Online play was a godsend during lockdown, and introduced me to all sorts of digital tools our group still uses. If I ever meet that nice Mr. Strahd, I’ll have to buy him a drink for that alone.
But damn, if we couldn’t wait to go back to in-person play. For a bunch of 30-40 year old folks with jobs and kids and other assorted awkward bollocks, in-the-flesh DnD has been a magnificent way for us to enrich old friendships - and, even better for people our age, develop new ones.
And it does this without a requirement to get smashed at the pub, which is still very much the default socialising technique over here. Not that I mind getting fucked up, but I’m always on the lookout for ways to hang out with friends that doesn’t revolve 100% around booze. Getting to share collaborative story-telling with my people around a table still feels every bit as special now as it did when we started 15 odd years ago.
Yeah, my in-person campaign didn’t survive the transition to online. One that started online is still going strong online, but it feels like transitioning from one to the other is a big ask, especially since what someone gets from an in-person game is not necessarily the same as a remote game.
On the other hand, online is nice in that there’s no rushing around to get somewhere, no travel time to deal with. Just be at your desk on time and spend a few hours throwing dice. If I could figure out how to do that but still get to play with my minis I’d be in a good place…
It kind of barely touches on FoundryVTT which is pretty much the best of the bunch if you are ok with running your own server:
-you own it -you own the content -lots of modules and very active development and support. Both official and fan based -great to use for a number of systems from DND to Warhammer and too many to list on mobile -very slick to use and macros allow you to do many cool things easily
Foundry really is amazing. The mod community for it is fantastic; you can find ones to do pretty much anything you’d want to do in game, and the UI is super slick. But the zero subscription part is what really sells it for me.
I’ve got something to admit: I’ve never actually played DnD.
I read a ton of TSR books, thoroughly enjoyed the movie, liked the cartoon as a kid, played D&D type PC games, but when I was young I didn’t know anyone who played and as an adult I feel kinda… a bit behind the curve to jump into a live game despite having a number of friends who do play more.
Is there any sort of online community where a newb can join into a game (preferably with a patient DM and players). Are there good kits to enhance the experience of playing with others online (virtual meeting and board?)
I’m still new to DnD, but after a few quick experiences, I think playing in-person has some benefits, especially for newcomers. It’s hard to get going with an online group when people have different levels of investment and commitment to the timeslot, and I’ve found online groups fall apart more easily than IRL groups. As a newcomer, my first “group” fell apart after 3 sessions, and I never really got a good feel for how the game went. It took my cousins and their friends inviting me for an IRL game to really get into it and enjoy it.
If you’re really looking at online, there are various Discord servers that will run games on roll20 and whatnot. I also just saw an ad for startplaying.games earlier, which apparently has paid games.
As for tools, it’s really up to you. Some people like using the physical books, others enjoy the way the information flows in something like DnDBeyond or Roll20’s compendiums.
@meant2live218@phx well IRL ones are cool and all, but most of my friends are online only. so we did the first session was at a friend's house nearby when we all were together for a comic con. Then we went to online Tabletop simulator. We played for a good 2 years. We are planning to get back to it since I was new to being a Co-DM and all.
I just started playing DnD a year ago for the first time at 31. I’d always wanted to play, ever since I was a kid, but never had the chance. So I decided to grab my wife and a couple of my wife’s friends and DM a short one shot, just to see if we enjoyed it. I spent a lot of time watching videos and looking at the DM communities, and after a couple weeks, we played it. It was a blast, and now a year later we’ve finished our first module and are midway through our second, and I’ve loved every second of it. We have three more players, two of which have played for years, and I’m still DMing.
If you’ve got some friends that play in person and they have an open slot, I’d 100% say go for it. Let them know you’re a total noob and just follow their lead; everyone was new at some point.
In my experience, the D&D community is very welcoming to newcomers. In addition to the classic online LFG stuff (lemmy, reddit, discord), I would give your local hobby shop(s) a visit. Chances are they host weekly games, or at the very least can point you in the right direction.
I will say, with D&D 5e, they really made an effort to streamline the learning curve, and it shows. I’ll message you a tool I found really helpful for learning the rules.
(Also, don’t limit yourself to D&D! There are plenty of great pen and paper roleplaying systems out there. Call of Cthulhu is a great example of one I’ve been meaning to play.)
Probably mostly bots. Apparently there is several hundred thousand bot accounts and admins have been purging them. Seems like new users were made to make it appear as if Lenny was growing exponentially
That graph showing a sudden massive uptick all at once across so many instances? Crazy.
From the post, it seemed that the intention was not to inflate the numbers alone, but to have the bots sit around until needed. It makes me mad that someone jumped on that so fast to set up all those sleeper bots.
The subscriber count you see is based in the instance you are on. 7000+ subscribers are from lemmy.world. The bot accounts people complain about are on unsecured instances. We haven’t seen proof of any activity from them and they wouldn’t show up in the subscriber count here.
I would suggest sketching your maps on paper and then copying the design at home. The time intensive part of making a map is figuring out how to populate it, at least for me. I.e. what civilization lives in which city, their culture, history, allies and enemies. Or in the case of dungeon maps, what monster lives in which room and how do they behave, loot, traps, story hooks etc.
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