ITT DJP plays Dungeons and Dragons for the first time EVER

omg

I've had a huge blast the past couple of years playing my William Burroughs-based warlock. (The Great Old One who pulls his strings is Mark Zuckerberg.)

Nice! This year I started playing again for the first time in 30 years. Glad I came back to it.

This is a great thread DJP!!!!

And: I am actually exactly in the same boat as you, I have played exactly two games of D&D in my life. (My first one I was 6, and I was killed within five minutes by a kobold. My second I was 13, trying to DM for my older brother; we lasted an hour before his girlfriend said "I'm really fucking bored" and we quit). I have the Monster Manual etc. and I read it, like, for fun.

I have such a fondness for gelatinous cubes from reading the Monster Manual

The only D&D game I have ever played involved a gelatinous cube.

i already covered the freezer/steam angle itt

spends his life attempting to atone for an unspecified tragedy that he refuses to discuss.

he stole Zristmas?

Nice. I've always wanted to play this but the opportunity hasn't come up.

late to this thread but HELLLLL YESSSSS

join me in playing MTG also it fuckin shreds

I’m currently at an urgent care with a 102.1 fever and PISSED because I refuse to miss tomorrow even if (as I suspect) I have strep

feel better, grinz

You'll just have to Grinz and bear it.

now is the time to fervently supplicate Selune

I did not anticipate this strep turn in Grinz's story. Grinz, heal thyself.

Update: I felt well enough to come into work AND I don't have strep, so IT IS ON TONIGHT

A mysterious crystal begins to glow in the freezer...

As much as I try I never got into D&D... I have immense fun making the characters, but then I just want to tell stories about them doing some Carlos Castaneda voyage of self-discovery shit (usually for some inexplicable reason involving gender dysphoria) instead of spending three hours rolling dice to simulate a 30 second fight with an orc and solving Mensa logic puzzles, which is what the actual gameplay of D&D seems to boil down to.

That would probably make a good comedy sketch.

We are gathered for the first session! The people who made it to this go-round are:

Cleric
Rogue
Barbarian
Paladin
Bard

We are walking along a road, hired by a woman Siobhan "Chevy" Dopplebock, who runs the Dopplebock Trading and Mail. It's usually just deliveries but this one is more personal. Her family's house is haunted/cursed or something and one of her fathers disappeared, so rest of the family left; her father wants to move back and we need to go check out the house to make sure it's safe. It's about 4-5 days away from our starting point; we're a couple of days out. We get 50 gold each if we clear the house out before she arrives with her father.

what could possibly go worng? 🤔

We investigated a guard tower outside the estate and were swarmed by bats and rats. I saved the paladin's life! We then met a gatekeeper who gave us a key into the manor (after the rogue raided his garden, oops). We kept missing skill rolls around perception and sleight of hand so every other interaction with him ended with a party member slapping him.

We got into the house and I was immediately possessed by a ghost who made me totally apathetic and want to leave, which hilariously matched my character's personality so no one actually noticed for a while

lol

love it

Did the DM slip you a note informing you of the possession and you were required to play-act?

(Also.. can one exorcise oneself?)

(Asking for a friend)

This is all work people so we were in a conference room on our laptops and she started a Slack conversation with me to feed me info

let investors know slack has a moat. it surrounds a castle with a dragon inside.

Other things that happened:

The bard saved everyone's asses from the bat/rat swarm by stunning most of them with his bagpipes
Our barbarian looks and sounds like a buff Ray Romano
We discovered that the ghosts in the house we've seen so far are mostly harmless and really dig the bard's bagpipe playing
The rogue spent the entire time stealing food and stuffing it into her face
The human father (who went missing) was a magician and inventor who created, among other things, analogues for the television and the telephone.
Even though the house has a habit of making people disappear, we found out that the cook still exists! We got him on the house's phone system and he turned on a bunch of lights for us.

hmm how do you know it's really the cook?

We don't!

