Topic: Best Actual Play Thread Ever (Read 1,280 times)
vladtolenkov Level 5 Thaumaturgist member is offline
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 321 Karma: 14
Best Actual Play Thread Ever « Thread Started on Jun 9, 2008, 2:35pm »
Okay, I know they're playing the new 4E game, but everybody who's EVER played D&D should check out this thread over at the Story Games forum: Shadowfell With My Seven Year Old.
Given OD&D's freewheeling anything goes sort of style this type of play seems particularly useful to look at. I mean hacking apart Lego Kobolds and rolling some dice sounds like a blast to me.
Joined: Jan 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 309 Location: The Mighty City of Jakalla Karma: 5
Re: Best Actual Play Thread Ever « Reply #1 on Jun 9, 2008, 4:28pm »
Hmmm...I dunno.
Seems like daddy is helping create another powergaming munchkin. The kid gets over-excited every time he kills, hacks and destroys.
I mean, it is heart-warming seeing a dad play with his son. My old man always thought I was a freak for liking fantasy and sci-fi.
But reading descriptions of kids getting misty-eyed with glee when they find out about (4th Ed absurdly powerful) sneak attack makes me cringe a bit for some reason.
Seems like daddy is helping create another powergaming munchkin. The kid gets over-excited every time he kills, hacks and destroys.
I mean, it is heart-warming seeing a dad play with his son. My old man always thought I was a freak for liking fantasy and sci-fi.
But reading descriptions of kids getting misty-eyed with glee when they find out about (4th Ed absurdly powerful) sneak attack makes me cringe a bit for some reason.
There is a lot more to those sessions than powergaming, Edsan, if you haven't read all the way through! Just about everyone who plays likes killin' monsters! But the kid shows mercy to the vanquished, has a lot of interactions with townsfolk, etc.
(And I thought they depowered sneak attack as compared to 3.x? Could be wrong; haven't looked at the new PHB)
(And I thought they depowered sneak attack as compared to 3.x? Could be wrong; haven't looked at the new PHB)
Maybe in the long run, I dont know. It begins at +2d6 and in terms of DPS it's d**n near impossible to beat at 1st level. When you add to this how easy it is to get "Combat advantage" the rogue starts kicking more ass than the fighter.
I've only playerd D&D 4th once but d**n! The rogue could kill!
[quote author=max board=general thread=998 post=15854 time=1213051585]There is a lot more to those sessions than powergaming, Edsan, if you haven't read all the way through!
I thought I had read it all when I got to the comments part.
(And I thought they depowered sneak attack as compared to 3.x? Could be wrong; haven't looked at the new PHB)
Maybe in the long run, I dont know. It begins at +2d6 and in terms of DPS it's d**n near impossible to beat at 1st level. When you add to this how easy it is to get "Combat advantage" the rogue starts kicking more ass than the fighter. I've only playerd D&D 4th once but d**n! The rogue could kill!
As for comparisons I'm not a 3.5 player so I can't say.
Re: Best Actual Play Thread Ever « Reply #5 on Jun 12, 2008, 6:32pm »
One of the things I really like about the linked thread is that, for all the griping about 4e in some parts of the Internet, the kid is basically doing the same thing we all did when playing super-early D&D.
I played in the same Keep on the Shadowfell adventure (in a different group, obviously), and the encounter at around post 62 completely destroyed our group.
For background, for people who haven't played it: there are these kobolds hanging out in a cave behind a waterfall; they've got these advance guards along the river bank, and then some reserve troops deeper in the cave.
Our group mowed through the advance guard, and didn't realize we were approaching a "big" encounter. So we cavalierly entered the caverns, ended up getting bogged down in a bad spot, surrounded, and then exterminated.
D--the kid in this example--ends up outwitting the encounter by sending in a spy for recon, risks his Wizard in a dangerous gambit so his warriors can make a surprise attack on the flank, and then realizes that killing the Big Bad Guy isn't worth a lot of resources when all he really has to do is slow him down. Then, the kobolds he "rehabilitated" earlier end up giving him a major tactical advantage.
