Dungeons & Dragons

Anyone else here like to play Dungeons & Dragons? Share your D&D stories!


I haven't been playing for that long, and I've actually been DMing almost longer than I've been playing now. We play 5th edition and the guy who got me into D&D decided to move away, and he was the DM. I decided to take over since I love storytelling and it's been a lot of fun.


The current campaign we are running is in the lands of Camelot. Thus far the party has been sent to recover holy relics. Most recently they were sent to the land of Giants to recover the Holy Tomes (10 commandments). Last week they had an epic boss fight where they managed to shut down a few portals from hell that were unleashing demons upon them. I also successfully killed my first character. However now they have to figure out how to carry these multi-ton tablets down a mountain that is basically the same as Devil's Tower in Wyoming. I look forward to it.

I play a lot of tabletop games with my family (like car wars), but haven't had the pleasure of playing DND. They aren't into that kind of thing..

Super jealous!

I've played a few tabletop RPGs but so far haven't touched DnD.

I love DND right now I am playing a lvl 7 chaos gnome gambler. My party currently went to a special plane our DM made up for Halloween. And for those who haven't played there are sites we could play at if you are willing to give it a shot I would love to get another game going with some new people although I mostly play 3.5 I could give 5e a shot

Challenge dragon to an eating contest
Eat his challenge just barely, a whole goat in under a half hour
Challenge him to eat my unholy staff
Hedidittheabsolutemadman.jpg
My staff absorbs his throat and he dies

Good eatin' on his corpse for a week.

I'm actually looking to start up a game online if anyone is interested in playing or Learning DnD 5e. One of my favorite moments involves a little teamkilling. Epic level game, me and this demon Fighter in our party have been at each other's throats for weeks now, My Half-Orc Barbarian/Fighter challenges him to a one on one fight.... then I cheated and used a Horn of Valhalla to summon a horde of vikings to pluck down his health.

I remember the first time I went through Tomb of Horrors, with a rather sadistic DM. That was not fun, lost some dear characters.
Second time through was several years later with a nicer DM, still a death trap though. Its hard not to use OOC knowledge in a total deathtrap dungeon like that though.

Blackthorne said:

I remember the first time I went through Tomb of Horrors, with a rather sadistic DM. That was not fun, lost some dear characters.
Second time through was several years later with a nicer DM, still a death trap though. Its hard not to use OOC knowledge in a total deathtrap dungeon like that though.

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I like building my own world from scratch, got one I've been wanting to use for some time now just not enough players to step into it.

DnD is regularly used for building the worlds from scratch. Which is nice because the default settings are a bit too full of different races and things for my liking but using just some of the races/monsters and whatnot will allow for setting creation without the need to make new rules for all the creatures.

Tomb of Horrors is actually supposed to be metagamed, it's a tournament dungeon more so built to see how far you got before dying. Also bring along an army of henchmen to throw at traps.

Now for D&D, I cut my teeth learning 3/3.5 back in highschool by playing a half orc wizard that would do silly things like setting fires for the hell of it and collect trophies from all his kills, including once a drow snake whip that bit and poisoned him. After that I didn't play for a while as my DM, my physics teacher, moved away and I didn't come back to the hobby for a few years; but when I did it was playing Pathfinder before it become the bloated mess it is.

There I played a drunken barbarian hobgoblin that got eaten by a roper only to be killed when the party set it on fire; and this after he had made a fairly epic standing jump across a twenty foot pit concealed in mist while being chased by a small troop of orcs. At least he got to shine for a little while. He got replaced by a rogue that didn't last long as a fellow PC grabbed an evil magic item and turned the rest of the party evil.

So then we made up new characters, gunslinger for me, to hunt down the old characters. This we did mostly through guile and magical power; because while touch AC might be nice for firearms you don't really do a lot of damage. After that campaign stalled due to out thinking the DM we tried a campaign where everyone was a caster and entered my Siege Mage half orc. Another campaign where my character didn't get to shine directly through their magic; but just in the creativity of the players in taking out the bad guys. We would have entire sessions where it was pointless to rule dice as we had stacked the deck so in our favour and just out thought the DM again and again.

That was a fairly common theme for the DM, even when we switched to Exalted 2nd briefly.

