Dungeons & Dragons relaunches with 'freemium' version 5.0 Dungeons & Dragons is BAAAACK – and it's brought a freemium business model with it. The venerable game was re-released yesterday, with a new Starter Pack reaching retailers and offering a rulebook for players, an “adventure book” for dungeon masters plus a handful of dice to get things going. The $19.99 kit is not, however, …
"The freebie is 110 pages long, which may explain any unusual paper shortages in your office over recent days."
I would hope that El Reg readers have discovered better systems than D&D by now. The Traveller you mentioned is one such. I personally prefer Alternity; the rules system is far better.
Traveller / XP
Not sure about the original but in later editions there were ways to improve skills (normally based on rolling all sixes or some such and another bunch of points you could earn) but the idea was you were a fully qualified professional whose done most of their learning already. But I'm pretty sure every group ends up with all its own special inhouse rules that make a good gaming group so much fun.
Wow.
It doesn't matter what level of nerd-dom I manage to discover, there will be a nerd-based argument about how some sub-strata of it is better.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd too, just for slightly different things.
(The best boardgame I ever played was Advanced Space Crusade, but never got into RPG's even with a brother mad on WH40K, several trials of DnD and no shortage of nerd-friends to play against. Sadly, even ASC is consigned to the scrapheap so that people can sell the plastic models in it for a fortune and you can never get a "full box" of it ever again, but it was a great, simple game without all the hassle of the DnD rules and having to deal with ridiculous amounts of non-rule situations.)
I found Space Hulk to be a great way to alienate my friends: set up board (quite slow), explain rules (quite slow, will need revisiting in-game), they pick Space Marines (decent rationale: they have firearms and armour), game starts, Genestealers quickly massacre the Marines, game is put away.
By the time I knew more people inclined to such pursuits, Magic: The Gathering was the big thing, and I wasn't tragic enough to be playing that.
"For you, maybe. For me its the antithesis of a good game, as I want character growth and to see numbers getting bigger."
Absolutely, bigger numbers never equalled growth. The "Bigger number" philosophy is also probably responsible for the bulk of poor computer RPG game design till the present day ;)
"Okay, roll a new character."
"Doing that now"
"You're an ensign in the Space Corpse it seems"
"Hmm, I'll stay in three more years"
"Oh, look Admiral of the Fleet"
The original Traveller was great but flawed. The MegaTraveller sorted out a lot of the issues but by far the best was Snapshot, the Traveller add on close combat game.
Anyway, I prefered Runequest.
I'm just wondering what it's better than, as in which edition of the D&D rules? And in what way?
I've been running a 4th ed session for some co-workers recently, but there's likely to be a few leaving and some fresh blood joining so I am seeing if I can get more opinions on the options before I splash another couple of hundred on a pile of books.
The criteria are:
Dragons are a must.
The rules have to be reasonably simple in the basics.
The dice have to be within the normal set (4,6,8,10,12,20)
Suitable for groups between 4 and 8 people.
Any suggestions?
"I would suggest checking out Pathfinder"
I second this. I greatly enjoyed 3.5ed despite a few quirks, and discovering Pathfinder re-ignited my interest in paper RPGs. Works great with minimal rules, but has as much detail as you could possibly want if you crave it - it's good for kids and adults alike. I played a simple, somewhat Monty Haul-ish game with my wife and son for years - it was more about fun than gritty realism.
NPCs had a terrible survival rate.
4ed seems too influenced by online gaming. I loved the concept, but it didn't seem to execute well. I'll take a look at 5ed, but I'm not impressed with WotC's stewardship of the D&D name. I'm more likely dust off my PF and give it a whirl.
D&D under WotC has become a Warhammer clone. If you want to play classic D&D you have to use the Pathfinder system. Or maybe Hackmaster if you can find the books.
