Dungeons and Dragons

[Overflow]

"The sound of stone scraping stone echoes through the dark corridors as you push open the secret door in the backroom of the ruined castle tower.  The stench of decay and a burst of warm air erupts from the passage, and you see a stone staircase descending into darkness, flanked by walls adorned with intricate designs of tentacled creatures, armoured soldiers and treasures.  You've found king Bairn's hidden catacombs.  What do you do?"

 

I recently (as in, around 6 months back) got to play my first D&D game, and it was awesome. I fell in love with the game, particularly 5e, and have since begun running my own game for a small group of friends.  I've been looking for a website with a forum where I could talk to other players and DM's for advice on running my game, and then I realized there are probably some players on OCRemix. 

Were my assumptions correct? Are there other D&D players on these forums who would like to discuss their games and experiences and ask for advice? 

 

Also, just for fun, here's a WIP version of the map for my campaign:

[Slimy]

I haven't played too much D&D, but I've always had an interest, and over the years I've collected a bunch of pdf files for various games and editions. Anyone can PM me if they're interested in seeing and using them.

(I even have a few folders full of maps, and deck-plans for Traveller.)

____

Edit: Oh, and if you don't mind his curmudgeonly attitude and a complete lack of editing, you might enjoy Spoony's Counter Monkey series.

[DarkeSword]

I played D&D on-and-off for many years with a specific core group of friends. One of my oldest friends, Sarah, has run campaigns in her own personal setting since we were in high school, and I, along with other friends, have played many characters that helped shape the setting; one of my characters has essentially entered into legendary-recurring-NPC territory at this point. It's been a massive source of creativity in my life wholly apart from my composing/arranging hobby. I've spent a lot of time writing stories and engaging in both D&D and freeform RP to flesh out characters.

Sarah's DMing style leans more on the storytelling side of D&D over the mechanical, board game combat side, so it's always been a great way to engage in great storytelling. It's not even the typical funny stories you hear from folks playing D&D either about how they managed to kill their whole party or about how they just screw with people; it's more like, there's so much character development and real drama that it's become one of my favorite fantasy settings, on par with Dragonlance or LotR.

Haven't played in a few years because we're all adulting now, but I miss the crap out of it. Might bother Sarah to get a game going soon.

[MindWanderer]

I played the hell out of D&D for most of my life, but like DS, I'm busy "adulting" now.  It's rare I can even squeeze in an hour or two for a video game, much less coordinate several hours of sit-down play with friends.  Also I don't really have any friends.

I've played with a lot of lousy DMs, a couple of good ones.  Most are either great at storytelling and world-building but lousy at mechanics, or vice-versa.  I played a ton of Living Forgotten Realms before D&D Essentials kind of killed 4e (and then WotC dropped support).  I was the GM of the Core Coliseum, a competitive format, over on the WotC forums for a year or so, right at the tail end of 3.5e.

Since WotC discontinued their own forums, enworld.org has become the primary online forum for D&D and several other RPG's.  You should check that out to share experiences and advice.  

[Overflow]

15 hours ago, Slimy said:

I haven't played too much D&D, but I've always had an interest, and over the years I've collected a bunch of pdf files for various games and editions. Anyone can PM me if they're interested in seeing and using them.

(I even have a few folders full of maps, and deck-plans for Traveller.)

____

Edit: Oh, and if you don't mind his curmudgeonly attitude and a complete lack of editing, you might enjoy Spoony's Counter Monkey series.

That's awesome, I actually watched a bunch of Counter Monkey before I ever played D&D. I feel it helped prepare me and got me in the mindset. I've already spent several hundred bucks on collecting books and stuff for the game haha.  And maps are super useful, especially grid maps of dungeons and caves!