About that time I began to run campaigns, first time lasted no more then a single session and resulted in a massive orgy of all my players save two who were staying in the next room over in an inn. Only reason they weren't involved was because the one was healing the other after harpooning them. I then tried my hand again and didn't get past the first session and honestly don't remember much but that was less my fault and the result of two of my players, one of them being the old DM, getting a divorce.

It was then that I decided to run a smaller group and let my players go wild using templates and gestalt characters. This would be the last time I would run pathfinder as I had grown tired of it's bloated mess and stating up NPCs and monsters had become too much of a chore and there were just too many fiddly bits. It was still one of my more successful campaigns as it did reach a satisfactory conclusion. The players were travelling to the ruins of an old dwarven city that had been lost in jungles, of course the ruins were over run by the descendants of the original inhabitants of snakemen. Dwarves had simply killed them and taken their homes before being corrupted by what lay beneath and destroyed themselves. There was a race between the players and some crazy cult attempting to re-awaken an old one like god monster which almost came throw; but they were able to defeat the main villain with heavy wounds.

About that time I was searching for something new and came upon what is and will remain my favourite version of D&D, Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Which is like a cleaned up Basic/Expert D&D with ascending AC, a really good encumbrance system, weird flavoured magic and a decent skill system. It turned me towards older editions of D&D and I've just been kind of obsessively collecting older things since. My pride being a copy of Judge's Guild Ready Ref Sheets which is akin to the Dungeon Masters Guide book prior to it's original release for AD&D. I also have the old Forgotten Realms grey box which would probably be the only version of FR that I would use for game purposes as it predates most if not all the novels. But going back to LotFP, the company had put out some of the best books, Vornheim is a perfect guide to running an urban campaign, Veins of the Earth is simply amazing for its art, layout and creative design for underdark campaigns, a fun bunch of adventures in Death Frost Doom where you can awaken a zombie horde that'll ravage the world if you're not careful, Tower of the Stargazer were you wander through a seemingly abandoned wizard's tower, Forgive Us which is a nice little urban dungeon, Scenic Dunnsmouth which has the most interesting village creator so that it's never the same small backwords place each time you visit, Towers Two written by former front man of Gwar Brockie, Broodmother Sky Fortress which will fuck your campaign world up with giant centaur hammerhead shark people, Qelong which is fantasy cambodia and a host of other stuff.

The OSR and it's fan community keeps me coming back to D&D and trying to expand and refine my world building in ways which pf never provoked. It got me to read the Appendix N books which lead me into following classic science fiction as I've developed an interest in Classic Traveller; but I digress very much here.

I've played and run a few LotFP campaigns. One where the players was a group of dwarven merchants that co-opted and took over a town in order to defend it against goblins. Another time while attempting to do a fantasy vietnam styled game they were wandering through jungles unsure of what to do while avoiding magic radiation and soldiers of a war poorly understood. That game group eventually died due to another divorce.

My latest group has been the most stable where I started running them with 5e; but converted them to LotFP as it's a system I can tinker with easier. Two of my players were black dragonborn who's acid damage inflicted hallucinations on it's victims and they worshiped Brohomet. There was a lot of dick sucking and fucking in that campaign, including the two dragonborn dating the same dwarf noble who didn't know he was dating two people. The game ended when the players achieved their goal of opening a brothel/opium den/fight club.

I then got to play in a one shot campaign as a slime girl that hid out in a fellow player's character as they were playing animated armour. That was a lot of fun, confused the party as the armour never spoke so they just heard my character.

Currently I play in a Dragon Age game while running a Dark Heresy game on alternating mondays and we're plotting to start up a tuesday group that'll meet so many times a month for 5e where I'll be a player. I hope to snag a tuesday to run some LotFP and try an actual dungeon crawl with the Maze of the Blue Medusa.

Somewhere along the lines I also did some online gaming with roll20, a lot of failed games of trying to run LotFP; but did have some fun with characters burning down bars due to random rolls on a carousing table. I have had entire adventures spun off from a few dice rolls on that table and my players have always loved the chance for their characters to get drunk and roll that giant d30. As a player I had a short lived buddy cop routine between my character a pysker and friend playing a tech priest in Dark Heresy, a heroin smuggler in Call of Cthulhu and a communist hoping to topple a kingdom in an evil pathfinder game.

