Sean Kelly has started playing the original Dungeons & Dragons again (pen & paper version) and he recently sent out his list of 10 Awesome Things About D&D:
1 – Rolling a Natural Twenty when the fight is on the line
2 – Leveling up
3 – 0 hit points, unconscious, possibly dead
4 – The 10‘ pole
5 – The druid spell Shillelagh
6 – Being a 1st level Halfling mage with 1 hit point and a dart
7 – Drinking ale in the tavern
8 – The planar asymmetric synergy of polyhedrons and lead figures
9 – Scimitars
10 – Treasure Type Q, the best Treasure Type
My list would have fighting a Beholder, those things were so badass.
What kind of things would make your D&D top ten list?
UPDATE 1: A bunch of great comments coming in. The nostalgia spell I cast worked!
UPDATE 2: For those of you thinking about getting back into D&D and trying out the new 3.5 ruleset, here’s the Wizards of the Coast official website for Dungeons & Dragons. TSR, company formed by Gary Gygax that originally published D&D, was bought by Wizards of the Coast in 1997. D&D 4th Edition is scheduled for this May.
UPDATE 3: All of this talk of D&D made me think of Dungeon Majesty, a hilarious public access TV show from 2004 where four women play D&D and act out the various battle scenes with ridiculous green screen effects.
UPDATE 4: Remember the awesome Dragon magazine? Well I just read the sad news that after 30 years it stopped being published back in September, however back issues are still available through its publisher Paizo. It’s great to go through there and just look at the covers of the issues I used to own.
Wade Rockett let us know that Dragon magazine editor Wolfgang Baur recently started the Kobold Quarterly to fill the void left by the end of Dragon.
UPDATE 5: Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away on March 4th, 2008.
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- Bags of Holding
- When you get to the point where you laugh at a horde of orcs rounding the corner of a dungeon
- Gelatinous Cubes
-Having great DMs to play with. This would make or break the whole game.
-All of the worlds and books that were created, esp Dragonlance series and Icewind Dale
The 1st edition DMG has all sorts of bizarre stuff, including a 2+ page section near the front on the game mechanics for various diseases. It’s some of the greatest bathroom reading material ever.
Oh, man, love the gelatinous cube.
I have a copy of Dieties and Demigods, the first edition before they revised it to remove the stuff that they didn’t own the rights to.
I feel like a lot of the stuff I use in my professional life (particularly writing and public speaking, but also more basic stuff like organization and leading teams) got started in fifth grade when I was playing D&D. I can’t wait until the new edition of this comes out so I can buy it and teach it to my kids.
But, but… halflings can’t be magic-users if you play by the book. Reference the Character Race Table II: Class Level Limitations on PHB Page 14, for instance.
:-)
Chaotic neutral. Which may be the alignment of most Coen Bros. flicks.
The original AD&D? Wasn’t there something about becoming a bard that made it totally not worth it? Like having to be a fighter for a few levels, then a thief for a few levels without using your fighter skills, and then you could be a bard if you passed a standardized bard test or something? Neither me or anyone I ever played with ever attempted that bard path, and I’ve never had anyone start telling me about their D&D character unsolicited by starting with “So I did all the work to become a bard,” either.
Carnivorous Flying Squirrels.
Boy does this bring back memories…
I laughed out loud at the 1 hp halfling mage with a dart.
I had a long, long discussion about evil with Donald Bruce on a drive across the country. We concluded that the purest evil was Neutral Evil. I went back and checked: all things that were lack of humanity were indeed Neutral Evil. Gary’s Lich in the Tomb of Horrors, for example. Then we tried to figger out what kind of evil Steve Jobs was… or Hitler. Interesting game for a long drive.
Anyone ever play Verbosh?
Holy Avenger FTW!
The original AD&D guides increased my vocabulary insane amounts, even though it didn’t help with pronounciation…
Two short stories:
A friend of mine won a class jeopardy contest because of D&D. “Trebuchet”, which he pronounced “tray-bu-shet”
In third grade sunday school, we were talking on why we call Jesus “Lord”. “Does anyone know what a lord is,†the Nun asked?
“It’s a ninth level fighter!†I responded.
One of the more traumatic experiences of my life. ;-)
3rd grade Sunday school. Priceless.
An answer like that in my sunday school class would have gotten you promptly paddled. It is hilarious though.
The first time you get to cast a fireball. All the awesome power of 6d6 damage.
