D&D?

Inconspicuous

Inconspicuous

Super classy secret agent
So I heard about Dungeons and Dragons, and I would like to learn to play. I figured that before I go play with some complete strangers, I'd ask around here. I was told about Roll20, an online site good for the game, and figured it would be more fun to play with some of the people here than just a total stranger.
 
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I never said there was. I'm just hoping I'm not being strange by just asking about it. I think I'll edit that.
 
Inconspicuous said:
So I heard about Dungeons and Dragons, and I would like to learn to play. I figured that before I go play with some complete strangers, I'd ask around here. I was told about Roll20, an online site good for the game, and figured it would be more fun to play with some of the people here than just a total stranger.
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I have been learning the ropes of roll20. It is a great platform. However; If you sign up, go through the entire tutorial. It may take 20 minutes or so, but it is worth it. If you don't go through it all, odds are you are lost and clicking through images rather than practicing the core mechanics. Just a friendly suggestion, of course. Roll20 is perfectly capable of full scale games and has built-in vid chat as well as chat tab (which displays actions and dice rolls as well if the master wishes ).
 
Dungeons and Dragons is the Wonderbread of tabletop gaming, Norph. That's not to say it's bad, only that its popularity does not reflect its overall quality, or guarantee that you will like it.

Here's a quick breakdown of a few different games. Compare them, disregard them, whatever.

D&D (3.5 Edition)
3rd Edition had some major flaws, so they released 3.5. Despite being over ten years old at this point, it's pretty easy to learn and has a lot of additional content, both official and unofficial. This is what most people think of when you say "Dungeons and Dragons".

DIFFICULTY: 4/10

PROS:

--Easy to learn, just skim the rules for the important parts and learn the rest as you go.
--Good introduction to tabletop gaming.

CONS:

--Rigid rules. Non-standard thinking is often punished by arbitrary penalties.
--You will not feel powerful until higher levels, which is why a lot of games start you between Level 5 and Level 9.
--A little heavy on the math. You'll be reading a lot of charts and tables.

D&D (5th Edition)
The current edition. There isn't a lot of content available for it yet, but an overhaul of the basic systems has allowed the game to focus more on the narrative than on having the right character build or party composition. It was designed to reinvigorate the brand after the failure that was 4th Edition.

DIFFICULTY: 1/10

PROS:

--Easiest system to learn. There is almost no effort required to create a character and start playing.
--Allows you to focus more on the story and roleplaying your character.

CONS:

--Lack of content. The basic game may start to get old after a while, and the format makes custom content more difficult to implement.
--You will feel more powerful than you will in 3.5, but still not very strong.
--Radically different format actually makes learning a new system after 5th Edition more difficult for newbies.

Pathfinder
A lot of gaming nerds have heard of Pathfinder, but don't really know what it is. It's an adaption of D&D 3.5 that fixed a lot of its lingering flaws and improved on its best traits. This is my personal favorite, but I'll try to be unbiased.

DIFFICULTY: 5/10

PROS:

--So much content. If you want to do something, there are bound to be at least three different ways to do it.
--Increased customization options makes characters unique and powerful right away.
--A lot of stuff has been consolidated to reduce the amount of skills/abilities you need to keep track of.

CONS:

--Just as math heavy as 3.5, and maybe a bit more.
--You may decide to do something a certain way only to find out too late there was a much better way to do it.
--The sheer amount of content may be a bit overwhelming at first.
--The aforementioned consolidation was, in some cases, just an excuse to add more

World of Darkness
WoD is actually several different systems that can overlap. You've got vampires, werewolves, undead, monster hunters, demons, fae, mages, and a few others that I can't remember off the top of my head. Heavy focus on narrative, so the games tend to flow better (in other words, a single fight scene won't last an hour).

DIFFICULTY: 3/10

PROS:

--This entire game is a power fantasy. Embrace it.
--Has a huge system for social interaction, including Social Combat. Violence may not be the answer for once.

