Dungeons & Dragons: the Gold Standard

Ah, Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's classic tabletop game is widely considered the granddaddy of the modern RPG. All you need to play is a set of those crazy polyhedral dice, a pencil and some paper, the rulebooks, and a little imagination. Before you know it, you'll be hacking, slashing, and magicking your way through medieval fantasy landscapes and dungeons filled with basilisks, djinn, necromancers, zombies, and, of course, dragons.

The Game:
D&D is a game that everybody has heard of, but few have actually played, so I'll endeavor to give a brief rundown of how the game is played. The basics for players are thus: a player begins by choosing his or her character's attributes, like race (human, elf, half orc, etc.), class (barbarian, cleric, sorcerer, etc.), and alignment (lawful good, chaotic neutral, etc.). Then the dice are allowed to determine the character's ability scores, i.e., the character's proficiencies in areas like strength,

dexterity, intelligence, and charisma. Then the character allocates points to special skills (disguise, heal, religious knowledge, etc.) and "feats" (combat reflexes,  exotic weapon proficiency, spell empowerment, etc.). Then, usually with the guidance of the dungeon master, the player chooses equipment (daggers, crossbows, scale mail, candles, backpacks, fishhooks, etc.). (For the lazy, there's a nice electronic character generator designed for the 3.5 rule set here.)

After that, players assume the roles of their respective characters. The characters get dropped into a world of the dungeon master's design and must to decide how to proceed on a quest the party is presented with. There are rules governing how they can move, how much rest they need, how far they can see, etc. Combat is turn-based and success or failure and outcome of the use of skills and feats is determined by the dice.

For the dungeon master, things are a bit more complicated. The DM must design the adventure from start to finish, including its people, monsters, environs, and storyline, and be prepared for whatever decisions the party might make along its way.

Strangers to the Heroic:
I don't do much justice to the game in my brief description above. I actually haven't played the game much, and I've never been a DM. However, for about 2 months now, I have been following the adventure of the Strangers to the Heroic. They play on Sundays from about 5pm to about 9pm EST. The DM is my good buddy Taroth. He is taking the party through a difficult multi-act adventure that began back in July.

The party is currently level 7 and consists of four characters: Lokas the bard, Leo the barbarian, Leera the mage, and Church the fighter. 5 characters have died throughout the campaign; Leo and Lokas are the only members of the original party still alive.

Here is a synopsis of Act III so far:

"The party then was summoned to Barovia by the town's burgomeister to defend his "love" Ireena. When they arrived in Barovia, Church the fighter (played by Churchrin) joined the party. The town was overrun by zombies! They spent several nights killing zombies. During a big attack at the town center, Listra the Cleric was killed by an Undead Entomber. They then ran into the burgomeister's son, who told them to speak with a gypsee named Madam Eva. He also confirmed that the letter the party received was from "that devil Strahd," the ruler of Castle Ravenloft. The party met with Madam Eva and were given clues through her foresight on how to kill Strahd, an undead Vampire of great power and quite possibly the first vampire to ever exist. 

They then traveled to the cemetery and discovered that the town cleric, Danovich, had used part of the Libre Blaspheme to resurrect his son, and this was what started the zombie plague. Danovich went mad and had to be put down, and once his son was killed the zombies all vanished.

The party then found the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, one of the relics needed to kill Strahd, in the church,  They ventured to the castle to activate the Holy Symbol, met Strahd, who welcomed them, and then explored the basement where they thought the Holy Symbol's ritual could be performed. Sadly, they entered the wing of the underground controlled by a sadistic necromancer. Leera met her death while the group fought zombies and wraiths, Now, they are in the necromancer's lair...."

You can watch the game at http://www.twitch.tv/taroth tonight at 5:00 EST. Taroth uses a program called Fantasy Grounds as a virtual tabletop. He draws the animated maps in Campaign Cartographer 3 and one of the players uses an ambient sound generator for background sounds and music. The mini figures representing players and monsters are scans of minis Taroth owns or were taken from the old D&D miniatures website.

Tune in and check it out! I plan to try to catch most of tonight's session. My handle on twitch.tv is Tropdawg.