After my last post, I stumbled on some YouTube videos about the dangers of playing Dungeons & Dragons. Like this 1985, 60 Minutes story below. You also get to see Gary Gygax being interviewed.
Category: How To
Dungeons & Dragons: Looking For Advice
Having read the “Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition RPG Starter Set” a few times now my mind is filled with questions about the game. But the over all question I have is How dose this all work? I wanted to start finding people here in Juneau with D&D experience that I could ask my questions.
One of the first places I tried was a used books store in down town Juneau called Rainy Retreat Books. There I met a very nice gentleman by the name of Royce Metz. He and I got into a long talk about Dungeons & Dragons. He did his best to explain to me the differences of Dungeons and Dragons 3.0, 3.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 4.0. He gave me some great advice about playing the roll of the Dungeon Master.
He also suggested the first three books from the DragonLance Chronicles to read. That the books would give me some good ideas for adventures and quests. So for a few bucks I picked them up.
I also went looking online for advice. I figured that I could not be the only person online blogging about the journey to learn Dungeons & Dragons. But after many Google searches I came back with two links I think are worth mentioning at the moment.
The first one is from Wizards of the Cost. They are the current publisher of the Dungeons & Dragons books. They have a pod cast section on their website. In particular they have a pod cast with the guys from Penny Arcade and Player Vs. Player playing Dungeons and Dragons that can be found here. I have found this so helpful! You can listen to them play D&D 4th edition, and get a real good feel of the game mechanics and how everything works together! I think this is one of the most helpful things I have found.
The second link I found is for a website called Newbie DM. This is a guy who blogs about Dungeon Mastering and the tips and tricks he has found that works best for him. For me it’s been an interesting read learning how this DM runs his games and the tools he finds useful for himself and his group of adventurers.
I still continued to look around for people to talk to who have had experience playing the game. I even spoke with my older brother Reza, about this on the phone. I asked him if he had ever played Dungeons & Dragons. To my astonishment he had when he was a high school junior in Vancouver Washington. (My older brother is just as much of a geek as I am!) Aside from needing the three core rulebooks, he told me a story about D&D. That back when I was much younger and we all used to live in Gridley Kansas, he had heard that a kid from near by Greenwood county, had killed himself. That one night while he was playing Dungeons & Dragons with some friends, his character had been banished to the Netherworld. This kid felt that the only way he could save his character from the Netherworld was to kill himself so he could go in after him. As my brother was telling me this story, I told him that I recalled hearing a version of it from my past. I might have even over heard Reza talking about this story with his friends or with our parents.
I can’t help but wonder if the story my brother and I heard was somehow related to the story of James Dallas Egbert III and what is refered to as the Steam tunnel incident. The steam tunnel incident is a set of urban myths wherein players enacting live action role-playing games perish. Mazes and Monsters is a 1981 novel based on inaccurate newspaper stories about the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III from Michigan State University in 1979. A 1982, made for T.V. movie called Mazes and Monsters (staring Tom Hanks) was based on the book. Just for fun I have added the movie to my Netflix Que.
Dungeons & Dragons: A Brief History
In my continuing quest to learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons, I have also been learning a lot about the games history. The game D&D stems from European war fair. A system was developed in the eighteenth century to simulate battle field scenarios. Figures represented troop movements and dice represented random elements in the battle. This was called War Game.
About one hundred years later, writer H.G. Wells published a simplified version of War Game for use of toy solders which he called “Little Wars“. Clubs for “Little Wars” started all around the world. Eventually Gary Gygax was part of one of these clubs, and he along with Dave Arneson took the game Idea and created what we know today to be Dungeons & Dragons.
Dungeons & Dragons: Is The Quick-Start Guide Any Help?
As I wrote earlier I picked up the “Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition RPG Starter Set” from my local book store here in Juneau Alaska. I spent the next several days reading the material that it came with. The first book in the starter set is called the “4th Edition Quick-Start Rules”. This has information on the game mechanics, as well as the game rules. It also comes with five ready made characters so you can start adventuring. To someone like me who is new to the game of D&D, this was all very intimidating to read. But I got through it.
The starter set also includes a “Dungeon Master’s Book” which contains rules for the person who will be taking on the roll of Dungeon Master. A Dungeon Master is the game organizer and participant in charge of creating the details and challenges of a given adventure. The Dungeon Master describes to the other players what they see and hear. Also included in the starter-set is a pre made adventures and pre made Monsters. Between these two books you can play a game of Dungeons & Dragons. However, with just my first read threw of the information I don’t think I could run a game. Not yet anyway.
Reading these books has caused my mind to exploded with questions! I have learned a lot about D&D after reading these quick-start books, but I was still left with unanswered questions. The game has such endless possibilities. I am already thinking about picking up the Three Core Rulebooks. I want to learn how to build my own character and monsters. I want to be the Dungeon Master in a game and come up with my own adventures.
But first I need to take a deep breath and re-read the these quick-start books a couple of times. I just really need to get down and absorb the information some more.
This starter-set also came with character and monster tokens as well as 3 sheets of double sided D&D Dungeon Tiles that can be used to adventure with. The included Dungeon Master’s book has a sample adventure using these tokens and tiles. But one thing is clear, the game can be played without tiles, or tokens, or even miniatures. All you really need is some Pencils and paper.
This starter-set is not with out a complaint however. The box it came in really is shitty. By shitty I mean flimsy and week. It really feels like it can fall apart any moment.
Dungeons & Dragons: Is It Worth The Cost?
I went looking online for the three core rulebooks that are required to play the game of Dungeons & Dragons. The Player’s Handbook, The Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the Monster Manual. Amazon shows the Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition containing all three core rulebooks for just over sixty six dollars.
Now sixty six dollars is not a whole lot of money really. But it was enough for me to take a step back and ask myself, “Are you really going to play this game all that much? It’s almost the same price of a video game!”
Some time passed with me looking off and on at the rulebooks on the Amazon website. Then one day I took brake from work and headed over to the local book store here in Juneau to see what they had in the way of Dungeons & Dragons. It was not long after that, I found myself staring down at a bin of multi colored dice, dice bags, playing cards for games like Magic The Gathering. I finally came across the Dungeons & Dragons section. The D&D section was on a book shelf on the bottom rack, near the back of the store. It was clear from the way the book shelf was arranged that they normally have more Dungeons & Dragons books available. But as it stood they did not have one rulebook that I could find. The upside to this in my thinking, was that Juneau was home to more Dungeons & Dragons players then I was currently aware of. This opened the possibility of a local community of information that I might be able to tap into.
As I stood up to got ready to leave the D&D section of the book store my eyes caught site of a blue box. I bent back down to pick it up and found it to be the “Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition RPG Starter Set“. My eyes widened as I read that the starter set contained “Everything you need to start playing now!”.
- Over 50 full-color character and monster tokens
- 3 sheets of double sided D&D Dungeon Tiles
- 16-page 4th Edition Quick-Start Rules
- 64-Page Dungeon Master’s Book
- 6 dice
To say the least I was stoked to find this! And for seventeen bucks I picked it up. I figured if the starter set could help me get a grip on how the game is played, then I would for sure know if investing nearly seventy bucks into the three core rulebooks would be worth it for me or not.