
Destroy All Monsters: A Journey into the Caverns of Dungeons and Dragons (2006) - smacktoward
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200609/?read=article_lafarge
======
shostack
I played D&D with the Gygax family almost every weekend as a teenager. They
were fundamental to shaping my teenage years and beyond.

I will never forget randomly stumbling into The Game Guild in Lake Geneva on a
school trip, meeting the group of people playing D&D in the back room filled
with soda and pizza boxes, and then finding out that the DM and another player
were actually Gary's sons, Ernie and Luke. I drove up every weekend to play
for 2 years from that point, and every weekend when back from college.

It helped me come out of my shell and become more social, and caused me to
start my own local D&D group. This eventually turned into me growing my own
group of friends after having moved and not knowing anyone. I created another
group in college with the same result. I also of course jumped at the chance
to join one at work when a colleague started one up which has brought me
closer to my co-workers.

It also taught me physics and math, because our entire party almost got
incinerated due to a miscalculation of fireball volume. I'll also never forget
casually mentioning a Mordenkainen spell, only to have one of the players make
some joke indicating that he had created the spell. Turns out the original
Mordenkainen was one of his characters. And someone else there was Bigby, and
Tenser.

No real point to this point other than to thank the Gygax family for making my
teenage years more memorable.

~~~
j9461701
I hope you mentioned to Mordenkainen his swords were invaluable!

Anyway, that's the advantage of both DnD and CS. They're do new you can still
often meet and talk with the founders of the entire discipline, or at least
one step removed.

------
Endy
In all honesty, I just got home from my (rather large) gaming group. At one
end of the room they were playing Nobilis; I was teaching FATE Core to a group
of new players. The worlds in the games are different, the rules are
different... and yet I can't help but agree completely that there's a grand
culture of cooperation, friendship, and acceptance among hardcore gamers.

If that's some kind of "fantasy world", where everyone works together,
believes in each other, and where the arguments are resolved with a roll of
the dice? Then I'm more than content to live in that fantasy; and work every
day to make it closer to reality.

The author got in before I did (I started with the computer games based on 2E
and moved up and down from there), but I can relate to everything he said. I
can even relate to Gygax himself as the author says it:

"From which you could conclude, I guess, that games are everything for Gygax,
or that everything is a game; but I don’t think that would be quite right. I
think that he has found a way to live."

I want to keep fighting to find that way to live. Where someday, I might have
a home with an open-door policy, where we can sit down and for those few hours
reclaim something essential about the human existence, regardless of that
world outside.

~~~
glogla
Take a look at Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. It's very different
than other RPGs but very cool. It was made by the same author as Nobilis and
she has a PhD in Computer Science and it kind of shows :)

------
simonh
It's an ok article, but it heavily conflates D&D with all tabletop role
playing. For example in one of the very few mentions of other RPGs it says
this about Vampire:

"some of them switched over to D&D, with the result that there are more women
gamers now, "

As though if they hadn't switched to D&D they wouldn't really be gamers. Also
this article predates Pathfinder eating D&D for lunch. The latest edition of
D&D has made a strong comeback, but there's huge diversity in the RPG market
now with lots of high quality games catering to every taste in terms of
complex or lightweight game mechanics, tactical or narrative focus, and every
conceivable genre. I hooked my daughters on the hobby using a great little RPG
called Mermaid Adventures. It's a great time to be a gamer.

~~~
Endy
It also conflates V:tM with Mind's Eye Theater. The author is basically a
classic AD&D grognard, and looks down on things like White Wolf and
storytelling games.

~~~
j9461701
I love the oWoD. But it doesn't take a grognard to argue it had huge problems
in terms of rules. Anyone who wants to play Mage needs to first find a new
magic system, because the one in the book straight up does not work properly
if you think about it for five seconds.

They also injected a ton of New age-y politics into everything, which annoyed
many people. The player base of Mage basically revolted at one point and
decided the ostensible villains of the setting - the Technocracy - while far
from perfect, where a damn sight more sympathetic than the insane hippie
anarchist weirdos (aka Mages) who are pissy humanity no longer lives in mud
huts and who can't accept science and technology did more good for the average
person than they ever could.

~~~
e12e
> Anyone who wants to play Mage needs to first find a new magic system,
> because the one in the book straight up does not work properly if you think
> about it for five seconds.

The premise of Mage is that an awakened can bend reality to their will[1].
There's no _need_ for a system... Just a Good GM :)

[1] À la The Matrix and the graphic novel The Books of Magic by Gaiman.

