Dungeon & Dragons (or other RPG) Stories and Memories

Television, Movies Games and Books Games & Toys
#61

So, A couple of months ago a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to play in his D&D group. This was from way out in left field, but I decided to give it a shot (At least in part because of the GWC recommendation a while back)

So, we’re in the middle of a normal campaign and one of our players is very close to leveling. Like, one very small encounter would push him over the edge. So as players we’re trying to figure out what we could do to manage it.

Somewhere along the line, we devise a plan to hold a gladiator-type battle for the city we’re currently operating out of. We’re pretty popular around town at the moment and we figure it’s a good way to build more rapport and earn some experience.

We discussed how much we’d charge for admission, who would participate in the fight. Our DM rolled for attendance. Things are looking good.

I love the direction the game went in, entirely on it’s own. It’s almost as if it is its own organism. Anyway, I was excited about the prospect that I had to share it with someone who’d understand. The fight is at the end of this week and I will share the exciting conclusion then.

(And a special thanks to the GWC Crue for providing a positive look at D&D which encouraged me to give it a shot in the first place)

#62

Threads merged.

I LOLed there. What kind of table did he come up with?

Let us know how it turns out.

#63

I think the process he used was that there were ~200 people in the town, and he rolled two d100s (really 2 d10s twice) to get a count. We ended up getting ~160 people to attend, which is pretty good.

One of my favorite parts about the whole affair was discussing the whole thing.
Me: “How much should we charge for admission?”
Other Players: “1 Gold?”
Me: “How much is a Gold piece worth?”
DM: “Well, 2 gold would get you a night in a good inn”
Me: “Ok, well how many silver are there in 1 gold? This should be affordable to everyone. Our goal here is not necessarily to make money”

I think on the end we settled on 5 silver, which we thought was an affordable price. We also mandated that this would be only “at will” powers.
The DM brought out the Head mage of the town, the town enforcer, and another warrior.

We need to come up with a name for our group.

#64

Back in the day, I played:

D&D
AD&D (1st and the 2nd after college)
TMNT
Gamma World

My favorite character was Robert Le Monoi, a 6’4" pigeon musketeer who made it to level 14 in TMNT without killing anyone. He used rapier and main-gauche for melee weapons and 2 vintage flintlock pistols (that had a 1d6 chance of jamming every time) for distance. Over the years, he had some epic battles including one where he battled the nefarious “Mega Rhino” who fired over 3000 rounds from his twin M-60s at Robert who dodged them all while managing to carve his trademarked “R” on Mega Rhinos left buttock. Finally, Mega Rhino threw down his weapons in disgust and stormed off in a huff!

#65

here is a well written article of a Dungeons and Dragons noob circa 1979.

Worth a read imho.

#66

That was a very good article. I have a D & D group that meets every Friday. I admit I did not play D & D growing up because I was never in any groups that would have brought that into my life. But playing it now that I am older I can see how a young man or even young woman could gain from playing D & D during the formative years. Being a geek most of us have suffered being different or having low self esteem growing up. So finding a group that you could fit into is very much needed. Also a lot of times to build confidence of become more outgoing etc you have to ‘fake it until you make it’. And D & D gives you that chance.

Anyway there is my two cents. Thanks for sharing that Oddball.

#67

I haven’t played D&D in decades, but I did recently make a nostalgic purchase at a used comic books shop.

Barrier Peaks was a module I had heard hushed rumors of but never really got around to experiencing (pun). I doubt I’ll ever get time enough to clutch the d20 again, but I can still enjoy the content from a bygone era.

May you always make your saving throws :slight_smile:

Cheers.

#68

I can’t remember if I had that module or if there was a Dragon issue that covered similar ground. I loved the idea of the technological ‘artifacts’ like powered armor that was better than anything else around–but which eventually wore down its batteries.

I never understood the negative reaction to such genre-mixing.

ETA: Merged threads.

