Current Events > How does D&D exactly work, and why do people have so much fun with it?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It seems like an immense chore and you have to strictly operate within the bounds of its rules and lore. I don't get why older millennials and boomers treat it like some fun social thing.

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Because its a fun creative activity. I like fantasy, I like roleplaying game. I like tactical grid based combat. Which is optional by the way. I like playing without it too.

CRON posted...

It seems like an immense chore and you have to strictly operate within the bounds of its rules and lore. I don't get why older millennials and boomers treat it like some fun social thing.

you're mistaken. D&D has always had house ruling and people coming up with their own homebrew campaigns and campaign settings. The vast vast majority of my twenty years of playing D&D has been in campaign settings the D&D came up with.

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CRON posted...

It seems like an immense chore and you have to strictly operate within the bounds of its rules and lore. I don't get why older millennials and boomers treat it like some fun social thing.

That's never been true.

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I stick with solo video games

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for me, i really enjoy the acting and roleplay aspect of it all. its really fun to do character voices or step into the shoes of a character completely different from myself
also i do like minmaxing characters so i also enjoy the combat since i know ill be good at it

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Can you explain the basics to me? From what I gather, a bunch of people sit at a table, create fantasy characters with specific stats, and narrate their adventure. How does the rest work?

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Never played, but looks like fun. What's not to like tc

Imagine a multiplayer video game where you can try to do anything you think of.

You want to bitch slap a questgiver? Go for it.

You want to drop your pants and take a shit while the big bad guy is doing his evil monologue? Don't even have to wipe.

You want to jump off a cliff and see if you can survive by turning into a goldfish? Probably a bad idea but sure.

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pegusus123456 posted...

Imagine a multiplayer video game where you can try to do anything you think of.

You want to bitch slap a questgiver? Go for it.

You want to drop your pants and take a shit while the big bad guy is doing his evil monologue? Don't even have to wipe.

You want to jump off a cliff and see if you can survive by turning into a goldfish? Probably a bad idea but sure.

That literally explains nothing. What are the basic mechanics of playing D&D and what makes it fun?

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CRON posted...

It seems like an immense chore and you have to strictly operate within the bounds of its rules and lore

It could not be further from this. The whole point is the immense freedom you have. The rules exist to give structure to whatever campaign you want to play. The only limit to what you can do is what the DM is willing to allow.

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CRON posted...

Can you explain the basics to me? From what I gather, a bunch of people sit at a table, create fantasy characters with specific stats, and narrate their adventure. How does the rest work?

You have a dungeon master who's responsible for the bulk of the game. They handle the NPCs and narrate the scenario, and the players who are each responsible for their own character. The DM will do some prepwork typically, but they'll often have to wing it because they players go off the rails.

You'll generally roll dice whenever you try something that might fail, like sneaking past guards or monsters, stealing, disabling traps, trying to bluff someone.

Combat can be handled with a grid and miniatures if you have a group that likes tactics play, or you can just roll dice, narrate stuff and imagine it.

There's a million other games besides D&D too, so you can do the same basic thing, but with different rules, in different genres with completely different playstyles.

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I was gonna roast the shit out of TC, but I rolled a nat 1 on attack

It's improv for nerds

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My cousin played it but I never met anybody else who did

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CRON posted...

That literally explains nothing. What are the basic mechanics of playing D&D and what makes it fun?

It explains more than you think. D&D is played very much like a video game. The Game/Dungeon Master controls the world and the NPCs. The other players play their characters. The only difference between it and a video game is the freedom it allows because both the DM and the PCs can improvise on the fly.

Just to use WoW as an example, the PCs finish the human starter zone. The DM has dropped a variety of potential plot points they can pick up on.

• The werewolves in Duskwood are getting out of hand.
• The Defias Brotherhood is making trouble in Westfall.
• The Blackrock Orcs are attacking settlements in the Redridge Mountains.
• The night elves on the other side of the world are having a variety of troubles.
• Or you can say fuck it to all of those plot threads and decide to get on a boat to Booty Bay and leave your DM to scramble and improvise something entirely new.

