271: Out of the D&D Closet

[Rowan Kaiser]

Out of the D&D Closet

Many gamers are familiar with hit points, dragon breath, and gaining a level through experience, but have never played the game which introduced these concepts. Rowan Kaiser takes the plunge and loses his tabletop gaming virginity to see how it compares to a lifetime playing CRPGs.

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[Fortuan]

while, I do love D&D I find the Pathfinder series a step backwards. People didn't like how D&D 4.0 worked so they made Pathfinder to keep the mind bendingly complicated systems that drive out new players.

 

[WittyInfidel]

I love D&D, and have played every incarnation of it since the original. I loved 3.5, but it just became too much. I think 4th edition helped streamline it greatly. Yes, 3.0 and 3.5 were great years, because of all the customization. But after a while, in my opinion, it became less about playing a fun character and more of a trial in making the ultimate min-max character.

 

[kingcom]

Masters and videogame designers are not so terribly different; both must encourage the players to do the "correct" thing to make the game run smoothly, while convincing the players that they are in control.

Perhaps it was just that DM's style of game but I find that entirely wrong. My Dark Heresy campaign im running at the moment has every session entirely determined by what the players do. The next session is written and built based upon the party's actions. The party does not have control over NPCs like in a videogame but NPCs are consistently acting regardless of whether they are present.

 

[standokan]

I love dnd and want to come out of the the dndcloset but there is no one outside the closet D:.

 

[lomylithruldor]

Masters and videogame designers are not so terribly different; both must encourage the players to do the "correct" thing to make the game run smoothly, while convincing the players that they are in control.

Perhaps it was just that DM's style of game but I find that entirely wrong. My Dark Heresy campaign im running at the moment has every session entirely determined by what the players do. The next session is written and built based upon the party's actions. The party does not have control over NPCs like in a videogame but NPCs are consistently acting regardless of whether they are present.

Not only that, the DM should have other things in mind for the character to do if they don't want to do the main quest or storyline. Most of my games are around the theme "Do you stand by your beliefs or do you save the world?" (ex: Do you side with the evil and corrupt government of your parents, side with the demons that want to bring it down to make it their own or stay on your own and fight a lost cause). I've seen groups do one or the other, groups that break out in the end because of the dilemma and groups managing to do both. It must also change most of the game if they choose one or the other and things like that don't happen in videogames.

 

[boradis]

Masters and videogame designers are not so terribly different; both must encourage the players to do the "correct" thing to make the game run smoothly, while convincing the players that they are in control.

Perhaps it was just that DM's style of game but I find that entirely wrong.

Ditto. That's not an experience I ever had during the years that I played -- we never knew what was going to happen. We rotated the DM slot and some of us were better at it than others, but when it was going well it was a real push/pull of creativity between the players and the DM, which is something no AI can provide.

This was years before computer and console RPGs became the norm though, when words like "tank" "healer" and "DPS" weren't part of the lexicon. Games were stories, not just a sequence of events which resulted in better gear for your character.

 

[kingcom]

I love dnd and want to come out of the the dndcloset but there is no one outside the closet D:.

I felt the same way until i got to University. Before then it just felt horrible to know i liked something which appared so completely reviled.

I guess thats what Post By Post games are for or I've heard games over Skype can work.

 

[LitigationJackson]

pathfinder is awesome, and you did have many choices, you just chose not to take them. So it boils down to you going in to the forest. I bet you walked along the main road like an idiot with a sign on you saying JUMP ME. you could've crept along the side of the path and maybe surprised the ambushers. the possibilities are only limited by your imagination

 

[Normeo]

D+D should never be about the rules, we play 3.5 just because the books were available for the newbies (still got all of my dusty old books, can't bare to throw them away), but the DM should be able to get away with any thing in the name of fun, story or what ever. Maybe I've mist the point?....FIREBALL!!!

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

You don't need to act like Pen and Paper Roleplaying and Videogaming are mutually exclusive, I've been regularly engaged in both for my entire adult life so far and I find that the enjoyment of one doesn't necessarily preclude or detract from the enjoyment of the other. If anything they occasionally enrich each other, Videogames especially acting as a great source of ideas for Pen and Paper Sessions.

 

[Falseprophet]

while, I do love D&D I find the Pathfinder series a step backwards. People didn't like how D&D 4.0 worked so they made Pathfinder to keep the mind bendingly complicated systems that drive out new players.

I'm kind of glad we have both D&D 4e and Pathfinder available. The former is definitely better for bringing in new players and bringing the game back to its roots. The latter is good for adding some more complexity and customization for the veterans who want it. I can enjoy both.

