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I actually got into D&D relatively recently.. about 3 years ago. But 3.5 was really fun for me. haven't tried 4th yet, though the news I hear about it is not making me eager.

Anyway, just wanted to see if anyone around here plays. I feel the need to gab at peopel about Incarnum and vestiges and what you can or can;t do with hustle

I do have a PbP campaign I'm working on, Dream's end if anyone feels like playing with me.

A simple forum search should come up with a number of DnD related threads. You'll also find stories set in various DnD campaign settings in the Fanfiction forum, including an excellent series by Imperial Overlord which starts here. Many members here are also members at Librium Arcana, which is more dedicated to role playing.

I myself recently started playing a 4e game (in person). I never got around to playing 3 or 3.5, but I'm enjoying 4e so far. I play a paladin of Kord, currently level 3, Cha focus. Rest of the party are mostly glass cannons, so I have to be both tank and healer. The role playing parts can be frustrating - though I hear your first kidnapping/interrogation is always the hardest

I'm not a fan of D&D 3.5. Still looking forward to taking up the campaign where we left off, though. That game is a bloody drug.

D&D 4th edition, however, I don't get. It's a game that seems predicated upon the player gazing forlornly at all the other cool options he can never pick.

I was untill I moved an no longer have a group as its hard finding players that speak your languages. Especially since I live in Wuerzburg now and the military community is no longer here.

I've been out of D&D a bit but that's only because I've been running or being a part of several other RPGs at the moment. When our Mutants and Masterminds campaign ends we're considering giving 4th Ed a shot.

I'm currently playing a 4e campaign, and having a blast. Of course, that's because the GM's directly porting the 3.5 Eberron background into it, and has a gift for working the Mournlands. Also because I can have a blast playing just about any rpg in the world(seriously, I enjoy both Gurps and Feng Shui, there's something severely wrong in my head). Oh yeah, and we're just this side of being a webcomic when it comes to breaking the 4th Wall.

The base 4e setting itself I care not for, and the system could use a whole lot less bland. Oh, and 2nd level utility powers are completely shite.

I've been gaming D&D for years. I still meet once a week with the old gang, but it's kinda more of a social thing now than serious gaming. I love character and plot development, and once a week for 4 hours doesn't give a lot of time for intricate development. We've also gotten in the habit of trying to "win", unfortunately, by focusing on leveling-up and powering-up, which to me isn't that important if the character is just a shadow of a personality.

To me, the golden era of D&D was AD&D 2nd Edition with the Kit Books. Maybe I'm nostalgiac because that was when I had a lot of free time and we could meet fairly often and indulge in occassional all-night weekender sessions if we felt like it, and totally immerse ourselves in a very rich and complex setting we'd created with some good GMs. I always felt that if something like AD&D/2nd, with its wide range of options, settings and modules could be combined with the refined rules of 3.0 and some 3.5, it'd be a winner.

Now, it seems that 4.0 is little more than D&D trying to be Warhammer 40K Miniatures Wargaming. It's all about the minis and the battleboard now, with ROLE play (as opposed to ROLL play) as an option. But I could just be a bitter old dude, too.

Of course, I also think that the whole "AD&D/2nd--> 3.0--> 3.5--> 4.0--> whatever" is killing it. Few people have the time to buy an assload of expensive books every four years except the hard-core hobbyist. Also, the game never "settles" long enough to gather many interesting modules, settings, or in-depth concepts. It's a continual process of reboot, making it seem more dry and 2-dimensional to me. Sigh.

Of course, I also think that the whole "AD&D/2nd--> 3.0--> 3.5--> 4.0--> whatever" is killing it. Few people have the time to buy an assload of expensive books every four years except the hard-core hobbyist. Also, the game never "settles" long enough to gather many interesting modules, settings, or in-depth concepts. It's a continual process of reboot, making it seem more dry and 2-dimensional to me. Sigh.

Wasn't 3.5 the same as 3 but with typo corrections and balancing changes? Not a big change. The irony is that the add ons are the same for each new addition- I have a bunch of the 2nd and some AD&D and many of the expansion rule sets have the same titles as the ones in 3.5 or the ones coming out in 4th. Deities and Demigods, Deities and Demigods, Deities and Demigods.

For minis, we mostly use LEGO men, Eldar, and some smallish pewter figures that someone's dad once played with.

D&D 4th edition, however, I don't get. It's a game that seems predicated upon the player gazing forlornly at all the other cool options he can never pick.

I hear that.

Oh, and 2nd level utility powers are completely shite.

It varies. Paladins aren't so good at 2, but Wardens, for example, get an encounter power that's +10 to perception.

Coyote wrote:Now, it seems that 4.0 is little more than D&D trying to be Warhammer 40K Miniatures Wargaming. It's all about the minis and the battleboard now, with ROLE play (as opposed to ROLL play) as an option. But I could just be a bitter old dude, too.

I sort of know what you mean. I remember playing D&D without a battlegrid, where we all sort of kept it in our heads, trusted the DM to hold it together in his mind, played it much more loose, and only occasionally crudely depicted where dudes were. That sort of style makes it a lot easier to roll some really wild encounters.

That said, you totally don't need minis to play 4th. The group I game with uses dice - usually D12s for the party - and dice-box-caps where needed for Large creatures. Minions get little glass bead counters. For a battlegrid, one of my friends printed out a big 1" grid, and sandwiched it between two sheets of thick hard plastic, then taped the edges - instant dry-erase writable surface.

consequences wrote:Also because I can have a blast playing just about any rpg in the world(seriously, I enjoy both Gurps and Feng Shui, there's something severely wrong in my head).

