The incredible austerity of D&D in 1980

does it venture any comparisons with vinyl records

haha sort of, one of the themes is that people now play D&D to escape from the internet, i.e. returning to an earlier analog era.

but I'll take a positive D&D article, even if it is lazy.

I had no idea the 2014 books were selling so well.

article is fine imo

I have been pondering how to get into D&D, possibly with my oldest (about to turn 10) for awhile now

or get back into, I guess I should say

So I had my first game this weekend and it was super fun, your advice above was appreciated.

My group are all late learners (even our DM) so I'm sure our game would've looked clumsy and spartan to a regular player, but we're getting there.

I'm very tempted to try DM-ing in the future, after a few campaigns. Not to tragically de-romanticize it, but it kind of reminded me of doing a work presentation - you have to make sure everyone gets equal time to speak, motivate a bunch of people with different learning styles, have the right handouts...

article was over-long but the part about autistic players was interesting

my books from the early 80s are at my dad's house but i can totally conjure up the way the pages smelled

kinda disappointed that the specific AD&D editions I used to have seem sort of hard to find these days

I think the fifth edition is supposed to be more-or-less compatible with the 2nd edition supplements... although if you play a very rules-lite version, I guess you could use any fantasy RPG and just rip off the story.

it appears that i have first editions of the monster manual, monster manual 2, player's handbook, dungeon master's guide and fiend folio. plus the 1981 version of deities & demigods, from which the moorcock and cthulhu characters of the 1980 version were removed

The first edition Monster Manual notably included topless portrayals of some of its female monsters, including the succubus, Type V demons, lamia, and sylph.

indeed

I def was familiar with and used earlier editions but the ones I actually owned and got the most use out of were these:
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2warpstoneptune.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F11%2Fdm-guide-1983.jpg&f=1
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lyberty.com%2Fencyc%2Farticles%2Fimages%2Fphb_v1_10th_s.jpg&f=1

it appears that i have first editions of the monster manual, monster manual 2, player's handbook, dungeon master's guide and fiend folio.

hello, sleeve from 1982!

I have some fantastic copies of the Monster Manuals that I found at used bookstores which had all the illustrations carefully colored in with colored pencils by the original owner.

it's not hard to find 1e ad&d stuff on ebay, and generally cheaper than the new books

i recently bought a bunch of 5e stuff and i have like 10 interested players but getting even half of the crew together at the same time is proving impossible ... sigh, adult life

mine were the ones with the cruder, better cover illos (DMG = big red devil, PH = big orange idol, MM = overground + underground tech pen ensemble. The ones I have now are the ones Shakey posted and lord I hate the graphics.

Even 2nd ed is a little rules heavy for me. When I DM there's no goddamn encumbrance and no morale checks and no running out of arrows.

i recently bought a bunch of 5e stuff and i have like 10 interested players but getting even half of the crew together at the same time is proving impossible ... sigh, adult life

OTM, I know about 20 ppl who would like to play but scheduling is fucking impossible

When I DM there's no goddamn encumbrance and no morale checks and no running out of arrows.

OTMFM

re: scheduling... yeah, see also "band practice" for us olds

it doesn't help that a play session tends to last about 8 hours (because we are adults and so tangential)

The ones I have now are the ones Shakey posted and lord I hate the graphic

I might be persuaded to take these off yr hands...

re: scheduling if I do get this going it will be primarily my family and maybe like one or two other people so that should simplify things

(I def have an in-law who is down for this at family events, so that's good)

When I DM there's no goddamn encumbrance

was always curious if *anyone* played with this, because what a nightmare

bags of holding all around

pack animals

but yeah encumbrance, morale fuck that shit

not so sure about the infinite arrows thing though

Arrows is just cause I'm lazy tbh

I suppose you can just assume everyone picks up all their spent/shot arrows afterwards - problem solved!

i have visited brooklyn strategist and it is almost always filled btw. wish i had that place when i was younger; they're doing the lord's work

I hate that "encumbrance" made it into video game RPGs and shooters. Trying to shoot your way out of an abandoned factory wearing power armor in Fallout 4 only to slow to a crawl because you picked up a fucking screwdriver is some baloney.

