Let’s get this out of the way real quick. I know as soon as the phrase “Dungeons & Dragons” is uttered, everyone has an idea in their head. Some of you believe that D&D is an activity engaged in by the geekiest of the geeky, and all stereotypes of those socially awkward among us surge to the forefront. Some picture a group of pre-pubescent nerds, or middle-aged nerds, gathered around a table wearing wizard hats and espousing about spells. While it can be all that, and many of those stereotypes are justified, D&D is a whole lot more. You may be surprised to hear that two time NBA MVP Tim Duncan, actors Vin Diesel, Karl Urban and Mike Meyers, director Jon Favreau, and comedians Robin Williams and Stephen Colbert are among the many celebrities that have publicly proclaimed their love for D&D. When I think of Dungeons & Dragons I remember numerous hours spent in camaraderie while using my imagination to its fullest and having many adventures surrounded by my friends. D&D promotes using your imagination, teaches math skills, and encourages group interaction instead of sitting alone in front of your TV or computer playing a video game.
The impetus for this blog is that a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons is currently in development, the fifth official version of the game since it was first published in 1974. The game was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson based on a previous game called Chainmail. D&D is not a game in the traditional sense that most people think of, in that there is no game board. Players use a set of rule books to create characters in a fantasy setting, and one player is the Dungeon Master, or DM, who is the storyteller of the group. The DM sets the world that the other players will participate in, and sets challenges for the other players to overcome as their characters. For instance, a group may encounter monsters to defeat, dungeons to explore, traps to either disable or survive, riddles to solve, damsels to save, dragons to slay, treasure to unearth and on and on. Players roll dice to determine how well they perform at the different tasks they want to accomplish throughout the adventure. Each swing of a sword, casting of a spell, or attempt to woo a tavern maiden hinges on how well you roll a 20-sided dice, known as a D20. After encounters, the players earn experience points doled out by the DM and those points are accumulated and eventually the character gets to a higher level and attains new abilities.
Those basic mechanics have been adapted over the years to many other various media to become the genre known as the Role Playing Game, or RPG, from video games like Skyrim and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, to MMO’s like World of Warcraft. But while those systems have thrived and flourished, there has always been a contingent of people, young and old alike, that regularly gather around a table laden with snack food and rule books to play D&D. And the reason is quite simple. D&D can take you anywhere and you can do anything. An example I love to recall happened in a game I was involved in that took place in the Star Wars universe. The DM had placed our group in the middle of a crossroad, surrounded by immensely tall buildings, and he had a plan on what would happen to our group if we went North, South, East, or West…but we went up. Straight up. We completely ruined what our DM had planned for us with one simple choice of which way should we go, so like a good DM he improvised what came next and we continued our adventure. If you are playing a video game and you want to go into a house to see what’s inside, if a programmer didn’t write the code for the door to that house to be able to open…you don’t get to go through it.
Now, I could bore you with tales of my various characters over the years, my Minotaur Archer Grok, my Half-Dragon Swordmaster Ladon, my Android Jedi Q9-J3 and on and on, but that’s really not the point of this article. The point is to simultaneously rejoice and shudder at the news that D&D version 5.0 is in production and will be released at some point in the near future. Why, you may ask, would I fear such a thing as I am obviously a fan of this franchise? Well, now we get to the really hardcore geeky part of this whole situation because there is nothing geekier than arguing about which version of D&D is the best. Some players have stuck with the same system they first started playing, disdaining any new system that is released. That has a tendency to irk the companies that make these books knowing that there are some people who have not invested any more than the original ten dollar price tag for D&D back in the 70’s and still play their game every weekend. So every few years they change the rules up and release new versions to try and tempt more money out of their fan base. Those changes then spark nerd rage fueled debates the likes of which you cannot possibly imagine unless you have seen them firsthand. I never thought something like how a sorcerer casts spells could cause such vitriol and utter hatred…but I have seen such things. Therefore each new version of D&D is both anticipated…and dreaded. Personally, I favor version 3.5. That may have to do with the fact that I have about 20 3.5 edition books that I paid good money for…but the simple fact of the matter is I didn’t like the changes that came with version 4.0. It reminded me too much of World of Warcraft in the way it was set up, and that didn’t appeal to me as much as the more fluid style of 3.5, especially since I also played World of Warcraft at the time.
Version 5 of D&D is still in the developmental phase, and reports about this version are still sketchy, but one thing is apparent. The company who currently makes and distributes D&D, Wizards of the Coast, is not ignoring their fan base. The reports I have seen thus far indicate that the company is looking for input from across the geek community on how to make the best version of D&D that they can, easy enough for new players to get hooked, while advanced enough for the hardcore nerd to really dive into and luxuriate in. Best of luck to you Wizards of the Coast.
Noah Westerfield is Ginyo Hobatsu, a Halfling Ninja of the Scorpion Clan proficient in the school of the Dancing Dragonfly.
