I have only played Dungeons and Dragons once but I really enjoyed it and would like to play again

Me and some friends started playing it when my friend got a box you can just play straight out of. We’ve got quite into it and now we’ve started to make our own characters. We’ve had about 5 sessions I think now.

Since we only started recently, my boyfriend who has been our DM so far has brought the 4th edition stuff so we use that because we don’t know any different

“My group uses 3.5e and we haven’t really had a chance to try out 4e. ”

I don’t blame you – I don’t find 4e really entertaining. It’s sort of like when a good company comes out with a game that you know is made specifically to coddle people through the process of playing.

Did you know they plan to make a 5e soon? I’m scared for the outcome but glad they realized that 4e wasn’t well-received.

yes they are planning to come out with 5e

http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/09/wizards-of-the-coasts-announces-new-edition-of-dungeons-and-dragons/

Joshua, the need to make new characters helps me be a better DM (constantly creating NPCs I can stash off on the side until I need them). I don’t see why it would hinder DMing.

I understand the love of playing though.We have two different games going (well, one D&D 3.5 with me and my friends, and then one game of Dark Heresy going with another group of friends where I get to be a player).

DMing is kind of stressful when one is in University, but it’s at least a good stressor.

I’ve played twice, but no one around here wants to play with meeeeeeee

I’ve played a few times at the enders club at my school. Would definitly like to try and start playing again (my old character sucked)

Never played, but wanted terribly to learn. Does anyone have any recommendations for getting started (beyond going to a tabletop gaming store and putting up a flier or having friends, which both sound intimidating and wrong)?

I’m a big D&D player — I think I’m going on 11 or 12 years now…(making me feel old).

I’m currently playing a mounted combat fighter/ranger in a low magic/low power 3.5 game, and running a campaign of heavily modified pathfinder (if you’re a big rules/ balance nerd like me you may like it, Check it out).

I think that 4th edition was a mistake. Not because it’s a bad system or unbalanced or it in anyway breaks down. I think it fails because it makes battles even longer, gaming supplements like tokens and boards more essential and focuses on balancing the game around tactical combat instead of promoting a system in which conflicts can be solved through skills and roleplaying. Also because it continues the idea that class=archtype=character.

pathfinder was a bit better in this regard, but honestly they are falling into the same hat with gunslingers and alchemists.

@Allibeth how would you play D&D like Dan Brown’s Chess game? Would we run a module just really slowly with stock characters? That seems terribly mechanical and hack n slashy (an adjective which can’t help but conjure images of fanfiction everytime I read or hear it).

@emptus @tomalsoknownastom

I would like to not draw it out as long as Dan Brown’s chess game. I just used that as an example to help get ideas moving. I was thinking, the DM would DM.. and we could either

a) set it up like a collab and have people upload a video response about what they want their character to do, with as much or as little roleplaying as they want. If we did it this way, the videos should be very short and uploaded often. The amount of players would have to be limited of course.

b) set it up more like Dan Brown’s chess game and use the moderator module. I think this would be favorable only if we had enough interest. We would actually need some sort of following for people to leave suggestions and vote on those suggestions.

I see a lot of positives and negatives to both senarios. What do you guys think? When I DM, I like both story and technical playing.. I try to DM a very balanced game, when possible. Combat still seems like it would take forever. Do you have any suggestions on simplifying it?

I’m currently running a game where the players all connect remotely via chat and VoIP, but that’s not exactly conducive to youtube-ing.

And I think making a forum thread, group, or something of that nature would be good for any conversation that is Player to Player, and not character to character. It would be great if the players want to make a collective decision on something.

J.Merrill, were you thinking the people in the 4 corners of the screen are the characters or the players? Just want to be able to better picture it in my mind.

And I think your idea is totally awesome.

I have lots of game boards — they are handmade, but over time we’ve been perfecting them. So, they do look pretty cool now.

I also have a collection of minitures. I have hundreds.

If we got together once a week to do a D&D session over Skype or something like it, we could then record it and edit it. I’m not very experienced at editing, but I do have the time. I have a HD camcorder and some really good software for editing.

Now we just need enough people and to figure out the details.

I have a tripod coming in the mail for my camera, so after that (and learning my editing software) I will be ready to go.

Do you want me to DM or someone else?

It looks like we have three people who are quite interested.
It would be great if we can get two more so we have a balanced party of four.

I’m happy to DM or be a player.

I prefer games that are classic D&D. By that I mean, just a classic fantasy world with magic and such. I like it balanced. Not too goofy, but not too serious either. What about you, @Tomalsoknownastom?

Before we start, I just want to make sure I have the video capture and everything worked out, so that we don’t miss anything. Among my family, I am known as a computer genius. Among nerds — not so much.

This is so exciting! I can’t wait to get it moving. I just want it done with awesome. (c;

@gaypher If asking people IRL to play seems challenging, you may want to look into Play-By-Post games. I know that both Giantitp.com and paizo.com/paizo/messageboards have vibrant PBP communities. You could also look into their “looking for players” threads to find a IRL game near you.

If that fails, you could go to your local gaming store and ask if they know anyone who plays — contact them and simply ask if you can sit in on one of their games.

And if all else fails, we can always start a game up here on yourpants.

…in fact we might be doing that. I’m sure no one would really mind a new player, though the commitment required to a youtube colab game is pretty serious, so no foul if that’s too much to commit to if you’re not sure you’re gonna like playing anyway.

