D&D 5E Discussion

[Old One]

I keep remembering the people who wanted to ban D&D because it had demons and spells, and would therefore teach kids witchcraft and satan worship.

Now some other people seem to think that portraying racial inequalities, or whatever other claptrap they're upset about this week, will create inequalities in the real world. More perversely, those same people seem to think that erasing racial inequalities in the game will lessen inequality in the real world.

On the most basic level, these two groups of people are making the same argument: players cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. Therefore the game must be controlled.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

A cautionary tale explaining why everyone should be introduced to RPGs by having several first-level characters die, eliminating any attachment or confusion between ego and alter-ego.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I keep remembering the people who wanted to ban D&D because it had demons and spells, and would therefore teach kids witchcraft and satan worship.

Now some other people seem to think that portraying racial inequalities, or whatever other claptrap they're upset about this week, will create inequalities in the real world. More perversely, those same people seem to think that erasing racial inequalities in the game will lessen inequality in the real world.

On the most basic level, these two groups of people are making the same argument: players cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. Therefore the game must be controlled.

main difference is that one ideology never perversely infiltrated every part of the people creating the product and actually changed the entire identity of the product
The worst we got from the religious fanatics was changing 'demon' to 'Tanar'ri'

Therefore, I don't really consider it comparable at all. One has had a massively worse impact upon D&D than the other.

 

[Cryomancer]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

I played an entire year of D&D 3rd edition as a caster in high school. This year, played a retroclone as a caster again. Played from lv 4 to 13 in S&W and yet, nobody offered me a coven membership and IRL magic powers.

 

[Rean]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

I played an entire year of D&D 3rd edition as a caster in high school. This year, played a retroclone as a caster again. Played from lv 4 to 13 in S&W and yet, nobody offered me a coven membership and IRL magic powers.

You just haven't been playing with the right people.

 

[Bara]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

I've been told those are still getting passed around too. Some one apparently printed them out and left them under a friends windshield wiper.

Could have been trolling could have been legit belief but who knows.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

D&D is a lot fucking closer to that now except replace magic with gender transitions

went from a focus on the player's character to the player themselves and self-inserts of such

 

[WhiteShark]

D&D is a lot fucking closer to that now except replace magic with gender transitions

went from a focus on the player's character to the player themselves and self-inserts of such

The first step of the decline was moving the emphasis off of D&D as a dungeon-crawling game to escapist fantasy.

 

[Morblot]

Played from lv 4 to 13 in S&W and yet, nobody offered me a coven membership and IRL magic powers.

Dude, you got those levelups literally for just showing up, one per session. No wonder you didn't get offered shit. Show some strength of personality like Debbie did and play a character from first level to eighth the hard way.

 

[infidel]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

Damn, I forgot how great it started, Marvel-level writing quality
I THINK YOU'D BETTER LET ELFSTAR TAKE CARE OF THINGS.

And that is how ELFSTAR was born, true believers! Next ish: ELFSTAR makes THE SCHOOL pay! Excelsior!

 

[Mortmal]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

I played an entire year of D&D 3rd edition as a caster in high school. This year, played a retroclone as a caster again. Played from lv 4 to 13 in S&W and yet, nobody offered me a coven membership and IRL magic powers.

If you are not offered a coven membership or magic powers that means the others are feeding on you , saping your life energy and devouring your soul. How do you think us Dm look so young and healthy ?

 

[Caim]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

Damn, I forgot how great it started, Marvel-level writing quality
I THINK YOU'D BETTER LET ELFSTAR TAKE CARE OF THINGS.

And that is how ELFSTAR was born, true believers! Next ish: ELFSTAR makes THE SCHOOL pay! Excelsior!

I'm still amused by how Green Ronin took this whole Chick Tract and used it to write a supervillain for Mutants & Masterminds.

Schizophrenia is a hell of a drug.

 

[udm]

Yeah I think Wizards of the Coast have been very strict about no digital products for the core books to slow down piracy, but I think they allowed side books to be digital.

