should i start playing D&D

(in the spirit of it is time to play might and magic vi and read fantasy novels)

1000x yes!!!!!

our older sister went into labor while playing D&D and finished out the evening's game before going to the hospital

forgot kelly played. what a badass

my friend and i tried to learn how to play this when we were younger but we didn't have anyone to teach us so we just kinda flipped through the rulebook for a while and then got bored and went back to playing video games

there was always a group of overweight guys in their late 20s with massive beards playing d&d in the back room of our local game store every weekend

these were our heroes & role models

they were in there from noon to midnight on saturdays sometimes

Yes! dnd is super super fun. How could sitting around a table with your best friends eating junk food and making hilarious bad ass shit up for hours not be?

when i 1st moved to nyc i wld see this dude in the elevator & lobby of my building reading/carrying d&d rulebooks and i didnt really have any friends and so after a month i asked him one day if he had a regular group & cld i play & he sd he was trying to get one together to try 4e & invited me to play, with him and his friends. and p much all the ppl i met through that group were great ppl & became my friends.

so i wld say yes, because it is a fun way to meet cool ppl only sum of whom have neckbeards/weight problems

but i think u have to take it seriously, sometimes ppl dont & its like, its still a game, that you want to be fun, not "ironic"

also you get to make a cool character, that can cast magic spells, or perform stunning acrobatic feats, or charm animals

as a last point in the PRO column, theyre playing d&d in the kitchen in e.t. & theyre having quite a bit of fun, it looks like

We played 4e with 8 people (kind of a lot) and had two DMs who took turns. One was responsible for moving along the main quest and the other did fun side quests every other week. We also took turns guest DMing if we had cool ideas that didn't fit in with our main arc. It is more fun if you take it seriously but flexibility is also really important to allow for the most creativity, imo.

I just recieved a package from my parents with all my old Magic: the Gathering cards, which I requested because the guy I am dating says he plays it sometimes and I was like (!)

Yes! dnd is super super fun. How could sitting around a table with your best friends eating junk food and making hilarious bad ass shit up for hours not be?

Yeah, but you can sit around a table & eat junk food w/your best friends and make up hilarious shit without so formal and structured a context, but maybe that's just me ...

did this as a kid (elementary school era) - super awesome, tons of fun.

got too cool to do it in high school

tried it again in college with stoned dudes being stoned - super awesome, tons of fun.

math says super awesome tons of fun iirc.

TRUE CONFESSION: in jr high when i moved to a new town after playing lots of D&D i convinced my mom to DM me through a module but she kept trying to give me hints and help me out w/stuff like "maybe you should use your staff to poke into the loose pile of dirt because MAYBE there is a cavern opening under there" so i got pissed and threw a fit and refused to play because she didn't "get it"

my mom is dope as shit and i was a pain in the ass back in the day, this is what i have learned

If there's one thing guaranteed to bring out that "unknowingly channelling Rik from The Young Ones" in a young teenager, it's D&D.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Di4Yd1AQL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

terrible book admittedly

That style of book cover pretty much guarantees a terrible book.

We played other RPGs as a teen, but never D&D, we always thought it was too generic and boring. Though in retrospect the Finnish fantasy game we used to play was kinda generic too. I used to be the DM, and at some point I just got bored of all the elves and other fantasy stuff, so I made the players go through some magical time machine, and they traveled to future and went to different planets and met robots and surreal aliens and had many cosmic shenanigans. After that we moved of to Cyberpunk 2020, which felt like the coolest thing ever in the early 90s, because you could have sex and drugs and cybernetic exoskeletons.

The real 2020 is really going to suck, isn't it...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I just saw an ad for a game at my local library! So pumped & can't wait for it to start, I don't think I've actually played a proper campaign since I was maybe 11.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

this REALLY geeky guy told me "NO MORE ROOM!!!!!" while jangling a silken pouch of 12+-sided die

also my BF returned from a month traveling to country to find ^this man was his new roommate

traveling THE country that is

stick with the mm6 roxy

i have read the player's handbook, and i'm starting a campaign with 5 other people at the end of the month. estimated to take about 3 months at one session per week. my first time. i think i'm going to be an elf rogue and be an arcane trickster.

i am considering this

do it!!!

