Dungeons & Dragons

[Kaleva]

Back when I was in the Navy, my friends and I played the game as defending this great nation was often tedious and boring. We were the Keystone Kops armed with nuclear weapons. I recall one incident where a friend who was role playing a magician cast a fireball spell when we were combating Orcs in a cave. I tried to tell my friend that the spell would create a fireball much larger then the cave we were in but he would not be deterred from his chosen course of action. I told the DM that I was running out of the cave down the tunnel in an effort to escape the coming calamity. Alas, I wasn't fast enough and got incinerated along with everyone else.

Just wondering if anyone else here played the game?

[keroro gunsou]

1. been there

done that. in my game's case it was a dumbass mage with a lightning bolt.

[Orsino]

2. For over thirty years now.

It saw me through high school, a bad marriage, the Army and beyond.

[NewJeffCT]

4. And, your DU name was used in my last campaign

Orsino was the merchant that hired the initial group of players to find his supposedly kidnapped daughter.

The players later found out that Orsino's daughter had not been kidnapped, but had gone off and joined a religious group dedicated to wiping out slavery. He considered the group a radical cult, so did not want to admit that she had joined voluntarily.

But, in a twist, after she joined the group dedicated to wiping out slavery, she was (in turn) kidnapped by minions of the evil god of slavery & tyranny, as she was a child of prophecy who would give birth to the key to the high priest of the evil god to rule the world.

[NewJeffCT]

3. I'm still an active player

Recently finished up a long-running campaign and am starting a new one next month. I've been playing since the late 70s, though I was out of gaming for 5-6 years in the 90s and then for several years last decade after 3E came out (not that I hated 3E - just got married, fathered a child, had a crazy job, etc)

[Writer]

5. D&D: Squeeeeeeee! n/t

[MrSlayer]

6. I've been playing since I was 12.

Love AD&D and still have all the original hardback 2nd edition books.

[Orrex]

7. You're all a bunch of pathetic geeks

And no, you may not have my complete collection of 1st ed. hardbacks.

Nor my 2nd ed.

[RoyGBiv]

9. Dieties and Demigods?

The original one?

[Orrex]

11. Not the Cthulhu one, alas, though a buddy of mine in college had it

[RoyGBiv]

13. Argh ...

Same here. He still has it too and will until I am finally able to lock him in his basement long enough to acquire it. :)

[Orrex]

14. My friend was a real dick about it, too.

He was always telling everyone that he had it, and how it was so cool, and how he'd never part with it, and how he never even opened it anymore blah blah blah. After a while we all concluded that he was full of shit, and we ignored him about it.


Then, around two years later, I was helping him move, and there it was in the oversized mylar bag, just like he'd said. Noticing that I'd seen it, he actually deigned to open it, and it was the very book in question, with all of the Mythos and Melnibonéan stuff right there on the page.

And you know the worst part? THE COVERS STILL CREAKED!!!!!

[GreenPartyVoter]

25. Pretty sure my family had that one, but I would have to ask my lil bro for sure since

he was more of a gamer than I ever was.

If it was this one, then yes we had it.

[Orrex]

29. There were different printings with the same cover

[GreenPartyVoter]

34. I thought so. Will have to ask my bro.

[GreenPartyVoter]

51. Ok, talked the the bro and yes it's the Cthulu one, but it's in crappy shape from being used so

much over the years. Ditto with all the other 1st edition AD&D books he has.

He was telling me the gaming club at college had a 1st edition signed by Gary Gygax himself, and during a rummage sale to raise money for the group a newbie sold it off for $20.

[Orsino]

62. My wife snagged us one from E-bay.

I was really ticked off back in '81, when the copy I'd ordered through the Sears catalog arrived bowdlerized. The Cthulhu stuff was the best part of the whole book, and i was going through a Lovecraft phase.

It was nice, nearly two decades later, to fix that swindle.

[NuttyFluffers]

64. i has it. it's a whole lot of chaotic evil, btw.

but alas, i inherited that one. only played D&D when i reached 20. love other RPGs, but respect must always be given to the great granddaddy. i'm currently partial to In Nomine, as i love the structure of rewards and punishments for roleplaying, as demanded of the characters. go against your nature, you literally risk everything you exist for -- and yet you play alien beings that must blend into the human world to get work done.

