[Game Related] Lets finally talk about doing that D&D thing we keep bringing up but never end up doing because someone derails the general thread.

Things to be decided:

A. Setting? [Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Custom]
B. Magic Level? [None, Low, High]
C. Scope? [Local, Region, Global, Interplanetary, Extraplanar]
D. Campaign Type? [Heroic? Anti-heroic? ‘Natural’?]
E. DMs? [At least 2, me included.]
F. Allowed Sources? [Core? All books? Magazines? All canon? Houserules?]
G. Anything Else?

Note, these are notes, not musts.

A. I don’t really care
B. High
C. Global
D. Heroic
E. 2 actually sounds perfect
F. I dont care

A. Custom
B. High
C. Global
D. Natural
E. At least 2. 2 is actually great.
F. Everything but houserules.(Although, fumbling on 1s would be one that I would personally excuse from the no-houserules.)

Right. Time for my commentary on each.

A. Honestly, Greyhawk would be easier. All the books are written based on the Greyhawk setting. It’s vague enough to hold almost everything you could want; and the whole planescapes and pantheons are ready.

B. I’d say high. Again, this is assumed to be the default in the books.

C. This’uns tricky. The bigger the scope, the more likely the PCs are to be smashed… Particularly at low levels. Of course, this can grow with the players.

D. I prefer natural. The world’s a blank slate, you get a few leads, and you develop your characters to be what you want them to be… Y’all ain’t gotta be heroes… Y’all ain’t gotta be evil.

E. At least two. Three could work. Too many is bad, two few makes the campaign die.

F. Now. This one’s hard. The more sources you allow, the more trouble could be caused by min/maxers… Allows for more variation, though. Personally, I’d confine the available content to… The books I own. Which is almost all of the 3.0/3.5 ones.

A. Eberron istoo badass to miss out on. It really is a cool setting. Forgotten realms is what we used to play alot and I got pretty board of it but eberon has HALFLINGS THAT RIDE FREAKING VELOCERAPTORS. So I vote eberron.

B. Dunno

C. i liked the big global happenings in eberron, but with forgotten realms it’s better to be localised.

D. Dunno.

E. 2 DMs would be good, but we don’t need to go overboard in that aspect.

F. I liked being able to dig out neet spells from stuff like “Dragon Magic” and stuff, but so longs as they are official rulebooks and suchlike that’s fine. Just all books I say.

G. Hi.

H. Level adjustments as applicable to race.

I. Starting level shouldn’t be 1 but 10 is too high. When we do it it’s usually the 2-8 range for starting, after you gain some abilities but early enough for you to be able to decide properly what you want in the grand scheme of things.

I also volunteer myself as one of the DMs. I have prior experience in real life but never on the net.

But then I wouldn’t be able to play. How about I’ll DM unless it’s eberron in which case I wont.

But Eberron and Forgotton Realms have a whole separate pile of books. :E

I suppose a few other things to argue about are…

Starting Level.
Race Allowance. [Level Adjustment races? Yes/no? Capped?]

A. Greyhawk, sure.
B. High enough to have magic as a class, but low enough to make sure mages are on roughly the same scale as warriors damage-wise, so as to avoid both Squishy Wizards and Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards.
C. Regional at first, Extraplanar when the players get to higher levels.
D. Heroic. Something about killing invading death monsters or something.
E. Maybe you as the main game master, then a couple others for actual dungeons.
F. I don’t even know.
H. Starting level is 1. Obvious.
I. Races should start on equal footing with one another… maybe have a cap at some high level.

Starting level should be 7. That’s where things start getting awesome.

Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards.

D&D made this trope, you know. As long as you have a mage of some sort, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll know a summoning spell at a higher level, and the thing it summons will be pretty close to matching a melee warrior of similar level in combat.

Either way…

A. I don’t have any strong feelings one way or another, so if Greyhawt is what you’re familiar with, let’s go with that. DM competence is important, right?
B. High, high. Maybe there’ll be enough magic swords for warriors so that they don’t feel jealous.
C. Global – is there anything that says it won’t play like a smaller scope at first?
D. Heroic
E. You and ocelot and maybe some third person if any applies.
F. Whatever you can provide. Chances are we don’t know any sources of our own.
H. Something like, I don’t know… a few. 1d4+3. All results of this are fine with me.
I. Races that adjust your level as you pick them? Sounds like some horrible thing munchkins would take, one that would make things a lot more complicated… why don’t we just not bother?

Before reading the previous posts:

A. World of Darkness. is really cool, and it has lots of different creatures, and I know how most of the system works, except combat. However, I figured out at some point that WoD is too powerful and really brings the “hit it with a giant fireball until it dies” strategy into play. I haven’t played other settings, so WoD is really my only suggestion.
It is also EXTREMELY easy to understand and play.

You could ask me questions about it, or go here

B. Not none, not high. Low, random miscellaneous magic leaves room for creativity.

C. Depends on the setting.

D. Heroic or ‘Natural’, where a situation is described and people can do whatever they want.

E. DMs – Two ideas:
One game with two DMs at least.
OR
A situation like the old Camp Maia that failed horribly, where there is only one setting, but characters can move between campaigns made by different approved DMs. For example, I make a character named “Heroic Failname”, He gets a magic sword from one game. If he joins a different game, he still has the magic sword.