Let's say they pick Westfall and meet up with the local guards to get info on the Brotherhood. They get intel that a small group of them have been spotted about a mile outside of town, probably planning a raid. The group decides to go ambush them, but how do they go about it?

• Do they just do a straight-up attack, murdering all of them?
• Do they sneak in and ambush them in the night while they're asleep?
• Do they figure out what route they're likely to take into town and set up a trap?
• Do they try and lure one of them away to interrogate him?
• Do they just walk up and engage in conversation?
• Do they attempt to start a dirty pirate orgy?

And that's the basic idea. It's a video game with mostly limitless freedom.

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CRON posted...

Can you explain the basics to me? From what I gather, a bunch of people sit at a table, create fantasy characters with specific stats, and narrate their adventure. How does the rest work?

One person is telling a story (the dm) and the players are each in control of a character and they determine their characters reactions like a CYOA. When something happens where the outcome is uncertain, a die is rolled and the dm interprets the result of the dice as a success, failure, or something else.

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different people get different things out of DnD. 5e is about as open ended as a game could possibly be while still being a game.

Do you like the gamey aspects of having stats and a party and going through an adventure someone creates? Do you like the concept of simulating a dungeon crawl? DnD can cater to that easily. Do you like the idea of pretending to be a character and existing within the framework of a story? Do you like the idea of *creating* a story for your friends to do the same thing within? DnD can cater to that easily.

It's a game as fun as the people you're playing it with are, and it's absolutely a social thing. At it's gamiest it's like playing a board game version of an RPG video game. At its least gamiest, it's like an exercise in communal storytelling with your friend.

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AngelicRadiance posted...

It's improv for nerds

Basically. It's collaborative storytelling.

CRON posted...

What are the basic mechanics of playing D&D and what makes it fun?

The fun is generally derived from one of the following aspects:

- tactical, combative gameplay. Think Final Fantasy Tactics or a CRPG like Baldur's Gate. You control a single unit with a personality, stats, HP, and abilities. The Dungeon Master will throw enemy units at you in a given arena. Its turn based combat involving dice and robust battle mechanics.

- noncombat encounters are dealt with roleplaying and skill checks. There's an NPC or environmental hazard or something that presents a difficulty to go through. It's up to you and your party to use the tools you have and your skill proficiencies to solve the riddle, get through with minimal harm, by getting the NPC to think you're a swell, awesome guy, or whatever Creativity is rewarded.

Just listen to a DnD podcast and do a lot of skipping around, listening to 1 or 2 minute segments. It's not for everyone and it's very reliant on a decent DM to narrate and create the world for the adventurers to run amok through.
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treewojima posted...

I was gonna roast the shit out of TC, but I rolled a nat 1 on attack

Use Vicious Mockery.

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jumi posted...

Use Vicious Mockery.

This actually happened one game when we were fighting giant rats and the bard decided to verbalize this by calling it a dirty rat

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Tyranthraxus posted...

This actually happened one game when we were fighting giant rats and the bard decided to verbalize this by calling it a dirty rat

"You dirty rat, you killed my brother! You dirty rat! Mmmmm-mmmm."

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Tabletop RPGs don't suffer from technical limitations like video games do. They're only as restricted as your imagination.

Why do people have fun with it? The players get to take a direct role in the story and influence the outcome in more ways than a computer RPG could realistically anticipate.

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when I played, my friend and I were both wanna be writers, so we both had setting set in our worlds when we DM'd

Didnt read any post. Go to youtube and watch Critical Roll. I would start on the 1st season about 30 episodes in. You will be hooked.

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Rain_Dust posted...

Go to youtube and watch Critical Roll. I would start on the 1st season about 30 episodes in. You will be hooked.

CR is good, but I don't think "watch a four hour livestream" is a good answer to this question lol.

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with modern videogames whats the point

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