Ambrosia Software Web Board: Looking for D&D Players - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Okay, so here's the deal. I've been DMing a D&D 4th Edition group using some online virtual tabletop software and voice chat. We've had three mostly-consistent players, and a few others who have come and gone along the way. Three players is not exactly optimal, and I for some reason got it in my head that the ATT was a hotbed of D&D action, or at least potential action. I'm here to inquire as to anyone would like to join us.

First, some information.

If you don't know anything at all about D&D, no problem! We'll teach you! We'll also hook you up with all the materials you need. You don't even need dice. If you've never played a tabletop RPG game in your entire life before, that is not a problem. If you have years and years of experience with D&D (of any edition), that's also not a problem. All are welcome, the important thing is you're willing to come play with us.

We have an IRC channel. It's #dnd on ravageduniverse.net (port 6667). If you're at all curious, come and say hello. We can answer your questions there in real-time.

We typically run Saturday nights. Occasionally we run Sunday night. I would very much like to have a nice set time I could tell you we will always play at, but right now all I can offer is that we typically try to start playing at 7 PM Eastern every Saturday night. Sometimes it's earlier, sometimes it's later. Typically the reason we don't have a more consistent time is because we haven't really had enough players. Hence this topic looking for new players. The games do sometimes go rather late at night. Some degree of flexibility in your schedule would probably be helpful. If we can manage to pick up another two players here, and always start on time, the play session will be a lot more consistent and end at a more predictable time.

All three current players are longtime members of the ASW community already. I'm going to ask them to come post their own thoughts here in the hopes of getting you interested. It's a fun group. They're very inexperienced with D&D, but they're learning and having a good time most of the time. I've been playing D&D for many many years, I've DMed various groups in person and online at various times. I know 4th Edition is not the most popular, but it seemed to me the best option for running this kind of inexperienced group. When "D&D Next" (5th Edition) comes out, I'd like to move over to that as it's a lot nicer, but it will really depend on what the players want to do.

The game tends to veer wildly between hack-and-slash and roleplaying sessions. The party, as it is now, seems to do a lot better with the hack-and-slash heavy sessions. If you can bring roleplaying skills or at least a healthy enthusiasm for trying, you'd help balance out the party wonderfully when the party is in town, and the other players would probably love you a great deal for saving them. If hack-and-slash is more your thing, I'll try to focus more on that as time goes on. Currently, our sessions tend to get bogged down if the party has to interact with NPCs, with a lot of hesitation and confusion over what to say or do. It's been an ongoing problem and I'm working on adapting things to suit the party better. Social puzzles, it would seem, are a bad idea. They've led to some really wonderful moments in the campaign, but it's my job to keep the party entertained and a big part of that is figuring out what keeps the party entertained. I've made mistakes as any DM would with a new party. Hopefully I've learned from all my mistakes, but I'm bound to make more. I very much appreciate feedback on my DMing. Bottom line, if you come join us, you'll help shape what the game will be like.

The party is made up of three players, but currently five characters. We have a halfling fighter (tank) played by ScarletSwordfish, a half-elf rogue (does melee damage) played by Dash, and one player (U.E. Admiral) plays both a dwarf ranger (does ranged damage) and a dwarf invoker (sort of a divine wizard). There's also a "Generic Devoted Cleric" which is played typically by Dash, as a sort of healbot. It's not a real player character, and I rolled the character myself so the party would have a healer and it's played by whoever feels like doing so on any given session where we haven't had a player healer. All these characters are level 5, will be level 6 next session. This group has been going for a while, having started fresh at level 1 many months ago.

The story is basically that the party is searching for a set of keys to unlock an ancient superweapon and save the world from annihilation. Right now the party has one key. They think they're getting close to a second one, and they're traveling across the countryside to find the River King. Along the way, party members have joined various secretive organizations across the land. The fighter, for example, has gotten mixed up in an underground fighting ring run by The Halfling Cabal. The rogue has joined the local thieves guild, and another organization dedicated to exterminating the undead. The ranger is welcome in hunting lodges everywhere, and he's been receiving mysterious letters, and though he won't say yet from who, he has been wearing a strange ring they apparently sent him to indicate his membership. The invoker is fairly new to the party (an attempt at filling out our numbers in lieu of actual new players), but so far it would seem he's a crazy heretic who does whatever his floating magical hand gestures at him to do. The generic cleric mostly just heals.

An actual healer would be great to have in the party, but you don't have to play one if you don't want. There's also no reason why you couldn't duplicate any existing role in the party. The group they have works pretty well as-is. Nothing is really missing. What we really need is warm bodies, players who will show up consistently every week and fill out the ranks a bit. If you're interested in playing, just talk to me and the rest of the party about what you're thinking of playing and we'll help you figure out how best to fit into the group with whatever you choose. You'd start at the same level the rest of the party is.

