What do you find fun in D&D? How do You have fun in D&D?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:36 am

You guys spend a lot of energy discussing it. Most of the time it's about why X sucks and Y is wrong or Z is a [EDITED], etc.
The 'Ideas that need to go away' thread is pretty long, think of this as a compliment to it. I figure it's a lot harder to think of 'ideas that need to stay'

But what exactly do you find FUN about it?
What's the most satisfying parts of D&D to you?

I'm interested in the Den's answers 'cause y'all are very aware of the rules behind the game. It's a more educated opinion than average.

Yep · Post by **Yep** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:40 am

I have fun when I play a balanced system that exists without gentlemen's agreements or massive, massive houseruling.

So, basically, 4E. Or 3E/earlier at 1-6.

edit: To be fair, 4E does have the horrible remnants of system mastery that 3E made so prevalent, but it's slightly better about them.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:58 am

I love me some Logistics and Dragons. Relatedly, I love me some crafting systems. I know that's unusual, and I don't foist them on others, but I track every single flask of oil. And I carry as much as I can.

I like crunchy systems.

Every system needs gentlemen's agreements, and I'm okay with that.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:08 am

Putting together a few bits and knick-knacks to cause hellaciously big effects.

I came up with Damocles Ingot/the Midas Meteor. You take a single gold piece, cast Major Creation on it to make gold by the cubic foot. It'll evaporate in a minute, but while it's there, it's real and it weighs 1,200 pounds a cubic foot.

One cubic foot per caster level. When it comes online at level 9, you can make a five-ton lump of gold and drop it on something.

Major Creation has a 10-minute casting time, so you're basically using that to crack open buildings or fuck up a sleeping dragon.

Which isn't a bad use of a single gold piece.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:11 am

magic is magical, and non-magic is NOT magical.

the system allows for stories to make sense, rather than just "accept it because it is part of the game"...even though it makes no sense IN the game.

the 4th wall.

humans are humans except dropped into a different world of physics due to magic.

a chance to apply theory to practical application, in cases where you just cannot do so today.

puzzles, be it literal word puzzles, mental puzzles, or abstract thought to solve some sort of situation.

a simpler world. you get offended by someone you can kill them without yourself being held responsible. a "duel" or fight is between two people and not something for the rest of society to interfere with or claim that should not happen. (also present in wild west type games).

money cant solve everything. you actually have to "work" and think to be able to get something done.

interesting money and monetary systems...and ones in which the value of your money was not how much you could borrow, but how much you have. none of this CREDIT CARD shit!

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:38 am

What's wrong with the game is all specifics and minutiae. What's right with the game is all overarching fundamentals.

To break that down into slightly more specific chunks: I find the social aspect of the game a lot of fun, an RPG provides a loose objective and a bit of structure to a social gathering. I also enjoy the tactical minigame (and the stratgic planning to anticipate potential tactical minigames via chargen/advancement/equipment) a lot. I also find the imaginative aspect of the game fun, personally moreso in worldbuilding and running games than as relates to merely playing a single character - this factor is where the RPG experience in mostly clearly differentiated from multiplayer board or card games (which can be social, tactical and strategic in their own right).

Now you might note that all of these aspects are part of any RPG and not specific to D&D. What is most attractive to me about D&D is just the size of it's playerbase and the amount of brand recognition it has. It is generally easier to find a game of D&D, and to explain and recruit non-gamers to a game of D&D than to most other available RPG systems. Frankly, there's not much point to a social game if it is very difficult to find and recruit players for it.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 3:43 am

I love making characters, backstories, cultures, logistics level planning for major/awesome effects. I also enjoy the tactical planning and execution.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 3:49 am

Maxus wrote:Putting together a few bits and knick-knacks to cause hellaciously big effects.

I came up with Damocles Ingot/the Midas Meteor. You take a single gold piece, cast Major Creation on it to make gold by the cubic foot. It'll evaporate in a minute, but while it's there, it's real and it weighs 1,200 pounds a cubic foot.