I haven't played regularly since AD&D, but I have friends who do. D&D is much like Churchill's assessment of Democracy. I've played both simpler and more complicated systems, more realistic and more heroic. For me D&D always hit the sweet spot: complicated enough to be interesting and challenging, not so complex you were more bogged down in bookkeeping than playing.
I've played a system that I think works much better, but it's an unpublished system from a friend. It had stats, a skill matrix based on the stats, and skill costs. After that you rolled straight percentages for success or failure. He had a modifier system for how difficult it was (easy you would succeed at double your skill level, up to exceptionally hard which was 1/4 of your skill level). You'd have to build the skill matrix for the world though.
>I would suggest checking out Pathfinder.
Seconded, thirded and fourthed. Been playing D&D (and Traveller, Call of Cthulu, GURPS etc etc) since the mid-80's and Pathfinder is one of the better ones I've played).
My other favourite was Rolemaster but it kind of lost its way.
I'm all about the Gumshoe system and rules light systems nowdays.
Games like rolemaster are great from a "system engineering" point of view but always pigs to ref (same with stuff like Anima)
Love the old tristat system to and ofcourse the wod system is nice and lightweight.
Technically speaking the core part of D&D has been free for some time (under the OGL) just without any of the setting. But I've always hated D20 with a burning passion and it only got more hateful.
There are lots of nice systems out there - I really enjoyed Ingenium from a classic fantasy side of things as character gen took 5 minutes for 4 players. Need a certain kind of seat of your pants fluff stuff ref though http://www.rpgnow.com/product/86469/Ingenium
Rolemaster rocks. I played MANY long campaigns using it,
The problem is.. we ran out of players. We just have 2 qualified players.. the usual GM an me (the backup or short campaign GM). The rest of them either don't want to learn the rules or don't have time with the kids, etc.
So no RM for me.
My most game oriented geek friend reviewed a pre-release two weeks ago. He said it looks pretty much like a light re-skinning of the old game so not worth the money. His advice was to stick to whatever you're currently using. If you're just getting started he figures it would be OK.
Savage Worlds might be worth a look.
I'm fond of a few of the non-High Fantasy SW settings as a GM (Solomon Kane, Space 1889 and Deadlands:Reloaded) but will readily concede that the magic system lacks the sheer heroic oomph of Pathfinder's, a fact that becomes apparent in those settings where Weird Scientists keep inventing the same four devices.
Also Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but that may be too "Old School" and randomly deadly for many.
I reckon for the average RPGer wanting to adventure in a high fantasy/Sword and Sorcery setting, Pathfinder is probably the best bang for everyone's buck. The starter box is phenomenal value for money.
5th ed looks good to me, my players say no though, we did the play test and they weren't impressed.
Pathfinder, on the radar, but I was never a fan of 3rd ed (didn't play 3.5). Shadowrun, I used to play and enjoy, wouldn't mind seeing what my players think of that.
Paranoia is my business trip game (we send nerds to all corners of the world!) :)
Maybe later in the year I'll run a pile of one shots, see what people think. All these suggestions are appreciated, thanks.
The "basic rules" version of 5th Ed looks like "back to basics" in many ways. Back to the 9 alignments, 4 base classes, no mention of multiclassing - although I'm sure about 800 more classes, each more overpowered than the last, will be offered in the "optional" supplements, due to start appearing any second now priced around $50 each.
I gave up on D&D after 2nd edition - 3.x was overpowered, particularly once the aforementioned supplements started appearing, and I never got to try 4 at all. I recommend Hackmaster.
Got to do a play through of Firefly RPG a couple of weeks ago. It's running Cortex 2 rules, tweaked to make a game seem like a television episode. Basically, no matter what you have planned, trouble will pop up and improvising will be required. Comes with a bunch of base characters as well as the tv show characters so you can drop people into a game with minimal fuss. Looking forward to getting my printed copy, one day...
Played this for years, only requires a bucket of 6 sided die. Rules have recently been re-released (a kickstarter project of course). A pretty simple system, with the bottom line being 'go with what makes sense for your group'.