CONS:

--Dense lore. Really dense.
--The amount of dice you have to roll in this game is so ludicrous that special websites have been created to do it for you.
--The game's format makes playing over the Internet difficult, if not impossible in some cases.

Exalted
Do you like anime with overpowered characters, like Dragonball? Do you wish there was a game where you could play a character so swole they could murder the universe? Kay, yeah, it's Exalted. World of Darkness and Exalted share the same publisher, so the two games are strikingly similar in every way except scope and setting.

DIFFICULTY: 3/10

PROS:

--Same as World of Darkness.

CONS:

--Same as World of Darkness.

GURPS
GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to allow you to do whatever you want without having to learn new systems to do it. It's designed to be modified at will by players, and the rulebooks are basically just lists of the different cool things you can do.

DIFFICULTY: 7/10

PROS:

--You only need regular old six-sided dice. The kind you can find just laying around your house.
--Literally do whatever you want. Futuristic soldiers riding dinosaur cavalry fighting wizards in modern New York? Go crazy.

CONS:

--It takes like three hours to create a character, minimum.
--The most math intensive system of them all. You had better be good at math.
--Hasn't been updated by the publisher since 2004. All content outside the books is homebrew.
 
Personally I've been playing D&D for a long time now. There's a variety of editions. The ones I'm most familiar with are 3.5 and Pathfinder. If you're interested, I'd be happy to teach you the basics. Roll20 is a great site as well, I usually play there myself and there's (usually) tons of helpful people you can find.
 
I wouldn't mind trying to get into another campaign, though obviously we'd all need to sort out times.
I'd give my current schedule... But that's up to possibly getting shifted around a lot tomorrow, so I'll come back after that and update you.

And like Morph I also try to give my own summaries of the different D&D editions that I have experience with.

D&D 3.5/Pathfinder
Pairing these together cause they're easier to explain when compared. Both have quite a lot to keep track of, but for different reasons. Pathfinder gives you a ton of options to play varied and interesting characters, while 3.5 doesn't work that hard on balance, leaving itself really open to the meta-game of making the most broken character possible, or accidently making an unusable character cause you picked the wrong class. Both follow the same general rules and mechanics however while in play, but Pathfinder took a few of the issues with 3.5 to improve play, mainly grouping things together that didn't need to be split, and letting players be more adaptable.

4th Edition
Affectionately known as "MMO the tabletop". If you're more of a dungeon crawler type of player then 4th edition is pretty solid, giving you a lot of classes to choose from, and a ton of diverse and interesting abilities to pick from within those classes. So no matter what you play as you'll have fun and engaging combat encounters. However... It does this at the cost of tanking pretty much anything that could aid in roleplaying, so when you're not running around killing monsters and raiding dungeons you're left with a ton of improv.

5th Edition
This is really just 3.5 again, but heavily simplified. It's much quicker and easier to pick up, and you should spend next to no time having to flip through a rule book in the middle of play. But as a trade off it also cuts off almost any ability to adapt and respond, both in combat and in RP. And there really isn't much variance between the classes, even with Archetypes. So once you've seen one rogue you've seen them all.

=================

So in short/summary.

3.5 = Best for your hardcore number crunchers and optimises. High risk, high reward, can be easily twisted and broken.
Pathfinder = Probably your best all rounder. It has the best mechanics set up to sort RP and Creativity, and is more friendly than 3.5 to a more casual group.
4th = If you just care about fighting monsters (or only care to have mechanic for fighting monsters) this is the best edition to go with. Combat will always be diverse and interesting, but be prepared to handle anything that isn't combat related.
5th = Best if you don't really care about any sort of mechanics, and just want an excuse to get people to show up at the table. Despite this systems popularity, I would highly advise AGAINST using this edition.
 
