Best book on D&D rules (gamewise)?

[DemonKing]

Long story but can anyone recommend a guidebook book that explain the Dungeons & Dragons rules (gamewise) for someone who has never played an RPG? Must be in book form rather then Internet guides etc.

Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies?

I think there's also a Dungeon Mastering for Dummies out there as well.

There's also a D&D starter kit for the latest edition which should be widely available and is dirt cheap (they're like pushers that want to give you a taster, I guess).

 

[Jaqen]

Again, big thanks for your help.

Slightly moving away from my original request/question, but here goes;

Is a campaign like a region in the massive D&D world?
I know that the author 'r a salvatore', has set some of his work in the 'Forgotton Realms' setting. Does his actions of writing determine how Role-Playing games are played? For example, if he decided to write about am erupting volcano which suddenly appeared - would people who play the Role-Playing game implement this into their game?

Sorry if that is a bad example, i'm just struggling to understand how actions the authors take (when based in the d&d world) actually affects the game world?

 

[someone else]

Maybe read the wikipedia?

A campaign is like a major quest such as Frodo and the Ring, including the actions outside of the Fellowship Of The Ring.
In strategy/simulation games a campaign is a series of missions or a war. WW2 will be a series of campaigns due to the scale it. Maybe check the dictionary.

Role-playing is pretty much anything goes, you don't have to follow an author or canon. Did Han shoot first?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Campaign settings in pen&paper RPG's mean the actual playing world that the game is set in.

Campaign in a p&p RPG is a series of quests and play-sessions which are linked together by an overarching plot. Similar to many TV-seriers which have small "quests" in every episode but in the background the big "quest", ie main plot, also advances.

Now, if R.A Salvatore writes an erupting volcano in his latest Drizzt-dribble, individual Game Masters are quite free to pick & choose. Some might use that volcano in their campaigns, others might not.

That's a mistake that many starting game groups make, trying to slavishly follow every little semi-"official" tidbit of information to get it all "right". GM's are completely free to conjure up their own worlds or their own versions of existing campaign settings.

 

[Jaqen]

Again, thanks for you help guys.

I never realized the D&D world was so big. I'm going to continue reading up on it and hopfully get some books on the subject for myself as at the moment I feel as if my head is about to explode!

I've came across a the term 'campaign' a few time before in PC games (most recently, Empires: Total War) but was unsure of the exact meaning of it in the d&d world.

So is there a kind of official body that governs what is made 'official'?

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

I never realized the D&D world was so big.

Which one of them? :D

So is there a kind of official body that governs what is made 'official'?

Anything published by WotC (TSR, if you're interested in older editions) is official.

 

[Redeye]

I wonder if this guy is from Hasbro and is just researching what people think they know.

Or something.

 

[Jaesun]

I wonder if this guy is from Hasbro and is just researching what people think they know.

Or something.

Of all the websites on Earth, why would they choose research at the Codex? :shock:

 

[Bloodeyes]

I don't buy this for a second.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Of all the websites on Earth, why would they choose research at the Codex? :shock:

The Codex is the most prestigious RPG magazine in the industry, silly.

 

[Jaesun]

Of all the websites on Earth, why would they choose research at the Codex? :shock:

The Codex is the most prestigious RPG magazine in the industry, silly.

Oh yes, good sir, I had forgotten. :monocle:

 

[Jaqen]

Cheers guys i'll keep reading up on it and buy some books on the subject.

I wonder if this guy is from Hasbro and is just researching what people think they know.

Or something.

Honestly, i'm just a clueless individual with an interest and willing learn on this subject. I'll keep reading wiki, although I seem to come away with more questions.

Everyone on this site seems to have a wealth of information, a lot of the posts I read I can't understand the terminology used. Hence trying to learn the 'basics' of how D&D works.

I don't know what Hasbro means either.

 

[Apathy]

I don't know what Hasbro means either.

Edit: Hasbro is a toy company.

Articles you might want to read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_role-playing_game

You don't need to read books to play BG and BG2 though, you'll learn more about cRPGs by playing a few, and if you like the genre maybe even try PnP. You don't need cRPG experience to play PnP, but it helps (and cRPGs are much more accessable than PnP RPGs so you don't have to invest as much time).

I'd suggest starting with Planescape: Torment. It's a really easy game, so you don't need to worry about your build or learning the rules (in cRPGs the game knows the rules for you, so unless you want to powergame you don't need to know more than what you learn in the manual/tutorial) It's also one of the best RPGs ever made.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Things like THACO and negative AC were moron repellents. D&D 3E started the decline.

