Tabletop RPG Games...

... 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...)

I used to play a basic version of Dungeons and Dragons with a couple of mates during lunchtime in school.

We never had a board, or a rule book, just a dice and a lot of imagination. It was all good fun!

A play a game called Warmachine. They have just released a digital version, which is not the same, and not as good as the table top version IMO.

Link: http://privateerpress.com/WARMACHINE

Ian

One of my favorite "luck of the dice" moments came from my very first game. We had been pressganged on to a pirate ship (this was the plot hook, now we are the officers in charge, but at the time we were the lowest recruits on board). I was gambling with some tough pirates, and decided to use my rouge "slight of hand" skill to cheat the dice.

After a few wins, the inevitable happened, and I botched my roll and they caught me. Angry, at knife point they demanded I hand over all my possesions, so I placed them on the table. The dialog went something like this:

DM (as pirate): And your boots too. Hand them over.
Me: I reach down and take off my boots, then stand up and swing them by the laces at the first guy's head.
DM: What? Oh for god's sake! Right, roll your basic attack.
* I rolled a natural 20
DM: *sigh* Roll again to confirm...
* I rolled a 20 again
DM: *laughs* You hit the first guy in the head so hard that his head smacks in to the other guy's head like a Newton's cradle, and they both fall down in a pile on the deck. You can almost see the little birdies flying round their heads tweeting!
Me: Sweet! I take all my stuff back, including all the money from the game on the table. Then I search them, what have they got?
DM: Errr, not much. Let's say ten gold pieces between them and their knifes.
Me: I take the money, but leave them their knives.
DM: Anything else?
Me: Yeah, actually. I remove their boots and toss them over the side of the ship. Then I get the hell out of there.

Two things came out of that. 1) no one was ever willing to gamble with me again, and 2) word started to spread amongst the crew that I was so hard I once killed a guy with nothing but an old boot.

Meh, I'll double post. (My topic, my rules, right?) My new dice turned up. So here's a pic showing one of every type I own:



I kinda wish someone made a d9, just to have a complete set.

Kinda like this one? http://www.shapeways.com/model/223823/d9-sphere-dice.html?materialId=25

I haven't played D&D, I don't really have the friends for it. Or so I thought!

I am just starting to get into Magic: The Gathering, but that's not really an RPG!

soooo. Me and Oli were thinking about starting a business, to print customized figures.

you will design the character with an extensive online character customization screen and we will print and send you an unpainted figure, for a reasonable price.

Was looking at wargaming and tabletop RPG's. Just saw this thread and was wondering the level of interest.

Dar: Blimey, and I thought my d7 was a weird shape!

Matt: Sounds like an interesting idea. The real qustion is, just how well can 3D printers create the sharp detail needed for figures? I'm probably not the best person to ask, since all my gaming so far has been done onlne. (The one time I DMed at work, I used Lego minifigs for the combat! )

Well the printers we were looking at have details as small as 20 microns (0.02mm) just finding away to cheaply finish and smooth them without losing that detail, since they come out often quite rough

I don't know much about 3D printing tbh mate. But I do know that, as you say, the parts need a fair bit of cleaning up. That's no problem on a flat surface, but the fine details of a figure might be problematic.

I play various role playing games at our local pub. It's empty on a Tuesday night so the landlord doesn't mind us geeking it up in an evening as long as we've got a pint (I know the sacrifices we make ay?)
Presently I forget the system we are playing but it's based in our town. We had to write our own backgrounds, specialities and skills. The DM then rated us and gave us skill points accordingly being generous if you were expansive with your story line. Basically the more detailed the better you started. However he's also strict and anything you say when playing even "jokingly" is taken in to effect so you gotta be on your game all the time! Makes for some very interesting events - especially as I'm written is as the spy and double agent type person!

I tried drinking beer while gaming at first. I quickly realised it's much better to be sober.

I mentioned earlier in the I feel down topic, our last game went horribly wrong. At the start we were the toast of Port Peril, the up and coming pirates. We had the aproval of the pirate king, and no less than 4 ships in our fleet. We had some of the best magic weapons money could buy for our level (7th), and all seemed good.
A couple of bad choices and a lot of critical fails later (how can virtual dice roll THAT many 1s in a row?) we now have nothing. We lost our ship, our crew, all our gear save for a dagger each, and we are on the run from the city guard, wearing only rather filthy underwear after a jail break through a sewer. If they catch us we are dead. Frankly, I don't see a way out.

I know that what my character would do in real life is bail. He'd make a run for it, abandoning the others, and start a new life in hiding. But then it comes down to "do you want to play this game or not?"

Well, we survived that screw up in the end. Several sessions later, we are back on track, with more side quests than I keep count of. Since our GM is a teacher and currently on holiday, we are cramming in as many games as we can.

We had a "christmas / winter film themed special" a few days ago... We were poisoned by Chevy Chase, then battled with Olaf and Elsa, Mr Freeze, a town full of Gremlins, and were finally killed by Bruce Willis, before waking up to find weapon upgrades under the tree for us.

Today I got to try out my new +2 (keen) Eleven curve blade... It crits at 15 or higher (d20+11 attack) for 2d10+6 damage!
I think I'm going to like this new toy.

We've just started playing games like this and are investing in D&D soon (how soon is a different question though). I never really thought about them much until the comic book store opened in my town and we went in and found a load of different games which are all really interesting. We ended up buying an Assassin's Creed RPG because it was a simple introduction to the games yet we're interested in the game series and we've really enjoyed it.

I think we're planning on buying King of Tokyo and King of New York next as they were recommended to us and, seeing other people playing them, they look really fun!

I definitely think RPGs are moving away from the stereotype that people that play them have no lives etc. and that more and more people are beginning to play them as they are really enjoyable!