I also seem to be having trouble checking my e-mail at the moment, but count me in if you can. note I was here early in the thread! See! See!
Got email, will travel…
what, it wasn’t that way?
It sounds like there’s enough interest for more than one game. I haven’t had a face-to-face gaming group in two years, so color me interested; but I prefer the chat-based systems as a primary tool for online play, with supplemental forums, so I’m willing to sit out of ronincyberpunk’s game in favor of another.
One other important concern, besides system and setting, though, is compatible play styles. We’re all nice people here, but the disparities in style and expectations even among good players can be stark. Powergaming or intense role-playing? Serious or absurd? Planned or random? Epic adventure or missions from job boards? Min-maxing or flavor-based character design? Dungeon crawls or affairs of state? The list goes on…
The differences can certainly be worked out, but it may be best for all parties involved to make it clear what kind of play style they prefer, what they’d find enjoyable in a game, and perhaps if we have enough interested players, split off into like-minded groups, schedules permitting.
I don’t mean to scare any new players off, and I deeply apologize if I have, but I’ve had a number of bad experiences with these little differences adding up, so I feel this is very important to take care of in the planning stages.
Yes, it might be a good idea, if there are 10+ people, to split into 2 (or more) groups, each with its own theme and setting- a monty haul game, for example, would be friendly to newcomers, easier to keep up with, and lend itself to a much simpler setting than a deep-immersion roleplaying game. We could also try grouping timezones together (roughly) to facilitiate play through some sort of IM service.
This looks like it may become confusing very quickly.
The way I see it, we can do this in one of two ways:
-
ron and another voluntary DM use the afforementioned system of “first come, first serve” and set the willing players between them.
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Those who have expressed their desire to play should briefly describe either their prefered play style or what they are in the mood for for this particular game the the DMs can weed them out.
I’m sure there are additional alternatives, but I think this may rapidly grow overwhelming.
You guys might enjoy visiting www.enworld.org, which is a RPG site with an emphasis on D&D.
I’m somewhat interested, but I’ve never really played D&D before, and I have no books (wait, that’s a lie, but the one book I have is a D&D variant, with simpler rules). I’m wondering if that would be much of a handicap to playing online, where it’s harder to ask to borrow the DM’s copy.
Well, I have a few minutes. I:
- Am not a powergamer or a rules mechanic
- Am not terribly serious; I like to RP, I just don’t get hung up over it
- Can adapt to any story style or adventure style
- Prefer not to have a detailed, minute-by-minute of my life background; rather just a framework that gets me to today. Allows me to adapt to the story.
- Don’t need fancy, special one-of-a-kind stuff to carry or happen to me. Story more important than stuff (as long as the DM making us go against vampires has given us sufficient chances to arm ourselves with stuff that can harm them…don’t laugh; I’ve seen some who hadn’t).
- Don’t believe the relationship between GM and player is adversarial. The player’s job is to be a hero, or part of the hero’s entourage, of the GM’s story. The GM’s job is to tell the story and make it exciting. The GM’s job is not to see how many ways he can kill the PC (Cthullu and Paranoia excepted).
Enough for now.
A few months ago, I made a post about this program for online P&P gaming. It costs money, though, so I don’t know if that’s the way anyone would want to go. There are a few more like it. OpenRPG (www.openrpg.com) is free, and there’s another one that’s something like ScreenMonkey or something.
While you’re playing, you could keep a tab open with the SRD: http://www.d20srd.org/ and have the majority of the rules at hand. It won’t give you everything, of course, but at least you’ll have the numbers for most things, and you’d have access to the equipment lists and such.
Yeah, I’ll line up next to that. I couldn’t be a powergaming 3.5+ ubergeek even if I wanted to - too long out of touch and no source materials more recent than a v3.0 Player’s Handbook. But I’ve loads of experience of most playing styles otherwise.
