For a story, for major characters who have no money, is it possible to play D&D without buying anything?
And, if the answer to that is no - that you must buy something (like a game set, maybe), what's the least expensive way to play the game?
For a story, for major characters who have no money, is it possible to play D&D without buying anything?
And, if the answer to that is no - that you must buy something (like a game set, maybe), what's the least expensive way to play the game?
what's the least expensive way to play the game?
Make friends with someone who has everything for it.
what's the least expensive way to play the game?
Make friends with someone who has everything for it.
Financially, yes. But emotionally the prize to pay may be too high, depending on the guys personality.
HM.
Depends on what time frame and what edition you want to have them playing.
Wizards of the Coast eventually released the entire basic edition and the 3.5 edition under and open source type license.
The basic rules for 5E are also under the open license, but none of the content is, so you would have to build your own classes, monsters, etc...
https://www.d20srd.org/
If you have a dungeon master with the creativity to build his own campaign/world from scratch then the only thing you would absolutely have to buy today is a set of dice for the DM and each player.
Depends on what time frame and what edition you want to have them playing.
And this is the key point.
As the original AD&D was released, all you had to spend was around $30, including 2 books and dice.
As for spending no money, impossible. As no matter what, you need to buy dice.
For a minimalist expense, probably Tunnels & Trolls. Boxed starter sets in the early 80's were around $15, and it only uses regular 6-sided dice.
For over a decade however, the d20 license has been free, so the only cost is printing it off, and the dice.
As for spending no money, impossible. As no matter what, you need to buy dice.
Well, if the players all had smart phones, they could probably find a dice simulator app and avoid buying physical dice.
ETA: I easily found an table top RPG dice roller/simulator app for Android.
Well, if the players all had smart phones, they could probably find a dice simulator app and avoid buying physical dice.
ETA: I easily found an table top RPG dice roller/simulator app for Android.
True, but he also did not mention the most important question. "When"? Heck, if you want to play it today for free, you can get almost all the old rule books easily online as a PDF. So unless you need to print them off, free.
dice simulator app
I would PBEM - Play by email - games and we'd use a computer program for the RNG (random number generator) - aka dice simulator. I used to have links to a couple of them for long time, but I finally deleted them.
As for spending no money, impossible. As no matter what, you need to buy dice.
Didn't have dice or the stores near me to buy dice so went out to the barn and made some spinners out of scraps. Only was able to find a single clock hand that was balanced so would use the hand on all the spinners and if you flicked it to hard it would go flying.
D4: Flip two coins treat the result as a binary number Heads = 1 tails = 0. Add 1 to result.
D8: 3 coins
And, if the answer to that is no - that you must buy something (like a game set, maybe), what's the least expensive way to play the game?
We played, back in the day (AD&D) with a DMs guide, a Player Handbook, and a Monster Manual, purchased with pooled funds. That, plus dice, probably set our entire group back about $35.
Now, you can get most of the material you need online, so dice, pencils, and paper are all you really need, if you can download the PDFs of the 3.5 books.
See: D&D 3.5 Core Books (PDF)
Now, you can get most of the material you need online, so dice, pencils, and paper are all you really need, if you can download the PDFs of the 3.5 books.
Thank you, Michael Loucks. That answer is especially useful for a would-be writer who knows absolutely nothing about D&D except that it's a game played by a lot of acquaintances.
Thank you, Michael Loucks. That answer is especially useful for a would-be writer who knows absolutely nothing about D&D except that it's a game played by a lot of acquaintances.
Then keep the reference to it to a minimum I would suggest.
That was actually not uncommon in the 1980's. Off the top of my head, I can think of 2 movies that featured D&D (or another TSR game) prominently.
In ET, the kids were actually playing it at the start of the movie. And in "Cloak & Dagger", the main character is heavily into Top Secret (a spy variant of the game).
However, none of the actual gameplay was ever really covered. Just keep it to a minimum, and you should be fine.
Oh, I loved "Top Secret". I played that and "Vampires of the Masquerade" and "Shadow Run". I also played some D&D from time to time.
As a broke teenager, I played, and ran, AD&D 2E for a long time with nothing but dice and the Player's Handbook. I did eventually pick up a DMG (that's Dungeon Master's Guide), but basically all of the critical rules were in the PHB, and you could just make up monsters.