The most interesting thing out of this is that it remains the most popular game by a large margin. I cannot do D&D not just because I don't like 5e's system, but also because I need my material to be digital, whether it's for maps or reference. I tried running Curse of Strahd once, and it really pissed me off because of how inaccessible the maps were. I was later told by a friend that it was better for me to use the printed maps as a reference and to hand-draw on a Chessex battlemat. Screw that, I'm too used to having pretty maps from sources like Heroic Maps and being able to "Ctrl+F" to pull up monster stat blocks.

 

[Caim]

Yeah I think Wizards of the Coast have been very strict about no digital products for the core books to slow down piracy, but I think they allowed side books to be digital.

The most interesting thing out of this is that it remains the most popular game by a large margin. I cannot do D&D not just because I don't like 5e's system, but also because I need my material to be digital, whether it's for maps or reference. I tried running Curse of Strahd once, and it really pissed me off because of how inaccessible the maps were. I was later told by a friend that it was better for me to use the printed maps as a reference and to hand-draw on a Chessex battlemat. Screw that, I'm too used to having pretty maps from sources like Heroic Maps and being able to "Ctrl+F" to pull up monster stat blocks.

D&D is avoiding the more digital stuff because back in early 4e the books were available digital as well as physical. This made piracy a doozy and around the time the Martial Power book hit it was pirated, shared and readily available in a pristine digital format in hours. So Wizards flipped the table, screeched and put the kibosh on all digital versions for the game. Not that it stopped anyone. This sucked for them, because they REALLY wanted to make D&D more digital but after the one guy who maintained the digital gaming environment left or died the code that he left behind was so labyrinthan and insurmountable they had to abandon the project.

On a related note, the reason you won't find digital versions of the Star Wars games made by Fantasy Flight Games is because they only managed to secure the rights for a physical version of the books but not a digital one. So the pirated versions are of a lower quality.

 

[infidel]

I'm still amused by how Green Ronin took this whole Chick Tract and used it to write a supervillain for Mutants & Masterminds.

Schizophrenia is a hell of a drug.

Riddle me this, Dark Knight. How long really did Alison spend practicing something useful before plunging into the world of caped crusaders?

Spoiler

According to my calculations ("Girls usually begin puberty between the ages of 8 and 13 years old. "), it's from -2 to +3 years, not including cosplay. Actually... cosplay is a pretty useful skill for a superhero.

 

[Cryomancer]

Dude, you got those levelups literally for just showing up, one per session.

Wrong. About 4 months; about 6 hours of game per session. Two sessions per week. That is about 32 sessions or 192 hours in table. That is one level per 3,5 sessions or per 31 hours of game. I only started in lv 4 cuz I entered in mid campaign. I only had a quick leveling till about lv 7. Then the leveling slowed a lot and after lv 10, become almost nonexistent.

Even FATAL which is the most brutal RPG ever created, recommend one level up per about 3 sessions and establishes one level up per campaign as a example of extremely fast/rushed game. My DM only rushed the starting levels.

my adventure in nutshell

The adventure started with a murder mystery(which I din't participated) which leaded to a kidnap mystery because the "bad guys" grown in influence, a bit of dungeon crawling, then a conspiracy involving a guild and gnomes, our party got framed by a massacre and had to flee, had to buy a ship and sail to another continent, almost died in the travel, if another magic user in my party din't had a scroll of control weather, we would died, had to flee from a kraken attack, landed in another continent, we started to get quests and get notoriety in the second continent which I don't know how to spell the name, got nobility title, participated in a defense against a horde of orcs and ... The group disbanded. Was a extremely fun adventure.

did and play a character from first level to eighth the hard way.

I entered in a already running game. Starting with a lv 1 char while the rest of party is lv 4 and a Druid was lv 5 would't be fun for the party or for me. I would be dead weight.

----------------

D&D is a high magic setting. There are adaptations of D&D to lower magical settings. Eg: Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea is a much lesser magical setting. Lv cap? 12. Greater daemons tends to have like 8 hit dices. Leveling once takes not only XP but gold for a mentor and weeks of training.

 

[Morblot]

You sound butthurt.

 

[Mortmal]

Usually in 5E in grant a level every 2 sessions, i prefer to get things moving . Then if a character die you reroll a new one at same level. I see no point in the grind , those are more suitable for a computer game.