In other words: my friends and I--who have been playing various versions of D&D for a long, long time, and pride ourselves on our "role-playing sophistication"--ended up getting creamed because we weren't thinking creatively. We said: "Duh, we have all these options on our character sheets, we don't need to think any more. All risk has been removed, we're invincible." And we were totally wrong.
Combat in 4e - much like combat in any of the lower levels in OD&D, Classic D&D, 1e, 2e - is hard. And just like in any other version of D&D, the game isn't really about combat. It's about maneuvering through the imaginary world with enough skill and grace so that you don't even have to fight -- or, if necessary, you fight on your own terms.
This little kid understood that perfectly, even despite all the bells and whistles of the new edition, which so many people think strays from the core of the game. You defeat challenges by out-imagining the Dungeon Master.
So: hats off to Tony's kid, hats off to Tony, and hats off to the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons, which has gone through some huge changes in the past 30-odd years but is still alive and kicking!
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Re: Best Actual Play Thread Ever « Reply #6 on Jun 12, 2008, 10:12pm »
This is freakin' inspirational.
And not just for me. I was telling my girlfriend about this tonight. She's only ever played 3.5, and that about 3 times in a convention game a friend of ours runs. There's always a bunch of kids in his game, and she loves it.
She allowed as how she'd like to run something like that for the kids (as a kids-only game); we've both long thought that the kids should have their own separate game.
Anyway, she'd be the "DM" and I'd play the monsters (as co-DM). (I'd also coach her on the rules, but hey, if we use OD&D, there hardly are any rules!)
I'm pretty stoked about trying this. Kids are so creative (as the subject of this thread proves).
Plus, it might allow me to get a boatload of Legos, which is always good...
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 942 Karma: 27
Re: Best Actual Play Thread Ever « Reply #7 on Jun 13, 2008, 12:44am »
Having a referee and a monster player is sweet! How do you get Legos in the deal?
That kid has chops, all right. In my brief experience with 3E, I was struck repeatedly by the contrast between my fellow players' mastery of rules minutia and their lack of tactical acumen (or even common sense). By rights, we ought to have had several TPKs. The DM claimed he didn't "fudge," but I don't believe it.
One of the things I really like about the linked thread is that, for all the griping about 4e in some parts of the Internet, the kid is basically doing the same thing we all did when playing super-early D&D.
I played in the same Keep on the Shadowfell adventure (in a different group, obviously), and the encounter at around post 62 completely destroyed our group.
D--the kid in this example--ends up outwitting the encounter by sending in a spy for recon, risks his Wizard in a dangerous gambit
In other words: my friends and I--who have been playing various versions of D&D for a long, long time, and pride ourselves on our "role-playing sophistication"--ended up getting creamed because we weren't thinking creatively.
(...) hats off to the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons, which has gone through some huge changes in the past 30-odd years but is still alive and kicking!
a) James, don't feel bad about your TPK. We all know that daddy must be fudging rolls so badly we could probably smell the plastic burning if we where there. If I had a kid I also would not want to kill his inner child by TPKs and have to deal with a tantrum.
b) It is interesting to see that despite 30+ years of "evolution" D&D still delivers the same type of experience to a 7 year old. Why then the bloated pagecounts and increased prices?
c) If I was running a whole party of PCs I too would have no problem risking one of them for the benefit of the group.
Good luck getting the guy running the wizard to do that and risk is *only* PC on a normal game.
d) Why is everyone getting so excited about whether D&D 4th works well for kids in the first place?
e) And whats with all this emo, tree-hugging "creative thinking" crap? It's a kid and an adult pushing plastic soldiers around a table, people!
I'm going to rain on everyone's parade here. . . . a) James, don't feel bad about your TPK. We all know that daddy must be fudging rolls so badly we could probably smell the plastic burning if we where there. If I had a kid I also would not want to kill his inner child by TPKs and have to deal with a tantrum.
