Have you ever played D&D?

[Le Panda du Mal]

I've played a lot of roleplaying games. My big brother had the D&D books in the 1980's but they were confiscated owing to the Satanic panic. As a consequence I didn't play D&D proper for a while- my first long-term RPG experience was the Robotech RPG, followed by Stormbringer (the RPG based on Michael Moorcock's Elric novels, with rules derived from RuneQuest). My first actual D&D experience was when I ran a Lankhmar campaign using AD&D 2nd edition, sometime in the mid-90's. Nowadays I gravitate more towards simpler, streamlined systems like Cairn- when I look at a D&D character sheet I feel like there's so many unnecessary fiddly bits. But obviously it's still the most popular RPG by far and people clearly enjoy it.

Interestingly I recently learned that the most popular RPG in Japan by far is Call of Cthulhu. Good for them!

 

[Le Panda du Mal]

For me, a lot of the WD nostalgia comes from the mid-90s, when I was first getting into it. The old metal models have a lot of charm. I remember seeing their old Eldar and skaven, and wanting to build little buildings like they did.

Anyhow, to me D&D depends hugely on the GM and players. I've known people who fixate on the numbers and mechanics of it, and others who play it as almost amateur dramatics. I tend to find that the sheer width of the setting and the super-powered characters make it feel a bit light and silly at times, but I have enjoyed it a lot. I'd like to try some games where you're basically just people, if odd and highly-trained ones.

As you might know already, there's a huge range of RPG's available beyond D&D. For the "basically just people" Call of Cthulhu might be the first game to do that, but there's lots of other games now in various settings. There are also "old school" D&D style games or "retroclones" where the characters are much less superpowered, combat is often better avoided, and reckless decisions can easily result in death.

 

[Vladd67]

I used to play D&D regularly until our last campaign finished. I play on roll20 every wednesday. We alternate, last week we played Dragonbane, a Swedish rpg that is reminiscent of original D&D and this week I am running a Delta Green game, think X Files crossed with Call of Cthulhu and True detective.

 

[Adeptus]

As you might know already, there's a huge range of RPG's available beyond D&D.

In my country (Poland), Warhammer Fantasy RPG used to be much more popular than D&D. Nowadays it is more balanced. Horror systems like World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu are also very popular.

 

[Harpo]

 

[Dave]

I'd like to try some games where you're basically just people, if odd and highly-trained ones.

Slightly off-topic but ever thought of having someone create a Space Captain Smith game?
(There's a whole new money-spinner for you - BTW I'll take a cheque!)
Even a Traveller Supplement might work - I can imagine a lot of fun to be had matching up those characters up to the attributes and skills of the Traveller Game (which one of the Supplements does for fun with other book and film characters i.e. Luke Skywalker)

 

[Toby Frost]

Yes, I have! Some years ago, a guy who read the books worked for a gaming magazine. He suggested it to me, and I thought it was a good idea. He took it to his boss, but it seemed that, unless you were a massive gaming company with sufficient clout, you needed a strong franchise to begin with. Certainly I now see a lot of very small books using D&D's 5th edition rules being advertised on Kickstarter and Facebook, and I don't know how well any of those succeed. I'd definitely consider it, though.

 

[ColGray]

I started playing in 5th grade with AD&D, did 2nd ed, 3rd, 3.5, and 4th. I haven't played 5th but loved 4th.

For anyone that loves Scifi, Scum and Villainy is a great game (it's a Blades in the Dark rebrand, by the originators) Super fun.

A buddy and I made a game that took some of the great parts of 4 (tactical combat, powers outside of, I swing my sword, and, I cast Fireball) and tried to address the issues (huge DM overhead to make things, everything is uniform). We made a system that let players make their own (balanced) powers, craft spells, share content, etc. A couple of bad life events derailed us and we never really graduated beyond serious playtesting (we did about 3 years of that) but it was super fun.

 

[Bugg]

I haven't played D&D. I did play Call of Cthulhu but we never finished it. Last I remember, we'd all gone insane in Vienna.

