Crashes and D&D

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So first thing first, I’m sorry that I didn’t update last week. Just as I got home from Thanksgiving vacation my hard drive crashed. Luckily I have friends among more tech savvy people and they were able to get me up and running in just a short time. The fix is also an upgrade actually, from 320GB to 500GB.

Anyway, Dungeons and Dragons… I got into D&D (version 3.5) during college, and I could honestly say that most of my friends here I met via joining D&D games with people I already knew. Now, I’ve played version 4 and my group on Sunday nights is doing the play test for the new version, but mostly many of my friends prefer 3.5. Besides ye olde D&D, I play Serenity (which I think goes by Cortex now I think), Mutants and Masterminds, and I’ve tried Warhammer 40k (which…I’m not totally sold on the system).

I’ve Dungeon Mastered a few games myself too, mainly Mutants and Masterminds as I was the most into comic books with my old group. But the style of DMing I grew around was that of story telling. Now, I known some prefer dungeon crawls, and I’ve heard others like to go by a hardcore old school style. I’m used to having a world and a goal that unfolds like a story. I feel that it pushes people to engage in role-play as characters to flush out the world around them. The more they role-play and grow their character the more that side missions and task can be altered to ensure a more rewarding experience. At times, as a DM, I’ve made decisions to keep my players alive and in the story (like, not sending another wave of enemies or ignoring some creature abilities to keep them relatively even).

With dungeon crawling, well its good practice. I find it useful for experimenting with new classes and techniques that you might not, but with no real goal or character investment there seems hardly to be a point to rping. I hesitate the same about the hardcore style but only for the reason I could say is that, with the more hardcore play where traps are a plenty and saving throws are few, rerolling a character every few sessions could nip it in the butt. Then again really experienced and talented player maybe able get over the crutch.

As a side note, when I play with my friends online we use Google hangout, but we might try Roll20 (http://roll20.net/) as I’ve heard some good things.

What Am I Thinking:

“I need to get to work on making my Christmas gifts…”

What I Am Doing:

Watching Firefly