 

46 minutes ago, DarkeSword said:

 

Sarah's DMing style leans more on the storytelling side of D&D over the mechanical, board game combat side, so it's always been a great way to engage in great storytelling. It's not even the typical funny stories you hear from folks playing D&D either about how they managed to kill their whole party or about how they just screw with people; it's more like, there's so much character development and real drama that it's become one of my favorite fantasy settings, on par with Dragonlance or LotR.

Haven't played in a few years because we're all adulting now, but I miss the crap out of it. Might bother Sarah to get a game going soon.

This is super cool, I hope to have a game that becomes that broad and awesome someday!  Creating such an epic and engrossing story with others sounds really satisfying and engaging.  You should totally see if you guys can play again on Roll20, which is a really handy virtual table top to play on.

Also fun fact, apparently the Dragonlance books actually are official D&D books! I've been finding that a lot of things are part of the D&D world and I never knew (Baldur's Gate, Dragonlance, Neverwinter Nights to name a few)

 

16 minutes ago, MindWanderer said:

I played the hell out of D&D for most of my life, but like DS, I'm busy "adulting" now.  It's rare I can even squeeze in an hour or two for a video game, much less coordinate several hours of sit-down play with friends.  Also I don't really have any friends.

I've played with a lot of lousy DMs, a couple of good ones.  Most are either great at storytelling and world-building but lousy at mechanics, or vice-versa.  I played a ton of Living Forgotten Realms before D&D Essentials kind of killed 4e (and then WotC dropped support).  I was the GM of the Core Coliseum, a competitive format, over on the WotC forums for a year or so, right at the tail end of 3.5e.

Since WotC discontinued their own forums, enworld.org has become the primary online forum for D&D and several other RPG's.  You should check that out to share experiences and advice.  

Adulting is really tough.  This week I've been putting in 13 hour work days at the studio.  Love my job but maaaaan.  

How does competitive D&D work? do you pit your characters against other characters, or is it like a race to get through a dungeon against another team? Both sound pretty fun haha.

Oh thanks, yeah I will for sure check out enworld.org.  I think I've actually come across some of their pages several times when looking for advice.

 

I've got a player in my group playing a Chaotic Good Cleric, but he's greedy beyond belief.  This player tries to take everything that isn't nailed down, skin and harvest every monster we fight and even break statues in temples so he can take pieces with him.  He even took a sword and spear which were coated in evil magic out of greed and took both treasures at the end of the dungeon (I intended one for him and one for the other player, but he was instantly like "Hey you don't mind if I take both, right?") so I thought hard about it and realizedthat a good aligned god he serves would become upset with his actions (especially carrying around evil weapons for no reason outside of greed), and so his god revoked his magic powers.  It baffled him beyond belief and it wasn't until the next game that he thought to actually ask his god what's going on haha.

[MindWanderer]

21 minutes ago, Overflow said:

How does competitive D&D work? do you pit your characters against other characters, or is it like a race to get through a dungeon against another team? Both sound pretty fun haha.

I've actually done a couple of different formats.  The CoCo was a PvP format, with a lot of house rules to cover abusable corner cases.  Since it was forum-based, each player would send the "pitlord" (sort of a one-shot DM) a set of tactics to follow, then the pitlord would try their best to follow those tactics and see how the battle played out.

I've also done tournaments that involved dungeon races like what you describe, with or without PvP allowed.

Your cleric player is a classic archetype, I've seen that in just about every game I've ever played with inexperienced players.  It takes a few games to figure out what actually makes for a fun game for everyone involved.  People used to video games, in particular, take a while to get out of the greed mentality.  I try not to be heavy-handed with divine sanction like that, though--it doesn't teach the long-term lesson, and if the same player rolls up a non-divine character next game (and he probably will), you'll be back to square one.  And this guy seems like he needs a lot of work, if he's actually taking multiple treasures for himself and not letting the other PC's get any.

