Mine as well. Sorry NAF1138, it was just something that popped into my head :).
But thanks to everyone for the replies.
Nah, it was interesting.
I don’t want to hijack here, but how does it work without graph paper?
I mean I understand the basic storytelling technique of “you are in a dark tower”, but without a measured grid, how can you make fair determinations about range and area-of-effect of spells and weapons?
Like say, “I see an orc on a distant ridge. I fire my arrow.” How do we consistently determine the outcome of an attack like that?
Either you use a battle mat and miniatures – or the digital equivalent if playing online – or you just use “Theater of the Mind” and wing it with the DM adjudicating if the goblin cleric was in range or if the rogue can successfully keep to the shadows and sneak around back.
What has gone out of fashion is the old thing where the DM says “You travel down the 50’ corridor and enter a 20’ x 15’ room with doors on the north and east walls…” and someone tries to scribble that onto graph paper and create a map so everyone isn’t lost. Alternate methods include the DM drawing it out on a battle mat as you go, having it all pre-drawn and covered, revealing it as you go, just sketching it in simple lines and shapes on a piece of paper or even just giving players a map at the beginning (obviously not showing secret doors, etc). While the purist may recoil at having the map “spoiled”, I honestly can’t say I ever felt like it detracted from the experience and I’d rather spend my play time actually adventuring than trying to figure out where we messed up and these tunnels don’t quite meet up. I think the greater emphesis on story-telling in 5e has largely done away with “adversarial” dungeon-making where Gygax once advocated for layouts that’d confound the players and require diligent cartography.
In my limited, online, all first-timer experience: You roll a d20, add any bonuses and the DM tells you whether you hit.
That’s a little glib, but it’s the essence of it. Our DM will have said something a bit more specific about the distance to the ridge so we know if it’s within range but we’re getting by fine without grid squares. All we need to really know is who is in movement range and who isn’t, who’s in ranged weapon range and who isn’t. Whether it’s 90ft or 100ft for the shot doesn’t affect the mechanics of it.
There was one occasion where we did have to stop and draw a sketch map from the DM’s description but that was just so we could get an idea of the general layout of a set of rooms, not so we could measure distances.
My “been running nearly 20 years, my youngest learn ed DnD on my lap” Friday night game moved to this combo when Covid hit. It works…ok. As the DM, my screen gets slow because of the number of players - number of combantants and layers.
Beyond20 is an add in that lets you roll dice (this may have been mentioned, I didn’t read through) a DnDBeyond character sheet into Roll20. Roll20s character sheets are horrible.
As someone who had a kid who started young (that I am moving into their first apartment), there will likely been good D&D times and bad ones. My kid moved in and out of our regular “adult” game throughout middle and high school depending on what activities they were involved in.
I’d go with DnDBeyond rather than physical books as a starting point - except maybe a players handbook to read on the go. A lot of DnD books are better online where they are much more searchable. But once a game store near you opens, definately go buy physical dice. Dice are magical…
Back when we were meeting IRL, I made a scratch off map for my players - which they loved. We are working through Dungeon of the Mad Mage, so I blew up the player maps supersized, had them laminated, and covered them with homemade scratch off paint. I’ve started to (again, IRL, move to mini terrain models for battles rather than a battlemap - it gives me better control over line of sight and verticals. Roll20 is great because the players can’t see what their characters can’t see (with some limitations) when dynamic lighting is turned on). So they are learning that in a dark dungeon, the 120 ft range on fireball isn’t worth much when your darkvision only lets you see 60 feet out. Which they “knew” but seldom bothered to remember and we’ve inconsistently enforced.
Some players are - for DnD purposes - maps and minis (or some sort of physical representation) players. Mine will pull out rulers to argue over distance and half cover and if I gave them a pure theatre of the mind encounter, they wouldn’t know what to do (which is strange - they’ve all played Fate and other types of games that rely on theatre of the mind - but DnD is played the way they started playing in 1978 dammit!)
A GREAT role playing/board game combo that is not DnD is Spectaculars - its SuperHero themed. But you create a world and characters and then run various missions through your world. But because the missions are more or less pre-written - and because you get to roll extra dice when you describe how you are doing something “not 'I punch him I guess” - but “I spin around to see him behind me, wielding my fist and clock him across the jaw” - its great RPG training for someone who doesn’t want to do the DM work or have someone around who does. Its best with four to six with someone willing to DM (run the game) though we had success with three with someone DMing and playing a character.
By way of illustration, Sunday night’s session involved a fight against a mage and 12 zombies at Old Owl Well.
Our DM’s description of the battleground (taken from the Starter Set book): “The mage’s tent is pitched in the courtyard of a ruined castle. The courtyard is approximately 60ft per side. On three sides the walls have collapsed to mounds of rubble. On the west side there is still a tower standing.”
That was enough for us to set up some basic tactics and describe what we wanted to do clearly enough so the DM knew what we were doing. 60ft is a nice distance for knowing how long it takes to cross the courtyard and whether a shot from the fallen walls is within normal or long range.
