Role-playing games

I've heard something like that before Petty: truly an effective method for striking fear into the faint-hearted!

I'd really have loved to put my questions forward here and discuss such things about a year ago (and we kind of did, a bit), but I've spent a considerable amount of time over the last year reading websites, forums, blogs, watching videos, and talking to other players over email about D&D but haven't really spent much time playing D&D.
The result of all this hashing-over of information is that I'm so damn tired of hearing about the bloody game (IN PARTICULAR ON REDDIT*) that I'd really rather bite my own foot off than spend much more time thinking about it and not actually playing.

*I've mentioned this before, but I'd like to restate just how entirely I loathe D&D discussion in the main sub-reddit. It's fine for a week or two, but then the overwhelming inanity of existence submerges your mind under a dark wave of mental excrescence that is enough to drive any man mad, any woman bonkers, any child loopy, any animal frothy-at-the-mouth, and any Scotshobbit permanently livid with blinding crabbit.


That being said, I happily look forward to sharing how the game goes and asking for some guidance on which direction to nudge things along once we get started!

DMing is certainly an art. I've DM'd most of my D&Ding career barring a few sessions under Mr Tyrant. I personally can't abide being a player, it's so limiting. If you know the people you are playing with it becomes quite easy to plan for, if you don't know who you're playing with it's only slightly more demanding. You can - and I recommend you do - spend a lot of time on the game world, the NPCs and how they all get along. Their wants and desires, fears and dreads. After that, it's simply a case of presenting the world to players that they think they have free choice of what they choose to do. Done right, you can 'guide' their decision to where you want them. If you do it badly it looks as if you are blocking everything and forcing them to choose the one you want.

Make sure everyone knows the DMs word is final.

Don't be a feartie. If a player does something daft and they are going to die, let them. Next character they use might be a bit smarter..

Anyway, I've been listening to a D&D podcast of all things because I've been tasked with a dreadfully tedious task and require something to pass the time.
It's called the Adventure Zone, and consists of three brothers and their dad playing 5e D&D.
http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/adventure-zone

I enjoy most of the show, even if it tends to drag a bit now and then. The most irritating thing is that while the DM is good at his job, he talks too much. In particular, he describes things too much. In minutae, he has used the same adjectives "enormous" and "huge" etc. to describe at least 10 different rooms over the last several episodes.
This came to a climax a few episodes ago, when the party went to one of their planet's moons. I was almost driven to the point of mental combustion by the horrible tediousness of his description of the sterilized and anachronistic moon-base structures through which they were tramping.
DM lesson of the day, duly noted:
Shut Up and Let Your Players Talk Sometimes!

Thankfully things have picked back up again, as I have another day of this tedious employment ahead of me and need distraction.

I've noticed one other curious trend: it seems that many DMs feel the need to supplement their normal vocabularies with a plethora of arcane and fantastical adjectives and nouns. So whereas a bloody opening in the side of a bloody moon-base could once be referred to as "an opening" or "a door" it must now be "a mechanised grate" or "a glass and steel reflective roundish porthole". This comes up again and again in this podcast and in other games I've witnessed. Repeatedly, DMs will ignore what a thing is and instead attempt to describe it with all this technical-jargon (most of which they don't even use correctly**) in the most confusing manner possible. What do they imagine is gained by this?
Another lesson, I think. If you don't know what a word means or if a simpler word can be used in its place, Use Language You Understand.


**The opening in the moon-base was at one point describes as a portcullis, for example.

I tried to read one of Gygax's books recently. It was full of what he obviously thought was 'period middle ages ye olde talke' which was so very hard to follow. Not because that in itself is hard, but he over used it, to the point I'm fairly sure he didn't really understand the context usage of it. In the end I gave up.

Side point "ye" in signs means "The". So next time you're passing a place called "The Ye Olde blaa blaa" smack them about with a trout.

Sort of like asking people to "Please RSVP".

Hey has anyone here tried out 13th Age before? It's a pretty neat RPG with several cool ideas. I've just been reading through the game book. It's more like 3e D&D than 5e in some ways, so I'm sure that would appeal to Petty.

I don't like swearing, as it makes me uncomfortable and if overused tends to replace other vocabulary, resulting in your sounding like a bit of an ignoramus.

But HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

For some God-forsaken reason I just read through my old emails from my first D&D group last fall and winter, at least until I couldn't stand them anymore. Worst six months of my life. I don't want to talk about it.

Nope, nope nope:

P.S.
Just a friendly reminder to anyone interested (and so Petty doesn't have to plug it himself again) that Petty wrote up the story that he used for a D&D game a while back. I have yet to finish it, and may not have made it past the first page.. It's quite good apparently!

http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/t535-circle-of-stone-reprieve?highlight=circle+oof+stone

P.P.S.
I feel like staying up late reliving stupid crap and then posting about it on a public forum is a really bad habit. But what else is there?

and may not have made it past the first page..- ,Forest

Well get on with it (folks tend to find the prologue a bit tricky because of the style its written in which is not the same as the main story- I should probably cave to popular consent and rewrite it, but its that way to serve a purpose by the tales end, and though you may not have noticed, I can, on rare occasions, be a touch stubborn about things)

As to it being any good? You will have to ask Azriel about that as she is the only one I think who read it to the end (Figg may have but I cant ever seem to get a straight answer from her if she actually finished it or not )

She probably ran into a character named "Lord Moffat" who was the master of the game's universe and was absolutely great in all ways; and then gave up on it at that point.