These days, the core materials for 3.5 and 5E are available for free download under the Open Gaming License, and of course if you don't care about Hasbro's copyrights, you can pirate anything on the Internet.
When 4E came out, and a lot of gamers didn't like it, Paizo, who had been a third-party publisher of D&D supplements, spun off a full 3.5 clone called Pathfinder, and it was for a while at least more popular than actual 4E D&D (though I think the advent of D&D 5E, which is better than 4E, and Pathfinder 2E, which is terrible, have reversed that). Basically all of the Pathfinder material is OGL, and you can run a game, perfectly legitimately, right off Paizo's website without ever touching a physical or even PDF book.
3.5 and Pathfinder really want a grid map and miniatures, but you can get by without them. Older and newer editions are less crunchy, and the battlemap is less necessary. And miniatures don't actually have to be the expensive little figurines... I've played with groups that used things like jellybeans for the monsters, so you could eat your kills.
So basically all you really need to buy is dice, and in theory you can draw chits instead of rolling actual dice, though I haven't seen anyone actually do that since the early days when all those funny-shaped dice weren't necessarily easy to come by.
(Some other games, like Shadowrun or GURPS, use only d6es, so you can just loot Yahtzee or Risk or whatever.)
My recommendation, though: Don't write about playing D&D if you've never actually played D&D. There are so many widespread misconceptions about how it fundamentally works that the results are invariably as ridiculous as virgins writing about sex. If you've got acquaintances that play D&D, see if you can get in on a game. Maybe you'll like it. Even if you don't, at least you won't be completely clueless when you write about it.
My recommendation, though: Don't write about playing D&D if you've never actually played D&D
This.
Agreed. The cool thing is that are a million videos on YouTube made by people live-steaming their games. Some are VERY professionally done, others are just normal folks at the kitchen table. There's also a ton of "how to play D&D" videos out there.
As far as what you need to play, most people would agree that you'd need at least one copy of the rulebook and a set of dice. I've heard D&D is popular in prison due to its escapist nature, but since they can't have dice they write down random number tables to use to generate the same randomized results you'd get from rolling dice. My point is that if money was really an issue, they could do it with nothing but pencil and paper. However, older editions of the rulebook can be found for less than $20 in used bookstores.
However, older editions of the rulebook can be found for less than $20 in used bookstores.
For the older editions, the basic rule books are available free on-line.
The cool thing is that are a million videos on YouTube made by people live-steaming their games. Some are VERY professionally done, others are just normal folks at the kitchen table. There's also a ton of "how to play D&D" videos out there.
Before you write, avail yourself of the free resources at a minimum. Especially videos as mentioned in the quote. The books DS mentioned would be good to read through as well.
For the older editions, the basic rule books are available free on-line
There are numerous people who don't like the latest editions and play only the older versions.
The books DS mentioned would be good to read through as well.
The best resource for the game rules is not a book. Up thread I posted a link to a site that has the SRDs(system resource document, the Open Gaming license verion) for D&D Basic, 3.5E and 5E all on-line as hyperlinked text.
Here's the link again. https://www.d20srd.org/
Out of curiosity, if you've never played, what prompts you to write a story involving it?
Out of curiosity, if you've never played, what prompts you to write a story involving it?
Especially as this is a very open question, with no simple answer.
This is a game that goes back over 45 years, and it has changed a lot. It would be like going "What is a good cheap car". Well, first we kind of need to know where, and the year. Without that, can not even begin to give a real answer.
The game that most people play is really the 7th to have been commonly called that. Chainmail/D&D, Advanced D&D, AD&D 2nd, AD&D 3rd, AD&D 3.5, AD&D 4, and now AD&D 5. Stretching all the way back to 1974.
Now I did write a story that involved it quite prominently, but I also covered it as "D&D Light". Discussing the adventures made and played, but almost never actually talking about the mechanics of the game itself. And at most, only dipping into some things that early on actually was a big thing with the community.
Like the "Great Beard Debate", a real thing in the early 1980s. As the book clearly stated "All dwarves have beards".
All dwarves? Women? Children? Infants? Then if I hold down a dwarf and shave them, are they no longer dwarves? Does it kill them (some did indeed argue that shaving a beard was fatal to a dwarf).
And yes, I have heard people at a convention even screaming that of course all dwarf babies are born with beards, and the women have them also.