Moron magnets is more like it. Designing a rules system to be counter-intuitive is not in itself bad(if there is some brilliant reasoning behind such). But making a game that is counter-intuitive, counter-logical, backwards, messy, cumbersome and just all around unnecessarily Rube Goldbergian YEARS after much better designs were published is bad. And maintaining such for a few DECADES just because the 'secure in their misery' kiddies are threatening to not buy a game we all know for certain they WILL buy(re: 3rd edition and 4th ed.) and get used to and eventually admit they were being idiots in their youth...well that is just madness.

I have heard a lot of gripes from the over 40 nostalgia guys in regards to 3rd ed. being the "decline" but one thing I have NEVER heard from a single one of them is an argument rooted in any understanding of game design. A lot of "They shouldn't have changed anything EVER!" but no "Here is why *THIS* worked better in 2nd ed...." arguments.

Telling.

Ok here's a reason. Well, sort of. I actually agree that 3rd edition is better for PnP. But I greatly preferred 2nd ed for crpgs, and not just because we had better games for it. The flaws of 3rd edition for crpg-ing are actually the things it improved for PnP. Classes in 3rd ed are much better balanced, in that they all start out in arm's reach of each other, and progress at roughly the same rate, so long as you include non-combat usefulness and versatility as 'power' (for bard, shadowdancer, etc). The system is far less harsh and classes are less important. You want a level in another class, you just take it - no fucking around with dual-classing and/or kits required.

2nd ed had flaws in PnP that were actually fun in crpgs. For example, magic-users (mages especially) were so incredibly weak early on that a level 1 wizard had a 50% statistical chance of losing to a housecat, assuming the wizard has the best spell selection memorised and good stats, but later they grew into teh fuck-off powerhouse. Same for dual-classing: you'd be taking a big hit to your character's abilities for a long time, that would be traded for late-game uberness - and the more late-game uberness you wanted, the longer your character would be gimped. You could have a kensai-wizard, or fighter-wizard that has the SAME number of spells as a pure wizard in BG2, while having hefty fighting skills if you timed your class-switching right (as the way the levels worked you could get about 9 levels of fighter, from memory, using only the exp between the exp cap and the wizard level one below the cap).

Now in PnP that is just shit design - a player is gimped out of the action for your first 6 months of gaming, then becomes overpowered and ruins the encounters for everyone else forever after that. BUT in crpgs, it was one of the more fun aspects of party management. It became a strategic decision about what balance of 'useful-now' and 'useful-later' you went for. E.g. timing you dual-classing right so that you always have a thief and a mage active, but still giving all your thieves fighter or mage dual-classes, and all your mages fighter or thief classes. If really powergaming you'd start out with a set of characters all in their OPPOSITE classes to what will be their eventual mains. But if the game was at a decent difficulty, that shouldn't be possible - instead you'd be making hard choices about how much early survivability you can AFFORD to trade for later power.

Also, for some reason, the greater emphasis on class seemed to make party-development and party-selection strategy more interesting in crpgs, whereas in PnP, where each player has one and only one character, it just makes the game more limiting.

I also liked, for crpg-with-reload purposes the sheer insanity of some spells that got scaled back in 3rd edition so they could actually be used in PnP without someone having a heart-attack: 'wish' I'm looking at you

Some of the monsters were eviller in more interesting ways - again, all in ways that were impractical in PnP where death is not just a quickload away from fixing - slimes that turned what they hit into more slimes, that kind of thing.

I know that isn't exactly a treatise, but does it satisfy you for why someone might preer 2nd ed for reasons other than 'don't change anything ever'. Again, I agree that later editions are better for PnP, so we aren't in complete disagreement.

 

[SkeleTony]

I was talking in terms of logical consistency, elegance, not being unnecessarily complicated(i.e. using a single d6 roll to spot underground traps if you are a dwarf but using percentile dice to hear noises if you are a human thief etc., which also goes to the consistency thing).

It is irrelevant how well or badly computer games have been made based on ANY system. It is still bad design. Even a badly designed RPG can be a lot of fun(more fun than a well designed real time strategy or FPS IMO) but that does not absolve designers from making a fucking effort to improve designs.


EDIT: BTW, I do not play pen and paper games.

 

[Panthera]

www.d20srd.org

 

[deuxhero]

I second the HTML SRD seeing as how it is free.