Could be worse, you could be into Rifts.

Well I used to role play a hell of lot back in college but since I graduated and moved back home to get employment I just haven't been able to find a decent gaming group. D&D 3.5 was the main gaming system though I ended up running a good deal of GURPS stuff as well.

I must say the STGOD's on this board are a pretty good substitute, but not much beats a good tabletop game.

I played 3.5 a long time ago, but never got to finish my first campaign after the group disintegrated. Now I'm playing 4e with a new group and a far more experienced DM, and it's pretty fun. I like it far more than I did 3.5, but that's probably due to the group.

Uraniun235 wrote:Minions get little glass bead counters.

Your DM lets you know which ones are minions? For us it's always a mystery unless he decides some skill check is high enough.

^ I usually do, as do my DMs. For one, players can usually figure it out because if you're a 1st level party and there are 20 orcs, either the DM is fucking you over or all the ones with lame equipment are minions. Two, with the way the powers work, if you blow a good single-target power on a minion and don't use your area effects properly to scorch as many as possible, then you just screwed yourself.

Usually it's not so much the DM saying "these guys are minons" as him saying "...and then there are 15 guys wih spears and loincloths, which I will choose to represent with generic tokens/coins/M&Ms." Us: "Uh-huh."

Alan Bolte wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:Minions get little glass bead counters.

Your DM lets you know which ones are minions? For us it's always a mystery unless he decides some skill check is high enough.

Not always, but sometimes. Sometimes we don't - a bunch of dice go out on the board, one 'minion' scores a hit on a dude and suddenly turns out to be a 'real' monster, others die to one hit - that one guy just turned out to be tougher than his comrades.

The bead counters are really for when there's like 10+ dudes, because really pretending to be keeping track of that many minions + real dudes is a pain in the ass. I'm not really into immersion anyway so it's not like it breaks the game for me.

My group tried 4th edition and didn't much like it. We still play some 3.5/Arcana Evolved/Black Company although we're mostly doing Dark Heresy and Vampire: The Masquerade.

I should add that up to a year ago we were playing a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but Dark Heresy nudged it out for a while.

I'm in a group now that's playing 3.5 ed. Pretty good for the most part, but with perpetual problems with the power gamer. Bah. I used to be part of a group that was amusing as Hell, unfortunately most of them moved.

Uraniun235 wrote:

consequences wrote:Also because I can have a blast playing just about any rpg in the world(seriously, I enjoy both Gurps and Feng Shui, there's something severely wrong in my head).

Could be worse, you could be into Rifts.

*Looks at his shelf of Palladium books*

Any rpg.

I just picked Gurps as the crunchiest rules heavy system I've played heavily, and Feng Shui as one of the least crunchy for purposes of contrast.


But back to 4e, we pretty much do it without a battle map. Partially because we can't be arsed to clear a large enough surface, but mostly because we can't be arsed to be that nit-picky in the first place.

I play the 4e RPGA games around town because the crew there are pretty awesome and I like hanging out with them on a Saturday afternoon. 4e itself is absurd though, the absolute embodiment of a "roll-playing game".

For everyone who liked 3.x, be aware that Paizo Publishing (the publisher of Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine before Hasbro pulled the license so they could BOHICA everyone with DDI subscriptions) is going to make an OGL-compatible game called Pathfinder. The main rulebook is coming out at GenCon and the Beta version of the ruleset is a free download. Check it out and see if you like it.

Coyote wrote:To me, the golden era of D&D was AD&D 2nd Edition with the Kit Books.

This is correct and the truth.

I agree that 2nd ed was the golden age settings wise, but i prefer the 3.5 ruleset/mechanics. Sure, spells are unfairly powerful, but that's fixable. 4th Eds lack of options and character versatility is harder to fix, and 2nd ed was just too confusing for me.

Now that 4e is out, those of us still playing 3.5 have started to focus more on Incarnum, Psionics and other "exotic" systems. You can play a wizard in 4th, but 3.5 still has a monopoly on the Totemist and Shadowcaster. Totemists are really fun to play.

I really don't much care for Paizo. they claim to want to better balance the game, but everyone who actually knows the system and tried their fix tells me it's a lie.

Balance wise, MOI/TOM/TOB/XPH games are my fix. No arcane or divine casting, and suddenly things are much less out of hand. And no gimped monks complaining that they should be as good as a wizard either. There is no way to make a monk as good as a wizard in D&D.

Still play, between groups because I've started a new job in a new area. 2.0, 3.0, 3.5. Never touched 4E. Played Masterminds and Mutants, played some of the third party stuff.

"Miniatures" in games I've DM always were spare dice or lose change. I've never gone in for anything but a home-made DM screen and the necessary basic books.

Wait, wait, wait. Psionics being a better fix than spellcasters?

Okay, well, power points make a little more sense (game mechanics-wise, anyway) than spell levels, sure. But I don't see how it's more balanced than spellcasters.

Erik von Nein wrote:Wait, wait, wait. Psionics being a better fix than spellcasters?

Okay, well, power points make a little more sense (game mechanics-wise, anyway) than spell levels, sure. But I don't see how it's more balanced than spellcasters.

It's because of certain spells. Spells like Alter self, haste, Gate, Planar Ally/Binding and polymorph other, Shapechange and others either have no analog or have an inferior psionic version. Psionics has better domination and direct damage effects which are easy to defend against and a subpar option respectively.

I still play 3.5 with a group of friends every so often. We mostly got around the power-gaming by kicking people in the shins when they're doing it until they stop. There's no way we're going 4th edition though. I've seen the rules and agree with most of the previous posters about it.