No Lord Moffat, though he is an influence most likely in the writing along with a ton of other folks ranging from Adams and Pratchett to Tolkien and Shakespeare (not the quality of writing obviously just nicking shit I liked!) And there is a time-whimey element to the tale, as the story is in two time periods, sort of. not hugely obtrusive but important overall.

Figg- this is a total drunken tangent - but I was wondering, if you read it, which in turn led me to wonder, given our 'hearty' debates on the Who thread on the subject of writing female charters what you thought of my own writing in this regard (feel free to draw on any of my other stroies you have read as well if you like) and don;t lket me down, I dont mean be rude about it or anything, but say what you think- I am more interested for improving my own writing than I am concerned about being offended.

{{See, I might not always agree with your views regards Moffats writing, but I do value your thoughts on the subject in general, and even where I do disagree, you still make me consider the argument -when your not being lazy and just slagging Moffat off to wind me up! }}}

http://www.npr.org/2015/10/27/450881148/after-40-years-dungeons-dragons-still-brings-players-to-the-table

I think we've covered all the bases on D&D then.

I'm meeting up with this fellow named Dean and two acquaintances of his tomorrow afternoon to create characters for a new D&D game that I will be DMing. This will be my first crack at it, and I only hope that it goes well.
I'm a bit nervous though.

Much of our group's D&D session was preempted by, of all things, The War of the Ring board game

You mean like you played the board game instead?
I've never tried it, was it fun? I'm also curious about how much Tolkien lore comes into play in the game.

No, I was just a spectator; just don't have any interest. The game was started earlier in the week by two of the players (including the DM, who hosts the sessions) and they wanted to finish the game. It took a lot long than I expected; I spent the time looking at books and my character sheets. There was about 3 hours left to play D&D so not much was done, but we ended on an intriguing note. Next session is Saturday.

Well that's rather bogus! You all get together to play one game and you're left waiting for other to finish up another!

Yeah, I'm really kind of annoyed about it, actually, but what're you gonna do. The DM really loves that game

Pull a Tolkien and kick his ass!  

The meet-up went pretty well by the way, if anyone cares to know. There are three other guys and a girl, and two of them are boyfriend-girlfriend and the girl and one of the other guys used to be coworkers. The only odd one out (apart from myself) is this 33 year old guy. He's played for 16 years or something, and has lots of stories about past games and talks too much. He's also DM'd before, and I felt like he was stepping on my toes here and there. That better not continue once we actually start playing! Or there will have to be consequences.

I'm really nervous. I only have 5 days to shape the adventure, build encounters, integrate their characters into the story and fill in as many blank spots as I can.

Is he second-guessing you and such?

No not really. It's just that he's more experienced than I am, and so he will offer advice to the other players. It's not always right, and not always the sort of thing that I would like to have encouraged at the table. That's what I meant by stepping on my toes. 

For example, he had said that it was required to be of the Lawful alignment to play a Paladin. This is no longer the case with 5e. He also talked for a while about how he most liked playing Chaotic Evil characters (!!) and how True Neutral was "more fun" than any of the Good alignments. I wanted to get things started off with a very pro-Good standard. So that's what I meant by "stepping on my toes."

Anyway, they're playing a Barbarian half-orc, a tiefling Cleric, a human Fighter, and a dragonborn Druid. Quite a diverse bunch on the whole! 

I've just now gotten back in from the farm chores and I'm starting work on the adventure that I'm building for them! I have a painting I'm going to send them to build the anticipation for next Saturday with a chapter title ( "Into Northern Seas" ) and two skirmishy on-the-open-sea sort of encounters and one casual betting riddle competition to be set up between some of the ship's crew and the party. As I'm sure people on here have noticed I'm a sucker for riddles and I'm going to ask them to bring two riddles along with them. D&D gold shall hang in the balance!

I think I heard something similar to this before, but a sillier one-off sort of riddle came to me while I was doing dishes:

What's blue inside blue inside the deep blue?

Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about the northern west coast of the Forgotten Realms? Our groups new campaign is going to consist of their party leaving a small harbour just north of Neverwinter (or just Neverwinter maybe) and sailing north along the coast to the Icewind Dale, where they will disembark and travel up onto the Reghed Glacier. I've looked over maps of the area, and I feel like I'm going to have to be sticking in a lot of stuff that isn't there. 
I'm fine with this, but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the setting from the books or video games or D&D that would be able to steer me away from adding anything too jarringly different from the published setting. I want to add in a new town on the Icewind Dale, for example, and stick in at least one smaller kingdom (do they have kingdoms in the FR?) just north of Neverwinter.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about the northern west coast of the Forgotten Realms? Our groups new campaign is going to consist of their party leaving a small harbour just north of Neverwinter (or just Neverwinter maybe) and sailing north along the coast to the Icewind Dale, where they will disembark and travel up onto the Reghed Glacier. I've looked over maps of the area, and I feel like I'm going to have to be sticking in a lot of stuff that isn't there. 
I'm fine with this, but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the setting from the books or video games or D&D that would be able to steer me away from adding anything too jarringly different from the published setting. I want to add in a new town on the Icewind Dale, for example, and stick in at least one smaller kingdom (do they have kingdoms in the FR?) just north of Neverwinter.

I'd say go for it, and to hell with any precreated stuff. as long as you have fun and the players have fun, that's all that matters. I'm sure Petty will agree, for a DM creating stuff can be more fun that the game.