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hahahahah

Seriously... computer gaming cannot compete with the thrill of having a live dungeon master mess with you

I had a totally bald, blue elf once as the result of a curse. My character found a scroll and the DM told me that once he started reading it I could say 'stop' at any time, and anything he'd read up to that point was permanent. So he started reading the scroll to me... really, really fast. I'm paraphrasing this from memory as it's been 30-some years ago:

May your pockets overflow with gold
May you swing your sword with greater strength
May you have a quickness to your step
May you turn blue and your hair fall out forever... STOP!

Crap!

You know, come to think of it, I could implement that into my game...

hahaha, yeah having DM makes a world of difference. The characters could be built so much better.

I had a 9th level Paladin that I built from level 1. Ran him for like 3 years. Well him and his fellow Paladins were governed by his church to "clean out" a village that had been possessed by demons. Upon arrival to the village he realized this was his home town village. Where he grew up and had not been back in years. He instantly plead with the other Paladins to stop that the church was wrong and that soon broke out into battle. He killed 4 or 5 Paladins and priests before they knocked him out. When he woke up his village was destroyed, all his family dead. The church had the village destroyed because they were not followers of them.

The church held him in a basement and performed magic experiments on him and eventually turned him into a Minotaur and banished him from the land.

After being nursed back to health he became, Nordham The Minotaur Paladin Slayer! He had a weapon forged named Holocaust that was extra powerful vs Paladins. Oh man he was so much fun to play! I played him for another 5 years off and on.

I can't remember what my favorite character's name was (this was about 12 years ago), but I remember what he was like He was a chaotic-evil priest traveling in disguise with a group of adventurers (the other players in my group). Only the DM knew my real alignment, and at one point when we were in a bad situation, I killed all of them while they were down and out. Ahhh, good times...

I wish I played. It sounds like tons of fun.

hallsofvallhalla wrote:You guys miss the fun of them? I personally haven't played a pen and paper rpg in quite some time. I played for 18 years then moved somewhere where no one plays

I miss the fun of making new campaigns, exploring dungeons, building a character you feel personalized with, and being a part of what is the closest to a real world as you will ever become.

I have tried to think of the best way to bring this back but to the digital world. Its so hard to recapture the magic. I believe it can be done through a browser game but for the life of me I can't figure out how.

I think alot of that fun of table top your refering to is actually unwitting world/adventure building. Eg, the player genuinely goes 'Oh, I hope there's not an ogre around that corner!' and the GM, who has nothing there thinks 'Hmm, yeah, an ogre would be good' then the players face their fear. But you can see the player essentially helped build the world as he played it.

That happens alot in roleplay - the player refers to interacting with something they would think is there, it's not in the GM's notes at all but the GM, upon hearing it, also thinks it's there. And so it is there. It's shared creation.

I would say that's possible in a browser too, but it'd be alot different from pressing 'attack goblin' over and over in execution.

I wrote a thesis about the idea that P&P RPGs are beneficial to all people, since psychologists use it to help people, Human resource management uses it for interviews and Teacher use it to teach situations.. Just more complex set of parameters to the scenario and more on going..

I concluded with statistics of University students grades from role-players vs non-role-players, proving that RPG's are better for you.

I'd LIKE also to create an online game which could mimic the RPG experience... Yet I recognise that without unique human gamesmasters, its virtually impossible.. Instead, I'm designing a game world generator, the players play in the world, but the world itself does require gamesmasters, I'd like GM's to use my online world to power their games, things that most GM's have trouble generating.. whats the name of the blacksmith in the town? what gear does he have to purchase? why does that sword cost so much? who is he married to, .. etc etc..

If players with a GM in my world, manage to find an Iron Ore Vein in the region, They set up miners team and provide Iron Ore to the town, then the prices of sword becomes cheaper, the players benefit, but so do ALL other players in the region.

I've always tried to do this in my P&P RPG's but it does become hard to keep track of.

Reading through this brings back alot of memories. I started in 1978 playing d&d and played on off sence then. My group of 18 years has broken up. Its been a little over a year now and i sure miss it. I have been looking for a group ever sence.

Halls I dont know if you remeber the caves that are up highway 285 outside morrison, back in high school we would hike up there and play in the cave by candle light. You talk about adding a sence of realizm. There were sometimes you would be totally freaked out. A couple of times we heard a noise and then you would see glowing eyes and there was a deer cruzing in.

There is deffinetly no computer game that can give you the same feeling and fun as p&p gaming.

Jackolantern, the last group I was with was one of those groups that had all the props to play with. We had figures, trees, rocks, maps, grids, ever book in print and mutilpe copies of each.

Have any of you played 4.0, I did not like it . Its starting to go the was of the computer.

yeah I passed through Morrison on my way to Red Rock! Looked like a kewl place. Man playing in caves would be great. We use to go out camping and play by campfire all the time.

To me, the last version of D&D was 2nd Edition. Version 3.0+ is all garbage IMHO. That is the "Wizards of the Coast" era D&D, where it was rehauled from the ground up to force players to buy miniatures, more books, and who knows what else. What was once a game that could be played, and played well with only a $20 book has now become a hobby that is more on par with the costs to play the Warhammer miniatures game (hundreds of dollars or more).

They also changed the rules to be more of a "power gamer" rule set. Everything has a rule and character development is so bloated. Honestly, the first time I read through the 3.0 rules, I saw right through it. The rules are designed to do a couple of things:

1. Encourage people to buy more books.
2. Encourage people to buy their own books, since every player is now going to need full use of their own all the time, so no sharing.
3. And the biggest: WotC wanted to establish the "D20" D&D system to license out to computer games. Therefore, it is quite easy to see that the D&D new rulesets play like a pen'n'paper computer game. Back in the 1st and 2nd editions, it was the other way around. D&D was its own thing, and computer games tried their best to mimic it without much success. Now the D&D player's manual reads like a video game design document. It completely stifles imagination and creativity, and encourages rule-heavy sessions where dice take the place of narrative and DMing.