Funnily enough, I saw this just yesterday:

BBC Archive

 

[Bick]

Yes, quite a bit. At school from age 15 or so, and then at Uni. I played a good deal of AD&D in my first year, and then for the next few years I played a lot of other rpgs. I was GM for a long-running Rolemaster campaign, which was pretty popular. This was in the Uni gaming club; we met on Friday evenings and played from about 6 pm through to about 4 am on Saturday. Students eh? Brilliant times. I was such a geek, and proud of it, looking back!

Edit: I owned a set of Traveller, but never got to play it much, which I always thought was a shame.

 

[THX1138]

Yes, quite a bit. At school from age 15 or so, and then at Uni. I played a good deal of AD&D in my first year, and then for the next few years I played a lot of other rpgs. I was GM for a long-running Rolemaster campaign, which was pretty popular. This was in the Uni gaming club; we met on Friday evenings and played from about 6 pm through to about 4 am on Saturday. Students eh? Brilliant times. I was such a geek, and proud of it, looking back!

Edit: I owned a set of Traveller, but never got to play it much, which I always thought was a shame.

Same here as for playing Rolemaster. I also had a Traveller set too, and in the same boat as for not much chance to play it.

 

[Bick]

Same here as for playing Rolemaster.

I also had the MERP books, which used the same gaming system, and set my Rolemaster campaign in the second age of Middle Earth. I did extensive research for it, and was pretty knowledgeable of the geography, history and peoples of middle-earth back then. Re-reads of The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales as well as the MERP books was helpful here. (I really ought to get hold of the old MERP main resource book - it was great and I lost my copy 30+ years ago).

I had these as well as the Rolemaster rule books:

Great stuff!

 

[HareBrain]

Yep, I had (still have) loads of Middle earth supplements for Rolemaster. Never used any of them but they were interesting to read. Still have quite a few of the painted figures too.

 

[THX1138]

@Bick @HareBrain That is very cool! Some of our Rolemaster gaming group back then wanted to have a go at the Middle Earth campaigns, but our self-appointed "Head Honcho" said nope. May have to look into it just for fun.

 

[Vladd67]

I see the attempts to monetize D&D continues.

Hollywood is going to come for D&D actual plays sooner or later — will they survive?

Can everything that makes the form great survive a mainstream transition?

www.polygon.com

 

[HareBrain]

I see the attempts to monetize D&D continues.

I'd like to see them try to monetise some of my old D&D games -- characters waffle for six hours failing to come up with a plan, until one of their NPC hirelings gives them a hint.

 

[Lacedaemonian]

I see the attempts to monetize D&D continues.

Hollywood is going to come for D&D actual plays sooner or later — will they survive?

Can everything that makes the form great survive a mainstream transition?

www.polygon.com

I think there is a desire to go back to the tradition of storytelling and I am all for it. Appreciate my take is overly optimistic. I have never played any of these games that you are all talking about in this thread. I recall seeing posters, books and games for sale in bookshops and Games Workshop etc and just wanting to play them but there was never anybody to play with. I live this lost chapter of my life vicariously through your accounts in this thread or watching the odd game played out on youtube.

 

[Dave]

Hollywood is going to come for D&D actual plays sooner or later — will they survive?

The campaigns that I was involved in were more suitable as a soap opera or TV serial than as a film screenplay. I don't think that any D&D game that I was involved in would easily fit into the confines of a 2-3 hour film without a great deal of editing, and that is without all the boring bits that Harebrain mentions:

I'd like to see them try to monetise some of my old D&D games -- characters waffle for six hours failing to come up with a plan, until one of their NPC hirelings gives them a hint.

When you add in the characters who die because they were stupid, or who just disappear and never come back to play again, it doesn't make for a great screenplay.

 

[Toby Frost]

I suspect that the sheer messiness of roleplaying would make truly unscripted games very hard to monetise unless they were heavily edited before being shown, or used as the basis of a script (for, say, a cartoon or acted drama). I can imagine a situation where the players knew the main beats of the story ("in this episode, you will storm the castle") but improvise all the fighting, dialogue, etc between those beats, but I'm not sure that this would really qualify as "proper" roleplaying. And no matter what, without very heavy post-production, you're going to end up watching a bunch of nerds rolling dice at a table.

 

[CupofJoe]

Nerds rolling dice aside, that sound a lot like unscripted TV like The Only Was Is Essex.