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Post by Siana Blackwood on Jan 10, 2016 7:50:03 GMT
I think Roll20 that Lillian linked further up has all the character sheets, dice etc. as part of the site. Also, the 'Basic Rules' PDF has printable character sheets at the back. Since I've been looking at character sheets and rules a bit now... I'm not actually confident I'll be able to get my head around all this. I mean, I can read the rules cover to cover (if I can stay awake, since it's basically a textbook), but from what I've read so far that isn't going to give me any real idea how it turns into a thing people can play. There's no external context, just like trying to learn anything else by doing nothing but reading a textbook. Okay, then. Using the textbook example, that means in addition to the rules we (well, at least I) probably need: a) Some kind of example/walk-through/tutorial to read or watch b) A simple, minimal setup game that follows either the same rules or a subset of them Either that or an expert who doesn't mind doing a lot of hand-holding. Overall, I don't think this is something I'm going to be able to get into.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Jan 10, 2016 22:53:21 GMT
For the rules, but yes, it's true, the first game requires a lot of hand holding, and there's a fair amount of overhead in building a character. On top of that, the DM will have to do even MORE. That's not even mentioning how we'd have to get everyone together in the same place at the same time regularly, AND figure out how to make a faceless online experience as interesting as a face to face one without any visuals. This game CAN be played online, but it's best played with a paper map, with people you can see and interact with, and some type of figurines. Otherwise you're just typing again. Much of the fun of the faceless part comes from designing a character, so if reading the subset of a textbook isn't your cup of tea, probably a better idea to do something that doesn't require this whole heap of commitment.
To that end, how about we do something different from either? I think a team building exercise (I don't know what else to call it) would indeed be a valuable thing, but it doesn't have to be as complex as D&D. So in the past, we've actually had a role playing board, where we'd usually start off with a serial story, and each poster would continue it. That never took off, possibly because it was too open. Everyone just wrote their character, and it never went anywhere. There was no component of building anything, because it was either all or nothing - you write a paragraph, and you each take turns.
I think we should do a stripped down game where we can all still make things up, but with just a few guides. So...
1) One person creates a simple setting and a basic quest, and slaps on a few obstacles. This person is the equivalent to the Dungeon Master. This is the person who will ultimately be responsible for moving the plot along from obstacle to obstacle. It'll be no more effort than writing one exercise. Characters would decide how to handle the obstacles, but this person would ultimately decide how successful each venture is. Kind of exactly like D&D, but without any hard and fast rules about the HOW, or any strict things that have to be defined. Random number, evil genius decision-making, whatever, all could work. Bonus, this person could even set it on their own world and get some free world building out of it. So for example this person could decide that we're doing a quest into the heart of a black hole to retrieve a portal generator that could revolutionize star travel, and decide that we're facing aliens, time travel shenanigans, and a virus that is slowly killing the crew. Once one adventure is over, we could do another, and let someone else have a turn sitting out. We could even keep the same characters. This solves the issue of a formless story, because one person is actually required to make milestones happen, thus freeing up the characters. 2) Each person except the "DM" creates a character. Unlike D&D, there will be no metrics that MUST be filled out. The characters are the ones that will decide how they want to handle the obstacles, according to their patterns of behavior. They can work individually or in teams. For example, they could all decide to steal an alien ship and shoot all the aliens. So one character could be the thief and steal the ship, while the others could be distraction. So they would take it by turns to state what each of them are doing towards this end. The "DM" would then invoke the RNG and state how successful they were.
"I want to steal the ship." "20! Yes, you succeed in stealing the ship." "I am fighting the rest of the aliens to distract them." "2. You distract them, but are severely injured. You will die if you don't get treatment."
And so on. Like D&D though, the characters could also level up every so often, like after every adventure, or every quest. Instead of XP, spells, and armor though, the rewards would be awarded more loosely. They could be maguffins, a kink of complexity in their backstory, getting to change sides, etc. For this, all each person needs to start is a simple character. Any character. This does work better with a variety of character types though, which I don't think should be a problem here.
3) We do this in real time, not on a thread where anyone just posts when they want, thus making the story painfully slow, and coordination just painful. We could introduce the role play on a thread, but actually do this on a chat. That way it would be easy to take turns.
What does everyone think? Would a stripped down role play be beneficial? Would you prefer another type of exercise, or prefer any changes to this setup?
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Post by LillianAltair on Jan 10, 2016 23:34:27 GMT
*raises hand* I bought a D&D book a while back that's made up of one-shot dungeons, with the low-level ones being 2-3 rooms each, with their own backstories about why the adventurers would be there. It's made for 4th edition, but it'd be easy enough to swap out the monsters for 5th edition ones if we go that route. I could easily scan and send some of the pages if anyone wants. As for making actual D&D characters and understanding combat and such, youtube is your friend. Dawnforgedcast has videos for I think every class of 5th edition (don't be intimidated by the length of the videos), and there's tons of videos of people playing D&D. There's also the Drunks and Dragons podcast, which starts *super* simple as a Halloween-based episode and then becomes a giant world of awesomeness XD
So, question, would option 1 be like the Character Boot Camp thing we did a while back? Cuz that was kind of awesome even if it did sort of spiral away from us at the end. A more structured storyline maybe? Maybe a sort of combination of 1 and 3 using a chat program and a turn order?
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Post by d4rksh1n3s on Jan 11, 2016 2:45:10 GMT
Holy crap count me in on all of this!
