tunnels & Trolls, Fighting Fantasy, and Lone Wolf (and to a lesser extent, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure and Twist-A-Plot).

D&D has a couple single-player options also, but not quite as satisfying, I think.