[Overflow]

23 minutes ago, MindWanderer said:

 

Your cleric player is a classic archetype, I've seen that in just about every game I've ever played with inexperienced players.  It takes a few games to figure out what actually makes for a fun game for everyone involved.  People used to video games, in particular, take a while to get out of the greed mentality.  I try not to be heavy-handed with divine sanction like that, though--it doesn't teach the long-term lesson, and if the same player rolls up a non-divine character next game (and he probably will), you'll be back to square one.  And this guy seems like he needs a lot of work, if he's actually taking multiple treasures for himself and not letting the other PC's get any.

That is a good point.  I'm still also new to DM'ing so it's taking practice for me to learn what works and what doesn't.  I did have another reasoning for why his god would be unhappy though, which is more of a "human" (in the sense that greek gods and such had "human" goals and desires) reason.  His god, Njord, is a god of treasure and tasked his cleric with finding his lost treasure for him, in exchange he would be blessed with treasure and adventure.  Recently, they explored a temple filled with monsters, and in a fit of rage, the player had his character eviscerate a monster, splattering its blood and guts all over the floor and walls.  This was the same temple where he tried to break and shatter jade statues  so he could take some with him.  I figured that Njord would watch that and think "Do I really trust this guy with finding my lost temple of treasure, if he will defile a temple like this without a second thought?"

[MindWanderer]

Oh, I'm not saying that it's an inappropriate action for the god to take.  But what you have is a character who would never exist.  He's supposed to have dedicated his life to a good god who's supposed to respect treasure, and right out the gate he violates that.  If the character had been under the control of this player earlier in his fictitious life, he would have fallen out of favor earlier.  It's not like a video game, where you're playing someone like Commander Shepard who's mostly a blank slate before the game starts.

What I would do as DM is talk to the player and discuss the possibility that he really never should have chosen this character to begin with.  He can then switch characters, or reveal a secret backstory to the character that would explain his actions, which would result in staying the same character story-wise but changing the character sheet.  For instance, he might have told everyone he worships Njord (and could continue to tell everyone this) but secretly worships Loki or Hœnir, or isn't actually a cleric at all.

[Skyline Drop]

If the character is acting out of line with his god's wishes by being greedy and disrespectful to treasure, then his god should probably take action. Make his spells fizzle at critical moments if he gets out of hand with it and see if he connects the dots. If he wants to keep disregarding his god's mission for him, then his god shouldn't keep endowing him with his powers or fulfilling his prayers. That might actually be a fun angle to play, if your group is okay with multiclassing. Maybe he feels betrayed by his god and chooses a different path where he can better serve his own ambitions. That sounds awfully Rogue-ish to me, personally, but he could play whatever at that point.

If the character's god just lets him get away with that stuff, maybe his god isn't as chaotic good as you initially thought. Greed, wanton destruction, disrespect for sacred artifacts - none of that stuff says "good guy" to me. And that's okay. Let him be a bad guy, if it's not going to derail the story too badly. Although it probably brings to mind bigger questions of why the rest of the party is keeping him around, assuming they're more traditional "good guys." Some of my favorite sessions have involved deep-seeded party conflict finally boiling over, and while it's pretty bad for railroading a group along a previously planned story arc, it can still make for a fun session if played right. It could even factor into another element of a story you've already written. Maybe that character has been an agent of the Big Bad the entire time? Maybe some eldritch horror from another plane has touched and tainted his mind. I dunno. Talk to the player and see if you can find something to run with.

That brings to mind the most important thing to remember; D&D is fundamentally a game about conversations. You need to be able to talk with your players about the direction of the game, and try your best to accommodate their interests without compromising your own. But at the same time, as DM, you do have some fiat ability, here. If he's being a disruption to the flow of the game, or making the other players uncomfortable, you need to step in.

 

That aside, I think a few years back, there was a group here on OCR playing D&D for a bit. I don't know what happened with that. It could be fun to start it up again.