I started with Chainmail in college. Had to stop as it was taking up too much time. I did make a lot of side money in college thanks to D&D. The diehards that were also into SCA all wanted armor etc especially the kind their characters wore. The silly thing was, making it wasn't that hard, it was easy enough that a novice could do it. In the 70's, 400$ was good money for a set of chainmail.
I used to knit mail... still do, really, but only to keep my own armor in fighting trim at this point. I used to make mail for sale, but a dollar doesn't go as far as it did even in the '90s, and the price you can charge for it crashed pretty hard when it started being possible to import mail manufactured by slave labor in Asia. You can get a flat-linked, riveted mail shirt for $200 these days, if you know where to look, and the hourly wage for that works out to less than I could make picking up cans by the roadside.
I'm somewhat surprised that no-one figured out how to mass-produce chain mail "cloth" with machines.
Could even slave labor compete with a machine that can put out hundreds of yards of chain mail "fabric" a day?
They have, but I don't think anyone uses it for making medieval-style armor. But that's how they make the super-fine-link mail for shark suits and butcher's gloves and so on.
They have, but I don't think anyone uses it for making medieval-style armor.
Why not? It would be a huge cost/labor savings, and probably better armor too.
It might not be, actually. It'd need different machinery than the ultra-fine-link stuff, and that'd be a big capital investment up front that the medieval recreation market probably isn't big enough, or willing to pay enough, to pay off in a reasonable timeframe. Especially when they can get cheap mail made the period way — by serfs paid starvation wages.
I'm somewhat surprised that no-one figured out how to mass-produce chain mail "cloth" with machines.
It's not hard to do. Cut the head off of a bolt with a drilled hole to set wire in, mount it in a lathe. For me, I machined a jig to keep tension on a spool of wire, then spin it slowly. Cut the links with a Dremel cut off wheel. A power drill can work as well.
If you wanted a riveted version, have a punch die made. It can flatten and punch the rivet hole in one operation.
Once you have the link stock, automation can follow. Automation was a bit of a pain, but with a group of engineering students (read closet geeks) it didn't take long.
Weaving by hand was a pain, but the time consuming part was getting the link stock.
ETA: These days it's more about show than functionality. The cosplay types are where the money is now. Make it look like their favorite video game characters armor and that will bring decent money.
The game that most people play is really the 7th to have been commonly called that. Chainmail/D&D, Advanced D&D, AD&D 2nd, AD&D 3rd, AD&D 3.5, AD&D 4, and now AD&D 5. Stretching all the way back to 1974.
That's... neither complete nor accurate.
The original D&D was released in 1974. In 1977, the game was forked into two different lines — Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and a similar but less complicated version called simply "Dungeons & Dragons" — that were developed in parallel.
There were only two editions of AD&D. (Though there were a bunch of supplements released for 2E that people sometimes call "2.5", but it wasn't really a new edition.) AD&D 2E was very similar to 1E — mostly, though not entirely, backwards-compatible.
But during the same period, the simpler "D&D" line continued to be developed, and there were... at least three editions of that after the fork, maybe four or five depending on how you count 'em. (I started with the Moldvay Red Box 'round about 1982, but pretty quickly moved over to AD&D.)
Then Wizards of the Coast, makers of Magic: The Gathering, acquired D&D, and in 2000 merged the two separate lines back together, releasing a new edition that was called "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition". It was very different than its predecessors in either line, and, though its name does not include "Advanced", it's more similar to the AD&D line, and the edition numbering indicates that it was a successor to AD&D 2E.
3E only lasted a few years, and then was replaced by a revised edition, called "D&D 3.5", because it was basically 3.0 with some of the sharp corners filed off. Also around this time, WotC, in a bid to kill off all non-d20 RPGs, released the core D&D 3.x rules free under the Open Gaming License.
This was fairly effective, as a lot of games added or converted to the widely-known d20 rules, and then died because d20 is actually really bad at almost everything, and the things it's actually good for, there was no reason to not just play D&D instead.
But, as I mentioned earlier, it backfired on them a few years later, when they released 4th edition D&D, which was a very different game from 3.5, and was wildly unpopular among hardcore gamers, and Paizo used the OGL material to release a complete 3.5 clone called Pathfinder, which basically hijacked D&D from D&D.
