Whatever happened to Dungeons and Dragons?

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I'll tell you what happened, it got replaced by that POS game Magic. Eff Magic. Eff MTG in all its many holes.

Just that D&D used to be the game to play amongst nerds and no one in my area and certainly none in my circle of friends even plays anymore and it makes me really angry. I loved playing the first time. I got to go on quests and adventures with real people, rolling dice, having fun, making jokes and having snacks. it was a warm, secure and safe feeling. I wish I could get it back.

Have you ever considered setting up and advertising your own game at a local library or college campus? D&D still seems decently popular, depending on where you live. I live out in the sticks but have a community college nearby and I think people still play D&D there along with a plethora of TCG games.

I haven't played since AD&D. I think several overhauls have occurred since then; I'm not even confident enough to talk about it. My cousin tried to get me into MTG but I just couldn't get into it.

I noticed magic:TG players in my university.

I looked into it a little and it seems like it is easier to win if you spend a lot of money on cards.

in D&D you dont spend money to win.

You also get roleplaying snobs who don't like D&D cos it is just fighting, so you get divisions based on that.

D&D doesnt have to be about just fighting, if you are a good DM.

One game that roleplaying snobs like is Shadowrun, that game (when I played it) is open to a lot of exploits.

Powergamers or munchkins tarnish the roleplaying experience by being obsessed with power.

Shadowrun is a powergamer's paradise as the adept class has a ton of advantages and no discernable disadventage. They are good at a lot of things including fighting.

If you want faster reactions in shadowrun you have to pay 100,000 dollars for surgery and accept a loss in humanity, is you are an adept you just gain reaction speed when you gain a level

D&D is better balanced than Shadowrun.

Deadlands and Call of Cthulu are good games.

Traveller, anyone?

Cannot say I have ever in my life played that....but I have heard of it and sounds like had I lived in the era it existed, I likely would have been into it. From what I have seen though there is some sort of online game of Dungeons and Dragons, not sure if its any good though just saw a couple ads for it when I was browsing around looking for other online multiplayer games that might be as fun as League of Legends the one I play, thus far no luck finding such an online game.

I have played Magic, because my second year of college some people I hung out with played it so I played with them...but haven't in years so don't even know if I'd remember how. I also used to play with Yu-Gi-Oh cards with my brother....the game was more entertaining than the show at least for me.

I always thought YGO looked interesting, moreso than magic but then again I'm an anime fan and like the monsters and weird stuff. I actually have a bunch of D&D books, mainly 2nd edition mixed in with some third. I've never really gotten to play though but I do have some neat planescape books..moreso for the fluff and art.

AD&D 2nd edition is my favorite. There was enough new material coming out at a fast enough rate to keep my players and I going in the same campaign for 40 weeks out of each year for 7 straight years.

And it was about role-playing, not card-slapping. If we wanted to play a card game, we played poker or euchre. If we wanted to play a real role-playing game, we put the cards away, picked up our dice and started rolling up characters. No arguing about what color the best deck was or how much mana you should tap for a particular action. No, if we wanted our characters to dog-pile the balrog, then our characters dog-piled the balrog, and that's all there was to it.

Traveller taught us stiff lessons about character mortality. When an average character might have only 21 "hit points" throughout its entire career, and one hit from an energy weapon could do 4d6 points of damage, you learned quickly that precise execution of well-planned tactics could spell the difference between an acceptable victory and rolling up a new character for each player.

Paranoia was just plain fun, while Rifts and Shadowrun taught us that mixing genres would not bring about the Apocalypse.

Card games? BLECCH!

I've played mtg and it seems that yes, you need to spend more money to get better cards, better organization of your cards, and overall just looking good. I saw that RPGs were pretty big back then, I thought I might give it a try.......if there is anyone to play with... (star wars rpg? heck yeah dude!)

I'll take the card games over D&D any day, frankly, though I have an honest interest in both. Though, honestly, comparing the two seems bloody stupid, really. Liking one does not for a second mean disliking the other. That.... doesnt even make sense. At all. And no, "they're both done on tabletop" isnt a good reason. It's a dumb one.

Despite an interest and a desire, I dont play D&D for a few reasons:

1. It's a social game. Note that main, central quality: A SOCIAL GAME. Consider where we are and where this is being posted. I doubt I have to explain why point # 1 here is a problem to me. It's not something I absolutely couldnt get over, but it's still a problem. If you still dont get what I'm talking about here in point # 1, imagine me hitting you over the head with a dead fish over and over for being so bloody dense.

2. It takes a group. You need a GROUP of players to play that, to REALLY have a good session. This I know. If I want to play Magic or a variety of other games, card or otherwise, I need *one* opponent. That's IT. Just one. But D&D needs a group, so you need to know enough people to fill that group, they all have to have the same time slot available for it, they all need to show up for it each time, they all need to not hate each other.... and so on. All have to have the interest, all have to have the time. It's the same reason why, despite liking board games, I never get to play those, as most are designed for more than just 2 players, and... yeah. Nobody I know gives a damn about any of the stuff being mentioned in this thread.

