What we’re doing (for complete beginners): Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published by Wizards of the Coast. It consists of a group (usually 3-6) of players who control characters and embark on adventures given to them by an additional player called a dungeon master (DM). D&D has a long history that I won’t get into here, but the release of the fifth edition of the game (5E) has attracted a considerable amount of attention.
If you’ve never played a tabletop RPG before, the closest analogy that might make sense is a Western-RPG game like Skyrim, or, even more accurately, CRPG games like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin. You control an individual character that you get to decide the backstory, class, and playstyle of, and work with other people to achieve desired goals. However, there’s a few things that are worth noting if you’ve played computer RPGs but not tabletop ones:
- It’s a tabletop game, not a video game. This means that there are no animations, game pieces have limited representations on the board, and the rules of the game inherently cannot address every situation that arises. Your and the other players’ imagination is essential both to making the game enjoyable and mechanically feasible.
- There’s a social aspect. You’re not playing alone, you’re playing with a group of other people. Your party members are often working towards the same goal, but may not agree on the best way to achieve it, and sometimes may even differ on what to do at all.
- There’s no real notion of “winning”. The DM’s goal isn’t to prevent you from achieving yours but rather is to make that achievement enjoyable by putting obstacles in your way. You’re winning if you’re having fun. That doesn’t necessarily exclude min-maxing your character to be the best they can possibly be, but it does encourage things that might not be seen as often in a video game like roleplaying, doing “what your character would do”, and so on.
- Unpredictable things happen. A video game is able to limit what you’re able to do through its mechanics and through “game logic”, like invisible walls, or limited conversation options, or limited quest triggers. A tabletop game throws away all of that and instead limits you only by your imagination and your DM’s ability to keep up. If you’ve ever played Divinity: Original Sin, you’ve seen how player freedom in how they approach objectives can lead to massive differences in what results they see. Tabletop games amplify this enormously.
What we’re doing (for people who already know what I’m talking about): A reasonably short 5e adventure, with the potential to go further if there’s interest and time. I’ll be DMing this unless someone else has DM’d before and really wants to do it. For the first adventure, we’ll probably run the WOTC-published Lost Mines of Phandelver. It’s a good introductory point, and I’ve run through parts of it already so I’ll have some preparation available.
How we’re doing this: Through roll20.net
That’s a website which facilitates playing tabletop RPGs online. It takes a little bit of time to get used to but is a great tool that’s receiving continuous development.
When we’re doing this: Plan for three to five sessions of three to five hours each. Timezones will make things complicated, but we’ll probably be able to work something out. Chances are we’ll be playing on weekends, but scheduling will happen once we have an idea of who’s playing.
Who’s doing this: There’s me on the DM role (unless someone else really wants it), and there’s @fightinfrenchman and @chrisie who are going to be players. The ear has given me his word on pain of two thousand years of ban that he won’t troll (this entire thing was his idea anyway). Chrisie is great at D&D and will likely end up helping you all (and me) with rules and staying organized. We’re interested in adding one to three more players for a party of three to five. I’d be hesitant to add any more than that, but if this goes well you may have a chance to play in the future.
In a last thread on the subject I saw potential interest from @hleung, @princeofcarthage, @Cometk, and @Mitoe. There’s a lot of purple in that list, and so I’d love to see some other colors of people represented too. Sircallen is not invited.
What you’ll need: A working mic and computer. In order to play the game, it’s recommended that you acquire a copy of the 5th edition of the Player’s Handbook, but if you can’t do that for whatever reason, there are subsets of it available online at websites like http://www.open5e.com
A webcam is also strongly recommended and borderline mandatory. After a discussion on the subject with chrisie, I think that having a camera to get peoples’ facial expressions and reactions is an essential part of the D&D experience that we’d want to capture if at all possible. If you can’t do this or aren’t willing to, I won’t go so far as to say that you won’t be allowed to play outright, but I think that you and everyone else will have a substantially diminished experience without one.
If you’re already familiar with the character creation process, feel free to make a character of any race/class combination in PHB (if you have supplementary materials that you want to make a character from, this is probably fine, but please check with me first). We’ll be using Standard Point Buy for ability scores. If you don’t know what any of this means, don’t worry, we’ll make characters during the first session, or I’ll call you for a one-on-one character creation session before we play. Take some time to review the races and classes available so that you’ll have some idea of what you want to play, though.
Q&A:
I didn’t sign up in time/can’t commit to this/don’t want to play but am still interested, halp!
Depending on interest, I may record this or, internet connection permitting, livestream it. There’s a good chance that even failing this I will summarize the events that happen during the game in this thread or another similar one.
Is that Divinity: Original Sin II campaign still happening?
Yes, but it’s on hold while we wait for the definitive edition to come out in August.
I don’t want to be involved in this nerd stuff.
Fear not, you’re aren’t required to be involved.
I have a question that wasn’t listed here. Also, most of the “questions” in this section aren’t.
Feel free to add questions or comments as long as they are good ones.