Monday, February 18, 2019

A Very Different Sort of D&D

One of my friends was at OrcCon this weekend (actually, she's still there, as it's a 4-day event.) I went and joined her and her friends yesterday and experienced a taste of what it's like to do D&D modules in a convention setting.

My experience of D&D has previously all been home games. I showed up and had to roll a level 14 version of my level 2 Warlock very quickly in order to have someone to play.

The way it worked was that you'd sign up for modules in different tiers (1-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-20) and hope you got in with your friends if you weren't quick to sign up.

This was much more mechanically-based D&D. The focus was on combat (and to an extent environmental exploration) and definitely not on RP.

So it's not really the way I like to play the game. But it was an interesting experience.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to play with my friend in the second module I ran, though I thankfully was able to play with her brother and one of her friends I had previously met. But there was no time to establish characters very well - I don't even really know what the races of the other characters were.

While I wouldn't suggest we do it as well, the games I tend to play are more in the Critical Role mode - my group tends not to mind if it's a combat-less session, and we're more focused on the storytelling aspect of the game. My best friend Tim and I have a lot of fun building complex backstory for characters and worlds (he's got his own homebrew setting). Indeed, I've often pitched the idea of D&D as a group improvisational storytelling system - and as a writer with a bunch of actor friends, that's a comfortable mode for us.

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