It's been out long enough that it's starting to get some opinions that hate or nitpick it to death, but I think the fact it got so much overall good reception from the DnD crowd when it first came out says something. And once you realize it's a visualization of a session between players and the DM, a rewatch to catch the little details that were missed before makes it even more enjoyable.
Besides reading the Basic Rules, which someone else has already linked, I suggest you check out a game on Youtube. Note that usually these aren’t an accurate representation of how most games actually go- Critical Role for instance is comprised entirely of experienced voice actors- but it’ll give you an impression of how the game runs.
Just don’t base your expectations of your players/dm on them.
Basically, you need a Dungeon Master who will be the story teller. This person is responsible for setting the stage for the story and guiding the adventurers through their quest. The DM also sets up the encounters with monsters. The DM must know each monster, the Hit Points, the Attack Power, special moves, etc for each monster.
The adventures will listen to the opening sequence of the story by the DM and then they will make decisions on what to do next. The DM will guide the players to what they “should” do, but the DM doesn’t “force” them to do anything.
The DM must be able to think on their toes, for players will always try to do something the DM didn’t think of…they must be able to quickly act on a situation. Speaking of quickly act, the DM can take their time to figure out what to say next, just don’t take like 10-15 minutes, or everyone will get bored.
For the players, try to stick to the story as much as you can, don’t go running off and trying to fuck chickens (yes I had a player who wanted to do that all the time).
The players must keep track of their health, inventory and skills. They must know how and when to use certain skills.
I could go on and on, but I see others are commenting now and probably discouraging based on your question, so I will keep this short and hope this is what you are looking for.
Oh, and HAVE FUN, that is the most important part!
I love this. I especially love the “play at level 1 until it’s not fun”. Progression is secondary to a good story. Back when I was playing 1st and 2nd editions, new players would start as zero level characters, where we roleplayed short adventures around them being apprentices for organizations such as a thieves guild, a church, a fighter’s guild or for some wizard or going to an academy. The characters might end up meeting each other by having similar quests given to them and they become friends who evolve into adventurers.
What a a pointless, ad ridden mess of an article. The popularity of Forgotten Realms stems from the fact that it was aggresively market ed during the 2e era, since the creator of the setting was on board, unlike Gary and his Greyhawk. The author mentions the (terrible) tie in novels that were also a major factor in its omnipresence, but they also drove the metaplot which diluted the setting into its curent “generic fantasy kitchen sink”. Personally, if you’d put a gun to my head and told me to run a game in it, I’d probaby avoid the Sword Coast in favor of the east/southeast, Dalelands or The Sea od Fallen Stars being the most likely canidates.
One direction to take this conversation is to legitimize a formal ads platform and move the technology in that direction. It's not a concept that has had airtime in federated social(open source, anti-corporate and all) but it fits into the model of enthusiast communities to have a magazine that is "both articles and ads".
I homebrewed a thing set on an alternate history future Earth where basically, there’s an alternate history divergence with Jimmy Carter not losing reelection and then the US basically turning into a demsoc utopia resulting in world peace and sustainable prosperity, and then three different races of aliens show up. At first things go well with humanity, but then there’s complications and tensions both between and within those three races, and the most advanced of the three ends up seeing humanity as a threat to them due to a bunch of other factors I introduced that would take way too long to explain and releasing a viral bioweapon that ended up killing most of humanity in the space of a year before a coalition of scientists and soldiers from all four species banded together to synthesize a cure and stop things. All of the game stuff happens well after, in the ruins of civilization, a la Fallout, but with a post-plague instead of post-nuclear aesthetic.
I have a whole novella detailing all of that lore on my Google Drive, most of which I wrote while unemployed in 2019. So you can imagine how weird 2020 was for me.
But that’s on the backburner at the moment because my group is playing through the one with Gundren Rockseeker on the Sword Coast right now, with someone else DMing, because my mental health wasn’t great in 2021 but we still wanted to play.
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