Tabletop Roleplaying

[Trevoke]

I would like to dedicate this thread more specifically to White Wolf, because that's what I'm the most familiar with, but it's open to everything, and that does include AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) as well.

White Wolf, in a concise summary, is a publishing company that specializes in personal horror fantasy roleplaying games. Unless otherwise noted (example: Vampire: The Dark Ages), the game setting is usually modern times, in the World of Darkness.
What is the World of Darkness? it is the world we all know and live in, only.. Darker. Corruption exists in many more places, the world is more violent.. In general, more bad things happen.
What is a personal horror fantasy roleplaying game? Well, it is fantasy because you don't play as yourself, and most of the time you play as an entity that doesn't exist in this world (that we know of anyway, right?): vampire, werewolf, mage, changeling, demon, ghost...

It is personal horror because, within this World of Darkness (WoD for short), bad things happen. That is usually what gives the character a reason to move forward (as opposed to, say, AD&D where people usually get quests or the such, although the characters might have different reasons to go on that quest).

Now, why is it fun?
Well, it's an escapist hobby of sorts. You live your regular life, and then you sit every once in a while with friends and you have this fake fantasy life where you get to delve into your character's life, not yours.
It's a nice change.

How does it work?
Well, you have the players, who each have one character, work with that character's life and what happens to them internally, what their goals are, etc etc.
Then you have the storyteller, who coordinates the rest of the world, what happens, what other characters exist, etc.
The storyteller introduces the world, explains the events, and the characters react to it (or sometimes act pre-emptively). And so the game is born.

... If you don't get it , think of it this way : Genso Suikoden 4 is a storyteller and you are a player.
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There are weapons you cannot hold in your hand.
You can only hold them in your mind.
-- Bene Gesserit Teaching

[Ranadiel]

I have been meaning to make a thread like this for a couple of days. Although the focus of that thread would have been Dungeons and Dragons(Please don't refer to it as AD&D. As far as I know it isn't called that anymore because that was the second edition name and we are currently on version 3.5.). Perhaps we shoudl make two threads, one for Whit Wolf and the other for Dungeons and Dragons. I guess we will just have to see how popular this thread gets and how well the two types of players get along. Assuming no one minds I think that this would be a good place to talk about the current happenings of the campaigns that we are in and a good place to get comments on our characters.

I'm going to start off by recapping my previous campaign(D&D). In the last campaign that my group was in, we started off by investigating a bunch of disapearances that had occured in the kingdom. I was playing an exalted monk/rogue gestalt who was hoping to save all of the people from being killed. We went to a dungeon where there was a lot of undead(which was annoying because my sneak attack was worthless). Eventually we came accross the princess of the kingdom(who had been kidnapped) and we rescued her. Upon returning her to the king we were accused of rape(which we did not do) by her and sentenced to being exiled. The shipe we were sank and we washed up on an island. There we encountered a dragon who said we were chosen(or something like that). We encountered a new character who led us into the forest in order to find the first thing we were supposed to do. I had to leave a short while after this happened, so the dm played my char from here on out. From what I heard they encountered an evil dragon. My character failed his will save, so he ran away. Then two of our party members attempted to bluff the dragon, but purposely failed(I have no idea what exactly happened :? ). They were of course tricked by the dragon and promptly killed. our guide ran back to the sea, and the last character's fate was left unknown. So the campaign of course ended.

Now we are starting a new campaign where we are a bunch of mercenaries. I was initially hoping to play a crazy soulknife who talks to a squirrel(inspired by Minsc), but there is no psionics allowed and magic is completely weird in this campaign. It takes me forever to come up with character ideas, so if anyone could help me come up with one I would appreciate it(I mean character personality not just class because that is easy).
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"Ye shall be as gods."

Titles: Harmonian Tenki Star, Harmonian Jousting Champion

[Trevoke]

Ok.. And forgive me, but what exactly is the point of your post, besides soldiercount++ ?
I mean, ... *rereads his post*
Oops.
Well, the question is, who does it, who is interested by it, who .... ?

Although you do raise a point: Is it insulting to call it AD&D ? Is it bad?
_________________
There are weapons you cannot hold in your hand.
You can only hold them in your mind.
-- Bene Gesserit Teaching

[Ranadiel]

Well I personally find it interesting to hear about other people's campaigns. I figured that there were other people like me. If not then I guess that that was a worthless post besides raising the question that you asked in your previous post in which case I apoligize. Anyways on to the question.

[Tonberry]

My brother used to play AD&D all the time with his friends. I used to watch him play.

I have this board game called "Hero Quest" where the four characters (Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, and Wizard) go on missions that the game leader person (Zargon) gives you. You basically go through dungeons fighting orcs, goblins, mummies, skeletons, zombies, and gargoyles. It is really fun. Is this game considered AD&D?