Edsan, you don't know Tony; I do (to the extent you can know somebody on the Internet): fudging a roll is very much out of his character, and he regards loss as a necessary learning experience. (His game Capes is all about learning to lose strategically.) As he notes in the thread, he was aware of the final Irontooth encounter as a party-killer, and felt trepidation about how his son would react - which suggests that he wasn't planning to pull any punches.
Also, for social context: Story-Games is full of RPG designers, who believe almost universally that a design where the DM is forced to fudge is a bad design. (Whether this is true or not isn't relevant: it's just the attitude over there.) Giving an AP report about a hotly anticipated new game in that context, reporting any fudging would be important.
(He does mention that he didn't always have the firmest grasp on the rules on a few minor points, and at one point allows the rehabilitated kobolds to return. These do not strike me as fudging per se, though I can see how others would disagree.)
Quote:
And whats with all this emo, tree-hugging "creative thinking" crap? It's a kid and an adult pushing plastic soldiers around a table, people!
What's with your angsty curmudgeon "crap"? Two people you don't know are having an amazingly good time with a role-playing game; one of whom is doing it for the first time and apparently having a blast. If you think all he's doing is pushing plastic soldiers around, you haven't read the thread.
ETA: the kid is helping to build the setting (literally), adding color to combat scenes (dragon scales; literally speaking in Kobold to trash-talk his enemies); suggesting romantic entanglements (Eric's going to fall in love with her); choosing very heroic acts (giving all of the villagers' money back - in 20 years of playing some species of D&D, I've never seen players do this unprompted); rehabilitating his enemies through mercy and kindness (again: pretty uncommon IME); suggesting future plot points (when Irontooth comes to town...); and coming up with a good strategy to defeat the villain.
To reduce this to "pushing plastic soldiers around the table" is like saying your Clanless Barbarians game is just rolling some dice and talking. It may be literally true, but it misses the point.
« Last Edit: Jun 13, 2008, 7:48am by jamesnostack »
What's with your angsty curmudgeon "crap"? Two people you don't know are having an amazingly good time with a role-playing game; one of whom is doing it for the first time and apparently having a blast. If you think all he's doing is pushing plastic soldiers around, you haven't read the thread.
(…)
To reduce this to "pushing plastic soldiers around the table" is like saying your Clanless Barbarians game is just rolling some dice and talking. It may be literally true, but it misses the point.
a) What the hell is a curmudgeon? And how can you make any assumptions about me, when you know me not, but dismiss my options on “dad” because you know him better than me? Kinda’of slanted over there he?
b) Call it what you will. It is still a dad and a kid pushing plastic minis around. I used to play make-believe all the time with my old man when I was 3. No dice, no minis, no expensive rulebooks. I must have been a d**n phenomenon back then and just didn’t know it!
c) My game is just that, a group of adults rolling some dice, talking and having fun with it. We don’t try to turn it into more than it is. Unlike certain dads and their cheerleading fans.
d) I did read the actual-game, thread, enough to see it was boring, uninteresting and filled with undeserved overblown praise to something that has been happening since Gary and his mates brought the kids around.
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Re: Best Actual Play Thread Ever « Reply #13 on Jun 13, 2008, 10:06am »
edsan, do you like going and telling preschoolers there is no santa claus for your weekend entertainment?
The kid is having a great time with his dad and experiencing this hobby we all love for the first time. Why "rain on everybody's parade"? What was the point of your post? To trash 4e? To trash the excitement of a father and son? or our excitement?
edsan, do you like going and telling preschoolers there is no santa claus for your weekend entertainment?
Why yes, all the time! And in weekdays I like telling them about death and how there is no heaven.
The above is a joke, ok? Keep your hats on.
Quote:
The kid is having a great time with his dad and experiencing this hobby we all love for the first time. Why "rain on everybody's parade"? What was the point of your post? To trash 4e? To trash the excitement of a father and son? or our excitement?
What was the point?
I have been invited for a PM talk about what you ask.
Thinking back I believe the answer to your question would be:
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