F. Depends on previous questions.

G. No more than 10 players per game, make multiple DMed games to compensate.

After reading previous posts:

H. Starting level should be 1.

I. Races should have differences, this is obvious to me. An Orc is more powerful than a Gnome, pretending otherwise is stupid. Just make sure every race has a few advantages up it’s arsenal.

We should start arguing with people over how our opinions are better or this whole thread is pointless.

I have very little preference any way, but that’s mainly due to ignorance.
And although I have little knowledge and less experience with D&D, I’ve always been interested in playing but have lacked the resources/time to get all the necessary items. Would a newcomer like me be able to play?

Yes, depending on which system we use it would even be simple. You don’t need any merch yourself, but the DMs need access to some sort of rule-book.

I would love to play a DnD forum game, but I wouldn’t be any help, since all my experience with DnD is Icewind Dale 2.

Originally posted by Kidudeman:

Yes, depending on which system we use it would even be simple. You don’t need any merch yourself, but the DMs need access to some sort of rule-book.

Yaaaaay.

I don’t think some people understand the princaple of level adjustment:

Slightly more powerful races might have a +1 or a +2 adjustment, this means at level 5 they would only have 3 class levels and the first 2 levels would be taken up by being that race.

Meaning munchkins would avoid level adjusting races because… most of the time they are ballanced or have slightly worse than the core races (which have a +0)

tl;dr: level adjustment is important as if we didn’t have it then munchkins would all be Rakshasas who usually have like +12 level adjustment because they are super OP. It is out of the question to remove the mechanic and it’s there for a reason.

Just clarification.

@chirston: Some parts can be complex but newcomers can pick it up and get the concept better if they have thier own books to read through. My suggestion: it’s easy to find the core rulebooks and many of the supplement rulebooks for D&D via stuff like mediafire, 4shared and other filesharing sites as a .PDF file. This is how I got many of the supplements but the core books I have in the paper.

I know alot of people like greyhawk and it’s complete open canvas, but I find it’s nice to have a base world, cities, and stuff like that to base on your adventure, this is why I say we should do Forgotten Realms or Eberron. I am in favor of Eberron because it is supposed to be epic action gameplay. The reason they based version 4 in eberron is because they wanted to make it easier for new players to get involved. And my final arguement in the way of Eberron is: Halflings on velociraptors.

You can find those in they “Sandstorm” supplement for Greyhawk.

And yeah, level adjustments are very anti-munchkin: You’re basically choosing to gimp your character for the sake of playing a vampire or Minotaur or some other cool race.

Now, I definitely like the idea of multiple games with players coming and going… But there’s only two ways to do it I can think of… Either each ‘side-game’ is a specific dungeon or region traveled to from the ‘main’ hub… Or the players are all members of some guild (The Nightsong, maybe?), and are ordered around as-needed.

This means I only have one arguement left…

Halflings riding on the backs of velociraptors.
I rest my case.

Nono. That was the one they have in Sandstorm. [My favorite of the ‘themed’ setting books, by the way. I love the concept of buried empires randomly being unearthed.]

What do you think we should cap the level adjustment at? They even have epic level (+22-ish) level adjusted races. I’m thinking either 2 or 3.

Yes of course, but if the starting level is 3/4/5 then that will be the cap of possible level adjustment as the races that have say, +22, wont be able to be used. to have a race you must be the level equalling thier level adjustment or more. Meaning if we start low they wont be able to use them. But if we start high, character levels become more and more valuable at higher levels and will probably be better than some +10-20 races.

Now, my personal thought is that we should start at level one… For multiple reasons.

A. Possible length.
B. Getting people who don’t know D&D from C&C used to the game.
C. Putting the fear of god(s) into the players while they’re weak, so they get it through their heads that this isn’t Ather City.

Cons of starting at level one:

A. They’ll be weak. A dire rat would put the fear of god in them.
B. Specialist classes will be gimpy.
C. They’ll be very limited… They may not like that this isn’t Ather City.

I remember the 1d6 crossbow kobolds, that was some scary shit.
Anyway, I agree with these points, and that will also cap at only 0 for races, but the biggest negative level adjustment should be 1 to avoid people getting a load of early character levels.

Specialist classes, I’ve found, are usually pretty gimpy throughout. Spellcasters usually put all other classes to shame in 3.5 anyway. That’s one of the reasons I like eberron, because warriors and other such classes tend to be much stronger because of A) Warforged and B) there tends to be a very high magic level in eberron, most commoners have magical items just in thier day to day lives.

This sounds interesting but I do have a question…
What is this anyway, Dungeons and Dragons on kongregate?

A. Forgotten Realms
B. Low
C. Region
D. Heroic
E. Why would a campaign have more than 1 DM?
F. All

I think it should be starting at higher than level 1. Probably 4 or 6.

Originally posted by RandomTurtle:

This sounds interesting but I do have a question…
What is this anyway, Dungeons and Dragons on kongregate?

I have the same question.

Ocelot, you realize every*thing* in Eberron, Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk are the same; it’s just the planar layout, map, groups, and deities that are different (Actually, I think Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms use the same pantheon?). Races and classes are identical.

And yes, Random. Yes it is.

Also: Specialists are gimpy. A specialist on each side of an opponent is OP. Specialists are only gimpy if the DM doesn’t include things which that are useful for.