Yes, but what about the masochists and the survival modders (possibly the same people)?

make it an option for the survival mode of the game and just remove it from the regular mode

I think the problem with Fallout (with the caveat that I haven't played Fallout 4) is that they both added the baggage of first person shooters and doubled down on the amount of junk/crafting. I'd rather have crafting require fewer, more unique items rather than having to store up a myriad of currency/material substitutes

Let's just say that I have spent more than an hour at a time in Fallout 4 just looking for aluminum and ceramics.

Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas was amazing, on par with the original two and in some ways even better, but I can't bring myself to play either 3 or 4 due to Bethesda's involvement.

This (longish) review sums it up rather nicely: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10267

whoops i confused brooklyn strategist with brooklyn gamelab... different thing!
https://brooklyngamelab.com/

compleat strategist on 33rd st is one of the most pleasant places in new york city imo

I broke down
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNfp4SwU8AAXnDO.jpg:large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNfp4SwU8AAXnDO.jpg:large

After plowing through the mountains of rules I had forgotten I'm beginning to be a little skeptical that my wife and daughter's stated enthusiasm for it will not wane when confronted with just how fucking *long* everything takes

nice, hope it works out

personally i thought the campaign included in the box was really cool, though i wish i knew more about the forgotten realms.

for whatever reason i lasted about two weeks with the rules in the box, then broke down and picked up player and dm guides and monster manual

i still haven't bought any of the adventure books (especially interested in tales from yawning portal and curse of strahd) because we were still working on the starter set campaign when it just kind of petered out (did i mention the campaign is really cool?)

i did pick up voio's guide to monsters, which was great for fleshing out encounters

excited for xanathar's guide to everything, which i hope will get me up to speed on forgotten realms

the books are fucking *expensive* though. sorry independent game shop, i'm headed to amazon.

the adventure does look pretty cool, it just reminded me that "oh yeah this is not a game you pick up, read the rules, and then play for an hour", it's way more involved than that.

I went over the character sheets with my daughter (often stopping to look up stuff I didn't remember) and she seems interested, she v much likes the storytelling aspect of it - but idk about all the rules and dice-rolling and math and shit

keep on the borderlands or gtfo

(not really)

some of my students were asking if i knew what d&d was

they were like "it's a boardgame ... where the board ... is in your mind!"

it was strange

xp there is a company (goodman games) that claimed to be working on a reprint of keep on the borderlands (original art and text) with updated 5e stats

supposedly dec 2017

http://www.phdgames.com/borderlands-goodman-games/

i often don't really trust third-party expansion material but i think the reprint strategy is a good one

i like that they obviously love the cheesy colored-pencils-in-a-high-school-notebook aesthetic of early dungeons and dragons

http://goodman-games.com/store/product/dungeon-crawl-classics-role-playing-game-4th-printing-copy/

but some of their other stuff seems like just a ripoff

http://goodman-games.com/5e/

shakey you can cut out all the rules basically and just do cooperative storytelling on the fly. most DMs ime use the rules to help arbitrate results but aren't wedded to every nuance in the book and are even willing to throw results away if they make the game less fun.

we started a campaign last night - i haven't played in years but it seems like a really good group. all young (early 30s) dads. homebrew campaign tho hopefully w/ lots of plane hopping so many we'll make a stop in forgotten realms / ravenloft / etc.

Yeah the rules are there for tactical gygaxians - go arneson, make that shit up.

+ seriously unless you're planning on playing w/ figurines, grid boards and measuring tape you're going to be applying all the rules kinda arbitrarily anyway. also i've never played in a campaign that calculated encumbrance or forced characters to "eat." all that stuff should be immediately done away with in any campaign.

yeah it's called role-playing not roll-playing maaaaaaan

tbh I'm probably just encumbered by teenage experiences playing w aggro nerd guys that just wanted to flout rules so they could have characters that were all 30th Level Wizard Warriors with vorpal swords and unlimited psionic powers and shit

xp

I feel like there oughta be a comfortable middle ground where you just have to roll for attacks and damage and attempting to do various things

i admit i like to min/max a little but i roleplay sincerely and play my character w/ lots of limitations. i just like knowing i have some mechanical nuke in my back pocket if things get dicey.