Community

I'll keep this short and sweet tonight.


I last blogged about the reaction to the D&D Next playtest and defended WotC, asking gamers to effectively 'grow up' and stop giving us a bad name, lest we, as a community, suffer. Tonight I want to turn the tables in true devli's advocate form and give the same treatment to WotC themselves. I hope they're listening.


ANOTHER DIRE WARNING

While it is no excuse for the recent behaviour of some of the RPG community at large, the D&D Next playtest launch wasn't handled with expert execution. I'm sure there will have been an incident report produced by now and that the reasons for the issues felt when the playtest packet was released will be well-known within WotC.

Regardless of the actual problem felt, be it unexpected visitor numbers on the day, technical...

In my blog series Returning to RPGs after a long absence, I explored some tips and tricks to make it easier to re-enter RPG gaming. This time I'd like to move the focus squarely to the player's side of the screen and talk about the things that could make the biggest impact for players starting to play Dungeons and Dragons for the first time or for players returning to Dungeons and Dragons after a time away from the hobby.

I'm a long-time DM and don't really play on the other side of the screen. I was worried that my DM bias may have affected the way my original blog articles were written so to get a true player's perspective I interviewed my players about what made it easier for them to game again. The rest of this article is built up from their commentry and I hope that by sharing their

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Over the years RPGs have been consumed with greater frequency on computers and games consoles. These computer RPGs have grown exponentially in complexity and are now at a point where they are often the first taste of RPGs that a role-player may get.

With the rise of the computerised RPG formats has come an incentive mechanism generally known as 'achievements'. Examples of where achievements are used include big 'triple-A' titles like World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, and Final Fantasy, as well as smaller RPG games and games with RPG elements such as Torchlight, Castlevania, and Costume Quest. This incentive mechanism aims to make a game more fun, provide greater playability and other linked benefits adding value to the game itself.

 

The question I want to cover in today's

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I've been lurking about on various RPG forums recently (such as www.enworld.org, www.ukroleplayers.comand, of course, community.wizards.com/go/forum/viewcateg...) and I've noticed that the edition wars haven't quite faded away yet.

Whilst the fires aren't raging like a Balor stepping out of his molton lava shower onto the upturned plug from his iPod charger the embers do still seem to glow brightly.

I've been giving the whole edition war subject a lot of thought and I believe that I may be able to answer that firebrand of a question, "What am bestest game plz?" (or, for those of you who didn't waste language slots or feats learning to read Internet Goblin, "What is the best game system please?").

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First, a little background. Those of you who have read any of my ramblings

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So far in this blog series I've talked about gaining the confidence to play RPGs again and also preparing for your first session. This time I want to explore the first session itself.

 

Those of you who have been following this blog will have noticed a long gap between the previous part of this series and this blog. First up I'd like to apologise for the wait and secondly I'd like to offer the reason for the delay. The reason is this: My own first session couldn't have run much better than it did and as a result between work and D&D preparation I haven't had much time to write the third part of my blog.

Believe me when I say all of the advice and commentary I'm giving is from experience! So, without further a-do, let's get to it.

 

If you have been following in my footsteps

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After last night's post about touching up my D&D minis I though I'd poll the community on the subject of repainting D&D miniatures. What do you do?

 

 

Just before I put up the third part of my 'returning from....' blog series, I sat down to basecoat some of my minis and looked over the plastic pre-painted D&D 'Players handbook characters' minis I have in my collection. The paint jobs on them were universally awful, many of the details had just been swabbed over with a single uniform colour and it seemed a real shame.

 

Unfortunately this led to me touching them up instead of painting my actual minis. Now, despite the poor moulding and wobbly weapons they actually look quite good. I wouldn't be embarassed to put these on the table now.

 

I wonder - how many D&D players end up doing what I've just done and re-paint their pre-painted minis? Do you? If so, do you just neaten it up or do you just go for broke. What techniques

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This is the first part in my blog series about returning to RPG games after an absence. I introduced the series on March the 15th and the original blog post can be found HERE.

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Welcome. In case you haven’t had a look at my profile or my earlier blog posts, my name is Doug and I’m a DM with more than a few years experience behind me. I’ve recently had an extended break from gaming and am now preparing to launch a new game group using the Dungeons and Dragons 4^th edition rules. As part of this series I’ll be exploring some of the themes and challenges of my return to gaming and will be trying to impart a few tips and tricks for making the transition from ‘used-to-game’ to ‘gamer’ a little easier.

Tonight I’d like to

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