DiogoJ42
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Metropolitan Line
... Or as most people know them, "Dungeons and Dragons, and other geeky things".
Anyone round here in to these games, or ever played one?
Despite being the mega geek that I am, I went most of my life having never played D&D, or any similar game. The closest I ever got was a few failed attempts to play Hero Quest as a kid (none of us could be bothered to read the rules, so we just played with the miniatures).
My interest really began a few years ago, when the video reviewer known as Spoony started his now popular Counter Monkey series, in which he tell tales of the amusing things that have happened in RPGs he has played over the years. It sounded like great fun. He also gives advice on how to play a good game, or be a good DM. There's even (I kid you not) a 68 minute video where he rants about the pros and cons of different types of dice!
I would highly recomend these videos to anyone with an interest in RPGs. He does tend to ramble on a lot. I find that as most of the time he is just sitting in a chair talking, you can listen to them while doing something else.
The second thing that made me want to start playing RPGs was discovering the webcomic The Order of the Stick A couple of years ago. It started out as a simple stick figure comic making jokes about how dumb some of the rules of D&D are. But now it's been going for ten years, and there is a serious plotline, with characters you can really root for. There have been several art style upgrades, but it still keeps true to it's stick fig roots. They are just much better detailed stick figs now.
So about a year ago, myself and a friend were talking, and this subject game up. I explained my interest in giving it a go, and he said that he has been playing Pathfinder for ages, and wanted to start DMing his own game, would I be interested?
And that is how I got started. Myself and Kelpie, my friend's wife, and a Dutch guy that my friend knows from his other game have been playing the Skulls and Shackles (IE: pirates) module of Pathfinder for about 8 months now. Kieron from this forum has recently joined in as well.
We are playing online, using a site called Roll20 to take care of all the maps and dice rolling, and a free program called PCGen to create our character sheets and do all the hard maths stuff for us. We do our talking over Skype (although Roll20 does have chat capabilities built in to it).
The good thing about doing it all online is you don't have to invest in loads of books, dice, figures etc if you just want to try it out. (Of course, I have now got the core rule book - all 574 pages of it - as well as a nice, ever growing collection of dice). The bad thing is that it's tricky to arange a time when all of us are free to play, especially when you work random shifts. Games tend to last several hours and can take up a whole afternoon / evening. At the moment we are lucky to get one game a month.
I'm on my second character as my first one died from a case of terminal stupidity (I knew what I was about to do was stupid, but it's what my young and foolish character would have done.) My current character is actually one of the bad guy NPCs that I took over, after our DM suggested it in private. It made for a great twist for the other players when they realised I was now playing a guy who in our last game, was trying to kill us. We came up with a indepth sob story to explain exactly why I was a bad guy, why I was no longer a threat, and why they should now trust me... they still don't.
A while ago I was explaining all this to some friends at work, and they seemed interested in seeing what it was all about. As we knew the following day would be very quiet, they begged me to bring bits in and run a small taster game for them. I had never DMed before and was a bit nervous, but I stayed up all night scouring the net for the info I'd need. In the end I gave them premade character sheets from our existing game, and ran a very simple "save a tavern from raiding goblins" scenario that lasted a couple of hours (most of which was explaining the rules). They loved it and were upset when we had to stop as 1) we were about to go on air, and 2) I had nothing more prepared!
Since then I have not attempted to DM again, but my friend who DMs our game keeps poking me to give it a proper go. Maybe one day I will (possibly with some of you lot if you are interested?), but not just yet.
Well anyway, enough waffle. Anyone round here play these games? If so, do you have an amusing tale to tell? (I have a couple, but will save them for now as I've prattled on enough already). Would you be interested in playing one some time? Discuss!
(I shall leave you with this very sad image of my dice collection...)
That's a d2, a d3, 4 x d4, 4 x d6, 4 x d8, 4 x d10, a d10%, a d 12, 4 x d20, a d16 and a d24.
