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Happy Birthday D&D
Oct. 18th, 2004 03:41 pmThis weekend Wizards of the Coast (the current owner of Dungeons and
Dragons) held
"World-Wide D&D Day"). It was, nationally speaking, enough of a Big Deal that CNN did a story on it. There's a mini-poll that asks if D&D is the best fantasy game ever, so go vote.
I fought MSU Football homecoming traffic and went over to Fortress Comics (my Friendly Local Game Store) and ran a couple tables of the short demonstration adventure they sent.
The good:
Introducing some new players to D&D, and a couple of "experienced" juveniles to the concept that one might actually play a role in a game (as opposed to just rolling dice and moving the minis). I passed out a lot of business cards for CARP, and already one of the players has registered for the next game day. WotC sent plastic minis for everyone (and dice, and nice mechanical pencils - alas, I gave mine up to a player because we ran out). Eric (the owner) also gave the volunteer GMs some product credit, so I spent mine acquiring plastic minis. I have paid for very few of my plastic D&D miniatures -- it's become a thing for me to see how many I can get without laying out any cash.
The bad:
There was a stunning lack of originality in the scenarios (and some fairly negligent editing). One was from the new D&D boxed set, and the other straight out of the Eberron book. Given the resources they have (including the membership of RPGA, which includes a number of excellent authors) it seems a shame that they couldn't be bothered to send adventures created for the event.
Alas, I'm afraid that is what WotC seems to be all about these days -- they're all about tactical miniature games, and roleplaying seems to be falling by the wayside.
I had fun, though, and consider it time well spent.
I fought MSU Football homecoming traffic and went over to Fortress Comics (my Friendly Local Game Store) and ran a couple tables of the short demonstration adventure they sent.
The good:
Introducing some new players to D&D, and a couple of "experienced" juveniles to the concept that one might actually play a role in a game (as opposed to just rolling dice and moving the minis). I passed out a lot of business cards for CARP, and already one of the players has registered for the next game day. WotC sent plastic minis for everyone (and dice, and nice mechanical pencils - alas, I gave mine up to a player because we ran out). Eric (the owner) also gave the volunteer GMs some product credit, so I spent mine acquiring plastic minis. I have paid for very few of my plastic D&D miniatures -- it's become a thing for me to see how many I can get without laying out any cash.
The bad:
There was a stunning lack of originality in the scenarios (and some fairly negligent editing). One was from the new D&D boxed set, and the other straight out of the Eberron book. Given the resources they have (including the membership of RPGA, which includes a number of excellent authors) it seems a shame that they couldn't be bothered to send adventures created for the event.
Alas, I'm afraid that is what WotC seems to be all about these days -- they're all about tactical miniature games, and roleplaying seems to be falling by the wayside.
I had fun, though, and consider it time well spent.
