How Dungeons & Dragons somehow became more popular than ever

April 20, 2019 7:52 AM

Yes, D&D is back. But it’s cool now (sort of). And legions are into it, including an unprecedented number of adult and female players, attracted by a popular recent revamp and new online playing options. It’s the ultimate sign that nerd culture is now mainstream. The game’s popularity has waxed and waned over its 45-year history. But in 2018, its developers, Wizards of the Coast, sold more units than ever before.
posted by octothorpe (56 comments total)

Non-Washington Post Link
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:09 AM on April 20, 2019 [7 favorites]

They pay $2,650 per person per weekend to play it in Caverswall Castle in Staffordshire, England - who does this?
posted by doctornemo at 8:14 AM on April 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

This has been a quiet theme among professional futurists of late. People are admitting that their experience playing or DMing Dungeons & Dragons etc. helped improve their abilities to create scenarios and workshops.
(I think I'm the only Call of Cthulhu person so far)
posted by doctornemo at 8:15 AM on April 20, 2019 [7 favorites]

I play D&D biweekly with mostly high school friends I'm reconnecting with after 25-ish years of not being in constant contact; the DM is in Hong Kong and runs the game via Fantasy Grounds, with Discord for voice chat. It's pretty awesome.
posted by Shepherd at 8:18 AM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

I am slightly annoyed that women's interest in D&D is attributed to specifically to series like Girls, Guts, Glory - which, judging from their webpage, leans heavily into the "girlfriends" style marketing. Not to knock the show itself, but I'd never heard of it, and it makes it seem like women weren't into D&D before there were shows like it - like we needed to be enticed by there being a girls' version.

Not really. We just need a space where we're not treated like trash. Women in relationships with men also need them to be equal partners so they have as much leisure time as they do, instead of the current situation where women have hours less of leisure time per week. That makes it harder to do group activities. It's easier now that the internet means you don't necessarily have to meet in person.

The women I know who are into D&D have either been into it for a while, or were introduced through Critical Role, which is huge ($10 million kickstarter). Critical Role is refreshing; there are female players and characters, and the characters have just as much depth and interest as the male characters. There is no dude-bro bullshit. I would guess its fandom is very gender balanced.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:29 AM on April 20, 2019 [58 favorites]

I got turned off from Critical Role because of all the loud yelling when they get excited. My favorite shows are from Rollplay and Roll20 Presents. Adam Koebel is the best GM! Court of Swords will have its 110th episode tomorrow :)
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:33 AM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

But.. but.... Satan...?!?
posted by slater at 8:35 AM on April 20, 2019 [17 favorites]

My son plays twice a month with a group that meets a local breweries to play.
posted by COD at 8:52 AM on April 20, 2019

I DM a roughly twice a month group of women who all essentially didn’t have the chance to play before. It was definitely not a thing boys welcomed girls to join in local groups when I was playing in the mid 80s; and their experiences match that. They were nervous getting started but have really taken hold of it. Honestly, when you have a group searching a mine and they discover a long shaft the discussions aren’t a lot different from a group of teenage boys. In any case, I’m loving it both as a personal activity and to see the cultural acceptance and growth. I also think parents see it as a positive for their kids if it displaces screen time.
posted by meinvt at 8:55 AM on April 20, 2019 [12 favorites]

doctornemo My crowd shuffled through a wide variety of RPG's. We started with D&D (the 1983 red boxed "Basic Set"), then moved into AD&D (1st ed, then 2nd ed), then Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Call of Cthulhu, various X the Y titles from White Wolf, GURPS, we dabbled in RIFTS a bit before the munchkin aspect got boring, Ars Magica, and a variety of weird little limited run RPG's we found at various cons.

For us D&D was the gateway drug into the tabletop RPG world, and we eventually stopped really playing it much as we moved into other stuff.
posted by sotonohito at 8:59 AM on April 20, 2019 [9 favorites]

So when is Hasbro, the parent company of WOTC, going to put forward the money for a decent D&D movie? They put money into Battleship, a gonzo sci-fi action flick which, almost impossibly, relates back to their game! (It even included an oblique My Little Pony reference, like the Transformer films.) Dungeons & Dragons has huge name recognition, so it seems like a natural.

