D&D Anyone?

[Bulbasaur4]

So... now that things are slowing down. ..(well, not really but I'm finding that my bored time is not being filled up with Theatre as much now) ... I am wondering about an RPG idea.

Now firstly, I'm not sure how many uber nerds there are out there... but does anyone play Dungeons and Dragons? If so, then maybe listen a bit further to see my idea.

I was thinking of starting a Dungeons & Dragons styled RPG. Basically using the world of D&D (or molding it to my own D&D world... mwhahaha...) and the creatures and such, and making it into an highly interactive RPG. Obviously there really would be no dice rolls, but there would be levels of some sort (not really to calculate things, but to help feel out the idea of how powerful a character would be). It wouldn't be highly complicated and it would lack the numbers of D&D, however it would include the world, races, monsters and the whole DM and players ordeals. Spells would be set to a limited number at the beginning for magic users, as well as a few boundaries for perhaps fighters... but nothing too extreme.

The format for RPing would be a bit different as well, obviously because the players would lack much control of their environment. While players would be able to say they "made a fire, cooked this..." and blah blah, they would lack much control of any NPC or specific environs such as castle walls and such. Also, while role playing the dialogue between player characters would be acceptable, it would be highly stressed that you either make sure you role play the character right or you PM and contact the individual to set some thing up or establish an understanding. After a few people would post, myself (the DM) would then post a "Moving" post, in which basically I would create a descriptive post that would create some sort of action or would bring the characters to a point where they must make a decision.
For example, I would post some thing detailed... that eventually would bring you to a point like this (of course, this is very very simplistic and not detailed in the way that I would do it, but for example's sake)
Finally, the characters reached the end of the long twisting staircase to climb up to a door. The door itself doesn't seem out of place or odd by any means- its made out of old dusty wood, crudely put together with iron planks. However, the knob of the door seems to leap out and catch your eye for the knob doesn't even seem like it belongs upon the door. It glistens with a newly crafted look of silver, being a round sphere of a knob with some strange embroidered markings etched into the surface.

Then, the characters would post their reactions to the events that happened leading up to the door, eventually posting what their actions would be and then as a result I will post saying what happens. To progress the RPG at times, I might take control of certain characters and have them do necissary things. But in any case... I hope you get the idea.


Would anyone be interested in this? I don't think anyone really would be... but if you are, just post to let me know. Thanks!

~ Bulbie

[Mystic_clown]

Hmm, interesting. It's new, so I'm willing to give it a shot. And the fact that it's D&D doesn't hurt either.

"I'm going to attack the darkness!"

[Asilynne]

I happen to be a D&D nerd myself LOL so Im all for this. If you need any help setting it up Ill be glad to help and if I dont know something about D&D we can just ask Jennie Wenny (M2D2) since she and her sis got me into it in the first place LOL she should have all the books and stuff.
But yeah sounds cool, Ill have to bring my druid back to life, those were some good times XD
You know there was this one time about an evil spice rack.......

[Outlaw JT]

Just let me know if you need a rogue or a cleric. I play them very well in the geekdom of D&D.

[Bulbasaur4]

[color=royalblue]
Yay! I'm glad that you three are interested. I actually never played D&D until second semester last year... where my boyfriend and all my anime friends brought it back to life since one of my best friends played it all the time. We now have tons of books (although I have yet to read most of them...) and I at least have the hard copies of Spell Compendium, Monster Manuel 4 and of course the PHB3.5.

So many fun stories with D&D! Weeee!!

[Waves_of_Darkness]

Let's see... yes, yes, and um, YES.

Anytime I can be a paladin is an excuse to not go to Romeo and Juliet rehearsal.

>.>

<.<

Don't tell my wife in the show that I said that...

[Arnen]

Oooh, D&D! <3 I wanna be my druid characterrrr. Who I'm using right now in my actual campaign and I'm having fun with. xD

[Plantae]

I must say this is a wondrous idea, one that I too had considered. I would probably join, dependent on time restraints. In terms of categorizing my expertise with Dungeons and Dragons... well, I have been playing for about six months. I DM for my group (quite ponderously) and despite allowing only the Core and Complete books in our game, often browse the other supplements. In addition, I have a few opinons on combining DnD and RPG. Feel free to ignore anything that you disagree with.

I have seen similar play-by-post DnD games online, albeit with all the statistics and dice rolls. In any case, this and Bulbasaur4's emphasis of the lack of control characters have over their environment has led me to recommend one course of action: it is better to post short and frequently. It helps to keep the action moving and from straying too far from the "everyone around the table" feel. Also, it makes it easier for characters to interact as the majority of the text in such a post should be spent describing your own character, not someone else's. (As an extant point, the whole of RPG seems to think short posts are a bit taboo. Part of the inactivity here is likely due in some part to the feeling of each role-player that they have the obligation to make a single post a short story. The "short and frequently" advice can be similarly applicable to RPG's in general.)

This is an odd suggestion, but time zones permitting, it might also be interesting to play out part of the RPG in an instant messaging chat room. It would allow for the real-time of your typical game.

By the way, I understand your omission of character sheets and all that jazz, but there is some argument to be made for their partial inclusion. What I am specifically referring to are dice rolls. Think about it: in every RPG players have a certain bias. When their characters act, they typically make it favorably. How many times have you purposely killed a character? Even let your character get severely injured? We want to keep our characters alive and operable, but if the heroes always carry the day in a spectacular fashion, does it not get somewhat stale? Dice rolls provide a factor that is, in my opinion, quite valuable: the random nature of real life. A bit of bad luck can add frequently omitted spice to the tried-and-true "good guys always win (often with surprising ease)." In truth, you are entitled to like your characters to have the best of luck almost all of the time. I, however, joining this RPG, might just roll a few times in the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons as it should be.