[Overflow]

^ These are both some really cool suggestions.  I like the idea of his character having dark intentions/worshiping a different god, and the idea that maybe the god isn't good.  I feel a large part of it is more that it's how he as a player likes to play (grabbing everything and having a trophy of every enemy they fight), and he was a bit frustrated when I told him that his behaviour (wanting to steal and kill people to get their stuff) is not becoming of a good aligned character.  It would still annoy me but to a lesser extent if he was playing a thief, for example.  Then again, the concept of a terribly greedy character needing to learn to resist his urges makes for an interesting character, but maybe not a very fun character to play.  I'm not sure.

 

Overall I'm keeping the game simple.  I know he wants to have lots of crafting and resource collecting, but I strongly dislike that element in video games and I'm not prepared to include it in a meaningful way, so I've been keeping it simple.  I haven't even been making them keep track of how many arrows they fire, for example.  Maybe one day I can have intense political intrigue, warring nations, crafting, etc but for now I'm still just learning.

 

Also, an OCR game would be cool, I bet there could be some really cool games run by people on here!

[Eino Keskitalo]

I used to (mostly) run some campaigns, playing the Middle-Earth Role Playing Game, and a Finnish RPG system Rapier/Elhendil that was all about elves. In retrospect I really sucked as a DM but I think we all had some fun. I've never played tabletop RPG sessions that were any good or if they were, lasted more than 1-2 sessions. Oh well. I still like to read rulebooks and campaign materials and stuff every now and then. It'd be cool to get to play Ars Magica for instance, and then there's the Glorantha setting, which sounds really good (gotta play King of Dragon Pass sometime). I did have RuneQuest but I don't think we ever played that one. I don't think I understood how cool it was back in the day either. It was the first RPG I had but it was too complicated for the young me and I got something more basic to get started with. Never played D&D!

Anyone played over Skype or something?

[Overflow]

11 hours ago, evktalo said:

 

Anyone played over Skype or something?

Well there is actually a really good virtual tabletop called Roll20.  It's free, and you can use tokens, roll dice, have maps and even play music and use fog of war features.  It's what I've been using for my D&D, and it even can do voice/video chat through the website!

[Slimy]

It suddenly occurred to me, some of you history pedants might enjoy watching lindybeige's videos. He's made a few about roleplaying games.

[LuckyXIII]

I didn't play my first game of D&D until I was 24 or so (12 years ago now). Participated with some friends from college, had a lot of fun. As a kid I was raised to believe it was all satanic and evil and that the devil would feast on my soul if I dared touch a D20. But I thought the cartoon looked cool...

Anyway, for a couple years there my friends and I engaged in campaigns; played the Star Wars RPG for which I was Game Master, then we just kinda stopped.

3.5 years ago I made some new friends from where I now work in Hawaii and we tried keeping a game going, but then adult responsibilities got in the way and that quickly dissipated, but in February I shot a short film that involves D&D and I'm going to try and edit it next week when I'm on leave. So far all I have is about 20 seconds of ROUGH opening titles...

Music by Zircon - purchased his groovy pack and he said it's cool using it for this project.

 

 

 

[Overflow]

That sounds cool, I'd watch that short film.

 

Last night I ran a game for a second group of people who I am starting on the opposite, southern end of the island. I'm trying to give them connecting story threads but different adventures, so when the two groups meet up, they will each have different stories to tell and have answers for each other's questions.  Currently I am preparing a zelda style dungeon for the second group, complete with locked doors and keys, puzzles, minibosses and a sand theme throughout the dungeon.  Should be fun!

[Anorax]

Have a few friends from college who play D&D in our spare time. Currently, with this being summer break and all, we're trying (with little success) to have a campaign over the internet.

The DM for this CoIP (campaign over internet) has a really neat homebrew world set up, and he's basically letting us use any and all 5e core and supplemental materials (as well as a few homebrew classes at DM's discretion), which was really cool. The biggest problem we currently have is actually finding scheduled time to campaign.

