Does Dungeons and Dragons rock, or what?

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• lol. +5

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  by MG1942 Has a Life Penguin on July 11th, 2007

• Thanks, That was the strongest person in that campaign too. When he was just level 5 the DM foolishly made us encounter a deck of many things. I had to draw four cards. Three of those four cards happened to be 50000 ex bonuses, lol, the fourth only 50 gems. But it was enough to put me way above everyone else, I was like a god character, lol. Of course, for that good fortune, the DM targeted me for a lot of hurting, lol, threw all sorts of things at me, even a dragon. Of course, that was another of my finest moments, I rolled a nat 20 on an intimidate check, and the wyrm rolled a nat 1 and ran away.

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  by WishUponAStar on July 11th, 2007

• As a DM, the highest character in my games was "The Great Grand Arch Mage" who was 50th level Magic user, 50th level Druid, and 49th level Illusionist.
  
  He was played and leveled up from a zero level nobody, for a total of 12 years by one of my friends, but I never allowed anything over level 50 ... 64 is too high for my worlds ... At 50, the Gods offer them a seat in the Deity Pantheon ...

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  by Takei-Shihan on July 11th, 2007

• LoL, well, my DM didn't prevent us from leveling like that. The campaign did start to get boring after a while, I mean, hacking through demons and devils in hell all the time, it got tough for the DM to design any original ideas that could test us.

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  by WishUponAStar on July 11th, 2007

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• LOL Ain't THAT the truth!!

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  by Dugald on July 29th, 2009

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• lol!

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  by travis bickle on October 22nd, 2006

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• Well, as much as AD&D may only give you stats, 3.5 is a bit different. And by a bit I mean almost entirely.
  
  3.5 gives ways to name dragons, personalities, what sort of stuff they may have etc. as well. As for GURPS, I've never played it, so I wouldn't know anything about the system. And why do you keep referencing AD&D? We've come a fair ways since then.

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  by Sofawall on January 28th, 2009

• AD&D as opposed to the old D&D which still has it's followers. In fact, I had a D&D Rules Cyclopedia that was put out in 1991, yet it was different enough from AD&D 2nd edition to require conversion rules.
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  I will grant that, especially with 4th edition, D&D has come far. However, getting the sort of detail I am used to in a game would require at least $500 worth of D&D books that are not cross-referenced in any navigable manner as opposed to under $150 worth of books that cite page numbers.
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  Plus, there is *still* the whole class/level thing that, despite being more customizable than previous editions, is still alomost as much of a turn-off to me as a woman with a penis.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on January 28th, 2009

• I'd like to point out that I still use 3.5, not 4e. And AD&D, if I recall correctly, was 2e. Any way you slice it, every edition of D&D has followers, except possibly 3.0. I never liked 3.0.
  
  I'm sorry, but I haven't played any of the games you have mentioned, but are you really saying that you can get the equivalent of at least 10 Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks for $150?
  
  And that's not counting the info from the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual, as well as the Expanded Psionics Handbook AND Unearthed Arcana, a book entirely of variant rules, which can all be had for free AND hyperlinked, online?
  
  As for the class/level thing, as I said, I haven't played GURPS or Shadowrun, so I don't know how they work, but good old class/level works for me ;)

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  by Sofawall on January 28th, 2009

• Monster Manual... MMII... Fiend Folio... setting books.... The Complete (insert class here), and you better get them all... Oriental Adventures...
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  I confess that I liked Unearthed Arcana, but I am used to that sort of thing IN THE BASE RULES!Sure, the base rules for GURPS now covers two books; one for rules and one listing all of the advantages, disadvantages, and skills required for creating a character for ANY setting/genre, whether it be real-world, fantasy, sci-fi, magic, psionic, supers... ANYTHING.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on January 28th, 2009

• Well, I'd like to say that my first two campaigns were run entirely using core only, not all those other books. Also, with the different classes, you will need more classes to describe the varieties of options for each class. As you said GURPS doesn't have classes, it doesn't seem to need that.

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  by Sofawall on January 28th, 2009

• Also, I just did some researching, and gurps seems to have over 20 books, not 2. Missed a zero there?

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  by Sofawall on January 28th, 2009

• Settings are more of a creative guideline. One nice change from GURPS 3E is that there are no new advantages or skills outside of the two books of the Basic Set unless you count the spells in Magic (GURPS treats each spell as a skill). Powers is a cool book as it gives ideas on how to utilize the stuff in Basic:Characters, but it's more of a stimulus for the imagination that introduction of new rules, skills, or such like as some other systems are wont to do
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  Compare that to the prestige classes of 3/3.5, some of which are ONLY mentioned in a book that players are not allowed to touch. Given D&D/AD&D's history of sprinkling such things in almost every book they print and their piss-poor cross-referencing, I'll take SR (3E or 4E) or GURPS any day.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on January 30th, 2009

• D&D 4E is a much better game, but also a quite different one. Different enough that some may consider it D&D in name only, much as Shadowrun which also changed it's core mechanics in the 3E -> 4E transition. I actually kind of like the changes, though it still lacks the flexibility I am used to. Thus far, it also seems to cut down dramatically on the number of required books.
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  BTW - GURPS 4E *can* be run on just the two books of the Basic Set while Shadowrun only needs one book. GURPS 3E could also be run on just the basic Rules but isn't really worthwhile unless you get at least two, the second being GURPS Compendium 1, which is analogous to 4E's Basic:Characters. GURPS 3E had some of the same problems as D&D did until Compendium 1 came out.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on January 30th, 2009

• You mean much like D&D *can* be run just on the three core books?
  
  
  Which are free online? ;)

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  by Sofawall on January 30th, 2009

• Not free online, but you are missing a lot more detail than I am as the GURPS and SR books contain a larger percentage of the stuff you need to run a fully fleshed-out character in a campaign.
  I suppose if you wanted to run stripped-down characters then D&D could do that too, but it's kind of like running a stripped-down car; I like to have doors and a roof on mine even though it'll run fine without them.
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  In the end, it's all personal preference. I like the more free-form points-based system and dislike high fantasy. I suppose I could go for d20 Modern but even that would feel like trying to run Halo 2 on a 386.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on January 30th, 2009

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• RFlagg, we're the same person.

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  by EL1 2 on October 18th, 2006

• Wow, I've found like three totaly kindred spirits on this site.
  (Who's names I will withhold for their own sake.

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  by RFlagg on October 18th, 2006