Although he did say "sometimes I'm here and sometimes I'm not, and whenever I come back into existence it's in a different part of the house" so even if it's not the cook, it's someone that the house is playing games with and probably needs our help.

You need someone with high CHA to ask the “cook” a really complicated question about soufflés. The truth shall emerge!

The other thing is Rudy the Gatekeeper (in between slaps) told us to look for other servants in the house, so we were predisposed to believe the person is who he said he was

were they adobe slaps?

I love this thread! I wanted to play D&D so much aged 12 but didn't know the kids (boys) who played it well enough to join, and never have played

hope you don't mind but here is someone else's twitter thread about a D&D late-starter

My grandmother passed away. Her funerals were today, but here I'd like to talk about the most important thing I couldn't spend too much time on in her eulogy: her love for Dungeons & Dragons. #DnD

— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019

anyway sorry for the intrusion, excited for more updates

That is a lovely story

Jeez that's a great story

I had to miss last week's session due to vacation logistics so I am excited to see what happened while I was away.

lol the invite for this week's session (which will be on Thursday) is "The Return of the Grinz"

RECAP:

When I was last with the group, we were about to climb some stairs to the second floor. The next thing I knew, everything went greyish and indistinct for an unspecified period of time and, when they came back into focus, the party was in a kitchen, the dragonborn bard had vanished, and there was an aasimar with the group who I'd never met before. Apparently I blipped out of existence when we went up the stairs; this is something the house does to people and what we are trying to stop (also it's a genius move on the DM's part to deal with weirdo scheduling issues for a group of 8-9 people with incompatible schedules that will cause them to drop in and out of game sessions). There was a lot of faffing around in the kitchen; we discovered a magic door that would only open for "those who serve" which led to a cupboard full of servants' livery (hmm I wonder how this door works) and also discovered the butler, a woman named M'Lair, out on a patio. The rest of the group seemed to want to lumber around breaking into things and bashing stuff (there was a hilariously failed attempt to kick in a glass door that was unlocked) so, despite my weary disdain, I ended taking point on talking to her to get information. She dropped the name of the wizard's assistant, Kalem, and said if anyone could help us figure out what was going wrong in the house and why it was popping people in and out of existence and attracting weird dancing ghosts, it would be him. She then blinked out of existence.

The party had been regaling me with stories about Branson, the awesome dragonborn cook we had spoken to on the "phone" before I vanished. I got the chance to meet him and he was super energetic, friendly, engaged, and incredibly talkative. Grinz was so relieved when the motormouth blipped back out of existence.

Meanwhile, our gnome rogue Malm idly pulled a card out of a magic deck that she had acquired while I was in The Grey (nb, I coined this term when the DM described what my non-existence was like and everyone immediately glommed onto it) which that did something to her; she immediately hid and ran away from us all, avoiding mirrors and windows. We still have no idea what happened to her.

We eventually ran into Kalem, who was a guitar-playing dragonborn who dresses like Prince. His memories were broken up by decades of blipping in and out of The Grey (M'Lair, who looked to be in her mid-30s, told us that she first began working at the manor over 60 years ago) but he thought he could remember some crucial information that would help us crack the mystery of the house. He then blipped out of existence mid-sentence.

Malm, in her quest to run away and hide, blundered into a room full of imps. We happened to be nearby and heard the commotion and rushed to investigate. The session ended right before combat began.

This is so much fun.

(I left out some details, like the magic portal that led back to the labyrinth they explored while I was gone and the revelation that our barbarian was a runaway noble who had gone to barbarian school in defiance of his parents out on his first post-graduation mission)

barbarian school?

