Unique British aspects of D&D in the UK?

[nerfherder]

The traditional mode of navigation in the UK is by pub names. Which is why changing the name or closing a pub is always so controversial.

Yeah, when meeting up for a drink in Newcastle, you often had to know the previous name(s) of pubs/clubs.

e.g. "Meet you at the Head of Steam.

Used to be the Eye on the Tyne.

Before that it was the Baltic Tavern.

Bonded Warehouse - yes, that one!"

 

[GuyBoy]

On the subject of pubs and directions, anyone ever play Pub Legs?
Doesn’t work on motorways (interstates to our US friends) but great on long journeys on A roads.

Driver is pub 1, first passenger pub 2, second passenger pub 3 etc, returning to driver to restart the count.
You get a point for every leg your pub has.
For examples:
Red Lion has 4 legs
The Minstrel has 2
Fox and Goose has 6
King’s Head scores 0

Keep a tally and, at journey’s end, the winner is anointed.
Passes the time on long journeys.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I'm in the Seattle area and I've noticed more and more roundabouts being put in over the last 20ish years. I really appreciate them on the backroads between towns because stopping at a 4-way with no one else in sight is annoying and inefficient.

I've visited the UK a couple times and the sense of awe at the age and history of things is real. I'm also from the West coast of the US, so I feel a similar sense of awe when I visit any historical site East of the Mississippi. On the flip side, I'm absolutely spoiled for wilderness and regularly use that as inspiration for my games. One example taken from less than an hour from my home:

 

[The Grinning Frog]

My aunt used to be a district nurse, and she knew every street name in Liverpool. So when she was giving directions she would rattle off a long list of street names. Leaving me hopelessly confused.

The traditional mode of navigation in the UK is by pub names. Which is why changing the name or closing a pub is always so controversial.

Yes it is, I forgot that. Not being a pub goer myself this has always been endlessly unhelpful!

 

[The Grinning Frog]

I'm in the Seattle area and I've noticed more and more roundabouts being put in over the last 20ish years. I really appreciate them on the backroads between towns because stopping at a 4-way with no one else in sight is annoying and inefficient.

I've visited the UK a couple times and the sense of awe at the age and history of things is real. I'm also from the West coast of the US, so I feel a similar sense of awe when I visit any historical site East of the Mississippi. On the flip side, I'm absolutely spoiled for wilderness and regularly use that as inspiration for my games. One example taken from less than an hour from my home:

My aforementioned wife is from Seattle and having been there I concur about your incredible scenery. I don't think she's run into any of those roundabouts on her visits back but I will be sure to tell her they now exist there!

 

[The Grinning Frog]

On the subject of pubs and directions, anyone ever play Pub Legs?
Doesn’t work on motorways (interstates to our US friends) but great on long journeys on A roads.

Driver is pub 1, first passenger pub 2, second passenger pub 3 etc, returning to driver to restart the count.
You get a point for every leg your pub has.
For examples:
Red Lion has 4 legs
The Minstrel has 2
Fox and Goose has 6
King’s Head scores 0

Keep a tally and, at journey’s end, the winner is anointed.
Passes the time on long journeys.

Brilliant. Could be done without taking turns but rather the first person to call the pub gets the points. Tally up at the end of the journey.

 

[General_Tangent]

As opposed to the unaccountably less popular enormous griffin park?

Griffin park used to be home to a very popular soccer team in West London known for having a pub at each corner.

There have been reports of people claiming to see the griffin flying, usually when it's a slow news day and the people might have had more than a few pints of ESB

 

[General_Tangent]

From a personal perspective I'd heard of D&D but it was the documentary series South of Watford hosted by Ben Elton that really opened my eyes and thanks to the magic of YouTube you can experience what it was like to play D&D in the 80s.

 

[jian]

WFRP, which is originally a home-grown English RPG, has many British tropes that make it different from D&D. That doesn’t mean that many British-run D&D games are more like WFRP - depends what you want from a game and you don’t always want grim peril and leprosy - but the tropes are influential and many groups will have played both. That’s also possibly true of Ars Magica, which was pretty popular here a decade or two ago.

Another mild difference will be the influential media. Nowadays these will be more similar in the US and U.K. (LotR films, GoT, anime, various fantasy novels and video games, Witcher, etc) but for instance, more older gamers in the UK will have grown up with Robin of Sherwood, a UK TV series that was very influential. Maybe more UK gamers will have read every Discworld book, that sort of thing.

 

[Voadam]

WFRP, which is originally a home-grown English RPG, has many British tropes that make it different from D&D. That doesn’t mean that many British-run D&D games are more like WFRP - depends what you want from a game and you don’t always want grim peril and leprosy - but the tropes are influential and many groups will have played both. That’s also possibly true of Ars Magica, which was pretty popular here a decade or two ago.

Another mild difference will be the influential media. Nowadays these will be more similar in the US and U.K. (LotR films, GoT, anime, various fantasy novels and video games, Witcher, etc) but for instance, more older gamers in the UK will have grown up with Robin of Sherwood, a UK TV series that was very influential. Maybe more UK gamers will have read every Discworld book, that sort of thing.

That's funny, my American group was playing WFRP in the 80s and a number of my current group were big Warhammer 40K fans. Also I have read and listened to a bunch of Discworld books (including the GURPS books) but I am not the megafan that one of the guys in my group is with the complete Pratchett bookshelf.

Its hard for me to think of that and stuff like Moorcock as not part of the just standard fantasy background for American D&D the same as Howard and Lieber and Vance. Probably a numbers and prevalence thing though.