Dungeons and Dragons (and Guns) Update

This week I have been working on some items for the Dungeons and Dragons and Guns concept I am working with. To start with weapons, I took the simple weapons list from the book, modified it some, and added a column to show some example builds to scavenge resources for the building of said item.

I then took the armor from the post that Wizards did earlier this year. It can be found here.

For guns I took the basic concepts from the DMG 5e and expanded upon them adding different guns, prices, ammo clips, ammo costs, etc.

A Note

I gave the guns prices because gold (as will everything resource needed to survive) will be hard to come by in the game. If you plan on having a regular amount of gold in the game, you may want to consider increasing the cost of the guns.

For the races, I decided to start with the races from the Basic Rules set that is free to download from Wizards. I then turned the races/subraces into nationalities to make it fit into a modern world.

As for classes, we are currently play testing them, 4 at a time. First up was going to be the main 4 as well from the Basic Rules. However, I decided against it as the Warlock’s magic is more easily explained in a modern setting than a wizard. So the classes we are looking at are: cleric, fighter, rogue, and warlock. Each class will also have a restriction to the type of gun they can use. For example, the fighter is able to use all shotguns and automatic rifles. Whereas the warlock is only able to use pistols.

Files Locations

All files are on the D&D Resources page. For those who do not want to scroll up, you can press here.

We Are Under An Onslaught From The Forces of Darkness

There is a great evil plaguing our little community in the Dungeons and Dragons world. We have players and DMs alike who anti new people! These D&D-ers have been seen bashing on new people in their groups saying that “new people slow the group down too much.” Some even to the point of saying that they do not want new people in this group. This is utter rubbish. These D&D-ers need to be taken back to their first game, that game where you were afraid to do anything not in the rules, where you took forever to come up with ideas to do.

Before I bash these people we need to look at D&D-ers. Most of us are nerds. Not the nerds of today who are actually “in” but old school nerds. Social misfits with high intelligence. Maybe you have social anxiety and it makes you a nervous wreck to be around people. Maybe it is more along the lines of you were not allowed into groups because you were so different. Maybe you just do not like people in general, not in a hateful way, you are just anti-social.

No matter the reason for your nerdiness, there was some point where we all heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Whether that was from friends, TV, whatever, we heard about it, then went out of our way to figure out how to learn it. Back then there was no Youtube to search these kind of things on (and keep in mind I am still under 30 years old). We had to find others to teach us. This means that yea, we were slow. All of us were slow at playing the game when we started off. This is not like playing war with a deck of playing cards. This game can be a bit tough for some people to grasp. I bet some of us “veteran” players still have our slow days when we have some massive brain farts (or possibly too much alcohol).

Now.. down to business…

Players

Hey! All players out there! It is your job to help new players learn how to play just as much as it is the DM’s job. In fact, depending on the size of the group, it will be you job even more so. Remember those first few games where you knew absolutely nothing about the game and someone had to teach you how to play? Extend that courtesy to the new players, just like someone did for you when you started. It is utter rubbish that you are so wrapped up in your selfish world that you cannot sacrifice a few game sessions to help out someone who could potentially be a new permanent part of the party.

Dungeon Masters

… and DM’s… I was very surprised when I saw DMs not wanting to have new players in the group. Without players.. well we DMs will not have a dungeon to master, so to say. DMs are guides to the players, no matter of experience levels. DMs are going to be the ones that the players are going to look to for advice on how to do things and the rules on how to do things. As a DM, if you know you will have a new player in the game ahead of time, set up a time to sit down with them together one-on-one and teach them. Show them how to make characters, give them a short tutorial campaign. You do not even have to plan something like that out ahead of time. Throw them in a fight to show them the ropes. Give them some skill checks, some perception, maybe picking some locks, smash in a door, just some basics.

We D&D-ers are a group. Together we work to pass the knowledge we have down to those of us who are new to the game. Without new players, our group could grow stale, and will eventually die off. There are parents out there teaching children how to play D&D right now, surely you can teach someone your own age how to play. Come on guys, we are better than this.

Dungeons and Dragons 5e With Guns

This month Dungeons and Dragons released a set of rules in the form of a pdf/download in Unearthed Arcana. This month is about Modern Magic. This pdf is a set of rules that helps give us some insight into how “spells” would work in a modern Dungeons and Dragons game. The pdf can be found here.

They also has an article in April that covered the same authored took the rules from 5e and combined them with the Urban Arcana rules to help make 5e armor that would work with the 5e rule sets. That article can be found here.

My Thoughts

I have been tossing around ideas about making my wife a version of Dungeons and Dragons that would combine a survival with a dystopian world. She is not into the fantasy theme as much as I am. However, she loves the dystopian theme in fantasy (The Hunger Games, Divergent Series).

So I am going to sit down and make a game world for her that will use fire arms, with limited ammo, that will be heavily reliant on survival and salvaging. I am shooting for a mix of the Divergent Series meets The Fallout Series.

These posts, along with pages 267-268 in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, will help give me a way of handling, for example armor, and for handling which classes can use different types of guns.

I know this style of Dungeons and Dragons is not for everyone, just like Dungeons and Dragons itself is not for everyone. But for those of us who are into this style of game, these are a great bit of information.

As I start building stats, rules, and weapon information for my Dungeons,Dragons,and Guns game, I will post up what I come up with on here for those few who might like this style of game.