Yeah I don't know, I just rolled with it. It's a ridiculous character anyway (he looks and sounds like a buff Ray Romano)

I love the concept of barbarian school, where first week orientation involves learning to eat with your hands and pound the table properly

yeah that's a great twist

Yes, Barbarian school is wonderful. Great update DJP! Sounds like a really fun group. Of course, you’re going to have to circle back to that glass door because there’s definitely treasure hidden behind it

We got through the glass door! Basically, our two heavies bounced off of it and it slowly opened, because it was unlocked. It led out to a patio where M'Lair was all "wtf are you manics doing here" and why I took over talking to the NPCs even though all I really wanted to do was contemplate a dead plant on a table in the corner

Apparently I blipped out of existence when we went up the stairs; this is something the house does to people and what we are trying to stop (also it's a genius move on the DM's part to deal with weirdo scheduling issues for a group of 8-9 people with incompatible schedules that will cause them to drop in and out of game sessions)

This is a very good tactic, well done your DM.

https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd

I kinda want to try this if I can get a party together

https://blog.roll20.net/post/621100826549682176/announcing-burn-bryte

Olaxis is the last galaxy in the universe. A bright orange existence-consuming phenomenon, dubbed the Burn, surrounds and slowly closes in on Olaxis, wiping out entire solar systems as it makes its slow, inevitable advance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g5cdpe1it8

but yeah, that looks really cool! i'm in the middle of a cyberpunk campaign now but i'm curious to hear if this is fun or not. the only thing about roll20 is that the video chat, in the experience of all 5 people on my campaign, is catastrophically awful and unreliable. it will make you lose your mind. last time we finally decided to chat on hangouts instead. but other than that it's got kind of a janky interface but in general things work!

some of the core mechanics seem interesting, too. i like this way of determining the success (or failure, actually) of skill rolls:

Each skill has a die size associated with it: d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12. The larger the die size, the better you are with the skill. Burn Bryte assumes characters are competent heroes, so rather than rolling to see if a character succeeds, the game asks you to roll to see if you fail. How does that work?

When you make a skill roll to perform a task, the skill roll has a complexity, which determines how difficult the task is to overcome. The higher a roll’s complexity, the harder it is to perform. The GM determines a roll’s complexity, which can be as low as 2 (easy) or as high as 7 (ridiculous). Outside of combat most skill rolls have a complexity of 2 (easy), 3 (moderate), or 4 (hard). The skill roll’s complexity determines the number of dice you roll.

When you make a skill roll, you roll number of dice of the skill’s die size equal to the roll’s complexity. If you roll the same number twice or more, known as rolling doubles, the skill roll fails.

For example, Luwe the glean (an alien species in Burn Bryte) wants to attempt to leap across a chasm. She tells the GM she wants to use her d8 Athletics to leap across the pit, and the GM tells her that skill roll has a complexity of 3. Luwe rolls 3d8 and rolls a 5, a 3, and a 7, so she succeeds. If Luwe had rolled a 5, a 5, and a 7 or a 6, a 6, and a 6, she would fail the roll because she rolled multiples (or doubles) of the same number.

if i did the probability/spreadsheeting correctly, i think this is the % chance of failure for various combos of dice thrown vs dice size:

https://i.imgur.com/88jooGt.png

as you level up your skills, i'm assuming you'll level up the dice size (d4 to d6, d6 to d8, etc), which would have the effect of making it more difficult to roll doubles/failures

pretty neat

it is a world where you have a 18% chance to successfully do something ridiculous in space

narrator: the probability/spreadsheeting was not correct. sorry.

june 28 is the day of the do-over. i think this is right, now:

https://i.imgur.com/WmlaBJq.png

earlier, i wasn't taking into account that if the goal is to avoid doubles, then the probability of each successive roll needs to take into account the additional, unique number that was rolled just previously.

this makes some skill checks are impossible. for example, a difficulty 5 roll (in combat) with a skill that only has a d4 ability wouldn't be successful, since you're required to roll 5 d4 and not roll doubles.

with that corrected, you have somewhere between a 0% and 50% of doing something ridiculous in space, depending on how much you've leveled up your dice size for that skill

Has anybody tried using zoom and roll20 together?

no but it's been under discussion in the game I'm playing, seems like it might work better for the audio end of things.

sleeve do you have the same issues with video/audio?

we don't use the video, just audio, but we're getting some glitches like where everyone can hear everyone else except one person can't hear me. so far we've been able to reset with a minimum of hassle, but we were saying "hmm how about trying Zoom" last week after the GM lost connection.

so basically we'd use Roll20 for the dice, character sheets, and maps.