Hmm some to add to the list
- Wandering monsters
- Modules S1-4. Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain…
- The loot
- Siege engine damage tables
- Any battle fought outside of the material plane
- The first time you read the first edition DMG from cover to cover (the one with the efrit on the cover)
- Dragon Magazine Issue #49 (those who know, know what I’m talking about)
- Grimtooth’s Traps
- Carving out your own imaginary empire in the imaginary World of Greyhawk
- That 80’s cartoon show (hehe)
If you place a bag of holding in another bag of holding, you open a tear in the space time continuum which eats all your stuff in both bags. Implodes with a *pop*.
I miss playing all day D&D once a month with my friends.
Ahh..the salad days.
This is great. I could sigh all day long.
My favs;
* “What’s my TACO?”
* “This adventure sux, we haven’t found any magical weapons.”
* Monks.
* Getting a new set of dice.
* The four sided dice and laughing at people who didn’t get it.
* Eating cold pizza the next morning and still playing.
* Minatures.
Favs from above:
* Bag of holding.
* 10 foot pole.
* The lord faux pas.
Nice one Scott. Let’s hook up for a game. World of Warcraft lacks imagination!
Mick
P.S. Have to add the Dragon Lance novels. They were awesome.
I’ve been playing 3.5 for a few years now. I tried looking at some old AD&D books and was grateful for the changes.
Now that I think about it, I remember when my older brother would DM back in the early 80s, and someone had a magic sword named Zaxxon which could cast spells like “Flying Fluorescent Mace Head” and “Invisible Stampeding Herd of Buffalo.”
It wasn’t exactly a rules-heavy game, no. Pre-teens for the win.
Dancing vorpal
Bigby’s Fists and other various body parts that did damage
Using the Giant-slayer hammer from one module to take on the 3 consecutive Giant modules. I remember the Trident was called Whelm, and the sword (Black Razor?) took souls–but can’t remember the hammer’s name (Googling is cheating!)
There was only one guy in the crowd who insisted on being a Paladin and then talking down to the group like he was the pope .
referring to 10-sided as “percentile” dice
Naming your dwarves after “Time Bandits” characters
Rolling for secret doors so often that the DM either says “fine–you find one” or “stop–there aren’t any!@”
Infravision
Trying to integrate the word “Succubus” into every day life
and the #1 thing– which is how you can code word new friends to see if they have ever played— “DROW”
I forgot to add an honorable mention..
Count Strahd Von Zarovich!
definitely character names. I had a female fighter called Bbbbbbbalqps (the last bit actually being the letter psi), and a paladin called G.R.O. LaSaller-Ingrate. A friend had a character named after the economist Biblabp das Gupta.
@Chip. S2. White Plume Mountain. The trident was “Waveâ€â€¦ ;-)
Anyone remember “chits†or rolling the 6 sider to determine the 10’s on their twenty sider?
You realize that according to 60 Minutes… by all rights we should all have committed suicide by now.
I’m still kicking myself for letting my mother sell all of my old D&D books, dice, modules, etc.
And reading through the comments dredged three words from the depths of my memory:
Baba Yaga’s Hut
Nothing. Nada. Caput.
I never have played. I laughed at people who did. I’m sure you all had a lot of fun not fitting in. Ha!
I do miss all the good drugs my D&D friends used to bring along though. Ahh, those were the days.
I loved ignoring all the encumbrance rules.
and creating characters were like doing your taxes…heh!
favorite (or least favorite, if you prefer) moment: a critical miss with a ranged weapon. you usually end up shooting your leg off.
Playing with my cousins from 9pm-5am – at age 29…
Chip’s theme song of the evening
Rolling back to back 1’s
Battling with foam swords, way too recently
Playing with the popular kids in high school and them requesting that it remained a secret
Gully dwarves named Scabris
Some other great things:
Deck of Many Things
Wand of Wonder
My friends paladin we referred to as “the meat wall” because he actually never hit a single creature until he was past level 10 (thousands of upon thousands of monsters….first edition took forever to level) but he was good for soaking up damage so the other characters could survive to deal damage.
Crazy obscure weapons like harpoons, bill-guisarms, falchion-forks and lucern hammers
Getting screwed over by super difficult monsters and modules. Tomb of Horrors anyone??