Now the current edition, which is, again, a very different game from the earlier editions, was originally called "D&D Next", but I think WotC has finally come around to officially calling it "5th edition", like everyone else does.
Paizo has also released a new edition of Pathfinder, which is a completely different (and really terribly designed) game from PF 1 or D&D 3.5, and kind of defeats the entire reason Pathfinder was popular, which was that people wanted to keep playing and getting new material for 3.5 after WotC abandoned it.
But anyway, there were only two editions called "AD&D", and "5th edition" Dungeons & Dragons is at least the eighth edition that's called just "Dungeons & Dragons", and like the tenth or twelfth if you count in "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons".
Chainmail was in fact the predecessor of D&D so that much was in fact true and accurate.
Chainmail was a straight miniatures wargame, like many that came before it.
D&D was a spur project, when the Gygax group decided to make the miniatures represent actual individuals, that could advance in abilities as they played.
By the late 1870's they released all three "tan books" as a boxed set.
The original D&D was released in 1974. In 1977, the game was forked into two different lines — Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and a similar but less complicated version called simply "Dungeons & Dragons" — that were developed in parallel.
Basic (original blue box and the follow-up) and Expert were dead-ends. I did not count them on purpose because they were largely abandoned after 1983. 2nd Edition has almost nothing to do with either of those sets, it is a linear follow-up to 1st Edition AD&D. Largely the same game in fact, just with some clarifications and minor changes.
Those are all orphans, and do not count in the lineage of AD&D.
Basic (original blue box and the follow-up) and Expert were dead-ends. I did not count them on purpose because they were largely abandoned after 1983.
No, they weren't. The D&D line was always TSR's red-headed stepchild, but it continued in active development until 1995, from the Holmes "Basic D&D" blue booklet, through the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert sets (where I got my start), the Mentzer "BECMI" (Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortals) sets, and a couple different versions of the Rules Cyclopedia. There was a regular Mystara (the standard D&D campaign world, what Greyhawk was to AD&D) feature in Dragon right up to the point I let my subscription lapse, around 1994.
2nd Edition has almost nothing to do with either of those sets, it is a linear follow-up to 1st Edition AD&D. Largely the same game in fact, just with some clarifications and minor changes.
Yes. Like I said, the game got forked into two separate lines, "AD&D" and just "D&D".
Those are all orphans, and do not count in the lineage of AD&D.
Again, 3.0 and subsequent editions are not AD&D. Neither in name nor in fact. 3.0 made a bunch of major changes to basic mechanics, which have largely carried through to subsequent editions, and the result is a game that's only superficially similar to what came before. (And every edition change since, except 3.0→3.5, has brought large-scale changes.) Among other things, 3.0 inverted the core combat mechanic.
This was fairly effective, as a lot of games added or converted to the widely-known d20 rules, and then died because d20 is actually really bad at almost everything, and the things it's actually good for, there was no reason to not just play D&D instead.
The bigger issue was the glut caused by so many people entering the game publishing market for the first time. With the mechanics done for them, every game master with their own passion-project campaign setting and $5-10K suddenly became a publisher. There was SO MUCH material, and of highly variable quality, splitting the consumer dollar that few individual publishers could make money.
The bigger issue was the glut caused by so many people entering the game publishing market for the first time. With the mechanics done for them, every game master with their own passion-project campaign setting and $5-10K suddenly became a publisher. There was SO MUCH material, and of highly variable quality, splitting the consumer dollar that few individual publishers could make money.
Well, for decades TSR tried to keep it for themselves only. Judges Guild, Flying Buffalo, they would sue almost anybody that even hinted that their expansions were compatible with their own. By the time Totally Sucky Rules sailed off into the sunset, most other companies folded, or had gotten completely out of that area.
But d20 was it's own shatshow. No more need to make actual rules, just do it like GURPS and write an expansion book to cover whatever it is you want.
Myself, I will admit I am not a fan of 3 and what followed. Tried several times, just could not get back into it. And tried a few other d20 systems people tried to get me into, same thing. When it takes an entire session just to make a simple character, really lost my interest.
Remus2
5/21/2021, 2:10:17 PM
@PotomacBob
Out of curiosity, if you've never played, what prompts you to write a story involving it?