@theallibeth

Power-creep is the forum term for the tendency to balance classes in new supplements based around the relative utility and power of the most powerful existing class.

For example: when balancing spell casting classes newer 3.5 supplements tend to balance the class around the cleric or the wizard — not around sorcerer who is by pretty much all numerical metrics inferior. As a result the new class (let’s call it…a “war mage” or a “warlock”) tends to be at least as powerful as the cleric (which is numerically the most powerful 3.5 base class) and occasionally is slightly more powerful. Now it’s time to make a new suplement and now I balance my new base class around… the warlock! (who maybe slightly more powerful than the cleric was)… Etc.

This process is repeated similarly with races, feats, and equipment

In the end you end up with “base classes” that far and away outstrip their original counterparts. This is why if you’ve played in the RPGA (where metagaming is king!), you’ll see many more scouts, duelists, ninjas and factotums than you will rogues — more cavaliers than paladins … etc.

In defense of moving to pathfinder: They did a very good job of not only further balancing the base classes among themselves — they did an even better job of making each base class distinct in both abilities and flavor. Sorcerers are no longer just wizards who cast fewer spells more often — they are scions of powerful bloodline powers, while wizards are guardians of specialized arcane secrets. The druid isn’t a cleric with a pet and a gimped spell list; the ranger isn’t a poorly thought out fighter with more skill points, he’s a master of terrain, pyschology and tactics… the list goes on.

In short, each class is more essentially arch-typical and special — also most classes are better balanced relatively (though admittedly some are still laughably underpowered [I'm looking at you monk. You're still worse than a fighter well-built in every regard.] ).

Oh and cleric’s turn undead no longer requires feats to be worth something. That’s good.

Do you have too many people, or could I get involved in this?

I play! I’ve never met another girl that is into D and D so this is comforting
We have a group of about five or six from school that play when we get the chance. I love my Eladrin druid so much.

We haven’t completely figured out the logistics of the game yet but it seems like you would need be willing to upload / send @theallibeth video of you playing the game (honestly I think if we could work out a way of recording the session as a multi-user skype chat that would be best). Also, you would have to make a character (obviously) and likely buy and paint and ship to allibeth a miniature (although I suppose if she’s really got hundreds, we could just pick some of the ones she already has)

Since it looks like I’ll be DMing the game — I’ll probably run it through Obsidian Portal (which if you haven’t seen it and you like table-tops you really owe it to yourself to check it out). So you’ll eventually need to make a profile there.

Also consensus so far seems to be a standard-ish fantasy world with a balanced 4 person party and a balanced focus on both roleplaying and combat/ dice rolling. So plan your character accordingly. Oh and try to make a character you think will be interesting for other people to watch as well as fun for you to play.

Oh and I guess it has kinda been assumed thus far, but I’ll go ahead and make it explicit: Since we are trying to capture the “heroic experience” of playing D&D, I think we should play characters in the Good and Neutral range of the alignment spectrum. That being said — if you’re dead set on playing an evil character, I’m not going to forbid it but set your evil expectations a bit low (think Belkar Bitterleaf from OOTS).

So I suppose in that regard we could start picking / assigning party roles.

I know Allibeth is going to want to play the Healer / Cleric.

As I see it a party typically has the following roles:

Tank/ Melee damage dealer

Arcanist (utility, crowd control, direct damage)

Skill Monkey (Rouge, ninja, bard etc)

Healer

Obviously there’s a lot of overlap and there are plenty of classes and builds which can fulfill multiple roles: (A dwarven cleric with the protection and strength domain makes a good tank as well as a healer; a properly geared and prepared wizard is capable of dealing with traps as well as rogue; a ranger is equally capable as a melee fighter, a ranged striker or as a skill character depending on specializations etc.) All that said though — we should strive to have a balanced party.

@therary The group I play in is mostly girls. When I started, there were a lot of guys. Now – not so much.

In my IRL games I’ve been trying to recruit some more boys. Can you believe it? I finally found a couple. Hopefully they will show up. (c;

One more thing, I was thinking that when we figure out the land we are playing and what characters we are playing, how would you guys feel about giving a little bit of backstory of the characters for the first video? I think that would be really neat to include. It could be really basic, but I think it would be nice to “introduce” the characters.

@Tomalsoknownastom, @emptus, @liesforneweyes

@emptus @tomalsoknownastom @liesforneweyes

We need to name our project. Any ideas?

The name should be used for the portal page and YouTube channel. Since we could possibly use the YouTube channel for another campaign or something else down the road, I don’t think it should be too specific.

We haven’t hammered down the exact logistics of the video production, but it looks like skype will be our go to since it allows for multi-person video chat and video recording capacities.

Obsidian Portal is a online campaign management site that helps users build campaigns and keep them organized. It comes with a campaign wiki (for all that world lore and setting stuff), an adventure log (which we can use to post links to the video as well as commentary on the sessions), campaign forums, editable campaign maps using google map technology, a campaign calendar, and internal linking and character sheet hosting. Basically it makes running a campaign and keeping up with all the NPC’s and towns easier — this way we will have a site where viewers can read up on our characters and the campaign setting, the deities, background etc. and we don’t have to worry about sharing campaign notes.

Also as a manner of update: I have so far built a pretty vibrant cosmological creation story for our world, a full pantheon of gods and should start making a basic world map and nations fairly soon. Let me know if there’s anything in particular you want to see in the world (like halfling velociraptors or dwarven pirates) and I’ll see what I can do to make it happen.