I love D&D, I love designing worlds for it, most of them for LotFP; but I've been developing a few thoughts for a 5e game.

As an added bonus I am born to be the DM as those are my initials.

. My first dungeon I played in was actually the Caves of Chaos, though they ran it as AD&D not Basic Set. I was totally hooked. Since then I ran D&D in 1st, 2nd, 3 and 3.5 many times, some for a few sessons, and some long campaigns

Also ran Rolemaster and LotR which was essentially a scaled down version of Rolemaster, and a number of smaller RPGs includng one that had an interesting Mana based casting system. I definitely love being a GM, world creation and the like, it is definitely much different today than it used to be, the world I use for most of my FRP games here is essentially the same world I have been running for campaigns over many many years, so many of the "historic" events I talk about were actually things done by past players.

Don't know if I will pick up 5e or not. last time I got into the game, we got 3e only to have them dump it for 3.5 e just as we started our first 3e campaign; which was a huge turn off to our group that had just invested in full sets of books for 3e. Left a bad taste in my mouth for sure. And of course, my old adventuring group we are all busy, most of us have kids now and some even grandkids.

Blackthorne said:

. My first dungeon I played in was actually the Caves of Chaos, though they ran it as AD&D not Basic Set. I was totally hooked. Since then I ran D&D in 1st, 2nd, 3 and 3.5 many times, some for a few sessons, and some long campaigns

Also ran Rolemaster and LotR which was essentially a scaled down version of Rolemaster, and a number of smaller RPGs includng one that had an interesting Mana based casting system. I definitely love being a GM, world creation and the like, it is definitely much different today than it used to be, the world I use for most of my FRP games here is essentially the same world I have been running for campaigns over many many years, so many of the "historic" events I talk about were actually things done by past players.

Don't know if I will pick up 5e or not. last time I got into the game, we got 3e only to have them dump it for 3.5 e just as we started our first 3e campaign; which was a huge turn off to our group that had just invested in full sets of books for 3e. Left a bad taste in my mouth for sure. And of course, my old adventuring group we are all busy, most of us have kids now and some even grandkids.

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5e got very different with how they release their books now. There's still the core 3, but only one or two give more information for players, most of them are just campaigns for DMs to run as is like Curse of Strahd, Storm's King Thunder, an the new one are just straight campaigns. Any new information you can find online or in the Vold's Book of Monsters.

5 is also a lot easier to pick up than 3 or 3.5, your skills are managed by your proficiency with them rather than a seperate pool of numbers to track, and just about every class has the potential for spellcasting within their class. Prestige classes are pretty much out the window and have taken up in favor of Subclasses. By third level you can choose which branch of abilities you want to go with, for example, the Fighter, He can take Champion, which gives him higher crit chance and more passive abilities, the Battle Master, which gives him active abilities based on attacks such as a parry or a riposte which can do extra damage, or the eldritch knight, which gives him spellcasting and the ability to do so within his own attacks.

5e has had a very slow production cycle as they are really hoping for it to be an evergreen product, at least that was one of the original stated goals back when it was still D&D Next.

Overall I don't mind the system, it's a lot of fun to play; but I'm not terribly keen on running it as I feel like there's not been a lot of support for DM's. Some setting and more monster books would be lovely. Still the fan community has been pretty amazing with the DM's Guild giving fans the chance to make and sell materials for 5e while not worrying about copy right.

About the only thing I can say against 5e mechanically is a lack of clear guidelines on a number of skills and the save system. Now every stat is a save but only those which you have prof. in will go up, less you do magic items. So if you're weak to one save and it's not your prof. then no matter what level you are still just as susceptible to failing your roll, not hard to see how annoying that would be. One common house rule I've seen for solving the issue is half prof. bonus for the other saves.

The character classes are interesting, for once I'm actually excited about the bard and the rogue can be down right brutal. I've also heard that they've finally fixed the monk; but I can't say for sure.

Nihilistic_Impact said:

5e has had a very slow production cycle as they are really hoping for it to be an evergreen product, at least that was one of the original stated goals back when it was still D&D Next.

