D&D General What did you think of the Stranger Things D&D game?

[jgsugden]

I enjoyed it. Basketball was more realistic and clearly feels like a life changing moment for the character on the show

Never had a moment where we we were standing up and throwing the dice down the table. Yes rolls that all depended on but nothing like that

I've been in plenty of moments where everyone stands up and watches a roll. I also remember quite a few cheers.

 

[Weiley31]

1) Vecna is not missing his whole left arm!

Forgivable really. Besides, I always thought of Vecna as being a more hands on kind of guy really.

 

[payn]

I've been in plenty of moments where everyone stands up and watches a roll. I also remember quite a few cheers.

Man, I miss that...

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Never had a moment where we we were standing up and throwing the dice down the table. Yes rolls that all depended on but nothing like that

Whether or not anyone actually ever stands tends to depend on the physical set up of the table. As I remember the episode they are playing at exactly the sort of giant complicated battlemap where I find myself naturally standing to look over it and to reach my piece. And in such set-ups I am particularly likely to be standing for a big, important roll.

Much more importantly, everybody standing was evocative of the way big momentous die rolls feel, whether you actually stand or not.

Really the more unusual part to me was the player huddle away from the table and DM. I've had plenty of conversations like the one they huddle for, but I've always just had them at the table. But, once again, such conversations definitely feel like a team huddle away from the DM sometimes, even if that's not really what's happening.

 

[Azzy]

Do I wish it were more accurate? Sure. But I thought it was fun, kept the spirit of things, and was nicely dramatic.

 

[cbwjm]

I pretty much don't care about the accuracy, it was just fun to watch. It looks like it would have been a fun game to be in.

 

[jgsugden]

...Really the more unusual part to me was the player huddle away from the table and DM. I've had plenty of conversations like the one they huddle for, but I've always just had them at the table. But, once again, such conversations definitely feel like a team huddle away from the DM sometimes, even if that's not really what's happening.

I've been in groups where the players go out of earshot of the DM to strategize, but I think of that as a bit of a red flag. Well, not so much red ... orange flag? It shows that the players feel like the DM is the enemy, rather than the one facilitating the storyand that the players don't feel like the DM can separate what the DM knows from what the NPCs/monsters know.

I tend to see this less with DMs that try to have the monsters act like the monsters rather than like their play pieces in a strategy game. If mindless undead act mindless, if hungry beasts act like predators, if intelligent enemies try to stay alive, etc... I tend to see it less often. It isn't a perfect correlation, but when I have seen it when I am DMing, it is usually something I subtly (or what passes for subtly for me) ask about with a few of the players to see if there is something I need to realign to address. Sometimes it is just the nature of the player. Sometimes there is a player that doesn't yet trust me as a DM. Either way, I usually take it as a sign that I can make them more comfortable.

 

[Dausuul]

1) Vecna is not missing his whole left arm!

2) was there critical hit rules in the 80's ? I always thought it was more of a houserule thing that became a rule in somewhat recent editions.

There weren't officially crit rules, no, but it was a very common house rule. And RAW wasn't really a thing back then--even folks who thought they were playing strictly by the book usually weren't.

In general, any time we're talking about a game from the TSR era and especially 1E, one should assume a heaping dose of a) house rules and b) misunderstandings of the official rules, which were labyrinthine enough to baffle Baphomet himself. In the D&D game that opens the Season 1 premiere, Will has to make an attack roll with a fireball, which is certainly not by the book... but the kids might have assumed that a damaging spell constituted an attack and thus required an attack roll.

IMO, the only thing that's really inaccurate is the use of "rogue" instead of "thief." (And I'll be honest, I didn't even notice that until y'all pointed it out.) I'm just going to say that Erica decided on her own to call it "rogue," and then later in life browbeat some D&D designers into adopting that term for later editions.

To the original question--that scene was awesome, and I really appreciated the goodies they tossed in for D&D players. Obviously there's the "Vecna lives!" reference, but I especially loved the reveal where everyone freaks out at the cultist missing a hand and eye. That kind of reveal, getting that kind of reaction, is the sweetest, purest joy a DM can know. (And it was a special gift to D&D fans, because no one else in the audience would have had a clue what it was about.)

 

[Dausuul]

I've been in groups where the players go out of earshot of the DM to strategize, but I think of that as a bit of a red flag. Well, not so much red ... orange flag? It shows that the players feel like the DM is the enemy, rather than the one facilitating the storyand that the players don't feel like the DM can separate what the DM knows from what the NPCs/monsters know.

True. Of course, that kind of adversarial mindset was pretty common in 1E--and looking at the Hellfire Club and its DM, I would absolutely expect to find it at their table.

 

[wicked cool]

Was vecna in 1e? I have never personally been in an adventure with the hand of vecna