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_%26_Trolls
Publisher page:
http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/tandt.htm
It was developed with collaboration by player testers, giving feedback periodically (my D&D group did this). It was fun to be part of the development.
The basic rules are pretty simple, the pace of play is much faster, combat is much faster, the dice are the same, it is suitable for groups but I think your group dynamics will dictate the numbers.
Characters have backgrounds which give extra skills & round things out, making it a more flexible system if you want to use your imagination. You can have a thief who used to be an artisan, a barbarian who used to be a mason.
All character classes are interesting up through the levels. In the previous versions magic users got more interesting as they leveled up but other classes kind of hit a plateau. Now with paths & skills each class gets some funky new abilities as they progress.
I played basic D&D in the 70s as a kid, then came back to it a few years ago at 4E, the first playtests were very much like winding back the clock to simpler days, but as it progressed it became more rounded but not more complicated. I think they have done a great job.
We'll be playing it tonight in Akihabara with the new rules, very happy to have helped develop them.
quote: "I would hope that El Reg readers have discovered better systems than D&D by now. The Traveller you mentioned is one such. I personally prefer Alternity; the rules system is far better."
"Better" is such a subjective term when talking about gaming systems. Some players prefer simplicity, some players prefer complexity (or a related preference for an exhaustive ruleset, which are complex by nature), some players only like sci-fi settings, some low fantasy, some prefer roleplay heavy campaigns, some prefer action oriented campaigns.
I've played 2nd, 3rd, 3.5 and 4th ed DnD and enjoyed them. I've also played 4th ed Shadowrun, Runequest, Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Pathfinder (although that's just a reskinned DnD 3.5 with some tweaks) and Feng Shui, and enjoyed them too. If the object of playing them is to have fun, and I have had fun using all of those systems, then I can only surmise that they are all good ^^;
Of course. But your list isn't comprehensive enough - if only you'd have played using my custom system, you'd see that it was even more fun than those others you tried :-) ...
... unless your own custom system was even better, naturally.
Our old group started with D&D 3.5 and stuck with it for ages. We modified the heck out of it with house rulings for bits we weren't overly fond of / felt didn't work. However that eventually started to crumble around us and made it difficult to add new people.
Then we moved to Pathfinder which fixed most of the issues we had with D&D. Never did D&D4.0 none of us were overly enamoured with it.
We had a stint for a year or so with WoD which was great from a roleplaying perspective ,but more difficult from a combat one we found.
Right now we're looking at a few different systems to try, mainly GURPS which I believe is also a freemium system, and FATE which caught my interest.
Since playing D&D 3.5 however I've been slowly building my own system that I'd like to try some day, but building a balanced system is hard, especially when I'm trying not to rip people off too much. Turns out the system I was putting together has a lot of similarities with GURPS. Thing is I keep getting to a certain point and then forgetting about i t/ losing the documents. That point is normally magic.. I'm no re-writing it all again, this time omitting magic entirely (for now) although I did have an idea of how I could implement magic in the future.
I know there's no need for my own system, and it'll probably do more harm than good for our group but it's something that's been stuck in my mind on and off for way too long now.
My kids, grandkids, and I actually added so many in-house rules that we finally just wrote and published our own manual from scratch on Amazon (called it "Elven Fire"), because it was cheaper to print a whole new book than addenda on a laser printer. Published it under CC, of course, to ensure my GREAT-grandchildren-to-be and friends can make their own variants if they like. Really, this is a great time to be alive!
Fun for us includes using bizarre dice - in addition to 5-, 7-, 14-, and 30-sided, we've also used backgammon doubling dice and nested double-dice and 3D printed dice and special rules on max and doubles rolls to provide exponential probability distributions. (One friend who played with us drily commented, "You guys like math, don't you?" :-D )
But in the end, the rules you adopt matter much less than the right players. We fall out of our chairs sometimes laughing at the predicaments into which we thrust out avatars sometimes, and that's what matters to us!