Module S3 – Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
+ Ioun stones
+ Artifacts, particularly the Vecna pair
+ The Twofold Talisman in Dragon #84 & #85
+ the Wish spell
+ Prismatic Wall, with the successive barriers broken by different counterspells
+ the Forgotten Realms, from the Dragon columns to the boxed set and now a succession of slick books
Oriental Adventures, Kensai, dual wielding katanas
2d10 baby
* Waiting for T-2 “Temple of Elemental Evil” for years, and years, and years….
* Artifacts: The Invulnerable Coat of Arnd, Baba Yagas Hut, and Vorpal Blade.
* Hanging the Grey hawk poster on my wall and putting little flag pins in the places we’d had adventures
* Painting miniatures (wash and dry!)
* “What’s New with Phil & Dixie” cartoon by Phil Foglio in every issue (and the tag line about next issue being the “Sex and D&D” issue – or the issue (64?) where there were dragons everywhere)
* The cool game pull-outs in Dragon (esp. issue #45)
* GenCon!
The Rod of Lordly Might!
Wand of wonder… Enough said.
i thought it was a rod???
Thanks to everyone who posted above. I haven’t enjoyed reading some random site I stumbled upon on the ‘Net this much in a looooong time.
I got almost every reference, felt every emotion, laughed at the obscurities and bizareness, and felt kinship with total strangers I’ll never meet, just because we shared what is was to play pen & paper D&D back in the days.
I salute you all! You’ve all collectively made my day and put a smile on my face.
Calzone Golems.
Also the first time you take a foray into Epic characters, there’s a whole lot of “You can do -what- now?”
Calkins first used his Rod of Lordly Might at Minicon, on his 16th birthday, with a random girl. . . In a stairwell, if I recall. . .
“Hello! Dungeon Master?! I’d like to report an alignment deviation!”
/ah, the good old days.
I won the Sonoma County spelling bee in 1987 and went on to the state finals because, thanks to D&D, I knew how to spell “lycanthropy”.
Thanks, D&D!
Ok,
First to the dude who is complaining about halflings not being able to be mages. That’s technically correct. I just looked it up in my mint-condition, 25 year-old, still-has-the-$12-sticker-on-it Player’s. However, we’re talking about a magical world where monsters that can turn armor into rust fight Elves that can see in the dark … And so, I cast the non-existent illusionist spell Suspend Partial Suspension of Disbelief on you, thereby making it ok for you to be both a halfling and a magician. Also it’s racist. Any race should be able to be any job. However, I must admit you totally faced a dungeon master in a public forum and won (technically), so the next bottle of Mountain Dew is on me.
And Calkins … what you have revealed unto us about your teenage World of Greyhawk years is both beautiful and disturbing. It’s a new word, beautisturbing. Or was that college. Nah, college was Shadowrun.
Making up a “hooker” character class with my friend when i was in 5th grade. We wrote out all sorts of funny tables and rules for it.
I remember the Houri class from Dragon magazine was it? That was basically a hooker. I also remember a ‘corpse’ class from some magazine. This corpse was actually a PC and as such could level up and stuff, and was ‘wielded as a weapon’ by other PCs.
@ Mick Liubinskas
Wasn’t it “THACO”…….
I remember playing in an old camper by gas lanterns….
the dice. all of them.
Monster manual. best.art.evar.
maps. loads and loads of maps.
players who “honestly” rolled and yet seem to have all attributes over 12, and at least 2 17s.
Monstrous Compendium (binder and hole-punched expansions only, please), and imagining a comprehensive ecology where a tarasque might conceivably exist.
Cloak of scintillating colors totally gave me a leg up on the SAT’s.
– How positively uber the original AD&D bard was– by the time my primary character was a 5th level bard he had 117 hit points and was squaring up against Type VI Balors.
(In spite of what the poster above says, if you took the time to go through the fighter, then thief, then bard levels, you were a demigod before the double digits. Then, the bard was sadly– but understandably– gimped.)
– The cavalier class (and anything in Unearthed Arcana)!
my first fav chara was a cav named Strydar with an 18 cha.
i was 11, not a virgin( thanx aunt cindy) and now 33 still wondering why the eff the dice gods blessed me with only one great ability wasted on cha??
Being the only one to survive in my party.. again.
Oh and rust monsters!!!
20th level fighter encounters a 3 HD rust monster. 20th level fighter runs away screaming like a little girl!
Great stuff!
reminded of a time before D&D was corrupted and it wasn’t all about the power gamer.
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