[Aristus]

23. I sold my original edition about 11 years ago for over $100.

Haven't played D&D in YEARS!...

[Angleae]

27. I have one of them.

Yes, the original with Cthulhu & Melnibonean mythos. No, you can't have it. :P

[RoyGBiv]

28. Meanie ...

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

:P

[Rhythm]

68. Yeah,... what he said! So there!!!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

37. I've got a copy.

Spine's in bad shape, but it's got all that great Erol Otus work.

[NewJeffCT]

38. I had the Cthulu one, but sold it on eBay

Needed some extra cash back in the day between marriages...

However, there are two versions of the Cthulu Deities & Demigods, but I forget how to distinguish them.

[GreenPartyVoter]

40. First pringint they thought the Cthulu mythos was public domain, but it wasn't so

they had to acknowledge the owner's rights in the second. (According to wikipedia.)

[Rhythm]

69. They also ran afoul of Michael Moorcock's fictional mythos as well.

The "Eternal Champion" heroes and gods were also removed when the DDG went into its second printing.

[OmahaBlueDog]

41. I thought the original was "Gods, Demiggods & Heroes"

All I remember was that we played a hybrid D a D that encompassed the 1st ed. hardbound books (which were coming out too slowly to be useful in 1981) and the 3-books-box set. I also had a heckuva time convinving mom to buy the stuff; the 3rd supplement (Eldrich Wizardry) had a very nekkid gal on an altar about to be sacrificed.

[RoyGBiv]

55. You may be right ...

Since I don't actually own it and haven't seen the original with all the stuff that had to be taken out in subsequent versions for twenty years, the mind is blurry.

My games have always developed into systems with "house rules" of one form or another. Because I played it for so long and so much, I still think in 2nd edition rules and had a lot of trouble changing to 3.0+, which, again, resulted in a bastardized system.

My mom had a pragmatic approach to the books with the racy covers and such. My grandmother was somewhat taken aback by something she saw on one of the pages I had open (I think it was a succubus), and Mom just told her something like, "Well, at least its not Penthouse or drugs ..." and that was that.

It was weird trying to find the books in a small town in the days before Internet, though ... a town with 51 churches and 10,000 people. We got them at a children's shoe store. The guy who owned the store actually played, realized how hard it was for younger people to get the books, and so started selling all sorts of supplies, sorta under the counter. I still have my first set of custom dice I got from him and the Crown Royal bag I found in a parking lot to hold them. :)

[OmahaBlueDog]

56. When I started...

Most players played with the first edition, which was commonly referred to as "three books boxed." These were paper bound copies. IIRC, they did not come with the dice. There were then a series of supplements. The first (and most useful) was Greyhawk (IIRC, it had the rules for Paladins and either Assasins or Rangers). The second was Blackmoor. The third was Eldrich Wizardry (rulees for psionics, demons, and relics). There were two additional quasi supplements. One (IIRC) was Gods, Demigods, and Heros, and it basically had character attributes for key figures in a number of mythologies. The other (and I cannot remember the name) had to do with raising armies and fighting large scale combat.


Then, a simplified version of what was billed as "Advanced D & D" came out. This was a box set. It had a larger (magazine sized) rule book that was a bare bones version of what was to come in the hard bound books (very bare bones). It also came with a set of dice (a 20 sided, an 8 sided, a 4 sided, and a 6 sided), and a sample dungeon. The hardbound A D & D books (what I think is now known as the second edition) was to quickly follow, but didn't show up for over a year. When it hit the market, the monster giude (I can't remember the title) hit first...which was really useless, since it made reference to a DM Guide that hadn't even hit the market yet. When the DM guide hit, it was finally a useful system....however, by that time, I'd discovered other interests, like beer and girls ;-)

Another RPG I enjoyed at that time was Traveller. It was a space-themed game, modeled very much on the first D & D in terms of the way the game was boxed and formatted. One of the great things about that game was that it was one of the first to use only 6-sided dice, which cut costs and made play a lot more straightforward. I never played the Hero-system games, but I'm told that the 6-sided die aspect is a huge part of their appeal as well.

