It’s been nearly 20 years since my fundamentalist mother made me burn my AD&D books after she spied the pentagram in the DM Guide. Apparently the game has grown, with revised rules and more books since then. One of my coworkers apparently plays with her husband and a few friends. She’s invited me to join. Or, more accurately, she asked if I’d be interested in playing online with them once the online MMORPG was up and running.
Now I’ve not RPGed, online or otherwise, since way back when; but I’m considering it. How different from the pen and paper game are Online games? I don’t really get into first-person shooters so I wouldn’t be interested if that’s all it is. Should I get the lastest rule books so I can be familar with the revised rules or is that not necessary?
I’d say go for it. the rules have changed quite a bit in the last 20 years.
One of the big things that has changed is how stats and AC is handled. THAC0 doesn’t exist, AC is now figured positively and almost every challenge is rolled on a single 20-sided die, rather then from various piles of dies with dozen sof modifiers applied from this rule and that rules.
Class templates have changed a good bit, as well. While the game itself has become more simplistic, that alone gives more room for creative character development (rather then spending 2 hours rolling out a single small party fight).
I’ll throw an example here that shows what changed with AC checks.
AC is now figured positively. 0 AC is terrible, and 20 AC is “pretty good”. If you have 20AC then an attack has to roll (+modifer) exactly 20 or higher total to hit you. If they don’t, then they miss…no questions asked.
The newer books are also more open to interpretation rather then requiring a nearly “every i dotted and every T crossed” method of doing exactly what the book says. It’s easier to impliment new monsters, game rules, quests and items.
Keep in mind, this is the D&D 3.5 series books I’m talking about - 3.5 was an update to 3.0 that fixed the Ranger from being an utterly useless class to be a fairly powerful class (as it should have been in the first place).
Only books you really would want is the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Player’s Handbook. Outside of that, anything else is full and an “MMOG” will contain the rest of the needed information.
To add to what Jeffy said, all races can now be any class and everyone can multiclass. In fact, it’s highly recommended that you do. There’s a lot of cool new classes now as well. It only took me one night to learn all the new rules, but then I was only away for about three years.
If you want to read more, much of the ruleset is available online for free (taking a cue from Linux, WotC open-sourced almost the entire thing). Here’s one of the better write-ups:
Online games lack the social interactions that make RPGs so much fun to begin with. At least in my opinion. I’d much rather play D&D or even a regular board game in person then I would online.
In a sense, there already is. Neverwinter Nights supports what’s known as Persistent Worlds, which are servers hosting what is, essentially, a MMORPG community.
Yeah, I’d like more detail on this D&D massively multiplayer role playing game. So far as I know, there’s no such animal. There’s Neverwinter Nights, which is reasonable faithful to the d20 system, and is online, but is not massively multiplayer. And I know a lot of people who run standard D&D games online, usually through a chat program or the like. And, of course, there are any number of massively multiplayer fantasy RPGs, but none that are actually D&D, as opposed to some other generic/brand name fantasy setting.
Can you give us some more details on exactly what game you’re playing, Homebrew?
From what I’ve read, the D&D Online designers are making special effort to force players to interact, I assume via a chat feature. I know that’s not the same as face-to-face interaction around a table; but it’s convenient when your party is spread around town and can’t all get together at someone’s house.
I’m still unclear on how actual gameplay happens in a MMORPG. With a plain old RPG the DM tells you what you see, each player says what they’re doing and on and on. How are players controlled online? Is it like Zork with pictures (dating myself somewhat, I guess)? Or a first-person shooter using the arrow keys for directions and a specific button for a specific action?