Alright, my game is full. I got emails from over ten people and I saw the two posted here saying to please hold their spot. Here is what I’m doing, I just went with the first six who emailed me. If the two who asked for me to reserve spots for them want to join my campaign, I’ll let them in, but otherwise I’m full. Since we’ve got someone else here interested in running, I hope no one is too terribly upset.
I appreciate Mind Gamer coming in here and trying to organize stuff, but I already had a good number of people in the chute so I’m just going to go with my original plan.
The six who got to me first were Revenant Threshhold, J. Z. Knuckles, acaos (a lurker), Nava, Happy Clam and another person who I do not have their board name (and don’t want to give out their email).
I’ll post the address of my forums once they’re online and you’ll all be able to come watch the drama unfold.
Cheers folks! And good hunting!
If you mean someone with my Doper name in the email addy, that was indeed me. 
Yeah, you! It was the whole prefix thing which threw me off. So yeah, you’re the sixth.
HURM. Well that solves that.
Who was the DM for the second batch? I don’t want to put too much weight on ron shoulders, so I’ll just jump into the next group … assuming one is in development.
Thanks for starting this up, ron! I’m glad you found all your players.
I’ll keep my hat in the ring as a player for now, then. DMing would be too much time commitment for now, I’m afraid. Here’s what I’m like at the table:
- I strongly believe the combination of role-playing and tactical combat is what makes D&D great. Better versions of just one or the other can be found in freeform role-playing, or tabletop war gaming.
- My preference is for roughly even time devoted to combat, exploration/adventuring, and interaction. (Exploration includes environmental puzzles and traps, and I don’t mind the occasional inexplicable logic puzzle.)
- I like my characters to have versatility, which keeps me from being a real min-maxer despite my head for numbers. I additionally feel that a character should be a concept foremost, with background and personality to accent that, and only after that a collection of numbers, to match.
- I have a preference for a connected, coherent plot, especially a multithreaded one, over a more freeform but player-driven style.
- Joking around out-of-character about ingame events at the table is great. It’s possible to overdo it, but just as often it’s what keeps the game memorable. Joking around about general events at the table is not so good.
- The players should be compatible enough to be friends. That is, don’t overlook a negative trait in a player that you wouldn’t in a friend.
- I’m very handy with the rules, and bring them up, or don’t, by the preference of the DM and players. I don’t care at all when we deviate for the sake of plot, narrative flow, simplicity, character concept, precedent, speed, or anything like that. Changes for no good reason often irk me, though.
- I prefer 3.5e with limited (DM-approved) material from the newer supplements. 3.0 and other game systems are fine by me. 2e and prior are not.
- I prefer 4-5 player games. 3 or 6 is stretching it but fine.
- D&D is often a very slow-moving game, especially online. I try to speed up the bookkeeping and the like as much as I can, and appreciate when others do the same.
If all that looks too concerned or overwrought to you, that’s totally reasonable. It takes all kinds, and we’ll probably both be happier in different gaming groups.
Mind Gamer - Well it was quite unintentional but I am glad to see this sort of response. I apologize, from the way you started posting, I thought you were going to DM as well.
So without a second DM, the two guys who asked me to save space are welcome in my game, email me once you get your personal email and you’ll be spots 7 and 8. I’ll hook you up with the forums and the like.
So put the word out, there’s a gaggle of Dopers looking for a DM!
Oh, sorry if I gave that impression. I should’ve clarified my intentions beyond just ‘interest’ there. I just like to organize things, and can get a bit overzealous.
Good luck with your game!
I’ve run D&D and d20 Future games through OpenRPG, and I’ve found it useable, though often frustrating. But I haven’t found any other program that quite does the job. Combined with TeamSpeak, it does pretty much make it possible to get the old gang together for a game. Check it out.
One reason people go for DnD 3.5 rather than other very popular games is that you can get the rulebook online. There’s also character generators (they roll dice for you and make sure you don’t use more talents than you have), charsheets and whatnot.