D&D General How am I a D&D outlier? How are you one?

[TarionzCousin]

3. I use the rules for dungeon crawls.

What, exactly, are these? How are they different from what most people do?

 

[Lanefan]

What, exactly, are these? How are they different from what most people do?

Possibly referring to the 1e rules for movement while exploring a dungeon, wandering monster checks/frequency, mapping, monitoring light-source durations, etc.?

If not, I too am curious.

 

[Asisreo]

Possibly referring to the 1e rules for movement while exploring a dungeon, wandering monster checks/frequency, mapping, monitoring light-source durations, etc.?

If not, I too am curious.

Basically that, except I have a "dungeon crawl" DM screen that makes running the dungeon crawls much easier than flipping through the book.

So, I can quickly ask their marching order, their speed, their light sources, etc. as well as adjudicating what actions like map-drawing and scouting ahead entails. When they tell me what they want to do, rather than go to page whatever to know how discovering traps works, I have the rules in my face during that time, except put into actual natural language and not the spaghetti code WoTC decided to write it as.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Lets see....

1) - long campaigns - I like them to last a decades.
2) - I really prefer mid and high level play. levels 1-3 I find near torture, and 4-5 is where it is just getting good. As an addendum I detest the concept of E6
3) - I tend not to run major humanocentric games I like my taverns to look like Mos Esiley Cantina.
4) - I tend to ignore "canon" and "official" - I never use setting lore (unless I steal pieces for my own setting) and usually by halfway through the lifetime of the game I'm using more 3rd party material than WotC. (Did similar with TSR stuff, lots of Role Aides and Dragon material).
5) - never used minis. Every. If combat was detailed enough to need a map for that fight, we just used markers to indicate position.
6) - I tend to run very cinematic - encumbrance and other such tracking is ignored, and death is generally off the table unless it is dramaticly appropriate - The game isn't a wargame, or a battle of combat wits, but a shared experience.
7) - I like the classic alignment system and it being prescriptive instead of descriptive. If I don't want that feel, I'll play a different game than D&D.
8) - I tend to run High Fantasy / Big Darn Heroes kind of games, where the world will be at stake at some point. Also no non-good alignments - the characters are heroes, no adventurers.
9) - All gaming is FtF, never have done digital gaming, never will. In fact phones, pads and computers are not allowed at the table.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

double.

 

[Lanefan]

Lets see....

1) - long campaigns - I like them to last a decades.
2) - I really prefer mid and high level play. levels 1-3 I find near torture, and 4-5 is where it is just getting good. As an addendum I detest the concept of E6
3) - I tend not to run major humanocentric games I like my taverns to look like Mos Esiley Cantina.
4) - I tend to ignore "canon" and "official" - I never use setting lore (unless I steal pieces for my own setting) and usually by halfway through the lifetime of the game I'm using more 3rd party material than WotC. (Did similar with TSR stuff, lots of Role Aides and Dragon material).
5) - never used minis. Every. If combat was detailed enough to need a map for that fight, we just used markers to indicate position.
6) - I tend to run very cinematic - encumbrance and other such tracking is ignored, and death is generally off the table unless it is dramaticly appropriate - The game isn't a wargame, or a battle of combat wits, but a shared experience.
7) - I like the classic alignment system and it being prescriptive instead of descriptive. If I don't want that feel, I'll play a different game than D&D.
8) - I tend to run High Fantasy / Big Darn Heroes kind of games, where the world will be at stake at some point. Also no non-good alignments - the characters are heroes, no adventurers.
9) - All gaming is FtF, never have done digital gaming, never will. In fact phones, pads and computers are not allowed at the table.

I'm with you as far as #1 above.

After that, through #8 we probably couldn't be much more opposite if we tried.

For #9: I'll only DM in-person games but if I want to play I've no choice but go digitial until the plague is over. Phones and tablets are essential at my table, however, as most (nearly all, now?) player-side rules and resources for my game are online; spell write-ups being by far the most commonly referenced.

 

[Maxperson]

I read the DMG.

You spell damage funny.

 

[Ath'kethin]

An outlier? I guess the following, though some may be less outlier-y now than they used to be.

1 From the time I began playing (1993 or so) almost every group I ever played with had multiple girls in it. I never got the "boys club" aspects of D&D or it's culture.

2. I'm happy to restrict player options, even banning stuff that's in the Player's Handbook. If we are playing in an Ancient Greek setting, you can save your musket-wielding chicken-people or whatever for another campaign.

3. There's no wrong way to play, but some characters and even players are a poor fit for a given table. We do not need to accommodate one person's disruption at the expense of everyone else's fun.

4. I love alignment in D&D. It may be my absolute favorite aspect of the game. But as noted above, I'm not going to tell you you can't do something. If your Lawful Good paladin is slaughtering innocent people, we will remove the terms "Good" and maybe even "Lawful" from your sheet. And that will have consequences down the line.

5. I vehemently disagree with anybody who claims that D&D "can't do" genres beyond sword & sorcery or pseudo-medieval high fantasy. In fact, my preferred milieu is Victorian steampunk or gaslamp fantasy. But I'll also happily use the OD&D rules to run games set in ancient, historical, present-day, or futuristic worlds, both magical and mundane. The period or genre, after all, is just a backdrop—a coat of paint on the game. As long as there are "dungeons" (or the period-appropriate equivalent) to explore and hexes to crawl (even if a hex represents a cubic parsec of interstellar space rather than a square league of wilderness), the game itself works just fine. The key to making OD&D function in any setting is simply to keep the game about exploration and treasure-hunting.

It is shocking to me the sheer volume of people who insist that D&D "can't do" something. It I guess that's easier than admitting there stuff THEY can't conceptualize doing with D&D.

 

[Li Shenron]

There are probably others, but that is enough for now.

How are you an outlier? How do you feel like one?

I agree/share maybe only half of your preferences, but something tells me I would love to play with you.

Me, I am an outlier mostly because I feel D&D as a private thing, meant to be made your own by designing your additional materials, DIY props, and house rules (even though I use ZERO house rules in 5e, but I do have my own ways of managing stuff through rule zero), and I love playing with beginners, casual players and anyone with the attitude of wanting to learn rather than teach. The dark side of that is my hate for the most vocals manifestations of the hobby: I hate fanboys, rules lawyers, powergamers, people who make youtube videos to praise the latest books, simulationist theirycrafters, and generally anyone who gets excited about buying anything "new", without ever putting enough attention into the here and now of the game (if ever actually playing it).

 

[el-remmen]

I agree/share maybe only half of your preferences, but something tells me I would love to play with you.

Gosh. That is very nice of you.

If you were local I'd talk to you about joining up, except that I promised the one woman in my F2F group that if we got a fifth player it'd be another woman or a non-binary person.