One cubic foot per caster level. When it comes online at level 9, you can make a five-ton lump of gold and drop it on something.

Major Creation has a 10-minute casting time, so you're basically using that to crack open buildings or fuck up a sleeping dragon.

Which isn't a bad use of a single gold piece.

Did this with Polymorph Any Object while fighting a dragon. Killed its ass in one shot.

Incidentally, I find coming up with wacky character combos the most fun. But I like making up stories too.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:19 am

Telling a story, killing some schmucks, looting treasure, amassing power (vertical or horizontal, or even non-mechanical), replicating characters, playing around with a character of my own.

It really depends. I had great fun executing a celestial cop in Koumei's game tonight, but I blame that on a day that feels like I spent several hours pounding my head against concrete.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:40 am

Playing a character or DMing in a fantasy world, creating adventures that often take unexpected turns and twists.

And writing down all that happens in those adventures and illustrating it.

K · Post by K » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:52 am

I like 3e DnD because it works the best in producing a cooperative story. I have the fewest rules arguments, it has the largest amount of functioning moving parts(subsystems) in both the core and expanded rules, and it's flexible enough cover the most genres of storytelling.

On the flipside, I don't like 4e DnD because the range of stories it can tell is very narrow... even more narrow than genre games like Vampire or Shadowrun.

Wulf · Post by **Wulf** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:29 am

I like how 'flexible" D&D 3x is. You can add any subsystem to it without breaking the whole game. New classes, new feats, different rules. You can adapt it easily to any playstyle or storyline. It allows a lot of tinkering both as a game, but also with your own characters. Character building is almost a mini-game of itself (for me a fun one too)

Falgund · Post by **Falgund** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:24 am

In order:

- Playing with friends
- When a plan comes together
- A MTP where we succeed in demonstrating to a NPC that up is down
- When schrodinger's cat results in an unexpected (but somewhat credible) way
- When Karma or Irony strikes back
- Planning (either for building/optimizing a character, or in game)
- Overcoming the challenges
- When the story resolves nicely
- Rule lawyering our way out of defeat
- Succeeding despite impossible odds due to dumb luck
- Bad puns in (N)PC names
- A bit of schadenfreude

cthulhudarren · Post by **cthulhudarren** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 12:38 pm

Fun, not in any particular order:

Hanging out with gaming buddies
Character Development, advancement
Exploration, the thrill of discovery
Being part of a team to solve difficult challenges.
Phat l00ts, finding that mithril longsword forged by elves in Gondolin.
Killing stuff, stabbing it in the face
Maps, I fucking LOVE maps. Especially overland-type of maps.
Descriptive, cinematic and dangerous combat.
Save or die
An interesting setting.
Being a melee character that can measure up to casters. (3.5 early levels).
Having characters that can do different stuff (bad 4E, why can't my fighter use a bow?)
Story, when I think the campaign is a sandbox

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:29 pm

I like creating characters with personalities and abilities sufficiently different from my own (Or at least exaggerated off of my own) to be interesting, to bounce that character off of that of other player characters, and to take that into a game world and achieve goals.

I like characters that can do whatever tasks I design them for well (Or at least be within sight of competence) because if I decide my character's going to be a hacker, and he can't hack a computer, then why the hell am I playing that character?

souran · Post by **souran** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:39 pm

My years of role playing have lead me far away from my initial leanings.

I know we all hate the simulationist/storytell/gamist stuff but I guess I was one of the few people who was strongly aligned with any of those ideas.

When I was younger I really wanted the rules to be a simulation of the gameworld. The money system was the representation of the economy, The magic needed to be distnct from the non magic. I made my dissatifcation with weapons that were impossible or disrupted my supsension of disblief known to my players.

So I was "strongly simulationist. And I was always unhappy.

Then I figured out that the times when the game was the most fun was when the game was doing the heavy lifting.