The impetus for this blog is that a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons is currently in development, the fifth official version of the game since it was first published in 1974. The game was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson based on a previous game called Chainmail. D&D is not a game in the traditional sense that most people think of, in that there is no game board. Players use a set of rule books to create characters in a fantasy setting, and one player is the Dungeon Master, or DM, who is the storyteller of the group. The DM sets the world that the other players will participate in, and sets challenges for the other players to overcome as their characters. For instance, a group may encounter monsters to defeat, dungeons to explore, traps to either disable or survive, riddles to solve, damsels to save, dragons to slay, treasure to unearth and on and on. Players roll dice to determine how well they perform at the different tasks they want to accomplish throughout the adventure. Each swing of a sword, casting of a spell, or attempt to woo a tavern maiden hinges on how well you roll a 20-sided dice, known as a D20. After encounters, the players earn experience points doled out by the DM and those points are accumulated and eventually the character gets to a higher level and attains new abilities.
Those basic mechanics have been adapted over the years to many other various media to become the genre known as the Role Playing Game, or RPG, from video games like Skyrim and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, to MMO’s like World of Warcraft. But while those systems have thrived and flourished, there has always been a contingent of people, young and old alike, that regularly gather around a table laden with snack food and rule books to play D&D. And the reason is quite simple. D&D can take you anywhere and you can do anything. An example I love to recall happened in a game I was involved in that took place in the Star Wars universe. The DM had placed our group in the middle of a crossroad, surrounded by immensely tall buildings, and he had a plan on what would happen to our group if we went North, South, East, or West…but we went up. Straight up. We completely ruined what our DM had planned for us with one simple choice of which way should we go, so like a good DM he improvised what came next and we continued our adventure. If you are playing a video game and you want to go into a house to see what’s inside, if a programmer didn’t write the code for the door to that house to be able to open…you don’t get to go through it.
Now, I could bore you with tales of my various characters over the years, my Minotaur Archer Grok, my Half-Dragon Swordmaster Ladon, my Android Jedi Q9-J3 and on and on, but that’s really not the point of this article. The point is to simultaneously rejoice and shudder at the news that D&D version 5.0 is in production and will be released at some point in the near future. Why, you may ask, would I fear such a thing as I am obviously a fan of this franchise? Well, now we get to the really hardcore geeky part of this whole situation because there is nothing geekier than arguing about which version of D&D is the best. Some players have stuck with the same system they first started playing, disdaining any new system that is released. That has a tendency to irk the companies that make these books knowing that there are some people who have not invested any more than the original ten dollar price tag for D&D back in the 70’s and still play their game every weekend. So every few years they change the rules up and release new versions to try and tempt more money out of their fan base. Those changes then spark nerd rage fueled debates the likes of which you cannot possibly imagine unless you have seen them firsthand. I never thought something like how a sorcerer casts spells could cause such vitriol and utter hatred…but I have seen such things. Therefore each new version of D&D is both anticipated…and dreaded. Personally, I favor version 3.5. That may have to do with the fact that I have about 20 3.5 edition books that I paid good money for…but the simple fact of the matter is I didn’t like the changes that came with version 4.0. It reminded me too much of World of Warcraft in the way it was set up, and that didn’t appeal to me as much as the more fluid style of 3.5, especially since I also played World of Warcraft at the time.
Version 5 of D&D is still in the developmental phase, and reports about this version are still sketchy, but one thing is apparent. The company who currently makes and distributes D&D, Wizards of the Coast, is not ignoring their fan base. The reports I have seen thus far indicate that the company is looking for input from across the geek community on how to make the best version of D&D that they can, easy enough for new players to get hooked, while advanced enough for the hardcore nerd to really dive into and luxuriate in. Best of luck to you Wizards of the Coast.
Noah Westerfield is Ginyo Hobatsu, a Halfling Ninja of the Scorpion Clan proficient in the school of the Dancing Dragonfly.
I was told to admonish you for not naming your Evil Paladin.
ReplyDeleteOh have your tried Pathfinder?
I have not tried Pathfinder...I am so committed to 3.5 it's just not funny.
ReplyDeleteAnd for some reason I cannot find the character sheet for that ill fated evil campaign...so I don't remember the name of my evil paladin.
Quick story for everyone who WASN'T in that game ABOUT that game...we were a group of evil adventurers going about doing evil things. I will spare you the majority of the details of the evil shenanigans we got up to, but the campaign came up to an abrupt halt when the GM handed out treasure, and one of the items was a magical helm. We had nobody who could identify what it was, so I put it on. Turns out it was a helm of reverse alignment. So I went from being an evil paladin, to a good paladin. So that night, during my shift at watch, I went around the camp, and put the helm on each of my companions in turn, and we all became good. After that, the whole campaign just fell apart.