Both are an improvement over the mess that was 2nd edition, the system of my high school and university years.

 

[mattaui]

Your experience with the Pathfinder Society games mirrors my own during my involvement with the Living Greyhawk campaign that Wizards ran for the better part of the last decade until they replaced it with the Living Forgotten Realms, though aside from a change in rule sets, the look and feel is very much the same. They're tournament-style games with timed adventures and parties of players that have mostly never played together, so the chances for good storytelling and roleplaying are few. In fact, you'll typically get a player or two that wants to push things along if things seem too bogged down, given that if you don't finish your adventure in the allotted time, you'll have missed out on XP and rewards. This feels exactly like a WoW pickup group, which is one of the reasons that I lost interest. Why would I drive across town or even across the state to partake in the little gaming cons that run these events when I could get the same experience staying at home.

However, all this does is really shine a light on the importance of a good gaming group and a good DM. This isn't an indictment of the tabletop hobby any more than a bad CRPG or MMO means that they're all not worth playing. But the greatest strength of games like D&D is also its greatest weakness, in that you're only going to enjoy the game as long as you've got people you want to play with and a DM that clicks with the rest of the group. I think that until we had widespread availability of CRPGs available that anyone who wanted their fantasy fix just had to put up with whatever players and DMs were in their area, and I've talked to folks who love CRPGs but hate tabletop RPGs, only to find that the reason they hate it is because they had some truly horrible experiences at the hands of DMs or their fellow players, and assumed that the games just weren't for them.

Still, it doesn't mean that the only good tabletop RPG is one that's full of drama and well-developed characters, or that CRPGs can't deliver as good or better of the same. Just as there are roleplaying servers for MMOs, there are tabletop groups where more or less roleplaying is the norm, ranging from intense, detailed character-diary keeping and scripts that the whole group writes out (yes, I've seen and done it) to groups where, unless you're playing an optimal build in the optimal fashion, you're just not going to fit in with the other wargaming grognards at the table.

 

[Fortuan]

while, I do love D&D I find the Pathfinder series a step backwards. People didn't like how D&D 4.0 worked so they made Pathfinder to keep the mind bendingly complicated systems that drive out new players.

I'm kind of glad we have both D&D 4e and Pathfinder available. The former is definitely better for bringing in new players and bringing the game back to its roots. The latter is good for adding some more complexity and customization for the veterans who want it. I can enjoy both.

Both are an improvement over the mess that was 2nd edition, the system of my high school and university years.

I'll give you that, more core players do prefer the harder rules. Few friends of mine are bent on hatred for 4.0

 

[Missing SHODAN]

I'd disagree about GMs having to convince players to do what they want - I've run games where the players were basically free to do whatever they wanted, and I actually think it's a bit of a mistake to try and railroad (which is the term for forcing players into doing things they or their characters don't want to do) players into an action. One of my favorite campaigns I ran was a Dark Heresy campaign. In my favorite session, the party was met up with overwhelming odds (after triple-crossing one NPC), and rather than surrender or make a brave last stand, every single one of them basically betrayed every other member of the party at one point or another to try and make it out alive (they all managed to succeed in surviving, although it was hardly their most dignified moment). Watching the total dissolution of teamwork into an 'every man for himself' scramble... well, it's been probably six months and my players still talk about that session with amusement, and that's really what I think a GM should aim for - creating moments in time that their players will enjoy and vividly remember.

Which is, of course, why I don't think computer RPGs are even a pale shade to a good human GM - a good human GM is as much there to judge the infinite ways a group of players respond to a challenge as he is there to come up with the challenges they face - as of yet no computer RPG engine has the capacity to interact with the insane creativity of 6 players trying to solve a problem - it can say 'no' to the unexpected plans of players, but it cannot say, 'sure why not.'

 

[dukethepcdr]

Pathfinder has different worlds, characters and rules from D&D and is developed by a different team of people catering to a different audience of players. Playing a couple sessions of Pathfinder and Pathfinder Society and trying to make comments about the D&D roleplaying game is like trying out motor vehicle transportation for the first time by riding a motorcycle around a residential neighborhood for an afternoon and then trying to write a paper about what driving offroad in a pickup truck is like (well, they both have wheels and an engine after all). The similarities between Pathfinder and D&D are purely superficial.

Mr. Kaiser should have either written his article about his initial impression of Pathfinder based on his experiences or he should have played D&D 3.5 or 4.0 instead of Pathfinder for the role playing experience and D&D Encounters instead of Pathfinder Society for the casual pick-up game experience. Also, he needed to play more than one session of each tabletop game. Then he would have been making a fair comparison.

