Campaign Night

[brianblack]

After having a rousing round of D&D with some old high school buddies (old as in, we're out of college by some years, not we've been friends since first period), I've got a hankering for a game that is lengthier than a game we could play for Game Night^(TM). I'm looking at that we play once a week at a specific time for say, 2-3 hours. Some amazing thoughts that have sprouted from my incredible brain thus far are:

- Borderlands
- Dungeons and Dragons Online

I think I'd like to play an MMO, but clearly one that's free, since a safe assumption is that we're all poor. The reason for that is a game like DDO, we could all party together and have a merry time of things. We'd all have a specific character that we'd only use for that timeframe, so that no one gets too far ahead of anyone else, and we'd all safely have the same quests. That's actually one of the nice things about DDO (I swear I'm not trying to push it, it just sounds like a good option) is that you can easily broadcast quests to everyone in the group.

Hopefully, Phev's Firefall will come out early in 2011, because that would also be a cool option (and would also be free). Anyhow, is there anyone else who'd be interested in something like this, and would be willing to eat up one of their nights regularly for it?

[docsfox]

I'm interested but not in an MMO, well a 'traditional' MMO that requires lots of grind. Firefall is looking good, Borderlands could work.

Man if only Elder Scrolls games were multiplayer.

[fivealarm]

*clears throat*

www.rptools.net/

[phevnil]

I would be up for something. I'm really seriously considering updating my bandwidth, so I may even opt for DDO.

[brianblack]

five, do those function with 4e d&d?

[fivealarm]

They're general purpose tools that allow you to play table top RPG's over the internet. There is no finite set of game rules that they "support". You make them support whatever you want by writing simple macros that can be applied to game tokens. Or you can control everything by hand.

Mostly I was just thinking that if we got a group of motivated people, we could nerd out with the map tool/diceroll tool and do whatever we fucking want.

Hell, if we could find a webapp that was like skype but, with a graph paper whiteboard I'd be all over that shit.

I've never gotten to play a real D&D game but, I want to.

[FadedOasis]

I have a set of D&D 4e books, but I've never had the reason to read them. None of my friends around here are up for learning it.

[fivealarm]

All my literature is 3E, and I have a 4E Shadowrun book. Never got much use out of them.

[phevnil]

I have no resources, what can I contribute?

[scrambles]

I'm a MMORPG n00b but sure I'll play, you figure it out and I will show up. (probably)

[fivealarm]

Pencil + Paper is all anyone needs to play. Rulebooks aren't necessary for everyone but, it certainly slows things down if there is only one available to use.

[brianblack]

And I think that's my big concern with a pen-n-paper game, is that everyone would need to either have or acquire some rulebooks in order to have everyone on the same edition (still only staying within D&D, which may not necessarily be true), which I'm looking to avoid.

Firefall is looking dead-sexy, but could also suck depending on how long it takes to kill people (and isn't due out for over a year yet). I think my preference, for now at least, would be DDO, since it really seems alleviate the 'grind' aspect with relatively different quests (at least at the low-levels I was at before I dropped it).

[Heller]

Well, if you're looking strictly at D&D for PnP games, the 3.5 edition core rulebooks are posted online in a more-or-less intact state (mostly "more" -- just a few omissions for certain specific things). Of course, there are other game systems, too.

[pneuma08]

1. LOTRO recently went free-to-play recently. Also Guild Wars comes highly recommended, although MMOs are not my thing, really. (The second one is coming out soon as well.) Can't really delve into specifics, though.

2. RPTools are a bit annoying to get working with nonstandard die rolls but they work well enough for whatever version of D&D (last I checked, which was admittedly a while ago, they had 4e running more or less on buttons alone, which is unsurprising giving its nature). So yes, it works swimmingly with 4e.

3. The d20 SRD makes 3.5 D&D (or d20 Modern, possibly) the most accessible by far, barring some free (and honestly largely crappy) systems. Most of the stuff that's missing is backend stuff handled by the DM, so only one person really needs the books, and that person is the one most intimate with the system. A lot of supplementary material is missing as well but honestly it's pretty automatic once it's copied down on a char sheet.

Addendum: if you're really hardcore into coding and the like you can set up RPTools (specifically MapTools) with all sorts of crazy stuff like character sheets that can track, for instance, a temporary reduction in Strength and its subsequent reduction of melee attack bonus and damage and such, nonstandard die rolls, nested random charts at the push of a button, etc. This is what is meant when it's said that RPTools can be used to accommodate any system.