"Sounds like you've not outgrown it, you're just resting..."
I've not played in 20 years.... The way I see it, it'll make a great way to pass the time should I live to need a retirement home. Better than watching Jeremy Kyle on telly all day. But then, so is a kick in the nuts.
What a superb idea! Yes, forget chess in the park as a way to while away the hours waiting for God. A wrinkly veteran in the corner of the care home loudly proclaims "20, 20, 18! For 27. The mercenary ducks as he sees you swing, his coif flapping up from the sudden move. Your bastard sword sings as it cleaves the air, a single pure note, before neatly slipping into the gap between coif and hauberk. You barely feel the blade slow before it comes through the other side. A look of surprise crosses the fighter's face, his trademark war cry cut short by the severing of his windpipe and an explosion of red through his mail. He falls to his knees, then forwards as his life-force oozes into the mud and straw of the outpost floor."
I'd say, you just have other more important things consuming your time. I'm sure if tomorrow found you independently wealthy so that you were no longer required to work, with friends who were also suddenly independently wealthy and played when you did, you'd be interested in the game once again.
I'm well into adulthood and my oldest kid is almost old enough to start joining in the games (though, if my past experience with very young players holds true, probably not mature enough to do so without making all the adult players want to slap her). I still play a regular rotation of games (currently GURPS) every weekend with the same group I've been playing with for the last 20 years. The membership has changed over the years as people have moved away or new people have joined up or life has forced other priorities on people*, but it's been a constant group. To me it's become an excuse to get together every Sunday afternoon with some of my closest friends than anything else.
*"Other priorities" in this context is mostly spouses who don't approve of the hobby, but I've been lucky in that regard. My wife games with us and is no happier about missing sessions than I am.
Bah!
I'm 59 and have a job and a college-age kid and I run two regular RPGs and play in a third. If I had more free time I have a backlog of stuff I'd like to try out too. I have from 6-8 players a game.
Used to be I'd run a game of Call of Cthulhu for the same three people once a month, but I was getting bored and didn't get on with one of the people.
The secret for me was relocating my gaming to a local friendly game store where I could tap into a huge player base via their "meetup" website.
Once you have a pool of gamers to draw from you get to see the Rule in action: RPG would-be players outnumber RPG would-be GMs by at least 4-1. So getting a group together becomes an exercise in finding a game everyone wants to try out. I have dozens of the buggers lying around in boxes, but everyone can find a D&D audience in a game store (I don't run that one myself).
I'm 46, with 13 year old daughter. Found my town has a gaming group (Abq RPG Gamers) and singed up for their newsletter. They do frequent one-shot games and game tests. Makes it easy to drop in on a Saturday afternoon for 4-6 hours. Ok, it is 30 miles away but this is all about geeking up my kid.
Saving throw modifiers are more complex for one example. The new system includes [You need the version of 'Saving Throws and You' designed for your race. Visit the website to purchase]. As you can see, while a little more complex, the new system does seem to more accurately reflect reality.
There's another good reason for them doing this, there are dozens if not hundreds of free game systems, some with settings some without. They want to get people into their ecosystem first before someone plays say the d6 system (which was used for the original star wars rpgs) or the Action system (used in Mekton) etc etc etc or all the "primer" sets you get for other game worlds that come with prerolls and enough rules to play for a few levels.
I don't know but I want to go BAAAAAAACKKK.
At various times in its history, Dungeons & Dragons has received negative publicity, in particular from some Christian groups, for alleged promotion of such practices as devil worship, witchcraft, suicide, and murder, and for the presence of naked breasts in drawings of female humanoids in the original AD&D manuals (mainly monsters such as Harpies, Succubi, etc.).
Hell yeah. Innocent times.
