The D&D thread

my problem with mercer's gunslinger is that it's basically pathfinder rules mashed into 5e. things like misfires, while realistic, will completely neuter a character. if you have a string of bad roles with a bow, well. that sucks, better luck next turn. if you have a string of bad roles with a firearm, well, your gun is broken and all your abilities are now useless until you take a long rest in a place where you can fix it.

I don't know if anyone's into watching some D&D (and I understand if you don't), but this weekend was the reveal of the new storyline (Descent into Avernus) and they streamed a shitload of games. This one was pretty good, Chris Perkins as DM and Matt Mercer steals the show playing as Boo

i tried to watch it but the streams were having all kinds of problems, as well as building having power outages i guess? anyway i'll rewatch them at some point i'm sure...

that being said perkins is such an evil DM, i love it. he has such a great way of beating all hope out of players immediately, but then lifting them up gradually in ways that make the players feel like they really overcame some terrible stuff

Had a pretty dang epic session last night in my group. I've lurked D&D most of my life, but this has been my first campaign. Anyway, our heroes return expecting parades and instead we face tribunal for murder hoboing.
I talked our way out via a stream of role playing and persuasion / performance rolls. But dangit if the rl girls in the group aren't shitty lol. Everybody there is at least several bad player tropes (according to YouTube), but they're the worst. We have a barbarian that has the best stats by far but spends her time stealing things during action and wandering off to do her own thing and we have a thief who is playing a catperson that basically just lounges around and naps - even during the fight with the big bad. When we get back? the cat totally tries to throw everybody under the bus, shouting, "He did it! He did!." (luckily I wasn't the he). I miraculously rolled a nat. 20 with an uproarious cheer from everybody.

Apparently the D&D cartoon is a pop cultural icon in Brazil...

Haus said:

Here's a pic of the 3d printed goblin village I did for my current campaign. Printed it, primed it, then used it before I could paint it. Now I realize the odds of them running into another goblin village in a swamp are pretty minimal.... heh

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It doesn't have to be a goblin village... and it doesn't have to be in the swamp. Repurpose that badboy every chance you get.

fantasy grounds has no social presence. i really like it but it falls flat on it's face in that regard vs roll20. mechanically i think fantasy grounds is WAAAY better and they're doing some really cool things with the unity engine update that is like 3 years behind...

it's really more about finding people that you get along with and just use whatever system they use. i don't have really any experience on that end with roll20 because i've had a weekly group for almost 4 years now. the little bit that i looked into roll20 seemed to be fairly decent at being able to FIND a group... though, you'll have to actually PLAY with the group to obviously know if you fit in... and you'll get the usual "starting a group in 3 weeks, need cleric" type groups so take it with a grain of salt.

but yeah, roll20 is really built off the social networking aspect of it

i'd probably try to take a look at the dm as much as you can. a good dm can pull a bad group together. my current dm has been a close friend for the better part of 20 years so it wasn't a huge risk for me but one of the players specifically and i had a couple of issues early on. basically it came down to "this is what my character would do" type nonsense, though in retrospect it was 100% what his character would have done. i talked to the DM in private, things were smoothed over and, like i said, we've been playing weekly for just about 4 years without further incident.

right when we started, the DM had written down his basic rules (he started doing some freelance dm'ing for groups that he didn't really know well so he made, basically a list of expectations). i was a LITTLE hand wavey about it at first, but ultimately it's been a big help in a lot of situations. his thing is basically that d&d is a social contract between all the players, including the DM and the point is for EVERYONE to have fun. as soon as it stops being fun, people start leaving. and as soon as YOU start having fun at someone else's expense? YOU'RE leaving.

he was very clear with what he expected from his players, and he was clear with what his players should expect from him. i think that, in and of itself, can really set the stage for what kind of stability the group is going to have. the games i've had that HAVEN'T had that clear, haven't stayed together. if you're thinking about contacting a group to join, i'd talk to the DM first just to get an idea of what kind of game they are running, and how they handle interparty/interplayer problems.

edit: one thing about the "everyone has fun" thing... we do tourney's every year now, where basically it's a weekend full of 3 hour one-shots. there are a couple of dm's and like 2 teams of 5 and we play one day with one dm, then the next with the other. it's fun but the loot system that the dm's put together was compeltely rng and we had like, 2 people get consistently awesome loot and 2 people get consistently terrible loot. every body was gracious and we all had fun overall but a few of us had a long conversation with the DM's about the loot and had sort of a constructive feedback session. one of the guys (who ended up with like, 20g and a standard healing potion as a reward) was like, yeah, i get it, i know why you did this, i know it's all based on roles. we all like roling, it feels like our fate is in our hands... but, it wasn't fun. it just wasn't fun.

the dm, who had been pretty adamant about things up until that point turned an immediate 180. you're right. you're 100% right and i'll start working on a new system for next year immediately.

^It is all, 100% about the DM. Before my current 'main' group, I tried five other groups.
1) Seemed like a good group, did three sessions (three hours each) and the DM ghosted us.
2) Was clearly a group of three friends looking for a DM and a +1. One guy refused to use Push to Talk, so we always heard him chewing/yelling/burping/etc. DM dropped and I did not stick around.
3) Group never made it past session Zero due to two players arguing with the DM over non-official material.
4) Seven people + DM, all agreed to do a session 0, me and one other person showed up.
5) Current group. Friend pulled me into it. Been playing with them for the past six months. Four of us + DM are the core, we have two or three people who rotate in/out when they can.

So yeah, you need to get lucky with a good DM.

Envy those that grew up around people who played D&D. I got into it at summer camp but nobody and I mean nobody played it that I knew. Didn't change when I went to college or after for that matter. I don't think I've met a person after age 15 that played.

Dom said:

I'm mostly concerned about diving into it and needing to go through a ton of groups until I find one that is decent and stable. My assumption is that many groups try to form and just fall apart soon after due to scheduling/dropouts. Anyone have experience with dealing with this or hopefully the opposite?

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I've been in a solid group on roll20 that's been running for the better part of two years now as well as DMing a game that I advertised and chose randoms for. In the case of the game I play in, it helped that they were already a group of online pals that were looking for an extra so look out for those kind of ads. I'd also advise to not bother if the ads been up a while and theres already a couple of dozen applicants - people tend to work their way down a list and go with the first few ideal candidates. This is what both me and the other DM did when setting up our games.

i'm not really sure what you are asking? like... you want to play dnd the way pen pals would play chess?