The way that one DM runs a tabletop RPG is vastly different from the way that another DM would run a game even if he was using the same published adventure and had players playing the same races and classes of heroes. D&D Encounters is an excellent example of this. I've played Encounters games with two different DMs. One DM stuck to the published and printed material in the Encounter like glue. He wouldn't budge from the script at all. If players tried to do something that didn't fit in the script, he wouldn't allow it. He also didn't allow players to use any characters other than the pre-generated characters that came in the set. In response to some attempt to do something "out of the box", he'd say something like "That's not what encounters is. Go play in a campaign." The other Encounters DM I played with was almost the opposite. He treated what was in the box as a starting point and let both his and the players' imaginations run wild from there. We used characters we rolled up ourselves, even bothering to come up with back stories for them. By the time the last session was done, our story looked totally different from what was in the Encounters book. In both cases, there were players who enjoyed the experience and players who didn't. The storytellers who were playing in the first DM's game got frustrated with the constraints he placed on them while the wargamers in the second DM's game got impatient sometimes with too much talk and not enough action.

The main thing in Mr. Kaiser's article that rings true for both D&D and Pathfinder is that all variants of these games have far more potential for interaction between the player and the one "in charge" of the game than video games will probably ever have. I don't know if an A.I. can be created that can match the creativity and interactivity of a human DM. Not in our lifetimes anyway.

 

[nuba km]

I have started playing D&D (so far one session) and I already like it. we haven't got chance to do anything really but the two fights we had were intense (because they seem like they were designed for 4-5 people but we just had 3 with one missing more then halve the time. Also even with my very little knowledge I am using the rule book and by looking at other classes my own class I will properly post it up for people to try when I am finished making it. what I like about D&D is how flexible it is after the fight my brother (the DM) pointed out that we could have used the forest around the road to narrow the monsters attacking (to create a 300 situation) so we are going up a learning curve but it looks fun at the top of it.

 

[Timeslament]

This artical is in complete opposite of my first D&D experience. My group is actually a nice balance of 3 guys and 3 girls and a rotating DM system, My first game, like 6 weeks ago, was with a DM who's style is more sparatic, and random, who really has no plan and makes some things up on the go, which was actually quiet fun for a beginner like me, It was great And i couldn't wait for the next game. We play with the 3.5 rules, The DM at the time was really helpful and let me start with a level 10 character to better balance the game.
Then the rotation happened and the other DM (who happens to be the husband of the other) Is more of a story teller, but still lets things remain open, he truly uses the character's average level to base monster encounters and the like so its challenging but we are not all dieing, but he dose tend to punish over powered characters.
I guess my group is different because its mainly family, (cousins and such) but its still fun! Its a time were we come together and socialize and play. It wasn't just a campaign were you get to get some better loot, but instead a story, were we the players desired what we do and the DM goes off of that. And that is something games are very basic in but have yet to rival, a choice in a CRPG might make some people not like you or change this one small part of the story, but with a table top rpg like d&d, you actions effect the entire story, campaign, etc.
Unlike you I will be actively seeking the next game.

 

[McClaud]

while, I do love D&D I find the Pathfinder series a step backwards. People didn't like how D&D 4.0 worked so they made Pathfinder to keep the mind bendingly complicated systems that drive out new players.

Actually, that's quite backwards.

Pathfinder was in production way before 4e was announced at GenCon. Paizo had been creating the Dragon/Dungeon magazines, and were looking at how to make 3.5 better. The only reason I correct you is because that seems to be a 4e fanboy Pathfinder hater myth being passed around.

It's unfortunate that there's a rift in D&D fans about which RPG is better than the others. Both Pathfinder and 4e have their flaws and merits. I actually play a different game system altogether (and 3.5), but I like both games.

Masters and videogame designers are not so terribly different; both must encourage the players to do the "correct" thing to make the game run smoothly, while convincing the players that they are in control.

Perhaps it was just that DM's style of game but I find that entirely wrong.

I've also not run into that problem. As a player, I've had DMs that create totally open-ended worlds that let the players drive. As a DM, it was always my belief that the players drive, so I never try to "steer" players into certain actions if they don't feel like doing it. And perhaps that's the fallacy of playing TOO many videogames - future DMs think that everything is an "either/or" choice when approaching potential adventures. In reality, asking players what they want to accomplish at the end of each session always helps me design the future session so they have a multitude of options available (and even surprise me by doing something I haven't planned for - which is uber fun).

 

[God_of_badgers]

I am a 28 year old man and I still play D&D! me my brother and my friend are going to play a 2 character campaign. Should be ... interesting.