My personal preference would be a CGI animated film, less dark and dismal like LOTR or GOT, but brighter with more colorful characters. Imagine How to Train Your Dragon mashed up with Big Hero Six. I think that would move a lot of units to the kids.
posted by SPrintF at 9:04 AM on April 20, 2019 [6 favorites]

I don't DM anymore, but I did it for a couple decades and gaming directly contributed to basically all of my marketable skills. It's good people are looking into this. It's fun, and it's a good way to practice thinking on your feet.

That said: D&D was never my favorite. When I was really young, I preferred Gamma World. Midrange, I was more about GURPS, and still like flipping through the supplements. Late in the field, I was a much bigger fan of FATE, FUDGE and HERO.
posted by mordax at 9:04 AM on April 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

It would be hard for a D&D movie to say anything new at this point. I'd prefer a Shadowrun movie.
posted by Spacelegoman at 9:08 AM on April 20, 2019 [11 favorites]

I'm just tired of how WotC constantly panders to the celebrity webcast crowd. Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated suck all the oxygen out of the room, and the real players get ignored.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:08 AM on April 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

If you like D&D, but want something more character-driven, I recommend Burning Wheel. The rules are designed to reward you for playing against your own self-interests and creating complication and drama. Characters are built in terms of Lifepaths which give you skills and traits, and you can improve your chances of succeeding by combining multiple skills which you can convince the GM are relevant to whatever you're doing. Best of all, when you fail, the punishment isn't that you don't do the thing, but instead you might get what you want, but at the cost of things becoming more complicated: doing things is separated into Intent and Task, so the players give their intent and the GM assigns it a task. You might flub a role and still succeed at the task, but the GM gets to twist the intent. The core rules (Hub and Spokes) can be downloaded for free.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:09 AM on April 20, 2019 [13 favorites]

I've got a couple games I play in. One with my old college friends that I plugged back into five or six years back playing AD&D rules, and one with my "new" friends using 5e rules. In the latter group we were just discussing how it's strengthened our relationships last weekend. We've gone from seeing each other once a month or so to every other weekend. With my college group, I hadn't spoken with some of them in years before I got back into their game, and now we're a regular part of each others lives. I love it!

The dynamics of the two groups is really interesting as well. In the college game we're playing our way through our DM's adaptations of some of the classic modules, we recently finished Temple of Elemental Evil and are moving into Against the Giants with an eye towards finishing up with the Descent series. It's a crunchy style group. The 5e game is much more open world, free form storytelling style. It's all great fun.
posted by calamari kid at 9:12 AM on April 20, 2019

If they make another D&D movie, it should take cues from The Lego Movie, telling a meta-story about imagination and adults' fear of imagination instead of trying to do a super-serious plot that crams in everything everyone is supposed to love about D&D. Again.

White Wolf games were what we generally played when I was a teen. They weren't "tabletop" so much as "on the carpeted floor" throwing dice among stocking feet. God, it was a disgusting scene sometimes. WW games at the time had a lot of cultural appropriation problems that were not recognized or discussed, and I am still embarrassed to have participated in some ways. But I'm glad I was gaming, for the XP and for the friends. I have finally found another D&D group, and I enjoy it.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:12 AM on April 20, 2019 [5 favorites]

> I also think parents see it as a positive for their kids if it displaces screen time.

I find this surreal. Isn't it amazing how things have changed?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:28 AM on April 20, 2019 [20 favorites]

Imagine How to Train Your Dragon mashed up with Big Hero Six. I think that would move a lot of units to the kids.

I think the fundamental problem to trying this approach is figuring out how to use any of the existing campaign settings in a way that doesn't end up being dismal. To be clear: I love me most of the traditional settings -- but crucially, most of that love is because of the time I've spent in them, and the things that have happened that are implied by but not really a part of the official canon.

Basically all the big-name settings are kinda bonkers and inscrutable from the outside, which presents real challenges to adapting them into a mainstream movie.

(also IMHO what we need is a Dark Sun animated movie with Brom back in the saddle as art director even though it would probably sink whatever studio made it because only weirdos like me would go see it ...)
posted by tocts at 9:34 AM on April 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you like D&D, but want something more character-driven, I recommend Burning Wheel.

I love Burning Wheel and Dungeon World. Tho, in my experience, it can be an uphill battle to get anyone who has any preconception for how D&D works to give it a try. D&D rewards success and trains you to minimize risk, where as BW rewards taking interesting risks regardless of success for failure (the rewards are just different in each instance).