~~~
csydas
I was going to say something to this effect since the MtA had a very free and
easy magic system that was more about manipulating reality in subtle and not
so subtle ways than "I cast fireball". It was a really creative and fun idea
for magic without mages outclassing everyone like with DnD (3.x).

What about it doesn't work cause I've spent quite a bit more than 5 seconds
thinking on it and I find it works quite well.

~~~
j9461701
Tell me, in concrete, non-ambiguous terms, what will or will not generate
paradox and if so how severely for performing the following feats in front of
10 sleepers. Directly cite the rule book for each example:

Using magic to levitate a feather.

Using magic to levitate a plane in the sky.

Using magic to levitate a person.

Using magic to levitate a person wearing a jetpack.

Using magic to levitate a person wearing a jetpack _not_ turned on.

Doing each of the above, but while wearing a stage magician's outfit and
explicitly calling each one an "illusion".

Vulgar, coincidental, perceiver w/ consensus, perceiver w/o consensus - blah,
it is so needlessly complicated and has too many self-contradictory answers.
You're left spinning your wheels trying to run the game according to the rules
white wolf created, ignoring the rules entirely and playing purely
narratively, or finding alternative rules that are actually decent.

~~~
e12e
As for your concrete question, I feel your missing (but touching on) the most
central aspect of magic in Mage; the paradigm. The jetpack can straddle the
gap between magic and shift in paradigm just as, in the world of Mage,
airplanes did when they first allowed humans to take to the skies en masse -
as opposed to being reserved for a medival arch mage wearing an "icarus
outfit", or riding a broomstick...

As with all rpg rules if the gm and/or group haven't internalised the rules -
make it up as you go along! Create house rules, and make tweaks if the game
leans too heavily in any given direction.

Ed: which is why: > Tell me, in concrete, non-ambiguous terms,

Doesn't make sense; I can't know what your game world is like, and what feel
your campaign has.

If you _do_ want a more regular rule system that might work in a similar
setting I advice having a look at Ars Magica - which appears to have been a
major source of inspiration for Mage.

~~~
j9461701
>Doesn't make sense; I can't know what your game world is like, and what feel
your campaign has.

I'm not asking you for fluff, I'm asking you to tell me - under the game's own
rule system - what the result should be to very common situations in
Ascension. These are basic mechanics here, stuff that comes up literally every
time I cast a spell and which the book goes into laborious detail to describe.
This is not a subjective or frivolous question, if I want to play the game as
written I _need_ to know the answers.

Anyway, my point was the game is mechanically an utter mess and I think these
replies pretty much proven it. Not a single one of you can answer my question,
and you all tacitly admit the ST needs to invent his own magic system and
explain _that_ to the players rather than actually attempt to use Ascension's
real rules.

>If you do want a more regular rule system that might work in a similar
setting I advice having a look at Ars Magica - which appears to have been a
major source of inspiration for Mage.

Or just use the Mage the Awakening magic system, because White Wolf
_themselves_ recognized Ascension's system was garbage and prioritized fixing
it in the nWoD. They even wrote a supplement whose sole purpose was to
facilitate players backporting Awakening's magic to the setting of Ascension,
called "Mage Translation Guide" \- letting you have Awakening's gameplay with
Ascension's setting.

~~~
e12e
Why would you want to play _any_ role-playing game _" as written"_? Make it
your own.

------
tomkat0789
A fun story of an old D&D player who meets and interviews Gary Gygax.

1\. It's funny that he's so dismissive of the roleplaying aspect of D&D. Some
groups I've played with got tons of laughs from roleplaying, the more
competitive players less so.

2\. What a mess copyright seems to have made! Avatars and Ilfs? Let the guys
play!

My initial takeaways as a 10 year off and on player and dungeon master. RIP
Gygax!

~~~
owyn
Dave Arneson was the other creator of D&D and in retrospect, I think he was
the one who really drove the RPG and world creating aspect of it. Gygax was
more interested in designing the rules, but Arneson created the first campaign
(Blackmoor).

There's a book called "Playing at the World" that goes into the details of all
this, but my takeaway was that Gygax was more of a rules guy, and Arneson was
the story teller.

Also a great read if you want to know a lot about the corporate side of the
whole situation...

~~~
vmarshall23
"Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons" is
good as well.

------
fapjacks
D&D is one of the most fundamental drivers of my life from childhood and into
adulthood. It really sits at the core of my being where few other things
exist. The first time I ever played, I ran the game, and I run the game almost
ever since. I ran a series of campaigns in a handful of warzones when I was in
the infantry. What an image that is: A group of grown men in uniform with
machine guns gathered around a table shouting like children about which spells
to cast and who's carrying the treasure. One of my life goals when I get older
is to write and publish my own system. Kinda absorb things I like (and "clean
up" the things I don't like) about Pathfinder and various D&D systems.