[GreenPartyVoter]

21. It's unreal all the book sets out there now. We've been picking up the latest editions. Things have

changed a bit.

Anyway, my boys are having a great time with it. Well, only when there's no fighting. If my younger guy gets hit he yells, "That's it, I'm dead for sure!" and leaves in a huff to play on his computer. (Yeah, he's dead. He took a 6pt hit leaving him with 33 or whatever.... :eyes:) The only way to get him back is to loudly declare his character to be an NPC and start controlling it for him. :rofl:

[Orrex]

30. I bought one 3rd ed soft-back book for around $9.95. That was my last T$R purchase

It's pretty clear at this point that their strategy is to release a new, largely incompatible system every couple of years, each time with thousands of dollars worth of new "indispensable" rulebooks, so my built-in cynicism prevents me from giving them any more money, even if I had the urge to acquire those books.

[TheMightyFavog]

31. TSR wasn't in control of D&D for 3rd ed

Wizards of the Coast bought TSR out in the late 90s, IIRC.

[Orrex]

33. WotC bought them, I thought that T$R was still operating as a subsidiary

I've been out of the game for ages, so I haven't kept track.

[NuttyFluffers]

65. it's all a slave to Hasbro. WotC, Avalon Hill, TSR... all slaves to G.I. Joe and Jem.

worked retail at a game store during the "great transition". quite sad. :(

[GreenPartyVoter]

35. What my husband figured is that they have restructured the system to make it

more similar to the card and video games out there.

We started playing this new campaign with a new module and old books. Almost impossible to do smoothly. Spent most of the time waiting for hubby to try and look up info he needed.

[tjwash]

44. Talk to me when you have the original paper bookcovers on those skippy

:hi:

And to be a real D and D geek, one needs to remember the Arduin Vs 1st-ed-Gygax wars that raged for years.

[Orrex]

54. I have Chainmail rules somewhere in my attic; that's as far back as I can go

[RoyGBiv]

8. Played, play, will play ...

I unfortunately don't know anyone now who is willing to engage their imagination enough to play regularly, so I haven't actually played in awhile. But I was a fairly steady player from the time I was around 11 or 12 up until my mid-30s. I'm 40 now and would be perfectly happy setting up a new campaign and setting forth.

I resort to playing things like Baldur's Gate these days, trying to create my own mods for it, etc.

Keeps the creativity flowing.

[Mojambo]

10. Thinking about starting up a Pathfinder game later this summer

for some friends who have never played before.

Should be fun.

[Alexander]

12. No, but my friend larps.

I wouldn't mind sitting down with some people and playing D&D (I did play something similar called Dungeon Master or something like that when I was a kid), but the whole idea of larping is a bit too much for me.

Spending money on a membership, foam weapons, gas, etc to drive out of state most of the time for role-playing games? No thank you. I guess some people find it entertaining, but it strikes me as a tremendous waste of time and money.

[miscsoc]

18. people should larp

on aircraft carriers. it's like a dungeon, innit

[Posteritatis]

24. I imagine storming the ruler's tower would result in some disciplinary action, though.. (nt)

[haele]

15. My early Navy career, my primary social outlet was the weekend quests -

along with the underway nightshift quests. Far better and easier on the pocketbook than the underway nightshift poker games...
And then, I discovered the SCA... :)

BTW, if you have a star, you didn't see the OP ad...
http://www.myjones.com/limited/wizards

Jones drinks are doing a special edition D&D 6 pack - woohoo!

Haele

[miscsoc]

16. kind of makes you understand

how the u.s. got where it is in iraq. i mean, the cave is like iraq, and the fireball is... uh, wait a minute, is this post all just a metaphor that has sailed right over my head? Maybe the Navy should play chess to pass the time instead. Or Risk!

[miscsoc]

17. on a related note

I watched one of those PBS documentaries about the presidents recently, and according to that, Nixon was a master poker player when he was in the Navy during the war. I don't know how to play poker so the details are beyond me, but apparently he made a science of it, and won himself several thousand dollars by pursuing a very cautious strategy he learned from a friend. This friend was interviewed on the programme, and said that personally he didn't have the patience to use such a careful method; but Nixon did, and ended up sending a lot of money back home by using it.