So I guess I have become the ultimate example of the gamist. I really couldn't give a fuck anymore if there is a disconnect between player and character perceptions becauase in a typical table of 5-6 players and myself that makes exactly 1 person upset. Same with with having an economy that is 90% handwaved. Or with having katanas in a westernized fantasy world. You probably have one person who find the situation frustrating and everybody else at the table just wants the game to move on.

However, what pisses everybody off is when they feel they were presented with choices and some of them were fake. Or when they discover that their favorite character concept is non competative or when they spend a whole session watching somebody else solve all the problems and/or dominate all the combats.

The game rules must work. I don't need rules for the player who wants to be a necromancer who rides a skeletal dinosaur and lives in a castle made of ice and bone in a pocket astral dimension and who solves problems by throwing zombies at them till all issues are gone.

I need rules that make it so that I can reasonablly send the party up against a dragon living in a dungeon and have evreybody have a good time during the fight.

And the asshole who wants to play the necromancer will play a necromancer who can have one undead minion just as much as he will the one who can have 100.

However, if the game decides to waste my time with 1-2 round combats where most people don't get to act and every challenge in the whole game can be best resolved by application of a spell then the game has fucking wasted my time. Thats the cardinal sin of gaming.

Shadow Balls · Post by **Shadow Balls** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:45 pm

The meta aspects. A counters B, which counters C, etc. Games without an in depth tactical element bore me very quickly, but with the right classes at least D&D delivers a fairly in depth meta.

If that was all I wanted I'd just stick to playing OU. But stories are meaningless without the crunch to back them up. That just gives you a wasted backstory when you die in fight 1, round 1. With the crunch to back them up, you have the reasons why I like D&D.

Another Gaming Comic does a decent job of illustrating what I mean. Some of the later ones show what happens when you get a basket weaver in your group.

souran · Post by **souran** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:54 pm

K wrote:I like 3e DnD because it works the best in producing a cooperative story. I have the fewest rules arguments, it has the largest amount of functioning moving parts(subsystems) in both the core and expanded rules, and it's flexible enough cover the most genres of storytelling.

On the flipside, I don't like 4e DnD because the range of stories it can tell is very narrow... even more narrow than genre games like Vampire or Shadowrun.

This is very strange.

I always found that in 4E I could tell any story I wanted and the players spent more time actually doing story things. Further, the players ability sets were better at allowing them to do the core things that were important, especially in a game with strong sword & Sorcery/Epic fantasy leanings.

Conversely, I found 3E fell apart so quickly that it rapidly becomes impossible to tell any coherent story at all. Most especially, the game simply couldn't actually handle any of the "classic" D&D type stories well at all.

Monsters move from "impossible" to "pointless" so fast that the game never has any real combat tension.

I guess my best example is the "Age of Worms" adventure path. This is honeslty an excellent adventure path, and in its design appears to have been put together by a person who wanted to showcase the "iconic" D&D monsters. Across the path you fight ithalids, dragons, liches, giants, beholders, the gamut of undead, trolls, ogres, goblinoids etc. It caps off with a fight with a god. The only thing you don't fight is the tarrasque.

However, most of the iconic monsters don't actually work very well. After the first few adventures, the powers of a typical group avoid much or all of an adventure.

So while you dislike 4E for being to narrow, I dislike 3E for being so broad that it can't tell the stories of adventures at all well.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 7:13 pm

I love that it taps into a very broad yet profound mythic archetype, and has annealed in the long years of crossover into something that is both the fantastic hero myth and the D&D fantasy myth. Talking about it- even to subvert it- gives me the same sort of rush I get when I come out of a good movie and say "Damn, I really feel like writing now!"

K · Post by K » Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:28 pm

souran wrote:
Conversely, I found 3E fell apart so quickly that it rapidly becomes impossible to tell any coherent story at all. Most especially, the game simply couldn't actually handle any of the "classic" D&D type stories well at all.

Monsters move from "impossible" to "pointless" so fast that the game never has any real combat tension.

