Frank's History of Roleplay pt.2
I remember first hearing about Dungeons and Dragons in the seventh grade, the same year that I in fact inadvertantly picked up my first roleplaying supplement.
An aquaintance told me about in in english class one day.
By this time I had established a keen interest in fantasy, and was voraciously reading any fantasy novel that came my way, Dungeons and Dragons sounded awesome.
I did not however seek out this game, but I did catch wind of a guy I knew who played it.
I knew him through band, he played trombone, and was goofy and not just a little entertaining.
Now I did not seek him out right away, instead I imersed myself in books.
Then it spiraled from there.
I picked up the MERP game Beastiary, then that summer the MERP box set.
Tried, some what successfully, to run the game with my nephews.
But the next summer is when I really got into gaming.
We went out to Salt Lake that year, as we often did, for a family reunion on my mother's side.
While there I picked up the large box set for Dungeons and Dragons Basic Game, I couldn't wait to get home and play it.
Upon opening the box, I took it all in: the little cardboard cutouts, the playing mat for the first adventure included in the box, the dice, the rule book, and especially the dm's screen with a 'how to play' tutorial printed on card stock.
Upon returning home from a trip (which as usual was brief), I went down to my room and poured over the materials in the box.
I 'learned'1 the rules as well as I could, and not long afterwards I was gathering my nephews up to play.
This led me to a handful of other rpg's that I would encounter in the next few years.
Many were interesting, but of them, Dungeons and Dragons is the one I played the most, it was the one that captured my attention.
I was eager to find more material for the game, I sent off for a module from TSR2, which I ran right away.
I soon had worked out a deal with my sister, I would baby sit her kids, and when she went to Vernal Utah (the nearby town) she would pick me up Dungeons and Dragons books there that the bookstore had ordered for people but couldn't sale.
The books came as a miscellanious mish-mash, both Dungeons and Dragons and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and for different campaign settings3.
I was fortuitous to have had her pick up both the Players Handbook, and the Dungeon Masters Guide on one of these ventures.
Then later on, I managed to recieve a Monstrous Manual (then in a three ring binder with three hold sheets).
This all happened with in about a year.
During this time, I actually got the chance to play some Dungeons and Dragons with one of my friends, Henry.
He ran the game with me and his little brother, my first character was a Kender4 and we were on a SpellJamming5 ship.
I was a rather inmature gamer (hell I still am), but I rather enjoyed my first game.
I ran games with my nephew's through highschool, though I only got the chance to play a character in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign on last time, my junior year I played a Thri-Kreen fighter in Dark Sun, for a brief stint.
That isn't of course to say I didn't play characters in other games, Star Wars, Rifts, Call of Cthulhu, all games I played under the guy I knew in band.
I still like Dungeons and Dragons, and I do still play when opportunity arises. I have a regular game on Saturdays utilizing the newest incarnation of the rules. Which is it's 3rd and a half edition (3.5) .
Each edition has it's own feel.
Basic Dungeons and Dragons was all about the combat, the treasure and exploring.
Fighting monsters was keen, in fact my nephews always preffered kick in the door style of game play. Lots of fights, lots of treasure, not a lot of talk.
I prefer to roleplay myself, though I prefer to run games with interesting characters, places and scenarios.
The one thing I want to make sure that the folks playing the characters should know is that the world does not revolve around their characters, their characters are just part of it.
When playing a character, well I like variety in Dungeon and Dragons, so I play what ever idea sounds cool at the time.
It wasn't easy to do this with the Basic set. (It was geared for the kick in the door campaigns).
The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition also had it's own feel.
It was based off the basic dungeon and dragons rules but had alot more too it.
While there was similarity to the combat of the Basic set, it was much more advanced (hence the name) and had a much richer structure for giving characters abilities and backgrounds.
The 2nd edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was a clean up and clarification of the original Advanced rules.
The lay out of the books was much better in the second edition of the game.
There were some rules changes, but mostly minor ones.
The current version is much different than the previous three (Basic D&D, and the AD&D editions).
The mechanics have been changed to be more logical, the class abilities have been revamped, there is a skills system and a feats (special abilities) sytem in place now, they've also updated abilitie scores*.
Many magical items from the previous systems can be used in the third edition, with minimal change (most involved die rolls, or small bonuses that can be applied with out much issue.
I like all editions.
Is one better than the other?
Well, most will say that the most recent installment is.
It is the most flexible, but it definitely doesn't have the feel that the old ones had.
But this is something that can be debated later.
1)"learned": upon rereading the rules, there are some things that I completely missed, my interpretation of certain rules (spellcasting for instance) was dubious at best.
2)Tactical Studies Rules, this was the original company that created Dungeons and Dragons back in the seventies.
3)"campaign settings": these are simply the worlds the game takes place in, the most popular is Forgotten Realms, though Dragonlance, Darksun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, PlanesScape, Al-Qadim and the generic d&d world Greyhawk were all interesting. Each campaign setting was released under TSR.
4)Kender were a race from the Dragonlance Campaign that were notorious for thier loose concept of property and their strange quirk of not understanding fear.
5)Spelljamming ship, refers to a magical space ship (hey i never said this stuff wasn't hokey) that characters flew around on in the Spelljammer campaign.
posted by F.G. Shaw @ 3:32 PM
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