 

[Morblot]

the one guy who maintained the digital gaming environment left or died

Didn't the guy kill his family and then himself?

 

[Cryomancer]

butthurt

Yep. Explaining why I started on lv 4 and the speed of leveling in my game(ie - on average a lv per 3.5 sessions of 6 hours each) = butthurt.

Usually in 5E in grant a level every 2 sessions, i prefer to get things moving .

How many sessions did you had in your lv 1 to 20 campaign?

IMO, is better to slow down on mid and high levels. One or two sessions / level seems fine on lv 1~7 but after it I believe that things needs to slow down a bit. Otherwise, becomes too hard for the DM to prepare fair challenges and adventures for the party. Obviously, just my opinion. You play as the way that you see fit.

-----

One thing which I don't understand on some D&D members is the idea of dictating how other groups should run their games. I mean, I mocked Lacrymas crazy eunuch paladin setting, but am happy that he can get fun in his way. You don't see the same thing on other RPG's. In GURPS, there are people who prefer pure historical, no magic, low tech adventures. And some people who like to play as technomancers building a robot army to craft a Dyson sphere. You don't see people who like the first type of game criticizing people who like the second. But in D&D, you see people who enjoy low level adventures criticizing a group who wanna run even mid level games. As if getting fun is a crime.

 

[Morblot]

One thing which I don't understand on some D&D members is the idea of dictating how other groups should run their games.

I don't really care one bit how other people play, I just like to mock you since it always causes you to go on these long tirades, thus providing me with enjoyment.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Jack Chick tract, 1984

Damn, I forgot how great it started, Marvel-level writing quality
I THINK YOU'D BETTER LET ELFSTAR TAKE CARE OF THINGS.

And that is how ELFSTAR was born, true believers! Next ish: ELFSTAR makes THE SCHOOL pay! Excelsior!

I'm still amused by how Green Ronin took this whole Chick Tract and used it to write a supervillain for Mutants & Masterminds.

Schizophrenia is a hell of a drug.

actually kinda tragic, kudos to the writer

 

[Larianshill]

because they REALLY wanted to make D&D more digital but after the one guy who maintained the digital gaming environment left or died the code that he left behind was so labyrinthan and insurmountable they had to abandon the project.

It was a bit more dramatic than that. The only guy in charge of online tools committed murder-suicide after killing his ex-wife.

 

[Caim]

because they REALLY wanted to make D&D more digital but after the one guy who maintained the digital gaming environment left or died the code that he left behind was so labyrinthan and insurmountable they had to abandon the project.

It was a bit more dramatic than that. The only guy in charge of online tools committed murder-suicide after killing his ex-wife.

Yeah, that was it. Quite a bit darker to be sure.

 

[Mortmal]

butthurt

Yep. Explaining why I started on lv 4 and the speed of leveling in my game(ie - on average a lv per 3.5 sessions of 6 hours each) = butthurt.

Usually in 5E in grant a level every 2 sessions, i prefer to get things moving .

How many sessions did you had in your lv 1 to 20 campaign?

IMO, is better to slow down on mid and high levels. One or two sessions / level seems fine on lv 1~7 but after it I believe that things needs to slow down a bit. Otherwise, becomes too hard for the DM to prepare fair challenges and adventures for the party. Obviously, just my opinion. You play as the way that you see fit.

-----

One thing which I don't understand on some D&D members is the idea of dictating how other groups should run their games. I mean, I mocked Lacrymas crazy eunuch paladin setting, but am happy that he can get fun in his way. You don't see the same thing on other RPG's. In GURPS, there are people who prefer pure historical, no magic, low tech adventures. And some people who like to play as technomancers building a robot army to craft a Dyson sphere. You don't see people who like the first type of game criticizing people who like the second. But in D&D, you see people who enjoy low level adventures criticizing a group who wanna run even mid level games. As if getting fun is a crime.

1 session by week from 8pm to 11pm offcially up to 2 am officiously , during 1.5 year to go from 1 to 20 with around 3-4 encounters per session. usually Hard to deadly encoutners , last one i had a 7x deadly and they managed it . Hundreds of hours of preparation , world building, map drawing, towns, dungeons in the most autistic way a codexer can provide .