|
rnc53's Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 edition (Other)
|
| [February 5, 2013 01:25:54 PM]
|
My experience playing DnD 3.5 was very educational, as I've never played a tabletop rpg before this. We played a campaign created by our GM with game pieces found from small objects around the apartment (pen caps) and maps drawn onto blank printer paper.
=Players=
DnD players have a fairly extensive character creation process. As my entire party was made of first time players, the GM handled character creation for us by asking us simple questions about the general personality and functionality of characters we would like to play. It is almost difficult to create some reference for sake of example because DnD is THE traditional rpg. Orcs, humans, dwarves, warrions, clerics, rogues -- they are all here.
=The Board=
Our board was a piece of paper with features drawn onto it. I thought this was a very interesting thing to do, and I imagine this low barrier to "modding" encouraged the early gaming community to mod video games.
=Game Play=
The game was broken into 2 principal phases.
There was a phase where we moved about relatively freely and had different rules applied to us than in the second phase (combat). The focus of this phase was exploration and advancing the plot.
The second phase was a combat phase. In this phase we were bound to turn based actions. I don't know if there were really limitations on what abilities we could use, or if we just naturally used different abilities for this situation.
The default phase was the exploration phase, and as soon as an enemy engages us the party would enter the combat phase.
=Overall=
There is far more to say about DnD than I can possible fathom from playing only 2 sessions, but there are some very strong features of DnD that seem to manifest itself in modern gaming.
The first and most obvious feature is game design influence. Almost every rpg seems like it could be a mod of DnD on a fundamental level. It almost reminds of proving that machines are of equivalent power in FL. I feel like you could 'play DnD' in most of these games and vice versa.
The second feature is artistic influence. The general personality of modern rpgs heavily resemble DnD. Of course, this is not entirely DnD's doing. Tolkien can take quite a bit of credit, but I would be interested to see how many rpg gamers played Dnd, read Tolkien, or both.
My final observation was on the mod-ability of DnD compared to the mod-ability of video games. Modding DnD barely takes any effort at all at its basic level. In fact, if you want to consider "casually modifying rules to your taste" a mod, it can almost happen by accident. I would bet that the low barriers to modding DnD allowed a lot of creative expression for its fan base. It would be significantly more difficult to express creativity in a video game, especially during the early days. I imagine some would be discouraged and ignore video games, but I also imagine some would take on the challenge of learning new technical skills to express their creativity on the new medium.
To summarize, I think DnD is tremendously deep and rewarding game that any video gamer owes a significant debt to.
add a comment 
|
|
|
 |
rnc53's Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 edition (Other)
|
|
Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Friday 1 February, 2013
|
|
