The incredible austerity of D&D in 1980

The "D&D" movie was shockingly well made. Funny, witty, entertaining, engaging, etc., with a couple of really clever action sequences and novel special effects. Of course it basically flopped. I could imagine it making the rounds as a beloved cult film.

Thread needs more gelatinous cube content

(Tbh I could never quite get into RPGs or games generally - I just lack the attention span. But I do find it anthropologically interesting that in 1980, the nerd-adjacent codes and signifiers and stereotypes had not quite been established yet.

So, like, yr middle-aged suburban mom could bring home a D&D box set thinking it was something like Scrabble or Monopoly. It had yet to acquire cultural baggage.)

I'll see your gelatinous cube and raise you a green slime, an ochre jelly, and a black pudding!

I just watched the movie with my son and it was pretty good! Gelatinous cubes for the whole family! Our attempts at doing tabletop RPGs at home have been thwarted by his older brother who can't sit still for them, but even our minimal experience was enough to notice plenty of little moments that felt as though they could have been rolled for

Loved the film.

Having a zoom call with a group of fellow beginners as a preliminary to our first ever session. We have a friend with a little DMing experience who has kindly volunteered to do the thing. Other than that, I really don't know what I'm in for

30-second encounters that take hours to play out

I never played much of the game, but I am pretty familiar with it (as a kid I used to read the arcana books a lot): in-jokes and little winks aside, was there anything about the movie that was particularly unique to D&D? I always thought a lot of the appeal of the game was that every campaign is different - personalized characters, unique stories, different enemies and encounters and obstacles - with the only constant being the gameplay, more or less: rolling dice, dungeon masters, maps, namely the things this movie totally (by necessity) lacked. I wonder if it would have done better if it was just called, like, "Heroes and Villains" or something more generic, and they played it up as a self-aware fantasy satire of sorts (which is kind of was) rather than an adaptation of something that is not, by design, adaptable.

pinefox, take your clueless shtick elsewhere plz

― Perverted By Linguiça (sleeve), Saturday, May 6, 2023 9:35 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe we could not have bullying on the D&D thread, lol

ok

Gelatinous Cube is the name of my Ice Cube tribute band

"The Wrong DM to Fuck With"

30 second encounters that take hours to play is a modern thing. I think we had three combats in our last 2 hour session, using the 1981 basic d&d rules.

^^ was gonna say

Half the time your first level magic user gets hit once and they’re dead, fight over.

i had my first game either late 79 or early 80, my 8th grade teacher brought me and a few friends for an overnight trip to some weird DM in suburban NJ, some sterotypical jersey name like Passaic or Parsippinay. tbh my parents thought it might be some pedo front and told me to be careful. anyway the dm was quite good and me and my pals were hooked for the next 3 years. many a trip to the compleat strategist in midtown ensued.

ha, seems i've been over this before

i played D&D between 79-82 give or take

the austerity didn't really register

― velko, Tuesday, October 25, 2016