I have another order that should be here tomorrow; a d5, a d7, and a d14.
Anyone round here in to these games, or ever played one?
Despite being the mega geek that I am, I went most of my life having never played D&D, or any similar game. The closest I ever got was a few failed attempts to play Hero Quest as a kid (none of us could be bothered to read the rules, so we just played with the miniatures).
My interest really began a few years ago, when the video reviewer known as Spoony started his now popular Counter Monkey series, in which he tell tales of the amusing things that have happened in RPGs he has played over the years. It sounded like great fun. He also gives advice on how to play a good game, or be a good DM. There's even (I kid you not) a 68 minute video where he rants about the pros and cons of different types of dice!
I would highly recomend these videos to anyone with an interest in RPGs. He does tend to ramble on a lot. I find that as most of the time he is just sitting in a chair talking, you can listen to them while doing something else.
The second thing that made me want to start playing RPGs was discovering the webcomic The Order of the Stick A couple of years ago. It started out as a simple stick figure comic making jokes about how dumb some of the rules of D&D are. But now it's been going for ten years, and there is a serious plotline, with characters you can really root for. There have been several art style upgrades, but it still keeps true to it's stick fig roots. They are just much better detailed stick figs now.
So about a year ago, myself and a friend were talking, and this subject game up. I explained my interest in giving it a go, and he said that he has been playing Pathfinder for ages, and wanted to start DMing his own game, would I be interested?
And that is how I got started. Myself and Kelpie, my friend's wife, and a Dutch guy that my friend knows from his other game have been playing the Skulls and Shackles (IE: pirates) module of Pathfinder for about 8 months now. Kieron from this forum has recently joined in as well.
We are playing online, using a site called Roll20 to take care of all the maps and dice rolling, and a free program called PCGen to create our character sheets and do all the hard maths stuff for us. We do our talking over Skype (although Roll20 does have chat capabilities built in to it).
The good thing about doing it all online is you don't have to invest in loads of books, dice, figures etc if you just want to try it out. (Of course, I have now got the core rule book - all 574 pages of it - as well as a nice, ever growing collection of dice). The bad thing is that it's tricky to arange a time when all of us are free to play, especially when you work random shifts. Games tend to last several hours and can take up a whole afternoon / evening. At the moment we are lucky to get one game a month.
I'm on my second character as my first one died from a case of terminal stupidity (I knew what I was about to do was stupid, but it's what my young and foolish character would have done.) My current character is actually one of the bad guy NPCs that I took over, after our DM suggested it in private. It made for a great twist for the other players when they realised I was now playing a guy who in our last game, was trying to kill us. We came up with a indepth sob story to explain exactly why I was a bad guy, why I was no longer a threat, and why they should now trust me... they still don't.
A while ago I was explaining all this to some friends at work, and they seemed interested in seeing what it was all about. As we knew the following day would be very quiet, they begged me to bring bits in and run a small taster game for them. I had never DMed before and was a bit nervous, but I stayed up all night scouring the net for the info I'd need. In the end I gave them premade character sheets from our existing game, and ran a very simple "save a tavern from raiding goblins" scenario that lasted a couple of hours (most of which was explaining the rules). They loved it and were upset when we had to stop as 1) we were about to go on air, and 2) I had nothing more prepared!
Since then I have not attempted to DM again, but my friend who DMs our game keeps poking me to give it a proper go. Maybe one day I will (possibly with some of you lot if you are interested?), but not just yet.
Well anyway, enough waffle. Anyone round here play these games? If so, do you have an amusing tale to tell? (I have a couple, but will save them for now as I've prattled on enough already). Would you be interested in playing one some time? Discuss!
(I shall leave you with this very sad image of my dice collection...)
That's a d2, a d3, 4 x d4, 4 x d6, 4 x d8, 4 x d10, a d10%, a d 12, 4 x d20, a d16 and a d24.
I have another order that should be here tomorrow; a d5, a d7, and a d14.