D&D 5E Need Advice from USA troops working in war zones.

Ok. I have a regular jarhead(Marine) player who will be shipping out for a combat zone next month. Where and when we don't need to know. Jarhead is a good player and a good dm I hear so he does want to play when he arrives at station. Random Questions begins with "IF he is on base ..."
Q1. Does the Moral and Support contacts have access to printers so he can print out AL Adventurers and player sheets?
Q2. Is access to D&D restricted? Any in country rules about not shipping him Volo's, dice, etc?
Q3. Does a library of D&D book already exist?
Q4. Should Jasper just wait till Jarhead is over there and let Jarhead get the information from his specific duty location?

I'm no soldier, but couldn't he just bring his own dice along, as well as an usb-stick with pdf's of the core books? That seems pretty simple to solve.

jasper said:

Ok. I have a regular jarhead(Marine) player who will be shipping out for a combat zone next month. Where and when we don't need to know. Jarhead is a good player and a good dm I hear so he does want to play when he arrives at station. Random Questions begins with "IF he is on base ..."
Q1. Does the Moral and Support contacts have access to printers so he can print out AL Adventurers and player sheets?
Q2. Is access to D&D restricted? Any in country rules about not shipping him Volo's, dice, etc?
Q3. Does a library of D&D book already exist?
Q4. Should Jasper just wait till Jarhead is over there and let Jarhead get the information from his specific duty location?

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My answers are based on experiences from when I deployed over a decade ago, so may not reflect current operational parameters.

1) The availability of printers will depend on the base. If he ends up spending most of his time at a forward operating base, he's not going to game. I would be more concerned about accessing the Internet to connect with you guys back in the states, though. It's been awhile, but I suspect most bases aren't offering wi-fi for the soldiers. Operational security.

At Kandahar Airfield in the early 2000's, there was a computer room for soldiers to communicate with loved ones back in the US, but the connection was crap and you were limited to 30 minutes or something.

2) You can mail books and dice, no problem. It's not really any different than mailing stuff in the US, just an extra plane ride across the pond.

3) Not sure what you mean. If you mean online, I'm sure it's possible to find any published material somewhere. Base communications are heavily monitored, so he ought to think twice about downloading copyrighted material. If you're asking if there's a library on base that might contain D&D books, it's certainly possible. Again, will depend on the base. The Kanadahar 'library' was mostly crappy romance novels and westerns. Hopefully our soldiers have better reading material available these days, but I wouldn't count on many (if any) of them having a collection of D&D books.

4) No. Stuff like communicating with people back home can and should be discussed during the pre-deployment phase. You should encourage him to ask his superiors how viable D&D will be at their destination base before leaving. They might not know for certain either, however.

Depending on his specialty and ops tempo, best bet is as [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION] said.

Bring a bag of dice. And pdfs. Maybe core book if it fits in personal gear.

Word of caution, again based on specialty and ops, the focus in a combat zone may preclude that type of gaming. Other times its fine when you have downtime.

He really needs to scout the area, ask someone who has been there, and get a feel for it before showing up.

And if there is no internet available, or if the connection is just terrible, he might be better off forming a group with like-minded soldiers at wherever he is stationed.

It's been a long time since I was deployed, but my advice is don't plan around him. He's going to go from long times of boredom, to immediate super busy with no warning. We didn't have internet back then (it existed, but it was dialup and most people didn't have it), so most gaming was with fellow soldiers and you just dropped everything when an alert sounded. And it may be weeks before he gets back to a place where he could game to begin with.

Not sure how much has changed now though. Even if he has access to reliable internet, I doubt the part about dropping everything with no warning has changed much. shrug.

To give some context, soldiers do game. A lot. Even when deployed. Here is a hand made game of monopoly we created while deployed in Bosnia, living in a GP Medium canvas tent, so even when you're fully deployed, you can find time.

I was deployed in the early 90s so technology was way different. Some material was sent to me since I could not find room to pack my books in the deployment bag. I remember having some photocopies of some stuff and some dice that were shared.

What would be great to send is something like the free starter set of rules for level 1-5. It contains all the basic things you need. Maybe some printouts of monsters you could encounter and a few printed modules weather AL or not. All of this can be thrown away or left when he leaves the station. A few other things that come in handy may include one of the small notebooks with graph paper inside, 3-ring binder for keeping all the photocopies inside, extra dice, and some sort of mat to place figures on for mini play. There may be some blank ones or something that can be printed and put in the binder as well. People can use coins of something as their mini and do not need actual figures. I remember having a BINGO game from a dollar store that had little tiles with the number on that were used for monsters.

Hopefully today they have better support and a printer to use.

I’ve sent gaming material to the USO- not to specific soldiers- and had no issues. They were happy to get it.

But if my experiences as an Army dependent and my relatives’ communications from overseas- in 3 different branches- are any indication, it will REALLY depend on what Jarhead is doing and where.

There are some places where online gaming will be utterly impractical if not outright impossible for technical or safety reasons. There are also some few countries or regions where such stuff might be illegal, and therefore, confiscated.

Then there’s the portability issue. Material in digital formats may be the ultimate in portability, but keeping one’s mobile devices charged may not be the easiest thing. Ditto keeping them functional in extreme environments. If possible, keep things man-portable and ideally, pocket sized*. Dice should be mini-sized with a good case or bag. A small bag of counters, like go/pente pieces might be good, too.






* you might want to check out your local military surplus store to get a good idea of what kind of pocket etc. storage space Jarhead will have. The pockets are numerous, big and button down, but still limited.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Then there’s the portability issue. Material in digital formats may be the ultimate in portability, but keeping one’s mobile devices charged may not be the easiest thing. Ditto keeping them functional in extreme environments. If possible, keep things man-portable and ideally, pocket sized*. Dice should be mini-sized with a good case or bag. A small bag of counters, like go/pente pieces might be good, too.

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My experience in the military and the portability issue was actually the driving force in me when I created Compact Heroes. All the people who played RPGs back in the rear were playing Magic when deployed because cards were way more portable. Digital storage wasn't a thing back then because you had to have a bulky computer to access the storage. So I created a game that played just like a typical RPG but was portable like a card game.

Then technology made it super easy to transport your digital books and the game sort of became moot....Oh well, such is life lol.