Dungeons and Dragons 5e: The Awakened Mystic Class

Last month in Unearthed Arcana, Wizards of the Coast released a play test download for their new class, the mystic. The mystic class is the 5e version of the psionic classes all kind of rolled into one class. The different classes from the pass are now different paths your character can take called Psionic Orders.

The link to the article/ downloadable pdf file is here.

My Thoughts

In previous versions, although no where near my favorite class, I did enjoy playing the psychic classes. I found the way they functioned to a beefed up monk, with some wizard like abilities. The way the psionic classes worked in 4e, however, I was not a fan of.

In this article, I believe Wizards is trying to bring back those older Psionic classes, and how they functioned. The Awakened Mystic, has two psionic orders available. The first is the Order of the Awakened, which gives you a psionic character that uses their mental prowess to harm foes from afar or better sense the world around you (the Third Eye Discipline). The other order is the Order of the Immortal. This order leads you down the path of turning your body into an unstoppable weapon, by fine tuning it from the inside out. You can run faster, channel your psionic energy into your weapon.

Play Testing

Prior to play-testing, I was unsure if I would like the Awakened Mystic like I did the older psionic courses. So, I downloaded the pdf from the website I linked above, rolled my ability scores and made my class. I ran him through a short introduction/tutorial adventure I made to introduce my friends to Dungeons and Dragons. I went down the Order of the Immortal to give that a try and enjoyed it, but I felt that it was missing a mental attack that was ranged. Or a way to convey your mental strength into a bow to do some extra psionic damage.

After that realization, I decided to roll another character. I chose the Order of the Awakened this time, knowing that it had some long range capabilities with it’s mind thrust ability. And, oh man, did I enjoy playing as that version of the class. Being able to stack up to 2 Psi points on to deal an extra 1d8 per a Psi point spent on this is amazing. When playing this character, I felt as if I was playing as a physically nerfed monk that is able to do an awesome ranged attack. And just because I say that it is nerfed physically does not mean it is weak. This class deals some great damage with its mind thrust and its weapons. On top of that, The Third Eye discipline, really makes this order even better by adding the ability to have extra senses.

Final Verdict

I really enjoyed playing the Awakened Mystic class. If Wizards decides to take this class further like they did with the other classes, this class will become quite a contender with other classes.

Here is a the second character I made, the one that I enjoyed playing the most. Zander-The-Mystic

The Tavern Post

Play-Through Party

For this weeks Play-Through Party we will be playing Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game. We are going to start with the Journey through Mirkwood quest. The deck that I will be using is a modified version of the Spirit/Tactics deck found here. Later this week before Sunday I will post up the cards for the new deck in a quick post.

Dungeons and Dragons

For our Dungeons and Dragons posts so far we have been using 4e. I was raised on 3.5 and adopted 4e awhile back. However, from this point forward we are going to be using fifth edition rules. After putting it off, I finally got my copies of the new rules. I will post a review of it as well once I get more reading done on it. However, my initial response to the new rules is one of excitement. It looks much better than 4e, and as I have mentioned, I was a fan of 4e. Just not as big of a fan as I was with 3.5.

The Tavern Post

This week we are going to be starting a featured section called the Play-through Party. It will take place every Sunday, most likely in the afternoon. In the Play-through Parties we will be going through a play-through of a few different things.

• Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game – For this we will play through a Quest for the week. This will be a Progression Series going over the quests in order.
• Dungeons & Dragons – We will build a new character each week and play through a short tutorial with each class type. This will show the new players of the different types of classes and how they function.
• Featured Games – We may take a break from the other games to play through a featured game that we review that week.

Most of these we will be done solo as a tutorial for the readers, however, some weeks we may feature other players in the Play-Through.
Join us each Sunday to see what we cover for the Play-through Party

Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons is the fantasy game that started it all. Dungeons and Dragons itself started off as a miniatures game called Chainmail, where players would recreate medieval battles. It then grew into the fantasy game we know today thanks to books like the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Dungeons and Dragons or D&D, is a pen and paper game of imagination, adventure, story telling, and fellowship. People play D&D for various different reasons: fellowship with their specific group of friends, story telling, dungeon crawling (fighting enemy after enemy in search for the best items), etc. The best part about it? There is no one correct way to play D&D.

Some people may be put off by the way Television portrays D&D: the iconic nerds sitting around a table dressed up in character with dice and papers all around them. The reality is much different. It is just a bunch of normal people, well not normal, but not dressed up like wizards and elves either, eating, drinking, and rolling dice. It looks more like this:

The one bad thing about D&D is that it can be a tad overwhelming to first start playing. It does after all have a 300+ page instruction book on how to play.

My Experience

I have been playing D&D for over 10 years now (on and off mind you) and was raised up on the 3.5 version rule set. That by far is my favorite rule set I have tried 4e(not tried 5e yet). However, for this blog I will be covering 4e or 4th Edition. This copy of D&D has caught crap from the more experienced D&D players out there, because they simplified it. Wizards of the Coast did indeed simplify it. However, that is not a bad thing. There are some out there who would like to try to play but the heaviness of the rules in v3.5 is a daunting mountain to climb.

So, recently I had a group of my friends come to me and ask me to teach them how to play. I taught the first 2 of them to play on v3.5, and it was a long day, of explaining character creation, then starting the quest. Then I found out that 4e simplified those v3.5 rules, but still kept the essence of the game. I then sat down and taught the group 4e in a matter of 2-3 game sessions, all be-it long sessions. But now each one of them can sit down and play the game pretty confidently.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting the basics of D&D(along with LOTRLCG posts).