Update on my Dungeon World game with my kids. My 8-y-o loves it. Our first game he played a Ranger, second a Wizard. My 11-y-o played a thief both times and finds it extremely hard to concentrate. I think the presence of paper and pencils and sitting in a chair basically makes him feel like he's at school. He gets into it, but after about an hour his distraction circuits are on overload. The 'be naughty at school' instinct kicks in and he tries to poison his brother, etc. So we stop. It's hard to really build momentum and play through a whole adventure because an hour is practically nothing.

Which leads me onto something that I've felt many times listening to RPG podcasts or watching streams etc - which is that most campaigns are AGONIZINGLY SLOW. Part of that is GMing style, but even with a tremendous GM the amount of 'story' you get through - as opposed to minute breakdowns of physical actions in a battle - in, say, three hours, is small. So many questions and answers and restatements of the scenario and where everyone is in relation to each other. Dungeon World helps, with its run and gun mentality, but I feel like there could be some even newer innovation that allows the story to really move.

I found GMing less daunting than I thought. I barely looked at any of my moves or notes. Once it starts flowing you really do just have things magically occur to you, at least often enough. As long as you're aware of when moves get triggered that's enough.

We had a lot of fun drawing a map. I used some of the guidance from Perilous Wilds there. Everybody noted their homeland, etc. The 8-year-old's country is called 'Potato Shack'. I can't wait to find out what that place is like.

I still find incorporating NPCs a little difficult. When and where the characters should meet them, how long they should hang around for, how to distinguish them from hirelings. I mean, it's just like any other aspect, I guess, you make it up and just roll with it.

This is my most favourite recent-ish thread, so I was wondering where is everyone at with their own experiences?

Has rona slowed everything to a crawl?

I think I may have found some nice local folks to game with who don't seem to mind a newbie participating, I'm excited.

My wife and daughter and my wife's cousin are playing every week, and they've got a clever way to prevent DM burnout -- they worked up a shared world that has a somewhat vague overarching plot, and take turns DMing smaller campaigns that run 4-6 sessions. Each of them is running 1-2 characters at a time and the DM du jour provides NPCs as needed.

I've been running an rpg via Discord (video streaming) for a couple of months and it works pretty well. None of my players are local, so Discord is not due to the pandemic.

As a now-48yo GM, I'm learning to be better than when I was a shitty, dictatorial 14-21yo GM. One technique I like is just asking the players lots of questions and letting them provide the details. Like introducing an NPC from one of the PC's past - I will tell them the name of the character and one fact about the NPC, then ask the PC about their relationship with NPC. This spreads the creative burden around, helps the players buy-in, and can lead to cool moments you wouldn't have come up with on your own.

Yeah I remember GMing something when I was that age, very much a shitty dictatorial GM insisting that players took a specific course or did certain actions. Later, I was fortunate enough to play RPGs with someone who was an incredible GM talent in my eyes: really capable of spouting out compelling stories. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia a decade later.

But more recently I really enjoyed watching my daughter GM a family game recently, where she did not fall into any of the traps I did at her age! Unfortunately, her cohort seem to have put D&D on the back burner recently even though they are all on Discord.

Got my first game (since I was in my early teens a looong time ago) this Saturday, opted for a badass 'Oath of Vengeance' Half-Elf Paladin, the numbers fell pretty good too and the DM is starting us all on L2 so imma be misty-stepping all over the place (okay, once a day)

It’s Not Just You: NYC Has a Serious Dungeon Master Shortage

https://hellgatenyc.com/no-on-wants-to-dungeon-master-any-more

Bumping this to note that I’m joining a project where the teams are all named after mythical creatures and I successfully got our team to name itself Gelatinous Cube

Ahaha, that's amazing.

excellent