 

Also, if you are someone who plays fifth edition, check out Dicecloud. It's a really, really neat online character sheet tool that lets you keep track of anything and everything that modifies character stats.  You can always keep track of how you got that +5 bonus to [ability]. It takes some extra time to set up the character, but once it's done it's a huge time saver.

[Overflow]

3 hours ago, Anorax said:

Have a few friends from college who play D&D in our spare time. Currently, with this being summer break and all, we're trying (with little success) to have a campaign over the internet.

The DM for this CoIP (campaign over internet) has a really neat homebrew world set up, and he's basically letting us use any and all 5e core and supplemental materials (as well as a few homebrew classes at DM's discretion), which was really cool. The biggest problem we currently have is actually finding scheduled time to campaign.

Finding time to play is one of the hardest things to do as adults haha.

3 hours ago, Anorax said:

Also, if you are someone who plays fifth edition, check out Dicecloud. It's a really, really neat online character sheet tool that lets you keep track of anything and everything that modifies character stats.  You can always keep track of how you got that +5 bonus to [ability]. It takes some extra time to set up the character, but once it's done it's a huge time saver.

Dude this website is awesome! I'm for sure going to check this out.  I always just use an editable PDF in a separate window for my character but everyone else in my group wants their info online, so I will show this to them. This will allow me to see their info at all times too if I need to

[Anorax]

3 hours ago, Overflow said:

Dude this website is awesome! I'm for sure going to check this out.  I always just use an editable PDF in a separate window for my character but everyone else in my group wants their info online, so I will show this to them. This will allow me to see their info at all times too if I need to

I know, it's fantastic! What's really neat is that its layout is mobile-responsive, so you can use it on your phone or desktop/laptop computer. Just keep in mind it's much better to use it from the moment of character creation rather than trying to transfer a character over from paper to dicecloud. I learned that the hard way.

My favorite part is how the site uses math.js functions to let you automate all sorts of calculations, so you can make some very detailed setups that you can just set once and never touch again. See my current character's sheet for an example (specifically the "Wizard Spellcaster" item under the Features tab).

[Slimy]

On 6/17/2016 at 0:49 AM, LuckyXIII said:

3.5 years ago I made some new friends from where I now work in Hawaii and we tried keeping a game going, but then adult responsibilities got in the way and that quickly dissipated, but in February I shot a short film that involves D&D and I'm going to try and edit it next week when I'm on leave. So far all I have is about 20 seconds of ROUGH opening titles...

Music by Zircon - purchased his groovy pack and he said it's cool using it for this project.

Personally, when I think of "D&D opening titles," I think of the Two Mandolins song from Stronghold playing while a camera pans over a dimly-lit table with dice and maps and character sheets. Probably because I like the juxtaposition of the simple, setting-appropriate music against the more serious storylines D&D tries to do a lot. Some other music I tend to think of as "D&D Soundtrack" is the Dwarf Fortress Soundsense Tracks by Simon Swerwer. The modern guitar probably isn't so setting-appropriate, but I really like the atmosphere. Especially with song like Kobold March, The Tankard Basher, and Spelunker.

[Overflow]

I like the Dwarf Fortress music, I may be able to find a place for it in my game.  When we wait in the lobby for the game to start, I always play This WoW music.  I've never played WoW but I like its music and it fits very well for that ready to begin style of music. 

Also, Pavane by Gabriel Faure is what I consider the perfect travel/adventure music for this sort of game.  It may be from the 1800's but it really sounds like the kind of music that would play in a SNES RPG overworld, like Dragon Quest.

 

In other news, I'm preparing a zelda style dungeon for my second group, check it out:

 

Obviously, it's sand/earth themed. I was hoping to find a really good song to use, preferably a cover of a Zelda dungeon song for it.  I found a good Stone Tower Temple remix but was also hoping to find a good Skyward Sword earth temple remix, but no one seems to have remixed it in a classical style.