All I can say is that while occasionally exhausting at times, I really do look forward to our sessions every week, and I'm hoping one or two of you here will come join. We have a lot of laughs, roll some dice, and kill some monsters. If you have a few hours to spare on Saturday nights to do some nerdy things with nerdy people, we'd love to have you.

So I guess that's my spiel. Again, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to join us on IRC sometime, post here in the topic, or even send me a PM. If you have even the slightest interest, I want to hear from you. Again, no experience necessary. We will try to make this as painless as possible for you to join and have fun with us. You can come join on a trial basis before you commit to anything. The most important thing is you show up willing to play and have fun.

Greetings.

I am the Ranger. I am the Invoker. I am sometimes the Cleric. I speak for the cluster of lost would-be D&Ders that reside in my brain, and I am here to offer a player's perspective on the experience of D&Ding with us.

It is often a boring slog. We struggle with interacting with NPCs (or even one another) and solving the most rudimentary of puzzles. We are not fluent in D&D: we don't know our class, we don't know our abilities, we don't understand the mechanics, and sometimes one or more of us can't be arsed to learn--senior moments abound. Everything takes a good long time, most notably when we're working on vague directives in some kind of search for information or an individual, but also very frequently in combat while we try to hash out our best options. It is not uncommon for us to spend upwards of an hour on even the simplest of encounters, and more normal ones range 2-4 hours depending on how well we coordinate and remember how our s### works.

Consistent attendance and paying attention through a swamp of error correction or strategy discussion is a major plus. A good chunk of our lost time is telling the next person in line that it's their turn, and filling them in on what is going on. This form of downtime was getting better for a while until we lost a couple players. We have recently regressed considerably due to lot of canceled sessions and trying to learn multiple characters so that we can keep going with fewer people. More folks with consistent attendance and attention will go a long way toward improving the quality (and quantity!) of our game time.

But s### happens; sometimes folks can't make it. No worries! I've got you covered. Usually. When I'm paying attention, my session notes are actually quite thorough (often to excess), so a missed session or two should not cripple the experience of any player who can't make it here and there. If you can't make it home, but want to join us over the phone, we can do that too! We've conducted several sessions with people away from home as long as they have some access to their character sheet, or have at least provided a copy to mrxak.

Nonetheless, our sessions are also often a hysterical exploration of potential options. We rarely actually follow through on some of our more entertaining ideas (because they'd be severely detrimental to our objectives or our alignment); however, perhaps my favorite part is sitting around laughing while we propose and discuss preposterous courses of action. Alas, I don't remember any specific stories I could succinctly relay as an example, but let me just say this: a couple of us have a small stockpile of hallucinogenic berries that we picked up in our travels; unwitting NPCs beware!

Our DM mrxak is quite lenient and forgiving of mechanical and logical errors, but sometimes expects too much of us. Forget to roll that saving throw, or forget your ability should have been triggered a couple minutes back? "Just roll it now, and try to remember next time." You look in the left rock and right rock for a hide-a-key, but neglect to look in the middle rock? "What about that one?" That said, mrxak will expect us to figure out or discover the "one solution", or take a given set of actions, while our eyes just glaze over and miss those things entirely. (Really, what does he take us for? Rational, educated participants? Pfft.) We could often do with a couple alternative solutions--a way to advance or progress--without managing to stumble, trip, and stub our toes on whatever it was intended we notice.

mrxak has already detailed our scheduling woes. We've spent as much time waiting for all of our people to show up as we have actually playing the game, and it isn't getting much better with time. As he says, it would help our troubles greatly if we had a couple more bodies to work with, because then one absent player doesn't mean we have to put the kibosh on the whole operation. We can progress with 3 players / 5 characters, but less than that is usually a mighty boring time. As things stand, one missing player usually means a canceled session.

SO! I hope you'll give us a try if you're interested. The needle sways to both extremes with us, but with a few more players we think we can get that needle to stay closer to the fun side of the gauge.

I put on my robe and wizard hat.

I would love to offer but timezones would make it a little tricky.

Out of interest, what software do you use? My gaming group has been looking at some form of software as we often find one member or another away from the area and we were wondering if there was a software solution that can be used at the same time as a real game so that someone could play remotely?

We've been experimenting with using virtual combat maps that everyone connects to with iPads at the table so if someone could dial in to that and use a VoiP program we could almost make it work, but a piece of software designed for the job would obviously be better suited.

Rickton, on 02 March 2014 - 10:28 AM, said:

Is that a yes you want to play?

Lektor, on 02 March 2014 - 01:52 PM, said:

We're using MapTool. There are other tools I'm aware of, but this one is free.

i have never actually played D&D, but have always had a keen interest to do so. if you gents wouldn't mind having a novice fumbling through the game, i'd love to play.

edit: another novice, i mean.

This post has been edited by daowei: 02 March 2014 - 08:09 PM