Oh good timing on the revive

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/these-massive-dice-have-120-sides.html

My roommate keeps wanting me to play this star wars board game that takes six hours and has hundreds of different pieces. I feel bad. I sneak out of the house just to avoid it. It's a good game but such an undertaking.

i've been in a couple of d&d groups on and off over the past year (first time) but i stopped going to one more or less because of the rapejoke density and the other one kept happening on sunday when i work all day. nevertheless would like to brag here about the time i threw a dagger into some fleshy monster's eye and cast heat metal on it.

i am thisclose to doing this, as DM for my two boys

however i have never properly been DM before and the last time i even played was more than 20 years ago

i have been reading up on what's become of DnD and um it sounds a little crazy? 4th edition? DnD "Next"??? my gut tells me to go for either 3rd edition or an old "basic set" but i dunno

also i have a question for the hedz: one of the most enjoyable games i ever played was with this DM dude who basically made up 70-80% of everything on the fly and used percentile dice for literally everything. like there was no need for any other dice. i thought it was pretty badass.

5e ("next") seems to work pretty well actually. some neat changes that do away w some of the pettier math without rendering combat vapid. suspect 3.5 is still the gold standard and it's def a much more fun set of books to own than 5 but it sure is... granular. i'm not rly a hed tho.

thank you, that is helpful

why do you say 3rd ed. is a more fun set of books to own? (partic. if it's more tedious?)

well they are luridly designed to look like grimoires, is most of what i meant, lol. and (related to the tedium) they are just really full of stuff, details about all kinds of stuff, labeled pen-and-ink sketches of different kinds of elf, etc.; they're fun to look at, like dinotopia or something. the 5e books are more streamlined, tho the monster manual's still pretty good. the monster manual's always good.

am i right that 5e is 'compatible' with 3?

man those pen and ink sketches...

btw the spur for this late-in-life rpg renaissance is Deadball, one of the only kickstarters i've ever contributed to:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/695502966/smallball-baseball-with-dice

xp i don't think so? lots of mechanics are the same, monsters and items you could maybe convert without much trouble, but characters are built pretty differently. that said, d&d should prob be played sloppily and made to conform to whatever you want from it, espesh in our age, to distinguish it from video games.

:D i'm going to take that as a vote of confidence in my nascent percentile-dice-for-everything steez

but i think u have to take it seriously, sometimes ppl dont & its like, its still a game, that you want to be fun, not "ironic"

emphasizing this important upthread post tho and that it is not wholesale unbalancing let alone "irony" i am recommending here, so much as like, just going ahead and making up what you think a bugbear would be proficient in or how you think this cool sword from elsewhere would work here.

i rly like the platonic assortment of d&d dice. they were fantastical artifacts when i was little. maybe not a lot of reason for them tho, a lot of other games seem to get by w percentile and/or boring ol grownup d6.

me too.

ooh actually the "advantage" and "disadvantage" mechanic looks like a neat and simple addition. i am going to go for 5e i think. it looks like the easiest for beginners (which my kids and i totally are)

i'm slightly suspicious of my sudden enthusiasm for this (what am i procrastinating?) but maybe i should JUST "ROLL" WITH IT HAHAHAHA

Take a look at this, if you get a chance. Completely free- if you want bound hard copies of the rules etc. they're super cheap.

http://www.basicfantasy.org/

interesting. have you played it?

it also seems that the great and good of D&D 5e have made the basic rules and DM's guide available as free downloads as well which is well sporting of them since the full fledged print editions cost a good 50 euros each

holy shit that basic fantasy stuff looks amazing!

I've played it... in my MIND! But, no, just dabbled. Looks interesting and there's a ton of stuff.

i have not started playing d&d. but i have started playing deadball! it is just on the edge of what my 5-y-o is capable of. so I think i will give him a little more time. they LOVE deadball.