#69

I first played D&D back in 2001 with a group of guys I met in drama class at community college. I had heard of D&D before but didn’t really know that much about it, and never really knew anyone else who played it. Eventually I was able to bring my brother into that group as well; after a year or two the campaign just kind of stopped and we never continued it, as people moved or got new jobs. My brother and I started playing again finally just this past year. At first we tried putting together a group of his friends with me DMing, but we could never work out good scheduling; plus the others were RPing newbs and didn’t enjoy it enough to keep playing. So my brother and I have been basically two-manning a campaign; he has two characters, I have one, and I play the two other NPCs in the party (along with all the rest!)

In my first group, I distinctly remember my friend Evan’s character, an elven rogue named Gabreel, who was a kleptomaniac. He would steal anything and everything shiny that he could get his agile elven fingers on, and it got us into trouble on multiple occasions. At the time that my character joined the group, ‘Gabe’ already had a price on his head for stealing something from some guildmaster; I forget the exact details, (it might have been a city mage guild) but I recall that we had to do some dangerous mission to get it nullified. Then he stole an evil sentient dagger from another bad guy that started compelling party members to shank each other for no apparent reason. That started a fight in which (luckily) no one was killed; he insisted on holding onto the thing, however, whereupon it would constantly talk to him and try to convince him to keep picking things up. Finally, to top it all off, at the very end of our campaign he decided to pick up the Essence of Mormo - essentially an unholy relic containing the remnants of an evil Titan (who were the overthrown, fallen gods of that game world). So, yeah.

Plus there was the fact that my brother and I were playing the only fighters (the ‘tinnies’) and were thus obligated to place our armor-plated bodies as meat shields between the rest of the party and whatever nightmarish fiends our DM had decided to pit against us (which he, being a malicious bastard, invariably did).

#70

I have two rather humorous stories about sentient weapons:

One was with the High School RPG group, one of my friends playing a barbarian found a very powerful sword. But the swords EGO and Willpower were greater than that of the character trying to wield it, so it would not cooperate with him. In fact the sword felt insulted to be owned by a dirty uncouth barbarian. This caused many ‘laugh out loud’ moments when my friend tried desperately to get his sword to help during dire moments, only to have it insult him and find ways to twist his commands to its own advantage and amusement. It all came to an end one day when he attempted to intimidate a group of Kobolds, he drew the sword with a flourish. He held high the glowing sword and dramatically shouted “Destroy!” I could not resist… He knew he had done something wrong by the look on my face. His eyes went wide, “What happened?” I smiled, “It blew up.”

“What?”

“You gave it an out.”

“Huh?”

“It would rather cease to exist than be held by you.”

“Ah, dude come on…”

“Your command gave it a way to do that without directly disobeying you.”

“Fuck.”

DESTROY! Became a running joke for months.

About 10 years later with another group almost the same thing happened-

A friend of mine had a big brutish Viking character who stumbles upon a very powerful sword. Once again the sword had a greater EGO, Willpower and INT than the would be owner. And the alignment of the sword and attempted owner also conflicted. The sword was not only intelligent but it was also telepathic, the original intent was that the sword could be used as an alarm if you were sleeping and an assassin crept into your room; but you could also plant the sword in a room and use it as a spy. But in this case it meant that the sword could harass you telepathically even if you stuffed it in a bag of holding, I heckled the poor guy during the games as the ‘voice of the sword’ to which the guy would often lose his cool and shout curses and tell it to “shut the fuck up”, to which the rest of the group would look at him strangely because of course the characters could not hear anything, the insults were sent telepathically.

The sword would suddenly glow at inappropriate times giving away the Viking’s position. If he tried to use it against a ‘good’ aligned character it would grow so heavy he could not hold it. He finally got so fed up with it one night he hurled it into a lake in a violent fit of frustration, the irony of that was not lost on the fellow gamers. They looked at me expectantly but I smirked and shook my head, “No, no… I does not become that sword.”

For me gaming is not about treasure and leveling up, it is about the interaction between characters and losing yourselves in the adventure. I do everything I can to prompt and encourage the players to be ‘in character’ when talking amongst themselves, and with NPC’s.

#71

Interesting ranking of Alignment article —> clicky da linky.

I do remember seeing the Paladin removed from player options in the games club due to the incessant arguing that ensued over the Lawful Good thingy.

I usually went with Lawful Evil.

The later references to the paladin class in “Dorkness Rising” made me laugh.

//youtu.be/6GD8JeilDPA

OB