I have been playing with roll20 and all I truly need is a rule book to base the mechanics on. Roll20 is system agnostic, meaning you can play any D&D game, and even play a star wars or fallout game on the same template.
Here is the checklist I assume goes with Roll20.

Make a map
Set up tokens (characters, npcs, enemies, etc.)
Set up health and other bars necessary.
Grab a rule book and set up the dice rolls with macros.

Or watch a YouTube tutorial for setting up the game.
As for what edition you desire, that is up to you.
 
Sean E. said:
Personally I've been playing D&D for a long time now. There's a variety of editions. The ones I'm most familiar with are 3.5 and Pathfinder. If you're interested, I'd be happy to teach you the basics. Roll20 is a great site as well, I usually play there myself and there's (usually) tons of helpful people you can find.
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Gwazi Magnum said:
I wouldn't mind trying to get into another campaign, though obviously we'd all need to sort out times.
I'd give my current schedule... But that's up to possibly getting shifted around a lot tomorrow, so I'll come back after that and update you.

And like Morph I also try to give my own summaries of the different D&D editions that I have experience with.

D&D 3.5/Pathfinder
Pairing these together cause they're easier to explain when compared. Both have quite a lot to keep track of, but for different reasons. Pathfinder gives you a ton of options to play varied and interesting characters, while 3.5 doesn't work that hard on balance, leaving itself really open to the meta-game of making the most broken character possible, or accidently making an unusable character cause you picked the wrong class. Both follow the same general rules and mechanics however while in play, but Pathfinder took a few of the issues with 3.5 to improve play, mainly grouping things together that didn't need to be split, and letting players be more adaptable.
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Thanks guys! Pathfinder sounds the most interesting. Sean, Gwazi, and everyone else who replied, thank you! Sean, if you'd be able to teach me the basics, that would be great. What time works best for you?
 
Get you knowing dat Pathfinder, Norph.

This video series will show you the basics.

And then there's my favorite part: all the information you'll need to play--for free!--on the Internet, here.
 
Inconspicuous said:
Thanks guys! Pathfinder sounds the most interesting. Sean, Gwazi, and everyone else who replied, thank you! Sean, if you'd be able to teach me the basics, that would be great. What time works best for you?
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The weekend I'm free basically the whole time, and during the week I'm free after 3 pm PST :D. I actually was thinking of running a PF game sometime soon, I still need to work on some stuff and it's hard to find the time to just devote 100% into it but I think it'll be decent at least
 
It's funny to see this post here. About a million years ago I rp'd on AOL. The chats would let you roll dice with a command. Our community was mainly role playing with D&D influence.
 
Sean E. said:
The weekend I'm free basically the whole time, and during the week I'm free after 3 pm PST :D. I actually was thinking of running a PF game sometime soon, I still need to work on some stuff and it's hard to find the time to just devote 100% into it but I think it'll be decent at least
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No problem. What time works best for you? I just finished the Roll20 tutorial, so I'm ready when you are.
 
My current schedule in the following

Time Zone EST

Mondays: Free after 3PM
Tuesdays: Free from 3PM to 8PM
Wednesday: Free until 8PM
Thursday: Free until 8PM
Friday: Free until 8PM
Saturday: Free until 3PM, busy afterwards.
Sunday: Basically busy for the day
 
A lot of local gaming stores will do dungeons and dragons games during the week for people who want to learn how to play. It's a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. Fifth edition is fairly easy to learn, so you should at least attempt to start with that.
 
Attention posters in this thread! :)

I am pleased to announce that I am gathering information via a poll on who would be interested in me running a D&D campaign setting here on Storyteller's Circle. If I get enough interest grown, the Site may allow me a section to dedicate to running D&D campaigns. Please post. I have the poll up, the poll closes as of March 7th 2017. I'd be pleased to here feedback not just in the poll, but questions and or comments in the thread! Thank you very much. :)

http://www.storytellerscircle.com/threads/d-d-on-storyteller-circle.2481/
 
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