Roll Perform (Oratory) Check
Who doesn’t love playing a game with friends on a otherwise dull weekend evening? If you said no to that rhetorical question, then just stop reading here, and why did you respond to it in the first place? If you’re sticking around, then let’s talk about one most nerdy things of the modern era: Tabletop RPGs and more specifically, Dungeons & Dragons. I see you starting to close out of this tab, don’t lie to me! Listen, just hear me out on this. Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve been able to share with my closest friends, and I want to share that with others. I want to show that it’s a medium for collaborative storytelling, and not an introduction into anything that will cause psychotic episodes(I’ll explain, don’t worry).
Right, so let’s start with the basics. The game is where you and several other people who you’re playing with have your own characters, whom you role play as and interact with the other players, and the non-player characters that the Dungeon Master (DM) controls. The DM controls the setting that the players are in, and gives the plot hooks and the like. What you, the players, do with them, are completely up to you. The goal is for everybody to have fun, DM included.
Above is a D20, the most rolled die when playing D&D. Oh, right I should’ve mentioned this earlier. Dice decide a lot in this game. From how skilled you are at certain things, such as how knowledgeable you are at something or how well you are at giving speeches, to how much damage you can deal and take in return. In D&D many things have a threshold that you have to meet in order to do something called the “Difficulty Class” or “Dice Challenge” (DC). The DC of an action is decided by both the rules and the DM, and the challenge is to roll that number using a D20 plus anything that would modify that roll. For example: the DC to hear the sound of a lock being opened is 20. Now, let’s say that you have a perception check modifier of +7. You would then roll a D20, and if you roll 13 or higher, you would be matching or beating the threshold, meaning that you heard the lock opening. Simple enough, right? Rolling 20 is the best you can do, rolling a 1 is the worst, and some house rules (rules DMs personally have when playing a game run by them) have them being automically succeeding or failing, respectively.
So yeah, playing the game is just simple math and playing the character that you want to play as within the setting. Now, there’s more to it than that, but just restating how the entire game is played would be kind of boring to read if you weren’t actively wanting to play the game. Luckily, there are online resources for players scattered about the internet to use to at least understand basics. Though, it’s better to get the proper books if possible, as they will be complete.
First introduced in 1974, Dungeons and Dragons has gone through many changes in the 40+ years it has been around. This includes ownership (now owned by Wizards of the Coast), to changes to the game that have made things simpler and easier for newcomers to the game to enjoy with the most recently released 5th edtion, or 5e for short. However, the rules for 3.5 live on in Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder (which I’m more experienced with, but that’s neither here, nor there).
So, I’d like to share a clip with you from the 1982 made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters, which wanted to show the dangers of these kinds of games.
Remember when I mentioned psychotic episodes? Well, relatively early in the lifespan of Dungeons and Dragons, there were many controversies involving it. These ranged from D&D being a gateway to satanism, or, as shown in the clip, cause mental illness. Needless to say, people didn’t think too highly of the game. Nowadays, it is treated much more kindly, with episode plots revolving around the game in TV series like Community, and people tuning in to watch people just play the game weekly on the online series Critical Role.
Now, I’ve been playing for roughly 4 years now. The group that I’m playing with I had known for a while since then, and I’ve played as many characters in that time. I’ve had characters die, and that’s just how the dice land sometimes. However, with every mistake that I made, I grew as a player, and now know what to do the next time something of that sort of situation happens. The game helps you learn how to deal with your mistakes, and grow as a person as well. Case and point, I had a problem of table-captaining, which is basically telling what the other players should be doing in a situation. After learning that I did that, I was able to scale myself back, listen more to my fellow players, and allow people to do as they want to do. It’s honestly helped in group projects, and allowed for me to be less of a control freak on a project.
So, there you have it. A brief, condensed explanation of D&D. Now I’m hoping that you’ll take a shot at playing a game yourself to try it out, but I can’t force anything on you. If you somehow managed to go through this entire wall of text and think this is something just for geeks and nerds, I just have one last thing to say to you. Vin Diesel is an avid player.
And with that, I roll my Perform (Oratory) check.
… That doesn’t bode well, does it?