I guess my best example is the "Age of Worms" adventure path. This is honeslty an excellent adventure path, and in its design appears to have been put together by a person who wanted to showcase the "iconic" D&D monsters. Across the path you fight ithalids, dragons, liches, giants, beholders, the gamut of undead, trolls, ogres, goblinoids etc. It caps off with a fight with a god. The only thing you don't fight is the tarrasque.

However, most of the iconic monsters don't actually work very well. After the first few adventures, the powers of a typical group avoid much or all of an adventure.

Ages of Worms is just a really terrible Adventure Path. I mean, it has a vampire dragon.

Let me repeat that: a vampire dragon.

On top of just stupid themes, it's just poorly constructed overall with almost no reason connecting adventures or even reasons to do the actual adventures at all. Skipping 90% of the fights and encounters doesn't affect how the plot unravels, so I'd expect that PCs would just do that.

It's also way too undead-heavy for a campaign, so it encourages stupid specialization.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:54 pm

I enjoy making characters, but the actual combat itself isn't that interesting or fun. Sun Tzu said that a good strategist wins the battle and then takes to the field, whereas a poor strategist takes to the field then tries to win the battle. Well, I encompass that by trying to make victory an inevitability by character design.

I generally like the MTP parts of the game - setting up plans for what order to take the capital (or whatever), the wind-down that tends to happen between story arcs (involving drink-ups, weddings, tea parties or all of the above) and characters finding things to get attached to. The backstory isn't that important in defining a character, and how people remember them, what's more important is the attachments the character makes.

Pursuing goals is good, especially if there's a little room there for PCs to pursue their own goals alongside the main quest story thing. Not huge stuff that gets in the way and says "Okay, this story arc is all about Collin and his desire to get the Dragon Balls", but just one-session side quests or down-time stuff like the insane Puppeteer trying to create actual life so he can bring his murdered family back.

Having cool powers/effects are also important, along with "being able to leave a mark on the setting", "being able to ignore trivial shit that should be 'someone else's job' at will" (such as most quests you might find in WoW, or anything that involves trudging through sewers) and "having multiple ways of doing things."

Most game systems allow for some of the above, the exact number depending on game and MC. D&D Triple (barring MC dickery*) allows for all of the above.

*MC Dickery, not as popular as MC Hammer

souran · Post by **souran** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:04 pm

K wrote:
Ages of Worms is just a really terrible Adventure Path. I mean, it has a vampire dragon.

Let me repeat that: a vampire dragon.

So what? The major fights are all against ionic monsters. I don't actually remember a vampire dragon. I remember there is a dracolich fight, but the vampire dragon doesn't bother me either way.

On top of just stupid themes, it's just poorly constructed overall with almost no reason connecting adventures or even reasons to do the actual adventures at all. Skipping 90% of the fights and encounters doesn't affect how the plot unravels, so I'd expect that PCs would just do that.

It's also way too undead-heavy for a campaign, so it encourages stupid specialization.

I get that some people won't like it. However, the Adventure path includes pretty much all the things that you would like the players to get to do over 20 levels.

Further, like every other published adventure the whole thing is somewhat raw. If you have a GM who can make the game at least somewhat serious you can tell the story in a fairly adult way.

That doesn't mean that the story can't be told in a silly childish way too. And the more childish the story seems the more players are going to feel like they can skip content.

However, Age of Worms is indicative of the type of story I think makes for a good grouping of D&D adventures. Frankly, 3.X has serious issues with that sort of story because the players have to many "bored now, lets wreck the placespace" type powers.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:15 pm

Having powers that alleviate any boredom brought on by the game is a good thing. 4E definitely could benefit from some of those.

And you call it "wrecking the place", I call it "wrecking the MC's plans by doing something different that lets you play on your terms". It would suck to play a game where, no matter how boring or shit, you had to go through the plot laid out by the MC.

souran · Post by **souran** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:26 pm

Koumei wrote:Having powers that alleviate any boredom brought on by the game is a good thing. 4E definitely could benefit from some of those.