[Waves_of_Darkness]

Well said, my hearts!

o,O

Okay, I HAVE to get out of this show...

[Weasel Overlord]

[color=silver]Yay! DnD! ^___^ *is joining the DnD club at uni* I am so up for that... FenDruid here I come! Huzzah!

[Asilynne]

This is an odd suggestion, but time zones permitting, it might also be interesting to play out part of the RPG in an instant messaging chat room. It would allow for the real-time of your typical game.
That would be really cool, maybe not very frequently cause I dont have a lot of time (and as Ive learned, its hard to organize something around a whole group of peoples scheduales, there will almost invariably be someone left out) but it would be good to implement when there is a major battle or something, like how in real D&D when your doing normal roleplaying its one way, but it completely changes format and speed when in a battle. That would also be the best way to do the dice rolls, since dice rolls are very very important in battle (I cant imagine trying to do a battle without rolling dice in D&D o.O)


By the way, I understand your omission of character sheets and all that jazz, but there is some argument to be made for their partial inclusion. What I am specifically referring to are dice rolls. Think about it: in every RPG players have a certain bias. When their characters act, they typically make it favorably. How many times have you purposely killed a character? Even let your character get severely injured? We want to keep our characters alive and operable, but if the heroes always carry the day in a spectacular fashion, does it not get somewhat stale? Dice rolls provide a factor that is, in my opinion, quite valuable: the random nature of real life. A bit of bad luck can add frequently omitted spice to the tried-and-true "good guys always win (often with surprising ease)." In truth, you are entitled to like your characters to have the best of luck almost all of the time. I, however, joining this RPG, might just roll a few times in the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons as it should be.

Too bad this forum doesnt have a roll feature for when you post like Gaia does XD that would make this game a whole lot easier, but I think it can still be possible. We should still have to do spot and listen checks, cause your absolutely right about the beauty of D&D being the randomness, something is always a surprise for even you lol

Let me tell you why rolls are necissary even though you already know lol (I just want an excuse to tell this story XD)
When I roleplayed with Jennie and her sister I played as my druid, and as some of you might know druids have a reincarnate spell at lvl 4 or 5 or something like that. We had just killed a monstor that was made of animal parts, it had the body of a bear the head of an eagle etc. But to make it extra gruesome the DM said that its eyes had been plucked out so it was a blind freak of nature, and in doing so he made me feel really sorry for it LOL So I used reincarnate on it, hoping to reincarnate it into something decent so it could live a good life that it never got to have because of the horrible thing that was done to it. So my DM rolled to see what my spell turned it into, thinking maybe a mouse or a cat or something. And he happened to roll a human XDDDD He was like ".................SHIT" lol because he thought it was going to overcomplicate things, but it turned out to be a cool part of the story since the reincarnated creature became my characters "daughter" who knew the druid language (since there werent enough languages I knew to give it 3, it knew common, elvish and druidic XD) And because of that the new NPC went into druid training with my char so it was a pretty cool thing that never would have happened had the DM be left to what he wanted to do lol

So yeah rolls are :yes: but I think they should be limited to the basics like spells, battles and basic skill related rolls ^,-,^ This seems like it will be delicious!

[Plantae]

I would just like to pop in to recommend an online dice rolling site that is useful for a player and a DM alike. See, this one allows you to roll and to be able to prove what you rolled; you can find it here (http://invisiblecastle.com/). Oh, and on the tangential subject of Spot and Listen checks, if we do happen to use rolls, I have a nifty hint in case you haven't your own method of getting around this. I know, as a DM, that there are times when I do not want players to know they are rolling a Spot or Listen check and roll for them. For what is worse than letting them roll and having them metagame as they get a "you hear nothing" or similar in response? Players can sometimes get a bit antsy if the DM rolls for them, too, blaming them for a bad roll or even a good roll if it did not let them hear or see the thing in question. Therefore, I have houseruled that before each game players should roll (desired number) of d20 dice. This way, the DM can still keep these rolls secret without robbing the player of their ability to roll for themselves; that is, during game the DM just goes down the list of rolled numbers, using them as necessary for any "secret" rolls.

I would just like to point out that though I doubt, judging by your post, that we would use all of the usual statistics (of course, as long as no one that wants to join is unfamilar with DnD, I would urge that you it is surprisingly less ponderous than you would believe) that there are websites that allow both the creation and the maintenance of fully online character sheets.

On the subject of chats, I agree that it would be almost necessary for combat to keep the pace of the RPG going.

By the way, I do not know how familiar you are with play-by-post DnD, B4, but you might find some of the material on this page (http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=play_ooc;action=display;num=11176809 19) applicable. Also, to anyone, there are a number of useful links at the bottom of the first post in the thread linked. If you browse that forum a bit, you can find a sub-forum with in-character threads (start topics) that are good examples of one way a DnD-esque RPG could work.

[Bulbasaur4]

[color=royalblue]
@_@ Gah...

So, I wanted to do this but after reading everyone's posts and such I feel a bit pressured and I'm not usually one to be a DM. So, with this in mind... would anyone else be willing to be a DM and take this over or like that? I don't want to throw the idea away, but I'm a bit overwhelmed.

[Mystic_clown]

Oh, sorry for putting pressure on you Bulbi. I'd like to do it, but I'm trying to keep my own RPG afloat.

Hmm, maybewe can make this a joint effort. Everyone putting their little bit in.