That said, I really appreciate D&D 5e cribbing a couple ideas from story games in the form of Inspiration Points and Beliefs. The DM or another player can reward you with an inspiration dice for good role playing that you can use to reroll any d20 (so good role playing feeds into better roll playing) and your character rewards you mechanically. And that you can only have one at any given time helps to prevent players from hording them. Want a chance you reroll every skill check you do? Play the hell out of your character!
posted by Reyturner at 9:44 AM on April 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

I (a mid-30s woman) got into D&D indirectly through the McElroy Brothers. I started listening to their My Brother, My Brother, and Me podcast, and eventually checked out The Adventure Zone, which I'm currently listening to for the, oh, sixth time. Early in my first listen, a couple of weeks after Trump was elected, a friend decided to get a D&D group together. We've been meeting about every week for the past two years, and it's a wonderful part of my life.

We didn't - or, I rather - didn't expect it to last this long, and I definitely didn't expect to enjoy it so much, but it's become an important part of my life. It's escapism, yes, and it lets me live in a world where evil is Evil and good is Good. That's refreshing in these times. And man, I have super powers! I can kill things with my fingers! As someone who regularly wishes she had that ability, it's nice to for once feel as powerful as I wish I were in real life. I feel so unempowered in my day to day world, so cast to the side. Not so in D&D.

It's deepened my relationships with the people I play with - we were good friends before, but it's rare that you get to play pretend as an adult, and it makes you vulnerable. I love seeing what my friends come up with. I love when we work together to defeat a foe.

It's also become a form of...therapy? My character is a very thinly disguised portion of myself. She's frequently confused and scared, slow to trust but undyingly loyal, and completely terrified of being alone. Getting to work through those feelings with a group of people I trust implicitly has helped me become far more comfortable with myself. And they all realize it, and have kind of let me do my thing, and that helps me be even more vulnerable, and trust even more, and in the end, I've become a better person because of this silly game.

Anyway, D&D is great.
posted by punchtothehead at 9:51 AM on April 20, 2019 [27 favorites]

Inspiration is a good try, but I think it lacks tie ins with the rest of the game rules and feels kind of tacked on. It can work if the DM is able to bring their own creativity in to make it work, but that's the trouble with D&D in general: it's has rules for combat and skills you'd need for looting a dungeon, but it kind of leaves you hanging if you want to play an intrigue game. Roleplaying is assumed, but left up to the players to define, which means it might remain undefined. What I like about Burning Wheel is that it provides a game framework around actually roleplaying your character in the form of Beliefs and Traits being the basis for gaining XP. It also has rules where players can introduce their own NPCs. I think Burning Wheel is most fun when you build a powerful character to start with, and play them like a burning dumpster (hence the name of the game) rolling down hill.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:57 AM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

I too recently got into D&D via the McElroys and connecting with other local fans of theirs. I figure if adults used to be able to get together and play bridge & poker & stuff this is no different.
posted by bleep at 10:01 AM on April 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

I mean I’m pretty sure I stood on a bridge wielding a poker at some point, so
posted by cortex at 10:07 AM on April 20, 2019 [12 favorites]

I started playing again last year after a few decades off. A couple friends have kids grown up and a little more time to play, and I got hooked enough to start DMing a home game to make sure we kept getting together.

As a middle aged white male nerd who played in junior high I feel I'm like the stereotypical demographic. But having done some public games too and pleasantly surprised to see how it's not all people like me. Very gender mixed. And more of a cross section of ages, professions and SES than I see in a lot of other get togethers I end up in.
posted by mark k at 10:23 AM on April 20, 2019

But.. but.... Satan...?!?

Satan doesn't play D&D, but does have a weekly Settlers of Catan group.
posted by Foosnark at 10:40 AM on April 20, 2019 [18 favorites]

Satan doesn't play D&D, but does have a weekly Settlers of Catan group.