I dunno about that. 3rd edition was a much simpler system than AD&D 2nd edition I thought, and the skill/feat system that replaced 2E's proficiencies was a vast improvement.
Can't comment on anything past 3.5E though. When 4th edition came out we switched to Pathfinder for a fantasy themed games. Not only was it compatible with our 3rd edition books, but we were all in agreement that 4th edition just plain sucked after one session with it.
Talking of simple systems: one couldn't get any simpler nor better than those in the MELEE rule book of the very underrated Fantasy Quest.
Perhaps even in those minimal days these were considered too minimal.
Yours still clutching his original copy of 'Red Bear White Moon'...
Ah, yes - Death Test, Silver Dragon, and other modules you could actually play solo. Wonder if anyone ever found the gold... What was it? A golden orc or something. Hidden somewhere in the Midwest USA, as I recall. Metagaming went out of business before the finder was announced, Steve Jackson went on to GURPS , and now I'll never know...
"Not only was it complete and complex it came with its own language."
Appropriately enough, since it was created by the linguist M. A. R. Barker.
If he had been a slightly better writer his works would be compared to Tolkien.
@ Stevie
GURPS like a tax form? That's what I thought of when I saw 3rd edition rules. Best part of GURPS was that you could use what you wanted, and throw out the rest. Space adventure? No problem. Fantasy? Steam Punk? Whatever, change the tools, the rules stayed the same. I still can't understand why it didn't get wider adoption.
Way back in the day we tried D&D, Rolemasters (RULEmasters is what that one should have been caled), RuneQuest (still have the original set), Traveller, and others. None compared to the simplicity of GURPS. Well, maybe RuneQuest, but combat sucked. How many times can you get clipped at the knees and end up on the ground before you have had enough? :D
Yes.
In support of this contention I offer GURPS For Dummies in which the advice from GURPS experts to get it all into a spreadsheet is repeated for both character builds so you can finish before the GM dies of old age and for GMs conducting combat so a simple flesh wound doesn't cause a quarter hour break to refigure the combat modifiers.
And personal experience, of course. What, you thought I'd never actually had a go?
Also, you write of GURPS in the past tense but it is still available in the gorgeous 4th edition hardback printing. I know, 'cos I have one. Well, two, since it is a two volume set. I bought them to see if they would make the free "GURPS Lite" rules that we were using for Tales of the Solar Patrol make sense. They did, but it is debatable whether that was worth the 80-odd bucks of acquisition.
I can't speak for 3rd edition, but the service pack, 3.5, is such a doddle it lured me back into playing D&D after a hiatus begun when I ran screaming from AD&D in 1981 and took up running Traveller, and then Call of Cthulhu. If you are saying you can make GURPS work but not 3.5 I have to question your sincerity.
As for simple rules systems, why buy expensive rules if you are going to throw most of them away? If you don't need the fractal insanity of GURPS in its entirety, Savage Worlds offers the quickest and cheapest way into generic engine RPGs, and BRP (Gold Book) a slightly more involved one. Both are easier to assimilate and cheaper to own than GURPS.
One thing Pathfinder and the older D&D 3.5 offer that GURPS doesn't is a comprehensive Bestiary that can save the GM oodles of time (and again, much cash). Trying to assemble a GURPS bestiary is an exercise in going slowly mad. Ask me how I know this.
GURPS settings are lavish things, sometimes great, sometimes not - one example of a swing and miss that leaps to mind is the patently ridiculous statement that the Mini Moke taxis could do "about 40 mph maximum" in the GURPS The Prisoner sourcebook. This from an 'expert' on the background too. And I imagine everyone could live without the third edition bindings that fall apart at the drop of a hat.
On the other hand, the Discworld and Vorkosigan Saga are works of breathtaking scope, and after Wizards of the Coast set the bar a little higher, fourth edition books have been in color on gloss paper too (bringing them up to par with Savage Worlds, D&D and Pathfinder publications). Both of those are out of print now, unfortunately.
