Pen and paper RPG players: what was the first game you played?

[slicer15]

PnP stands for "Pen and Paper". It's a dice rolling, roleplaying game where you build a character (on a character sheet) and roleplay that character. As you go through adventures you gain experience and level up, gain new abilities etc. Bear in mind everything takes place within your mind. You need imagination to Play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons is but one form PnP can take...). A good DM (Dungeon Master) or Storyteller helps. The DM/Storyteller guides you through the adventure, declares what happens etc. Maybe someone else can explain better than I, but that's the basic outline.
EDIT: Darn it! Beat me to it! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ 01-30-2004, 07:13 PM: Message edited by: slicer15 ]

[spydar]

Originally posted by slicer15: Not many people (in fact, zero people) play around my area...it's just me and my 5 friends, or so...still enjoyable, but I'd like to play with a female character, as in real life...that would make things more interesting...ah well, no chance of that happening any time soon. Maybe when I go to College or something...

didn't know we were that rare (we being girls who roleplay)
hmm...I guess thats why when I tell people I've played D&D they look at me like I'm some sort of leper.

[ 01-30-2004, 07:53 PM: Message edited by: spydar ]

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

Yes, we are that rare.

[Nerull]

It is unfortunate, but female players are rare. I actually had the good fortune of having two in a group, and while it changed things up, it was a good thing. Not a hard and fast rule, but I've just noticed that males tend to focus more on the combat while females tend to focus more on the roleplaying. I had to switch more from dungeon-delving to more thinking oriented adventures. In fact, I eventually implemented a "blue book" system that I had heard about reading about other campaigns. Blue booking is where you write stuff that you say to the person and show it to them. It's a lot easier to say "sensitive" stuff when you just write it and let the other person read it. That allowed a romance among the party members, and also allowed someone to play an evil character among the otherwise good group (he was blue booking me what he was doing and thinking). If only one character saw something, I would blue book what they saw, and it was up to them to let the others know (and I kept track of real time, so if they didn't have the opportunity in real life...).

Anyway, I digress. It is unfortunate that there aren't that many female roleplayers out there. Maybe some sort of social stigma (spydar's comment)?

[Pirengle]

I remember last year's D&D group going to an anime convention and pulling out their books and dice at one point during the 1-6am downtime. Guys took pictures of them just to prove to their friends back home that all-female gaming groups exist.

This is my first time in an entirely female group. I'm used to being in the minority. Unfortunately, the stereotypes (rule-monger, dice-hoarder, munchkin, etc.) come out just as strong in both genders. When making babybowlerhat's latest game, someone wandered into the common room, spotted me rolling dice, and went "so I'm not the only one who plays D&D!" She went on to describe her 23rd-level sorcerer who had--get this--56 charisma. My jaw dropped. She thought it was out of amazement. :shrug:

As for a definition of PnP (sorry Nerull), it's like BG2 without the computer.

[JrKASperov]

The first game I played was when I went to the house of one of my NWN-guildmembers. Without warning, I had to roll a char, and that turned out to be a wood elf rogue with more strength than the half-orc paladin! Well, needless to say, he kicked some booty. And PnP DnD was everything I've ever wanted in a regular pc game.

[Nerull]

The computer just can't take the place of a live DM. Also, the computer is limited as to what you can do, as opposed to a PnP game. In the computer game, to get across a river, you have to find the spot where it lets you walk across. In PnP, you can tell the DM "we're cutting down trees to make a raft" or "we're going to try to wade across with the horses". A swashbuckler fights like however the game is programmed to fight. You can't tell the computer "I'm going to swing off of the chandelier, roll across the table, stab the ogre as part of my spring attack, and then roll between his legs to get behind him to flank him". The computer is good because you can just play on your own with little preparation; just make a character and go. Multiplayer allows you the interaction, but it is just not the same as face-to-face interaction.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

Handling magic is also much more differednt in PnP. It's much more flexible. You could say, "My elven sorceror is going to try to modify her Cone of Cold spell to freeze that water." or the druid, "I am going to ask a treebranch to bend and let us walk across." You can't get that in a game, either. To me, magic is one of the most fun parts of DnD. The more powerful your character gets, the more creative you become in using it.

In PC games you use magic to kill people. Or heal people.

[Ilander]

Nobody's mentioned all the inside jokes that spring up from 3AM rpging...like, in my group (mimes, hand plunging straight down and then makes a thump noise ans hand flattens) means something funny...and rolling a one on a d20 is generally much MUCH more fun, if terrifying---my star wars character managed to shot himself in the arm, once, trying to steady his aim...lol.

[/)eathKiller]

heh I played it on my senior high school year with David, known here as Red Blue Flare, and he made up the rules and we used his neighbor's dads D&D set, without his permission of course, so he got all "POed Puerto Rican" on us [img]tongue.gif[/img] Quite funny though, we got to meet his level 39 Demi-God, Alphalpha.

"I CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD!"