Satan totally plays Risk though.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:52 AM on April 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Satan plays “Diplomacy”.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:00 AM on April 20, 2019 [19 favorites]

Satan invented Diplomacy, the game that ruins friendships!
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:07 AM on April 20, 2019 [14 favorites]

Satan invented capitalism, and therefore Monopoly, objectively the worst game.
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM on April 20, 2019 [11 favorites]

I've been trying to create a campaign for playing over the interwebs using roll20 and I'm finding it inordinately complicated and unwieldy. I can't figure out how to make AN goblin using their system. Makes me miss pen and paper.
posted by runcibleshaw at 11:56 AM on April 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Basically all the big-name settings are kinda bonkers and inscrutable from the outside, which presents real challenges to adapting them into a mainstream movie.

Well of course, the smart play, from Hasbro's perspective, is a new setting to sell to players old and new. You sell more books while avoiding all the "that's not the Lady of Pain" from all the grognards.

And even 4th edition managed to have some fun.
posted by SPrintF at 12:15 PM on April 20, 2019

Yeah, I too played back in the day (first Basic box, then AD&D), but "grew out of it." (Though since then I found that friends of mine in college were also closet D&D nerds. I was trying to be too intellectual.) Didn't start playing again until my son got into 5th edition and pulled me in. Now I DM two sessions a week (I was almost always DM when I was a kid, too). I love how balanced 5e is, and how much it foregrounds role playing, if not storytelling.

When I was younger I had aspirations of being a writer. But the more I wrote, the lonelier I felt, and the more I found that I'm not good at selling what I write. But my brain is wired to make up characters and stories. But being Dungeon Master scratches that itch, and it's a lot more fun for me to create stories with and for a group of particular people than to write into the void.
posted by rikschell at 12:28 PM on April 20, 2019 [13 favorites]

I'd kind of thought everyone had switched to Pathfinder.
posted by kyrademon at 12:57 PM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

Pathfinder is where you'll find all the 3.5 min-maxers and munchkins. Though their 2nd edition seems to be moving away from that style of play, which makes me wonder who they think their audience is. 5e has a lot of options for players, and they're all designed to be pretty fun and balanced. Pathfinder has like a billion options for players, but lots and lots of them are broken.
posted by rikschell at 1:19 PM on April 20, 2019 [7 favorites]

I haven't actually played myself since the 80s but I keep thinking that I should find a group. There's a board gaming tavern opening up in my neighborhood this Summer and that'll probably be a good place to find a group to play with. Now if I only had the free time that I had when I was 19 ...
posted by octothorpe at 1:49 PM on April 20, 2019

I'm one of those now middle aged women who missed out in the 80s. I wanted to play, but the only people I knew who did in high school were boys who... weren't very welcoming. Then I discovered live music and destroyed my eardrums going to shows instead.

Now, it still looks really fun but I'm too shy about being an old lady newbie. I'm really into a couple of Call of Cthulhu-related podcasts, though! And Dragon Age also scratches some of the itch...

Still. If somehow a group of old lady players were to spring up near me, I'd be very excited. All the notices I see are for college age peeps.
posted by lovecrafty at 2:03 PM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

We've been playing 5E weekly for, oh, I think almost a year now. Some of it was in prepublished adventures, some in the same prepublished adventure (one of our group loves the 3E starting adventure The Sunless Citadel, and sometimes runs the 5E version in Tales of the Yawning Portal), and quite a lot of time in a megadungeon I've been working on. The group is surprisingly survivable, in my sessions at least it's been very difficult to kill anyone off permanently.

One issue in our games is that combat, while a bit faster than in 3E, still takes us a long time. One thing I'm trying to speed things up, which so far has worked fairly well, is a variant combat style I'm working on that replaces the dungeon grid with a connected groups of 20x20 and 40x40 foot areas. Movement within an area is largely granted, but to move to another takes up your movement, and to move two takes movement+dash. Area effect spells are adjudicated using the "theater of the mind" suggestions from the DMs guide. I might write these rules up somewhere.
posted by JHarris at 2:49 PM on April 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

I feel like we’ve already had a proper D&D movie in the form of that one extremely good episode of Community
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:30 PM on April 20, 2019 [12 favorites]

Lovecrafty (and others looking for a group to join), you might look at local game stores. Often these places will run a weekly (or bi-weekly) session of "Adventurers League" which is a form of organized play where anyone can come and join a table. Sometimes you might have to sign up ahead of time (often on Warhorn.net), and ask if it's okay that you haven't played before, but most places are really welcoming and love getting new players into the game.