I just think these settings would all work better, be easier to run and be seen by a larger audience if they were run under a different game engine.
Because GURPS looks, and is, complicated.
GURPS, the RPG that makes income tax instructions look easy.
GURPS is actually one of the easier systems I've used. You have to reference the books whenever you add skills, but aside from that it's very easy. Roll 3d6 and if you're under your target number (The appropriate attribute adjusted for your skill level) you succeed. You should have all your target numbers written on your character sheet, so that's not hard at all. Even someone only passingly familiar with the system can get their character put together in 30 minutes or less.
Compare that with Rifts, a system wherein I once finished my character in only an hour and a half and kept looking at it convinced I'd made a mistake because it should have taken twice as long.
Played all versions of D&D & AD&D and my current game group settled on 4th ed by default when we started up again a few years back. To be honest the game system is irrelevant to us - its just an excuse to get together every 3 weeks and take the piss out of each other, have a laugh and an enjoyable evening. Having a "game" to play just makes the social aspect more regular, otherwise there would always be some reason to miss this get together...
We've taken a rest form D&D lately and are currently playing a Chill-based modern horror (think Charles Stoss Laundry...)
"I rolled Double zero... is that good?"
Not played for a long time now, but I remember getting early copies of the "Dungeon Master Guide" imported by someone who holidayed in the USA. As my group played the rules moved more and more to our own customised versions and ZX81 wobbly RAM pack combat resolution before finally emerging into completely rule free sessions; essentially moderated story telling.
Might I suggest: Fighting Fantasy - The Introductory Role-playing Game
A group of friends and I used to play this in the school playground around 1984-1986. It was simple, fast and had the great back-story of the Fighting Fantasy game books to base adventures in.
I played Basic D&D, AD&D 2nd Ed, Traveller, Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, MERP and Call of Cthulhu. Of them all, I always went back to the FF book mentioned simply because I inevitably got bored with the other systems' desires for complexity over efficiency. The only other one that came close for speed of play was Tunnels and Trolls - which, incidentally, had some great humour in it too.
"The Computer is your friend!"
"Will all REG sector troubleshooters please report for termination immediately."
"Thank you for your cooperation. Have a nice day."
At least Paranoia gives an IT angle to this story.
Colin
PS: I am well aware of the big overlap between IT and RPGs. Hence the joke icon.
No doubt I'll add this (D&D5) PDF to my collection.
The heyday for me was AD&D in the 80s. There was so much material in the rule books that it could play very differently if, for example, took note of the material components required for spells. Of course, we developed our own house rules based which actually used information in the rule books - an initiative system suddenly split fighters into plate & greatsword tanks vs leather & rapier swashbucklers, as a role choice without disadvantage to either.
I was going to list some of the other (obscure) RPGs we played during the 80s and 90s - but frankly the list is just too long, and would repeat what has been said in a lot of places.
Often, we just made up RPGs for settings, and rolled with it. There was a great long standing campaign set in the 1640s - started as a Musketeers game, and ended up in England during the Civil War. It was always the obsurd million-to-one chance occurances which stick in the memory - in the latter case one character who still used a bow managed a multiple-critical to take out a cannon.
On the other end of the "playability" scale was a WWI game - 30 minutes to roll up a character, detail their background, choose possessions, etc - and 1 minute in play to fail a saving throw when "going over the top"...
I used to play Runequest for 'serious' roleplaying and Tunnels and Trolls for 'back from the pub and skin up' fun. I still fondly remember my T&T character going around with his testicles in his pouch looking for someone to sew them back on (he'd missed spotting the broken chair when jumping into the pit full of Troll shit)
It's gotta be better than the piece of garbage that is 4th edition. If I wanted to have the limitations needed to make a computerized RPG viable I probably wouldn't be playing a pen and paper game.
Still I don't see myself or any of the rest of the group I play with switching back from Pathfinder any time soon.
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