If we were all round a table, I could see the value of having a grid map to interrogate closely and plan out a highly tactical set of moves; done over Zoom, a looser descriptive style works better. (I think!).
This is so cool! I would love to play with my kids, when I’ll have them, if they are interested
Among other things, like books and classes, you should def play together! It can be tricky with just the two of you, it will require some work from you, but it can be such a bonding experience, you can build a character together, their behaviour, their traits, appearance and for a 10 yoit can be a nice development of imagination, improving the skills of negotiating, discussing. And sharing something with a parent is always cool!
[quote=“Jophiel, post:45, topic:854567”] … where Gygax once advocated for layouts that’d confound the players and require diligent cartography.
[/quote]
Eons ago, I remember some of those convoluted maps (.e.g the Spider Demon’s dimension) being a key part of the confusion and fun of the game. Just mapping out the multi-level lair was an adventure of its own for some of my fellow players. A couple guys even cared less about gaining treasure or improving skills than simply mapping out the dungeon correctly.
[quote=“Jophiel, post:45, topic:854567”]
. I think the greater emphesis on story-telling in 5e has largely done away with “adversarial” dungeon-making…[/quote]
Hmmm…that actually sounds appealing, then.
One of the reasons I let myself fade out of the gaming group was that the rule sets for 3.5e and 4e were becoming too mechanical and were micomanaging time and movement more than I was comfortable even paying attention to. It was all shifting away from a role-playing game of Dungeons & Dragons to a computational morass of Statistics & Situations
Since the old gang moved to Discord when the world went into quarantine mode, I might look them up again and consider lurking during a weekend session.
–G!
5E definitely moved away from a lot of the crunch of 3.x and 4E, and towards more narrative gaming. But that’s just following the general trends in the hobby.
D&D is still the big boy on the block, but outside of that, the trend in other RPGs has definitely been towards narrative and co-operative storytelling. In the 80s, the market was filled with games designed by people who thought D&D wasn’t crunchy enough: GURPS, Rolemaster, Harn, and such. Nowadays, you have RPGs like FATE, GUMSHOE, and Powered by the Apocalypse, which are explicitly “player-facing” and don’t merely encourage but require cooperative world building and storytelling by all of the players at the table.
PbtA games in particular tend to go out of their way to emphasize that the “GM” is just another player, albeit one with more responsibilities (they specifically don’t use the term “Game Master” for just that reason). PbtA games often have “GM Principles” that include some variant of, “Be a fan of the Heroes. Hit them had when the narrative demands it, but let them shine when the narrative demands that, and cheer their successes.”
I do a lot of theater of the mind. I have actually found that battlemaps can restrict new players’ imagination in combat. They start treating combat like a board game instead of a role-playing game. This isn’t universal, but I’ve noticed it when running RPGs at cons. So long as you write down how far people are when you first say, “The goblin cleric is 50 feet away,” I’ve found it easy to keep things straight, and that encourages a lot more chandelier-swinging, wagon-chasing, and other Errol Flyn-esque action in my games, which I’m always a fan of.
When I started playing D&D, I was 10. My parents bought me a 7-piece dice set, the 3 core rulebooks (Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual), and a pad of graph paper. I didn’t know anyone who played in school, so I asked my sister and my school friends to play. Maybe your daughter has some friends she used to hang out with in person who would be up for a Google Hangouts game?
However, after I got started, I was hooked. I have dozens of books from a half-dozen systems (including the one I developed on my own), and many, many dice sets. So, get ready for that. Game books and dice make great birthday and Christmas presents, though!
Playing online, I’ve mostly done via Google Hangouts, with everyone rolling their dice and trusting to the honor system to make certain they are not cheating. It works pretty well, since everyone wants to play the game. As a note, if you run a game for your daughter and friends, it’s easier if you and your daughter call in from different computers in different rooms. My wife and I have to do this when we play in the same game online.
I’ve done play-by-post several times. It’s failed more often than it worked, but for more story-focused games, it works well. The one time I got it to stick was in a gothic horror/political thriller game, and there it rocked, as I was able to slowly build the horror and tension in a way I could not have with a video conference.
Finally, I’ve run games at cons where a group of 7-12 year old girls sit down at the table, and they are just as into all the violence and kick-butt action as the boys are. Some even more so. My con games are for the Age of Aether system, so they have premade characters, but young girls just LOVE playing the big, brutal minotaur and smacking the snot out of anyone who talks down to them.
So ask your daughter what she wants to play, see if she has some friends who want to play, get her the basic tools, and if she gets hooked, prepare to buy fancy dice and many more supplimental rulebooks.
Welcome Jack - a far better name than Dinsdale Jr., if I may say so.
Yeah, by all means - buy your 10-yr old a set of dice, and 20 yrs later they’ll design their own games! 
Hope it’s OK for me to toot my kid’s horn for him!
Ditto for Thoroncir! I’d really love to return to Middle-earth with you all again sometime, if What_Exit is willing.
I’ve also been GM’ing a Star Trek: The Original Series-based RPG on another message board for almost a decade now. Any Doper is welcome to PM me for more info.