Adventurers League is mainly short unconnected adventures that can be played in a single 4-6 hour session, but it can be a good way to meet people and make connections and maybe find a longer-term campaign to join. For me, D&D really shines in a long-running game where the players and their characters really get to know each other. If you're curious, I really encourage you to take the plunge. And if the first shop or table you try isn't super friendly, try another one. There are still people who try to gatekeep the hobby, but for the most part I have found DMs and players who really like to help new people jump in, even if they don't know all the rules.
posted by rikschell at 3:54 PM on April 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

Looks like there's a film in the works by the director of Pikachu Detective.
posted by octothorpe at 3:56 PM on April 20, 2019

My son found my old bag of dice and now keeps asking when we can play. But it’s hard to get into with only one player, and jeez it’s been more than 2 decades since I tried, so I can’t remember the dang rules. Book said a monster had two hit dice. Great. Which one is that? The book doesn’t say. I had to actually google it to find out that means a d10. The book just assumes you’ll automatically know that, it isn’t even listed in the index or the monstrous compendium. I am like super, super rusty.
posted by caution live frogs at 4:46 PM on April 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

The starter box for 5E is both excellent and affordable. I highly recommend it. There is endless (and good) advice for DMs on YouTube now as well. I highly recommend just doing it, especially with kids. The story is more important than rules. Have fun, keep it moving. Look up rules after.
posted by meinvt at 4:57 PM on April 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

"Adventurers League" which is a form of organized play where anyone can come and join a table.

I looked into Adventurers League last year as a way to get back into playing D&D and maybe meet some people, but it was a bit too organized for my taste. There's a whole thing where you can only use certain rules, and you have to keep a log of what your character does. Seemed to suck all the fun out of what I like about D&D, which is making fun characters and having some fantasy goof-em-ups. I think if WoTC were smart they'd sponsor one-shot D&D sessions at stores without all the restrictions that Adventurers League seems to have.
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:14 PM on April 20, 2019

My 11yo son and I have been sort of getting into D&D recently, having bought the 'D&D STARTER SET'.
It hasn't really worked out, as it's just the 2 of us, and on top of that I'd only played once before when I was 8yo, and never as DM.
We end up freestyling it, without really following the rules. It's more of an excuse to hang out and invent stories together, which I take it is the idea, sort of. We go so far as to eschew table, paper, pencils and dice, just using our imaginations, including while floating in the water off of Buzios this summer, where I had some success with an adventure set in the Culture.
He would like to be able to play a 'real' game, though, but as we're in Chile and his friends don't even know the game it's hard.
Query: Would you recommend Fantasy Grounds, or something like it, for an unexperienced 11yo to cut his teeth on D&D?
posted by signal at 7:41 PM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

tocts: "
(also IMHO what we need is a Dark Sun animated movie with Brom back in the saddle as art director even though it would probably sink whatever studio made it because only weirdos like me would go see it ...)"

SPELLJAMMER OR GTFO
posted by Chrysostom at 8:36 PM on April 20, 2019 [6 favorites]

My group goes back and forth between campaigns of Pathfinder and Burning Wheel, depending on whether we're in the mood for hack & slash or serious roleplaying. Last night, we had one of the most exciting and fulfilling Burning Wheel sessions I've ever played. We, uh, tried to move a heavily-laden wagon of stolen goods. It can be so difficult, as a player, really committing to your character and playing their beliefs and instincts even when it complicates things, but I think we're getting better at it, and we're getting more out of smaller events.

I hope they take everything back down to level one in the next D&D movie. That's where it's the most fun.

If Critical Role is getting new people playing, then that's terrific. I did not find it entertaining. I think the only time I've enjoyed watching other people play an RPG unscripted is Shadowrun on Harmontown.
posted by heatvision at 3:51 AM on April 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

We started playing six years ago because of the now-defunct Nerd Poker, back when they actually had a regular lady player. And I just wrapped up my first arc as DM — it was a revised version of Goblin Stone’s Banquet of the Damned redone to make it queerer, browner, and less fatphobic for our group that has three dudes and two ladies and me as lady DM.

Our first session also involved a table of players trying to figure out whether children had been baked into pies, with half the table being horrified at the idea, and the other half delighted. So for our big boss fight session, I combined two nerdy loves, D and D and Great British Bakeoff, and baked my first hot water crust pastry pie (breakfast sausage, kale, mushroom duxelles, and roasted potatoes) and decorated the top with pastry children.