Overall I don't mind the system, it's a lot of fun to play; but I'm not terribly keen on running it as I feel like there's not been a lot of support for DM's. Some setting and more monster books would be lovely. Still the fan community has been pretty amazing with the DM's Guild giving fans the chance to make and sell materials for 5e while not worrying about copy right.

About the only thing I can say against 5e mechanically is a lack of clear guidelines on a number of skills and the save system. Now every stat is a save but only those which you have prof. in will go up, less you do magic items. So if you're weak to one save and it's not your prof. then no matter what level you are still just as susceptible to failing your roll, not hard to see how annoying that would be. One common house rule I've seen for solving the issue is half prof. bonus for the other saves.

The character classes are interesting, for once I'm actually excited about the bard and the rogue can be down right brutal. I've also heard that they've finally fixed the monk; but I can't say for sure.

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Monk is cleaned up a bit from 3.5, still gets armor based on his Wisdom, but Barbarian gets that now based on his Con. He gets more active abilities based on his level, and can use them like spell-casting levels, in addition to whatever spell-casting he may take from his subclass, which is just Last Airbender based stuff.

I'm always looking to run a game, it's just a matter of finding players, someone send me a pm sometime and see if we can get something started.

So, I'm just gonna go ahead and type out what happened at my DnD Session this evening. Playing a good campaign, horror based, very Lovecraftian in nature, currently level 6. The party consists of Two Fighters (One Eldritch Knight (myself) and One Champion), One Druid, One Monk, and a Mind Flayer Wizard. The party is leaving a big impressive manor with a task to meet an agent in a dive bar in the docks. Once making it to the docks, the party realizes that they do not know where the bar in question is and decide to ask for directions. The Monk and the Champion decide to take this matter into their own hands, grabbing a passing worker and trying to intimidate him into giving them the directions. (Rolled a 1) In which caused several other workers to surround the party and a fight ensues with 2 (probably) innocent people killed. They got their directions and made their way into the bar.

Upon reaching the bar, the party tries to make their way through the bar, which somehow causes a big bar fight to break out. The Eldritch Knight, getting into things and forgets he's been afflicted with an undead curse (when in Rome...), grabs the nearest combatant and starts using him like a weapon to get through, the grab filling him with Necrotic energy and killing him instantly. The Druid, getting shoved around too much, casts a thunderwave, killing 5 more people around her and throwing them around the bar. The party gets their information, which is to steal a document from a powerful lord over the dock district, learns the guard are after them and ducks out of the bar out the back.

In which case, the party realizes that they don't know where the manor to steal from is and stops a hooker to ask for directions, the Monk and the Champion again try to intimidate a hooker into telling them what they want. Upon seeing this, the Eldrich Knight leaves to ask someone else with less threats of violence. The threatened hooker calls over her muscle, a Goliath, and attempts to rough up the party. (Rolled a 1, twice) Falls on the ground, unconscious and bleeding out. The Eldritch Knight, offering to pay for the trouble, asks for directions and a quiet way in, which she answers the directions but the hooker tells him to cough up more gold so she can lead him quietly. Claiming he needs to get the rest of his party, he offers that he will come back once he has the rest. She demands half of his gold up front in case he doesn't come back. He decides to try to read if she's lying (Rolls a 2) but believes her and leaves half of his gold with her before getting to the rest of his party. Big guess what happened there, but he still got the directions he wanted.

Now, at the Manor they party has to break into. The Druid, turns into an octopus, climbs over the wall with ease and into the house on her own. The Mind Flayer, stands at the front gate, not knowing how doors work. The rest of the party is trying to climb over the wall. The Octopus finds the list and makes a deal with the owner of the manor, the Mind Flayer, magically opens the gate and the front door as the octopus is leaving back out a window with the list and goes inside and has a different conversation with the owner. The Mind Flayer, then forks over one of his unidentified magical items to the being in exchange being let go back out the front door without getting the whole party killed off.

And I'm just here still trying to wrap my mind around all of that.

D&D is always a fun game but I find that it depends on reliable players, something that gets a lot harder as I get older.