3.X powers don't actually let you do anything fun, they just let you circumvent anything representing story. Mostly, they just let you be astoundingly destructive to the enviroment.

Further, DM's have 2 options, assume that everyday life assumes a countermeasure to the wizard who decides it would be fun to convert the whole castle wall to stone for no reason and effectively shoot down the player, or let it happen and verify that the world could be taken over by level 7 characters.

And you call it "wrecking the place", I call it "wrecking the MC's plans by doing something different that lets you play on your terms". It would suck to play a game where, no matter how boring or shit, you had to go through the plot laid out by the MC.

No, its wrecking the playspace. Killing an NPC that the the rest of the party is talking to just to see if you can is wrecking the playspace. Players will be destructive just to see what the limits are.

3.X those limits are very HIGH. They make a world that is astoundingly STUPID. 2E had a number of restrictions that really prevented to much stupidity on that front just because the rules were written to fuck over players. 3.X tries to be more fair to the players without taking out the stuff that should have had the designers go LOL NO before it went into the game.

In the end 3.X is not worth playing because its fucking pointless. Not quite as bad as exalted where you literally cannot create a relevant challenge ot the party, but 3.x there are no challenges relevant to a level 7 or higher party. That makes the game shit.

K · Post by K » Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:04 pm

souran wrote:
K wrote:
Ages of Worms is just a really terrible Adventure Path. I mean, it has a vampire dragon.

Let me repeat that: a vampire dragon.
So what? The major fights are all against ionic monsters. I don't actually remember a vampire dragon. I remember there is a dracolich fight, but the vampire dragon doesn't bother me either way.

Seriously? The vampire dragon is the major character of the whole adventure path since she's directly responsible for the rise of Kyuss.

souran wrote:
On top of just stupid themes, it's just poorly constructed overall with almost no reason connecting adventures or even reasons to do the actual adventures at all. Skipping 90% of the fights and encounters doesn't affect how the plot unravels, so I'd expect that PCs would just do that.

It's also way too undead-heavy for a campaign, so it encourages stupid specialization.
I get that some people won't like it. However, the Adventure path includes pretty much all the things that you would like the players to get to do over 20 levels.

Further, like every other published adventure the whole thing is somewhat raw. If you have a GM who can make the game at least somewhat serious you can tell the story in a fairly adult way.

That doesn't mean that the story can't be told in a silly childish way too. And the more childish the story seems the more players are going to feel like they can skip content.

However, Age of Worms is indicative of the type of story I think makes for a good grouping of D&D adventures. Frankly, 3.X has serious issues with that sort of story because the players have to many "bored now, lets wreck the placespace" type powers.

Crap stories should be skipped.

Age of Worms is a good example of crap stories strung together with nothing to compel players to do the next adventure. None of the things that matter in one adventure even get mentioned in the next adventure. The only recurring monsters are the ones created for the AP (various juiced-up Worms of Kyuss), but you do get to fight a few iconics.

What happened to the Wind Dukes tie-in? The three-gods-as-one? Why is there a tie-in with the evil leader of the main city at all since he seems to have nothing to do with the rise of Kyuss?

I mean, none of the monsters even tie into the plot. The lich? He's completely uninvolved and some plot item is in his possession and he doesn't know about it or care. The dracolich who was a former consort of Tiamat? Some plot item used to be in his possession. The vampire dragon? A major player in the plot who you never know is a major player and maybe you get to loot her empty lair.

The adventure path is a shining example of randomly picking monsters and randomly picking single adventures to drop those monsters into and then trying to force them into a campaign narrative.

I liked a lot of the individual pieces like the whole Prince and his half-fiend daughter subplot or the basic idea of the rise of Kyuss, but none of it meshed together at all. You can't blame 3.x for that.

I mean, it's called Age of Worms and there are only two adventures that really feature Kyuss-related hijinks and one is just a tour of a ruined city with random encounters that you could skip and not alter the plot at all.