For any other folks interested in adventures with feminist overtones, particular ones that play with traditionally female monsters like Medusas and harpies, I really recommend getting (or having your DM get) the indie adventure collection Uncaged.

Our group’s next one is going to be re-done version of Chapel on the Cliffs. Zombies! Mysteries! Witch hunts! But with the investigation streamlined because ours group can overthink a plate of beans and then some, but hopefully the moral questions turned up to a couple notches.
posted by joyceanmachine at 8:03 AM on April 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

A remake of The Seven Samurai would make quite a good D&D movie. Substitute D&D characters of different classes for the samurai, and appropriate D&D monsters for the bandits. The plot of The Seven Samurai is good for a low-level D&D adventure centered on a village threatened by monsters. Much of the dialog would work verbatim.

For a first serious D&D movie, you’d want to go with a strong story so it appeals to a wide audience, rather than risk the free-form you get with roleplay which might end up niche.
posted by kadonoishi at 10:48 AM on April 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

So, as somebody who played in the mid-90s (2nd edition), lost touch with the game, and doesn't have a heck of a lot of time, what's the best way to just try things out again, casual-like? Maybe online, preferably text-based?
posted by synecdoche at 7:00 PM on April 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Personally, when thinking of what a D&D movie should be, I keep thinking of it less as a conventional fantasy film using Dragonlance, Eberron, or Ravenloft as a setting and more of what I want is a modern version of the D&D 80s cartoon.

Group of friends are sucked into a dimensional portal transformed into heroes in some kind of bog standard fantasy world, and they must summon their courage, cleverness, and awareness of common fantasy tropes to find a way home. A bit of Jumanji, a bit of Zombieland, a bit of Narnia, and a whole lot of meta and "oh my God, DID you see that? I can't believe that worked!" nat 20 moments.

Basically make the film be about a group of friends sharing their love for fantasy lore, their imagination, and their relationships with each other. Because that's what D&D is all about.
posted by bl1nk at 4:21 AM on April 22, 2019

Or, alternatively, just do a cinematic adaptation of Nicholas Eames' Kings of the Wyld, because, honestly, that is one of the best love letters to D&D that I have read in a long time.
posted by bl1nk at 4:28 AM on April 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

rikschell: Pathfinder is where you'll find all the 3.5 min-maxers and munchkins. Though their 2nd edition seems to be moving away from that style of play, which makes me wonder who they think their audience is. 5e has a lot of options for players, and they're all designed to be pretty fun and balanced. Pathfinder has like a billion options for players, but lots and lots of them are broken.

Pathfinder really took off because D&D 3.5 was a good system, but had some amazingly clunky mechanics in parts--turning undead, for example, was just pants-on-head stupidly complicated. Instead of fixing it, WotC went ahead and made 4e, which practically no one wanted. Pathfinder fixed 3.5. When they wanted to sell more books and stuff, instead of coming up with a whole new system, they came up with add-ons that added classes and spells and gear and stuff, but left the core system intact. Of course, this eventually became unwieldy; as you noted, trying to make sure that everything's balanced quickly became problematic. Paizo knows that, and I suspect that Starfinder came about as much to fix some of the mechanics as to do a space opera RPG. And their 2e is likewise their looking over D&D's shoulder and seeing part of why they're doing so much better lately.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:42 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

The plot of The Seven Samurai is good for a low-level D&D adventure

You've just described Hawk the Slayer.
posted by SPrintF at 4:16 PM on April 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

I mainly reward players with Inspiration when they bring me snacks.
posted by jrishel at 10:50 AM on April 23, 2019

Amazon’s recent game sale included a discounted Stranger Things-themed D&D starter set, and my son’s birthday is in a little over 2 weeks. Guess what he’s getting.

He hasn’t watched the show (it would probably terrify him, tbh - he acts like a tough 10 year old but he’s quite susceptible to bad dreams after scary shows, even though he wants to like them). But I did find it charming that the campaign included was ostensibly the same one the kids in the show were playing, complete with their characters, and I think he will have fun trying it out. Plus it’s packaged in a recreation of the old-school 1e red box.

My books are all 2e, so if he really does get into it, imma need an upgrade I think...
posted by caution live frogs at 5:34 AM on April 26, 2019