Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

We started playing a year ago, it was my first time playing since the mid-80's, and we're doing it all from my old AD&D (first edition) books and modules that I had collected from then.

We really like it because as a group of newbies - four of the five players had never played before - it gives us permission to do things that are really fun but we never really would have found time to do before. We've incorporated poetry reading, table-reading of scripts, songs, and silly tasks (I made my wife pick a real estate lockbox we didn't have the combination for, before her thief could advance to level 2).

So for us anyway, it wasn't anything about Wizards of the Coast or 5e... this is strictly Gygax-level stuff we're playing. But I think some of it is a blowback from many of us just feeling exhausted and discouraged about online life, there is greater appetite for making these sorts of memories and being creative together.

That sounds like a good time! I've actually had some of the most fun role-playing experiences playing with new players who don't really have a preconceived on what the typical limits of role-playing should be.

For example, we've got one player who decided to try and buy drugs in-game at one of the seedier cities we were stopping at. Fast-forward many sessions later, and she's now a kingpin of sorts with an owl-delivery service and contacts of varying trustworthiness all over the place. It does help to have a very creative DM who likes creating random effects (inhaling ground up flail snail shell turned out to be particularly silly) and teammates who don't get bent out of shape over "less than optimal" play or whatever.

This is the D&D I remember. Half the time we we didn't have the books accessible (basically each friend had bought a single book, so if they weren't around, neither was their book).

Due to limited transportation, we spent most of one summer playing on a 3-way phone chain. Whenever someone's parents needed the phone their character would become an NPC until they could dial back in. No maps — just a lot of trust and imagination.

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