DMless D&D?

[Mark]

Say a group would like to play D&D but without a DM. I'd like to read discussion of ways to play the various editions without a DM. Post or link to any that you know. Can the DM be replaced with a deck of encounter cards, a random encounter table, or some other mechanic for such an experiment? Can a solo game be sustained over the course of leveling up? Throughout a campaign? Thoughts?

 

[Markn]

4e DMG has an example on how to do this.

 

[Halivar]

I am currently trying to develop a sandbox game that will rely heavily on encounter decks, treasure decks, and random events. Some of those tools could be handy in such a game. I plan to start a thread on its development when planning goes into full swing in a couple weeks.

 

[Celebrim]

Say a group would like to play D&D but without a DM.

Ok.

Can the DM be replaced with a deck of encounter cards, a random encounter table, or some other mechanic for such an experiment?

No, the DM cannot be replaced by anything but a human level intelligence.

You could however still play D&D as a skirmish game using wandering encounter tables. While I wouldn't recommend using 1e as a tactical skirmish game (because it would get really redundent), 1e is well suited to generating random encounters.

I'd say that before 4e, there'd not be much point in that, but 4e would probably play decently as a skirmish game. The monsters are fairly simple and don't require alot of DM tactical mastery to use well, so its less of a problem having the NPC's controled by someone who has a vested interest in seeing the monster 'do badly'. Tactics with monster are usually pretty straight forward compared to 3e, for example, because the monsters usually have one obvious trick and one obvious board position that they are trying to maintain. (Compare with a 3e Noble Salamander or most outsiders (barbed devil for example) with their varied array of possible tactics and long list of powers.) And, 4e can kill alot of time with tactical play and the whole encounter system supports stand alone meaningless encounters alot better than any prior edition.

So yeah, you could do it.

Can a solo game be sustained over the course of leveling up? Throughout a campaign? Thoughts?

I guess that depends on how interesting the players find tactical skirmish games. Alot of people are complaining about how boring and repetitive 4e combat is in the context of a full fledged story line, so while 4e might be my edition choice for a tactical skirmish game I'm not sure that even then it's got enough to maintain interest in combat for combat's sake. However, I remember meeting junior high kids back in the day who had level up characters to high levels simply by picking entries in the MM, rolling up an encounter, and then fighting them, with no real 'DM' required, so I imagine some people would dig it.

The game would still be better with a DM, a map, and at least a thin gruel of a story.

 

[Crothian]

XRP has a book on DMless D&D. I don't recall much about it becuase it wasn't anything I was interested in. But DMless D&D should be possible with a group of fair players.

 

[Mark]

4e DMG has an example on how to do this.

What aspects of that are actually, potentially useful? How much of that is good for just random fighting? How would it work for a sustained campaign?

 

[Woas]

maybe give World of Warcraft a whirl?

 

[pawsplay]

It might be fun to play a 4e game where each player gets one PC and four mosnters, and the PCs cannot attack each other but the players actively attempt to kill each other's characters.

 

[Mark]

I am currently trying to develop a sandbox game that will rely heavily on encounter decks, treasure decks, and random events. Some of those tools could be handy in such a game. I plan to start a thread on its development when planning goes into full swing in a couple weeks.

That does appear to be on track for this manner of playing. Bump this thread with a link, please, once that gets off the ground.

 

[Ariosto]

The Strategic Review #1 featured a system for solo dungeon adventures, which was included in the 1st ed. AD&D DMG. It's basically an expansion (mainly with map-generating algorithms) of the tables in the original D&D set that mostly have analogs in later Basic sets. One suggested addition was to have a friend write up some special rooms and seal the descriptions in envelopes.

One could also use the rules for wilderness expeditions (including random terrain generation in the DMG, iirc). The original set suggested using the map board from The Avalon Hill Game Company's Outdoor Survival game, but almost any hex-gridded map of suitable terrain could do; the main thing is to decide which hexes are castles and towns. For excursions in the latter, the DMG encounter tables are again handy -- and so is Cities from Midkemia Press (if you have it).

Kellri's Dungeon Designer's Netbook #4 (Encounters) is generally useful.

Just about anything of that sort, meant as an aid to the DM, can be helpful when effectively serving as one's own DM.