D&D: Kazakhstani style

[Talvisota]

Fellow ENBoard members:

I have gotten a few emails about this recently, so I thought it would be best to announce in thread. Pardon my intrusion!

Until last Saturday, I had been gameless for four years. I had moved to Kazakhstan in the Peace Corps and got a great job offer afterwards so I decided to stay. (What the heck would I do in the States, anyway?)

But, recently I had found another American, who is also doing development work, who was of similar mold - wargames, RPGs, etc. Still, two is few.

Then, miraculously, I noticed one of our local embassy employees organizing a MTG deck during a power outage. Flabbergasted, as they are not sold here, I put him under ruthless interrogation. Who plays MTG? Any wargamers here? RPGers?

Turns out, he had heard of D&D through friends while on program in the US, and was quitre interested, and had friends willing to learn.

"But no one has the rulebooks or anything," he said. Quick-draw PHB, and the rest is history.

So now we have the makings of a great group, and for training purposes, I am using The Sunless Citadel. After that, I'll use my own stuff I've been playing with as a creative outlet here.

The locals:
Cleric of Pelor
Bard (starts tonight)
Paladin of Heironeus
Wizard
The other American: a rogue who plans to take some fighter levels and Weapon Finesse the rapier

I DM in English as I am naturally not as erudite in Russian. However, the local players use Russian. Basically, for ease, we all use our native tongue around the table. Of course, lots of English drop-ins, like Armor Class, class names, etc.


Thanks for all the words of encouragement and assistance!

 

[Frostmarrow]

This just makes me feel so GOOD. I've got tears in my eyes, for crying out loud! I hope you'll have a long and glorious campaign.

 

[Zappo]

This just makes me feel so GOOD. I've got tears in my eyes, for crying out loud! I hope you'll have a long and glorious campaign.

Somehow, somewhy, I can't help feeling exactly the same way. It's great!

 

[Henry]

As I was saying in your Character Sheet thread, I certainly wish your group well. It is so far the only group I have ever heard of who games in more than one language at the table. That would be worth it just to hear it alone!

Good gaming! (Or however you say that in Russian!)

 

[A2Z]

I'll repost my idea again, maybe PC or Morrus we'll see it this time. Of course I know they're busy and if it's a lot of trouble to do I just say forget about it. Still it'd be interesting to see the statistics of membership. Anyway here it is as posted in this thread.

"It'd be interesting if we good get a list of how many members are from where. I wonder how hard that would be or if Morrus could just print something out from the member list. I'd like to see what percentage of members are from what parts of the world."

 

[Piratecat]

Saw it! There's no way to do that; many people leave the location field blank, or put a fantasy location in it. A person would have to manually sort through all 3000+ members. No thanks!

If I had to guess, I'd say that 35% of members are from the US, 25% from Europe, 20% from Canada, 10% from Australia, and 5% from elsewhere (Asia, Africa, South America.) You can judge by a certain extent by how much traffic the board receives in North America's "overnight hours."

Oh, and Talvisota? I'd like to echo the others: that is just too freakin' cool.