[GreenPartyVoter]

19. Still play and am in fact in a campaign with my little boys. The hack-n-slash

has brought back a lot of memories....

of why I stopped playing with little boys.


(And nobody better be saying anything about the line above. You _know_ what I mean!!! Pevs!!)

[GreenPartyVoter]

20. Two must-see movies for people who love D&D...

The Gamers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiTEHqAeanw

The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwtH5oQqHPg (Even better than the first one and also available through Netflix.)

[RoyGBiv]

26. Those are awesome ...

I like Dorkiness Rising better. I once played a bard. It really, really sucked. :)

I watched it one evening a few months ago and laughed through the whole thing. Everyone in the house at the time thought I was nuts.

And I guess I was, just a lil' bit.

[GreenPartyVoter]

36. Yeah, we showed Dorkness Rising to the kids. They giggled through the whole thing, then when it was

over begged dad to start up a campaign for them. :)

[GreenPartyVoter]

60. Hey, I went to see if they were doing another movie. Turns out instead they are filming a

web series called "JourneyQuest." Can't wait to see it!

[AsahinaKimi]

22. I think I played a game like D&D

I was always playing a ninja type character. But my favorite game was this:
Werewolf: The Apocalypse

It was the most awesome role playing game at the time. My character was an old powerful
wearbear. She didn't have that problem with Silver that the Werewolves did, and every time
we went up against the Vampire horde, she would shred them to pieces, even though being
pumped full of Silver bullets. Of course, it would help that she would grow to 9 foot tall
and weight a half ton of full raging muscle. We spent hours on that game.. some times going into the wee morning hours, and loving every second of it.


***edit note: I think White Wolf used to have a website for gamers to go and play on line. I tried it once, but it just didn't seem the same.

[TheMightyFavog]

32. Played it in college...

But 4th ed is kind of meh.

Now Shadowrun... There's a game I wanna get into. Too bad there's not much in the way of gamers around here.


Shadowrun magic is not your wimpy D&D mojo.

[JohnnyBoots]

39. I think they made 4th to be more like a video game to try and get the WOW kids to spend their money.

[GreenPartyVoter]

42. Husband totally agrees. It's like Magic the gathering cards and RPG video games

smooshed together for the kids, with a little bit of AD&D flavoring to help it go down with the older gamers.

[NewJeffCT]

43. I'm surprised at the number of old-school gamers who like 4E

The problem is that 3E/3.5 became a hugely bloated unplayable mess. After my last campaign hit level 10 or 11 or so, it was literally like a second full-time job for me just to prepare interesting, balanced and challenging encounters. And, even then, I would find I would forget a key ability, class ability, template ability, magic item, racial ability, feat, etc for one of my bad guys in most encounters. There was just so much, it was unmanageable. It would take us a good hour or more to do one round of combat between myself and 8 players.

Then, because preparing good encounters for my bad guys took up so much friggin’ time, things like the story and role-playing and character development ended up falling by the wayside.

And, while Pathfinder cleaned up some of the bloat, it did so by adding another layer of complexity to the base classes, which I can just see causing all sorts of problems in terms of my players or me forgetting something at a key time in game.

So, while there is a lot of things I do not like about 4E, I will not go back to 3E/3.5 and would not DM Pathfinder unless I got paid a lot of money to do so.

In defense of 4E:
1) Encounter preparation is a breeze – it took me 15 minutes to prepare three diverse encounters that are a good challenge for first level characters.

2) There is an actual mechanic to reward role-playing now with Skill Challenges.

3) All of the classes are fairly well balanced now – in all of the older editions, it was wait for the wizard to get high enough level to carry the party, or 3e/3.5 wait for the wizard/cleric to get high enough level.

4) It is the current supported version of D&D and the online DDI tool is absolutely terrific and makes building monsters/encounters, PCs and NPCs extremely easy.

[GreenPartyVoter]

46. Hubbby likes being ablt to print out character sheets for us. That's a pretty cool thing, not to

have to work it all out for ourselves but instead let the computer do it for us. (I have _never_ been good with the technical stuff. I've never memorized a chart and I still have to ask people which dice to roll for what. LOL)

With us, though, there is story from the module, but not so much character development. Playing with 10 and 12 yo boys means nothing but hack-n-slash.

