The Beardian Blog

Since about September or October I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons weekly with some friends from work and, golly, it's been a blast! My unsatisfactory previous excursion with the game lead me to found a group. I'd only played once before at CCS and the game only lasted a short time before many of the other players got bored, unfortunately. Suspicious that this might be a symptom of 4th Edition, which is the version we played, I opted to try the 3.5 rulebooks, a choice validated by the fact that this was the only set of rules my local library had.

Happily, I ended up renewing the books and even keeping them overdue for several weeks. (Luckily, my mom used to work there, so I kind of have it in with the crew.) Because I was trying to start up a game, I took it upon myself to be Dungeon Master, meaning I had to spend a couple weeks studying the Player's Handbook and DM's Guide before the first play session could even begin. The work paid off, though, as the following weekly play sessions were really fun!

The group started off pretty small, but, as word spread, a few folks at work revealed themselves to be former D&D players. Soon we were seven strong: Adam, Andy, and Chauncey had never played before, while Sarah, Nigel, and Brian had varying degrees of past experience. Learning the game has been nearly as much fun as playing -- I'm blessed to have players patient enough to wait for their DM to look up the rules.

And DMing, though a daunting role, is a hell of lot of fun. In video gamer's terms, you basically get to create your own multiplayer game. You have to make up the story, the NPCs, the monsters, the level design, all of that. But the best part is putting your game before your players and having them choose how to play it. It can lead to consequences you couldn't possibly foresee and the game feels alive and elastic when you encounter moments like that, moments when you have to suddenly change your plans and figure out how these players, these anomalies would realistically affect events given the new circumstances.

In celebration of this phenomenon, and to keep a record of in-game events, I've been keeping a new blog, The Beardian Blog, where one can read up on my group's adventures. I tend to go into needless detail in each post, but that's just a sign that I enjoy writing them.

And now a few players have penned their own campaigns, meaning I get to relax and be a player! We've already played through an adventure by Nigel, and Brian and Andy both have awesome-looking campaigns lines up. But right now we're still in the midst of my game, and I'm loving the DM's chair. My stories tend to have a flair a la Pratchett, since I read the Discworld books practically nonstop through high school, and my players seem to enjoy the mild silliness as much as I do.

I'd greatly encourage anyone who's never played the game to try it. I think it's particularly easy for a video gamer to pick up, especially someone who likes RPGs or games with good stories. It might be difficult to find people to play with, but if you ask around, you might be surprised who's dabbled with dice in the past and would like to play again. If this happens, you might not even have to take on the responsibility of DM; on the other hand, if you've the constitution to read through the many, many rules, DMing can be a surprisingly rewarding experience.

I should note that we technically no longer play D&D. We abandoned the 3.5 rules recently to start playing by the Pathfinder rules... It gets kinda complicated, but from what I understand, while D&D 4th Edition completely revamped the rules from 3.5, the Pathfinder rules (which are published by Paizo, not Wizards of the Coast) are an improvement and the successor to 3.5. From my experience, this is the case -- Pathfinder is more fun and more concise than the 3.5 rules, and my, admittedly brief, experience with 4E did not end so well. So, now, we play Pathfinder, but really, at heart, we're playing D&D.

Oh, and Happy New Decade, internet!