I'm a big fan of D&D, and in fact D&D 3.5 was my introduction to role-playing.

I'm a huge fan of the OSR movement, but I'll play any edition of D&D except 4e.

I simply adore Dungeons & Dragons, as well as other Tabletop RPGs. I DM a Pathfinder Planeswalking game currently in the cannon Golarion setting, and I rather enjoy it I must say. Such creative outlets have been a great deal of fun for me. c:

I’m newer to D&D and therefore only know 5e mechanics. I’ve been focusing my time learning the rogue class for now and am totally in love with it. I’m currently in a Curse of Strahd campaign playing a level 5 rogue/scout archetype. She’s also a sharpshooter. I adore her to pieces and am enamored with her background and backstory. In the current party, she’s gotten to be pretty close friends with an elven wizard who seems to specialize in fire magic and producing light and such. They are both quiet and the sort who like to observe and plan when able. Presently, the two are finding ways to harmonize their skills and work together from a tactical standpoint. They also have aligned and have agreed to assist in helping each other achieve their goals. Not everyone (in character) is aware of this friendship or their alliance. But it’s cool watching it unfold and progress and how they look out for the other. : )

I began with the Gurps system and have played through 2nd, 3.5 , 4th and 5th edition[once]. Primarily on the Savage World system yet I have touched upon other settings but damn has it been something I've played since my teen years. Plenty of awesome stories as a GM and Player.

When I started RPing (we only had tabletop back then...!), it was just Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. As opposed to Basic Dungeons & Dragons. No 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition stuff - just Advanced. In Basic D&D (which I never played, btw), humans could play any class, and the other races (elves, dwarves, etc...) were a class unto themselves; Advanced D&D introduced the idea that any race could be any class. But AD&D held that each class had its own XP progression, and that female characters were not as strong physically as male characters (so there was a lower limit on the Strength stat for female characters than for males); and to become a bard you first had to progress as a Fighter, then change to a Thief, THEN move to the Bard.

Fun times.

I never played it but I am willing to learn. I played a few other table top games though.

It's fun stuff. I'm newer to it myself and everyone I know who's played a previous edition has said that the current edition (5e) is the best to learn on and, so far--even though I've nothing to compare it to--I have to agree. Basically, I can say that it's been pretty easy to figure out as I go and it's also quite intuitive. The books are easy to follow, especially if you use them in conjunction with sites like DnD Beyond. Hope you get a chance to give it go. : )

I work at the local game store on my island. I play in the bi-weekly adventure league (which is basically wizards of the coast sanctioned D&D casual events) and I am now embarking on the greatest quest of becoming a game master for my table. We have had kids coming into the store asking about it, but our only group organizes at around 6:00 pm, and with school being out I have decided to become a DM so that I can run the adventure league for the kids table at a much easier time for them to manage (probably 1 or so me and the other DM at the store haven't really worked out details yet.)

I picked up the game when I was a kid, during 3.5, and I played both 4th edition and pathfinder. I never really liked Pathfinder because it is really easy to break that games system and create level 1 characters who can basically do anything. (we had a level 2 alchemist in one game that just sucked the fun right out of the table with his six free actions, enlarging himself with concutions and then killing dragons it was the dumbest thing, and our DM at the time didn't care)

and 4th was just a mini's game. A good mini game, one where you could sit down and have very neat battles, but oh boy was it was made directly to sell toys.

5th honestly feels like it's more open. I've heard the complaint that backgrounds 'ruin character backstories' but I'm also hosting adventure league no one cares about backstories, or even the story of why they are doing the quest. Adventure league is all about jumping into an adventure and getting a job done.

Which can be a little draining if your there for the more RP side of things, but I'd say if your looking for a more RP heavy game and less of a combat game, you should probably be playing Call of Cuthulhu.

for those of you who want to give D&D a try in a more casual capacity you can find your local Adventure league group with this Store & Event Locator - Wizards of the Coast

I don't mind the Backgrounds aspect of 5E - it use it to enhance the character's backstory. Typically, I don't start writing a backstory for my character until the character is developed (or mostly developed), so that includes the Backgrounds.

People who reckon the Backgrounds "ruin the character's backstory" just aren't imaginative enough...or are too impatient.