Replies: Mushroom
Working on a story in which the narrator main character's father plays the game, along with the father's friends and relatives. They don't use a computer version (if there is one), but father around the family table. I don't believe they use a board (is one needed?)I don't need details of playing the game; just enough for a brief description, including what would be visible on the table on which they play. I gather from the responses that would include dice. The father (born in 1970) is a big fan of anything to do with zombies - would there be zombies in D&D? Time setting is today. (The main character, born in 2002, is more interested in playing chess or poker)
Zombies are indeed one of the many types of creatures found in D&D. Generally speaking, they are considered "low level" creatures that don't pose much challenge for seasoned characters.
The table would likely have character sheets (sheets of paper with character statistics on it) in front of each player, maybe some rulebooks, dice, pencils, and snacks. Not required, but some groups use miniature figurines representing their characters, all placed on a grid map. The grid is a visual key to how far a character can move during their turn.
If you watch the first few minutes of Stranger Things on Netflix, the kids are playing D&D. Or again, look it up on YouTube.
Stranger Things is great, but it's not really a good representation of how D&D is/was usually played. The showrunners were gamers, so they actually knew what they were talking about, but it still ended up with a lot of compromise for the sake of TV and sort of got mashed up with the Dungeon board game for plot purposes and because mundanes don't understand a game that hasn't got a board.
Stranger Things is great, but it's not really a good representation of how D&D is/was usually played.
It could be worse. The suggested movie could have been that horrible Tom Hanks film "Mazes and Monsters". Or "Dark Dungeons", based on the Chick Tract of the same name.
Chick Tract
What amazes me is that those tracts are still around!
Dark Dungeons is still available, though it's out of print, so it's a 'custom order':
Jack Chick - Dark Dungeons
They've even revised it to be "more modern". Elfstar gets to wear pants now! I'm pretty sure that was sinful when Jack first drew it.
That reminds me: One of the big differences between 1st and 2nd edition was that, in a bid to get the Satanic panic wackos off their backs, they renamed all the demons and devils in the Monster Manual. e.g., "Demons" became "Ta'anari", and the "Type V demon" became a "marilith". This was about as effective as you might expect. In 3.0 they're back to being "demons" and "devils", though the type names stuck.
Anyway, the likes of Mazes and Monsters and Dark Dungeons are the big reason I suggest playing, or at least watching the game actually played, before trying to write about it. There's a huge amount of often deliberate misinformation about what a D&D game is like floating around out there.
They've even revised it to be "more modern". Elfstar gets to wear pants now! I'm pretty sure that was sinful when Jack first drew it.
That reminds me: One of the big differences between 1st and 2nd edition was that, in a bid to get the Satanic panic wackos off their backs, they renamed all the demons and devils in the Monster Manual. e.g., "Demons" became "Ta'anari", and the "Type V demon" became a "marilith". This was about as effective as you might expect. In 3.0 they're back to being "demons" and "devils", though the type names stuck.
Anyway, the likes of Mazes and Monsters and Dark Dungeons are the big reason I suggest playing, or at least watching the game actually played, before trying to write about it. There's a huge amount of often deliberate misinformation about what a D&D game is like floating around out there.
If you get a chance, the movie Dark Dungeons is on YouTube. Apparently old Jack sold them the rights right before he died, and they deliberately made it campy as hell. And yes, I remember the D&D Panic", and a bunch of us before a session passing around that tract.
And you can not expect Hollywood to get much of anything right. Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters was one of the first starring rolls for Tom Hanks, and even the author admitted she got almost all of her "facts" from the crazy lady that created BADD.
At least Cloak and Dagger tried to integrate some game aspects into the movie, in a light and sometimes funny way. But it was also 3-ways, as they not only tied in Top Secret, but a video game by Atari.
D&D has zombies, but they have very little resemblance to the spreads-by-biting, must-be-decapitated zombies of wider pop culture. They're just shambling sword fodder.
I figured once that it would take something on the order of ten million standard zombies to take down the mid-level fighter-mage I was playing at the time... assuming I didn't use my spells. If I started casting, it was no longer even theoretically possible for them to hurt me.
D&D, especially 3.5, has a ludicrously steep power curve, and zombies are very much starting mooks.
But seriously, just try playing. Most groups are eager for new blood. If the pandemic or whatever means you can't, at least watch some of the game sessions people post on YouTube. (I don't YouTube much; I always forget that's an option.)
You won't like your grade point average if all the grades on your report cards are D & D.