[Skyline Drop]

That map looks pretty sweet! The layout actually does a good job of conjuring memories of early Zelda temples, as well. I like it.

My group had an interesting adventure last session, and the party got pretty badly separated, with both of our spellcasters ending up in prison, and all of their possessions - including our spellcasting foci - taken away and hidden. While the party paladin went on a crazy adventure to fight and break the sorcerer out of prison, killing several guards along the way (and accidentally earning our sorcerer the moniker of "The Pyromancer of Mordheim"), I, playing a druid, pointed out the DM that Wild Shape was technically not a spell, and therefore didn't require a casting focus, any material, verbal, or somatic spell components, or any equipment at all of that matter. Thus, the night my character was thrown into a human-sized cell wearing human-sized shackles, he simply turned into a rat and scurried away. While the paladin and sorcerer's mini-quest had taken hours of real time and multiple combats, and put them on the equivalent of a terror watchlist in the city, my escape took all of a minute to resolve and my character's anonymity was maintained.

[LuckyXIII]

On 6/22/2016 at 2:08 AM, Slimy said:

Personally, when I think of "D&D opening titles," I think of the Two Mandolins song from Stronghold playing while a camera pans over a dimly-lit table with dice and maps and character sheets. Probably because I like the juxtaposition of the simple, setting-appropriate music against the more serious storylines D&D tries to do a lot. Some other music I tend to think of as "D&D Soundtrack" is the Dwarf Fortress Soundsense Tracks by Simon Swerwer. The modern guitar probably isn't so setting-appropriate, but I really like the atmosphere. Especially with song like Kobold March, The Tankard Basher, and Spelunker.

I LIKE it! Were the story simply about a gaming session I would go for something like this, however something more...uh...something more something happens (sorry, it's late) and so with the original selection of music I'm trying to create some tension as well as some juxtaposition, hoping to ramp up comedic tension.

 

 

 

[Mirby]

I'm actually in the midst of setting up a campaign based on a world I've had in mind for quite some time. Already got the world roughly made using this site (it has 4 continents) and hitting random there until I got 4 landmasses that roughly matched up with the shapes I've had in mind for the continents for years. Added in the Gods and their domains and dogmas (which are necessary if a Cleric picks that god so there's a code they have to follow or else they lose their powers, ya know). I'm really enjoying this world building because I haven't really elaborated on this world this much in some time so it's great to get the creative juices flowing again.

[Slimy]

35 minutes ago, Mirby said:

I'm actually in the midst of setting up a campaign based on a world I've had in mind for quite some time. Already got the world roughly made using this site (it has 4 continents) and hitting random there until I got 4 landmasses that roughly matched up with the shapes I've had in mind for the continents for years. Added in the Gods and their domains and dogmas (which are necessary if a Cleric picks that god so there's a code they have to follow or else they lose their powers, ya know). I'm really enjoying this world building because I haven't really elaborated on this world this much in some time so it's great to get the creative juices flowing again.

You might find these websites interesting/useful:

• https://donjon.bin.sh/
• http://chaoticshiny.com/
• http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index.php
• http://www.gozzys.com/
• https://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php
• https://www.reddit.com/r/mapmaking
• https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding
• https://www.reddit.com/r/battlemaps

[Overflow]

On 7/15/2016 at 11:03 PM, Slimy said:

You might find these websites interesting/useful:

• https://donjon.bin.sh/
• http://chaoticshiny.com/
• http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index.php
• http://www.gozzys.com/
• https://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php
• https://www.reddit.com/r/mapmaking
• https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding
• https://www.reddit.com/r/battlemaps

I've used a few of these sites before, Donjon is really awesome.  Another good one is http://inkarnate.com/  Which is still in beta but can be used to make some nice looking maps.

Speaking of which, I've finally finished up my D&D map!  I'll be posting it here in a few days after I introduce it in the game, but I'm pretty happy with it.