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Jan 11, 2016 3:23:32 GMT
Lillian, yes, that's a great idea. Yeah, those three things were all one game. Guess the explanation wasn't clear, but to answer your question, essentially, yes, all three of those are basically Muse Boot Camp with the addition of a structure, e.g. one person is the Puppetmaster, and the rest are players. Actually, come to think of it, I don't see why the Puppetmaster can't play too, like Boot Camp. I think the reason Muse Boot Camp worked so well is because even though there wasn't an official leader, there was a clear conflict and quest, namely, to get out of the Russian boot camp. In short, we need to try to kill our characters. Take away their powers and drop them defenseless into a tortuous place. Watch them squirm. >:-D So we have two options. 1) Muse Boot Camp role play with extra structure. Each person makes a character, Puppetmaster tries to kill them, we use chat and take turns, things go boom and get awesome. *carefully notes down board name idea* 2) Legit D&D. So here are my thoughts: Personally, while I would love to play D&D, it does require a bit of a learning curve. The character sheet and textbook monolith are daunting, but no one's going to get dumped in cold turkey. There needs to be handholding to translate rules to reality. Those unfamiliar will need time to go on Youtube and read the guides, and I'm sure it would be nice to have the opportunity to have the chance to ask questions and share knowledge here. I'm not overly familiar with it myself, having only designed a character once and played v3.5 once and v5 once. :-P I could design my character by the 15th, but given that all of us are beginners, I think we need to work together. First time I played I had a lot of help, so I didn't panic. This should be fun, not a panic-inducing situation. We shouldn't feel alone in this, so I think we could create threads for this in role play - post examples, talk about where to start, share links, post our character sheets and make sure we're doing it correctly, etc. What do we think - would starting slow, having more time, and having help available make this something to consider? BUT! That's not to say we can't do something. Why don't we start with Boot Camp, and see how that goes? Meanwhile we can still work on setting up a D&D group, and getting everyone up to speed, help build characters, etc. So actually, now that we've hashed out the two things, two questions. 1) How many people are interested in Boot Camp (except via chat, with a more structured story)? 2) How many people are interested in (eventually, with the requisite intro) playing D&D? Both of these are mutually exclusive and optional, by the way. You can do one, both, or neither. Looks like we have at least three people for D&D, potentially. Myself: 1) I'm totally down for Boot Camp Live RP. 2) I'm down for D&D as well. ALSO. I tracked down the Monsters Manual, the Dungeon Masters Guide, and the Player's Handbook for v5 [same as the one Lillian linked], which is a lot more intuitive than the earlier versions. If you're new, youtube would help, as would googling how to build a v5 character. Then you need only to read the sections of the book on your character type. Start at the beginning, then flip through to the relevant pages. The handbook takes you through building a character, so you don't have to actually read the whole thing. I've included a bunch of character and spell sheets as well. To start with we really only need the main character sheet. It might ask you to sign in, but you don't need to. Just cancel out. D&D v5 PDFs
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Post by d4rksh1n3s on Jan 12, 2016 1:46:20 GMT
Down for both, slightly leaning toward boot camp if I had to pick only one.
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Post by LillianAltair on Jan 12, 2016 2:58:33 GMT
I'm good with both! ^_^ Though, for the "no powers" thing for Boot Camp, if I give Kyran the handicap of post-war knee injury (it hurts if he doesn't walk with a cane), can he still turn into a lynx (albeit one with a noticeable limp)? XD I do like no powers though, because Kyran was a bit Hawkeye'd in the last thread (ala "We're fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow") going up against sci-fi characters XD
For D&D, whenever I make character sheets there is the inevitable 'wait where the hell is this number supposed to come from?' at which point GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND! If, say, you're trying to figure out where the 'passive perception' comes from (which I did have to google when I made my first XD), just google it and chances are the first link will tell you ^_^ The index is fairly decent (though sometimes I can't find what I'm looking for because it's classified as something different than I would think to call it. For reference, 'money' is not under 'money', nor 'currency' nor 'monetary system'. It's called 'coinage' XD) and some of the basic, smaller stuff is scattered though the handbook. Following a youtube video makes it a lot easier XD (For spellcasters, rather than constantly be flipping to the 'spells' chapter I just found the spell description/action online and copy/pasted to the boxes on the second page (for personality XD) that I don't use. It's pretty handy ^_^)
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Jan 12, 2016 5:44:14 GMT
Probably yes to Boot Camp. D&D... maybe, with sufficient preparation time/discussion and if I can find something online that talks about it with less assumed knowledge. Edit: Was looking for stuff and saw a couple of PDFs of simplified D&D games for ages 6 and up: The Heroes of Hesiod and Champions of the Elements. Would something like that work as a sort of 'warm-up event' to introduce the general principles of the game and sort out the administrative/communication aspects of playing online?
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Post by Danielle Wayland on Jan 14, 2016 0:44:10 GMT
I may be interested in the first option, not sure about D&D, I never really had the urge to play it. And if I have to read a book to learn it, then that heightens my disinterest lol.
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Post by monica4567 on Feb 7, 2016 18:17:03 GMT
Well, looks like I'm rather late to the party. I'll stick around this time, m'kay?
The D&D project looks like fun, but I'd need a few extra hours added to the day to manage that.
My writing goals for this year remain the same: FINISH REVISIONS on my novel Bullet Proof. The good news is I have an editor. The bad news is I have an editor. So I've spent the last week or so creating a storyboard of my manuscript for her. Before that, I'd spent most of January working on plotting out my sequel and developing the backstory for my antagonists, which were underdeveloped and keeping me from getting my scenes right. Now that I've sent that out to her I'm going to try to rewrite this scene that I've been stuck on.
My non-writing goals, such as they are: get my blog going again. That was last year's goal but just never made it. Must, must do this.
I don't have any new ideas for new challenges but will continue to report my progress here in my PPT.
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