First night we played we came back from an encounter all bloodied, hungry, and exhausted. I said we were going to the inn to clean up, eat and sleep, but no, the little guy wanted to go straight to the blacksmith and get fitted for better armor. And just the other night we were wandering through the remains of a keep and we hear voices behind a door. We know they are most likely goblins and that we would have to fight. So what do the kids do? They try to break down the door. And they failed 4 times. So all they did was go Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom on the door, letting the Goblins know we were out there. So much for surprise. :eyes:

[Kaleva]

45. My characters often made joke potions

One time, I made a potion that was supposed to make the drinker twice as fast but it actually would make the person crap their pants. I told the DM this before starting out on an adventure with others. I sold the potion to one telling him one drink would greatly increase his speed for a short period of time. It wasn't long before we got into a fight with some monsters. My friend took out the potion vial from his pouch and took a sip. The DM told him he crapped his pants. Confused, my friend took another sip and crapped his pants again. After the fight was over, my buddy was standing there holding an empty potion vial and had many pounds of shit in his britches. I explained to the party what the potion actually did and everyone but the victim thought it was very funny.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

47. I did until my buddies.........

decided that GURPS was more fun. :(

[Taverner]

48. SO THAT'S WHAT YOU GUYS DID!!!!

We past DMs wonder what happened when you folks fell off the Earth (seemingly)

[ZombieHorde]

49. D&D is awesome. nt

[mcollins]

50. Used to play 2nd Edition.

Seems like a million years ago. Haven't picked up a book since 1984 I think, except to look through and remember games from long past. Have you see the webcomic "Order of the Stick"? If you haven't you must go and read them all. Way too funny.

[GreenPartyVoter]

53. Cute! Do you remember Phil Foglio's strips in Dragon magazine? I found them online here

http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php

[nickinSTL]

52. I do

with a group of friends (including my wife), who are all more into gaming than I am.

The group ranges in age (now, since one couple left and I don't know if they'll be back) from around 36 to 56.

We do D&D, but we've also experimented with a number of other settings & systems.

[TK421]

57. Our campaign just reached 16th level...we'll be taking it past epic levels

going up against a god, basically ( an evil one ). We're running this campaign off of Book of Nine Swords and we only have five of them so far

[Kaleva]

58. A friend once rolled up a character so weak and dumb...

we had to carry him and he could do little more then wiggle his eyebrows. In every fight we got into, he'd lay on the ground wiggling his eyebrows furiously. He actually outlived everyone else in the party but died of thirst as there was no one left to take care of him.

[TK421]

59. Heh...was this character a halfling rogue by any chance?

I ask because there is a halfling wizard coming into this party soon

[Ekirh]

61. I play Dungeon and Dragons on Tuesdays

I'm a Level Eleven Ranger Human.

However, we don't stop there OHHH NO!!! ON Weds I play Stars Wars (Level 4 Noble) and on Sundays I play Pathfinder (Level 3 Cleric Dwarf)

[Broken_Hero]

63. Yep, D and D

player here, I played 1st and second(primarily 2nd edition).

Craziest thing that happened to me, was I had a level 9 dwarf warrior(which in 2nd edition is pretty damn good), and a 3 level wizard(bud of mine) did a hold person spell on me, and I totally bombed my save dice roll, hell all I had to do was roll 5-6 or better, and I rolled a 1.

So I was in the hold spell, and dude walked right up to me and gave me the final goodbye with a dagger...I was rather irate, but meh, I campaigned to be the first Dwarf Lich, but failed....

[DarkTirade]

66. The group I was with for a while upgraded from 3.5 to Pathfinder a while back

kinda like it. Its the unofficial D&D 3.75 basically. :)

Haven't tried 4.0. Haven't heard many good things about it either. When I was working on making a simplified kid-friendly version of the D20 system so parents could play with their kids, several people told me not to bother because it'd already been done. It was called 4.0. :P

[nolabear]

67. Played many years ago, with friends I still have.

I suspect D&D friends last. All those battle tales, all that comeraderie...