3. HOLY HELL MY MEMORY IS TERRIBLE. Card game, board game? Everything is there, visually, in front of me. Even as a fan of Magic, I'm *going* to forget what individual cards do. This will happen very much at random. Doesnt matter how many times I've seen the damn card. I'm going to forget. The visual nature of it also means that it's easy to remember what events and moves have occurred. It's easy for me to see that such-and-such creature has this enchantment on it due to the fact that the enchantment is actually physically sitting on the creature card. Same with board games: I can easily see where my position on the board is, what the state of the surrounding spaces/tiles/thingies/whatever are.... and so on. With something like D&D, there's too much. You sometimes get SOME stuff represented visually... like position on a board that represents a dungeon or surrounding area... but in the real thick of it, there's about 50 billion details that happen constantly, and frankly, I cant remember them. Even if they happened 10 seconds ago. Nobody wants someone that has to ask about these things, over and over and over again.

4. It's roleplaying. Which feels like a form of acting to me. There's a couple of problems here: 1, definitely not something I"m good at. I can act like myself, or I can act like a really irritated version of myself. That's really about it. and 2, and this is the big major thing for me: it means ALOT of talking, and most people TALK REALLY SLOWLY. I've had chances to observe people playing D&D before, and just... uuuuuuuugh. They take 5 minutes to get out ideas that could be said in 30 seconds. And note: I dont mean they're taking long because of the acting bit. That part wouldnt bother me because listening to someone do that, particularly someone I know, would be entertaining and possibly hilarious. I mean the part where most of the five minutes is "Uh...." and "Um...." and stuff like that... you know what I mean. The unending talking also makes it harder for me to remember stuff, as each individual bit EXTENDS, taking longer to get from one action to the next. Now, of course, this really depends ALOT on the group doing the game. If my friends WERE to get into it, this actually would be unlikely to be a problem with them, specifically. But it's one of many reasons why I dont go looking for another group.

5. It's impossible to get anyone to play any of these with me, physically. Magic I can play online, though I'd rather play the physical version. I cant do that with D&D without some elaborate headphone setup (ugh!) and stuff like that, and I cant do it with the board games in most cases, and some parts just arent the same that way. If a game uses dice, I want to hold and throw the stupid dice. Not doing so just BUGS me. I dont even know why. It just does.



....sorry, a bit of a rant there, but these subjects frustrate me. I tend to get interested in things of this nature, but never get to DO them, which is annoying....

People still play it, though it's hard to get a group together since it actually requires planning and creativity. MtG is more straightforward in that it has defined rules and structure, whereas D&D is relatively structureless. I played D&D once and found it to be quite enjoyable, and I used to like playing Magic casually before my friends got into the tournament scene. I would love to get into a group where we can play both games, and maybe some others like Warhammer 40k.

Speaking of which, is there a cheaper/easier way to play 40k, like with papercraft versions of the miniatures?

What happened to D&D? Nothing happened to D&D. All of the books are safe and sound in my basement.

It depends on which version of (A)D&D you play, and how strict the DM is...though Gygax originally wrote the Advanced rules for tournament play, and encouraged other DMs to change the rules how they like.

Competitive D&D? O_o How does that work?

The only way I've seen to play it so far that isnt freakishly expensive is a program that can be found online, designed entirely to allow you to play any sort of miniatures game over the Net with friends. I dont remember what it's called, but it's easy to find as is the modules for 40k.

Of course, that's probably not what you're looking for.... if there's a way to play the physical game that ISNT hyper expensive, I've never heard of it. Games Workshop is infamous for their amazingly bloated prices. You can at least get the rulebooks online in PDF form, which can be useful if you have like, a tablet to easily access them. Other than that though..... everything is hyper pricey. If you want to play it with makeshift figures and board and such.... you'll have to make it yourself, most likely.

Damn shame, too. I think there's alot of people that WOULD get into 40k, with it being such a very deep game with tons of lore and such backing it up, but it's just too expensive for most. Heck, most of my friends would probably play that one, but I'm the only one that could afford to, so it doesnt happen. Yet another one of these sorts of things I cant play, bah.

Other than combat, the DM could setup situations that require cunning to overcome.

Also he could make it like a roguelike where there are situations that require careful actions and planning.

In my pessimistic mind Im thinking that it is just mostly combat

Set the game in a magical realm similar to 14th-century Florence (Tuscany), with the players going up against the political manipulations of the House of Medici, the Tradesmen's Guilds, the banking system, slavers, a corrupt Church, and an occasional mad wizard or two.

And then watch some card-slapping munchkin insist on playing a cyborg ...