[Ranadiel]

I wouldn't consider it to be either AD&D or D&D based off of what you said. It seems that it could be a simplified version of tabletop role playing games. The character creation sounds to be predone, and I'm unsure on the other elements since you didn't give to many details. However since you called it a board game I'm assuming that the adventures are pre-structered which would be a simplified version of the other elements as well.
_________________
"Ye shall be as gods."

Titles: Harmonian Tenki Star, Harmonian Jousting Champion

[Lunarblade]

I love Dungeons and Dragons, I've been playing it for...maybe 5 or 6 years now? My friends back home and I have TONS of campaigns...we've got a little bit of a short attention span, and we all like making characters, so many times we never "finish" them...plus, the World Builder's Guidebook is fun as hell to use. :mrgreen:

We also play all kinds of other D20 system games too, like the Star Wars, Wheel of Time, and Mutants & Masterminds variants. Of course, we played 2nd edition back in the day, and it was incredibly fun (though I think it came mostly from the characters we made, and not the actual rules, which were pretty clunky).

Unfortunately, since I went to college I don't play with them as much, though this summer we hope to get together and do it way more. I'm kinda sick of DMing though...on the other hand, my friends all (admittedly) suck at it so...yeah.

I have no real problem with calling it AD&D or D&D, both work for me. I really liked 3rd edition's rules, but not the new "h4rdk0r" gritty look. Ick. I want my high fantasy with chicks in chainmail bikinis back! :cry: 3.5 seems to be a lame way for Wizards/Hasbro/TSR/The evil oil companies to make more money from the product...plus they ruined my favorite spell, Haste, so that it's useless for spellcasters. *sad panda*
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[Beecham]

I'm sorry, I'm a loyal fan of the Wheel of Time, but that d20 system made me -cry.- It was just -bad.- When I ran it, I entirely trashed the channeling system for a looser one of my own. Just the fact that it existed though... *sighs miserably*

[Daniel Blackhand]

I haven't played one since I was in high school almost 10 years ago, but back than I was into them pretty heavy. I played a little AD&D and Dark Sun, but I spent more time with Robotech and RIFTS. I had some really great times with my RIFTS campaigns.
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[Tonberry]

I want to start reading The Wheel of Time. My friend said that they are really good books. Currently, I am reading R.A. Salvatore's books. I've read 10 books so far on Drizzt Do'Urden, the renegade drow elf. I've also read The Cleric Quintet.

[Masaya]

hahah oh dear god. I havn't played AD&D in a good year. Me and some friends used to get together and play it for about a year, then I guess we all decided we had better things to do with our time :-P. And see I have a low attention span, and ushually would almost get our intire party killed. By the time we quit, we had leveled our characters from level 1 to around 17. I was a bard, oh dear one of the most useless yet fun classes I've ever used. To compistate I was a Half-Celestial Bard, and all I did was run around supporting the party, and paralysing the enemy with noise. It was pretty fun. It was fun for a while, but I hated the fact my friends liked to think through everything before doing it. And they'd get pissed at me for always "walking into the dark cave blindly" or "drinking the glowling liquid that seems to be in that weird fountain". However our GM friend absolutly loved to use all of his tricks so it all worked out..
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[Trevoke]

What I've always failed to understand in D&D is ... Character development. How the heck does your character change and evolve unless it's "part of the plot" ? I mean, you're always with your group, so when do you do something on your own to get a chance to change?
_________________
There are weapons you cannot hold in your hand.
You can only hold them in your mind.
-- Bene Gesserit Teaching

[Ranadiel]

Well that really depends on the D&D campaign. Different DMs run their campaigns differently. There are some out there who play campaigns where all you do is get a tip of where some mosters are and then you go out there and slay them before moving onto the next monster nest. Then there are some very complicated ones(I've only heard of) that take place almost enirely in the court of a kingdom where skills and character personalities are really all that matter. In the latter type of campaign it is much more likely that the characters will get some time to themselves to develop.

One other way for a character to develop is through the NPCs. If a character is close to a NPC who happens to die it should cause the character to develop ther by causing the character to develop. However I suppose you might consider it as "part of the plot". To sum up character development it really depends on the campaign.

A thing to note about your post though is, in many D&D campaigns you don't spend all of the campaign together with the rest of the party. The most common of these instances are that the characters go a different way when you get into a city and meet up later. Another type of campaign that the characters might spend time apart would be in a mercenary campaign where the characters are part of different mercenary groups who happen to work together every so often. Although I haven't seen this type of campaign either because it would get rather coincidental after a while.

Before I finish this post up I would like to propose a new topic for discussion. What is the most interesting campaign that you have played in a Tabletop Roleplaying Game? I'll post mine later after I have though more about it.
_________________
"Ye shall be as gods."

Titles: Harmonian Tenki Star, Harmonian Jousting Champion