------
forapurpose
A question for D&D players and dungeon masters: How can a dungeon master
possibly do their job?

They have to write every character (besides the the players' own characters),
including personality, knowledge, skills, intellect, emotional state,
motivations, relationships, etc. They have to understand what a medieval
blacksmith, farmer, soldier, barmaid, princess, etc. all understand. They are
supposed to create whole towns, which requires some knowledge of politics,
economics and a host of other issues. It's an effort worthy of a major novel
or movie, and in fact it seems far more: Because it's non-linear, you never
know which person your players will run into or which building they will walk
into, so you would need to prepare, it seems, far more people and settings
than are used.

On top of that, the dungeon master has to act all these characters, a one-
person show that would overwhelm the greatest professional actors (and win
every acting award if they pulled it off). Even more, because of the non-
linear story and the chaos player decisions introduce, the dungeon master must
improvise constantly and in a way that is consistent with the ongoing story
and all the other characters they have portrayed and will portray.

Who has the time? It sounds like years of work. And even more incredibly, who
has the skill (nobody who ever lived)? Yet it's done, and done well enough
that millions enjoy it. How is this all done in reality?

~~~
pjc50
This is the kind of comment that makes me wonder if you've ever seen a
theatrical play, let alone non-professional improv.

Once you realise that pedantry isn't part of the gameplay it gets a lot
easier. It merely has to be good enough for those sitting at the table - who
themselves are also invested in their suspension of disbelief.

> effort worthy of a major novel or movie

That's the thing, RPGs do not exist in a vaccum, nor are they trying to
portray a particular historical era realistically - they are based on fantasy
novels. That means you don't have to ..

> understand what a medieval blacksmith understands

... you merely have to make up what the minor character of a blacksmith in a
Jack Vance novel might say. If you want to do some common tasks there is
probably a table for armour repair or weaponsmithing costs in AD&D 2nd edition
somewhere.

There's usually a bit of tension between railroading the players into set-
pieces versus dropping hints and relying on them to cooperate, but that can be
all part of the fun.

> consistent

Consistency issues can usually be fixed with wizards.

(edit: the whole issue is addressed by Shakespeare at the start of Henry V,
"can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France" etc)

~~~
forapurpose
> makes me wonder if you've ever seen a theatrical play

Interesting - after reading the comments I realized my love of the arts (as a
reader/viewer, not as a practitioner), including theater, was the source of
many unconscious assumption behind my question. I was (am) thinking that role-
playing could be art by different means. I saw a couple of old modules by
Gygax, and the stories and characters were really good, better than many
movies I've seen. A good dungeon master could make quite a story - but perhaps
the demands are just too high.

How would my question imply that I wasn't familiar with theater?

------
contingencies
Obligatory mention that D&D essentially spawned one of the greatest and oldest
lineages of computer games: the _roguelike_.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike)

~~~
setr
Dungeon crawlers, [jwc]rpgs, text adventures, adventure games in general, and
probably many more I'm not immediately thinking of all have some significant
linkages to tabletop rpgs.

More generally, most early video games, and thus the elder genres, were based
on board games and sports (y'know, existing games).

DnD -> roguelike isn't particularly notable in that sense; though the fact
that the influence was from DnD v1, v1.5, and not the later editions (like
[cw]rpgs) is somewhat interesting, as it depicts a significant shift in the
aspect of rpgs people were interested in (shifting from exploration and combat
to actually roleplaying)

------
StanislavPetrov
D&D blazed the trail for gaming systems like GURPS. No matter his personal
shortfalls Gygax was a legend that influenced culture for decades.

------
devrandomguy
Check out Nerdarchy on YT if you want to level up your DM skills, just let
them chat in the background while you flesh out the campaign. Try not to
squirrel too hard; if they give you an awesome idea, just make a note for next
week and then carry on with what you meant to work on, if you can.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/Nerdarchy](https://www.youtube.com/user/Nerdarchy),
goes well with beer and colored mechanical pencils.

------
cpeterso
If you are interested in the history of role-playing games, I recommend Jon
Peterson's _" Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and
Fantastic Adventures, From Chess to Role-Playing Games"_. It is a monster 720
page tome. Very comprehensive and well-researched.

[https://amzn.com/0615642047](https://amzn.com/0615642047)

------
SubiculumCode
For the busy, play by post is a great option.

------
retox
(2006)

------
frigen
I never played D&D.

Promise.

