DnD Next Open calling

Hey I am bored and it seems impossible to get into a group on roll20. Since I have the DnD next info/files I am willing to hold a run through of DnD Next to the first crew of people willing to play. It would be late nights from about 9-11:30(EST), there are 5 open slots for players and I am willing to allow substitutes. Post away, First come first serve

I'm in.

Apparently only you and I are on Adam Ill send you some info in a bit, just reading up on the material and familiarizing myself

I'm in.

I've started running a game IRL but wouldn't mind playing a PC here. I would like to see things from the player side. I could do weekends and possibly weekdays for the next 2-4 weeks. I'm in mechanical engineering, but summer quarters are kooky so I'm only able to catch up on those "you just have to take them at some point" classes. One is from 10am-12PM and the other is online, they require a fair bit of work (literature responses and multivariate calc HW/Quizes), but I have plenty of time to play until the second half of summer (at which point I hit my actual engineering classes and die). So evenings are good for me for a while. As this will be the first time I've attempted to play a game (throwing assets in and testing out the chat rolls by myself isn't exactly that productive), I'd need to figure out how to interact with the environment from a player perspective. How would you like to run the game? Chat, video, etc.? I literally just dug my webcam out of a box the other day (because I was bored and looking for string to play with of all things) so I should try and see if it still works. I am definitely interested in seeing what other people have done with it, and comparing notes as well.

Any need for a wizard? ^_^ He's a wizard named 'A Wizard Named Widemaz Madwise: Formerly Known As The Menace of Millhaven: Formerly Known As Steve, The Unruly Sage: Formerly Known As Aeolefthelm The Elf Of Whom We Do Not Speak *in the elven tongue*.' He insists on using the full title, but doesn't freeze-ray those who call him Wazam for short (as long as they are close friends who have bonded over what he considers to be an acceptable level of shenanigans). He is just a little bit racist, but only with respect to elves, and believes all elves look alike. Therefore the extent of his description is "Elf".

Just FYI this will be my first run John, I am reading and re-reading all the components for the dungeon and I am not sure if your potential DM knowledge would be too much a burden. The initial "campaign" its packaged with is super dense with creatures and small rooms so I am trying to wrap my head around it. That and there is lots of nooks and crannies to it, even if you dont try to make your own spin on things. But all in all, you'd be a welcome addition. Edit: as far as for play style, I think my best case would be webcams, but its probably going to boil down to a mix of cams with mics/cam or mic/chatbox because Roll20 is intended to be freeware (I could forsee many people not having cams). I am going to spend this week making some macros and adding a specialized drama deck to the assets.

Cool. Cool cool cool. /Abed I haven't exactly committed all of the rules to memory yet (ha, me, memory, such a knee slapper) and I've never actually ran the "Caves of Chaos" so no worries about me already knowing where all teh shiniez be. I sort of took the general idea, expanded it out to a larger setting (a canyon network instead of just caves), looked at a couple encounters to get an idea of XP ranges for battles, and just made up the details as I went along (I love taking inspiration from my players and modifying my plans when they have good ideas. This usually does not work in the favor of their best health. Hence my avatar ^_^ ). Here's the storyline I wrote and am currently running them through if you're interested in seeing it: <a href="http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245249" rel="nofollow">http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245249</a> My problem is I always want to add more detail to the situation and things end up taking longer. In two sessions we only made it through two of those paragraphs.

I'm always interested in a game, though I'm unfamiliar with this system.

I'd be up for playing. I'm available any night except Wed. and Sat.

I'm cool with playing any time any day :) and I've had a go at the playtest before. wouldn't mind playing the rogue :)

@Zach (sorry to go twitter on you guys) I can let you review the docs and sit in on the first or you could just hop in @matthew and punk welcome aboard, I'll work on setting some stuff up so we can get something started soon

I have been itching for a 3.5 game for a while...any room?

So, do you have any additional material for us to review, or are you running the playtest as written?

Hey Chris, just checking in, seeing if you have a day in mind, or able to outline what we should do as far as character creation. I hadn't heard of DnD Next - is that 3.5 / 4.0 or something different entirely?

@Jason DnD next is a play test version that we will be betabtesting, it is effectively 5.0 @drpersons this would not be a 3.5 run, sorry @john I intend to run at least 3 mini sessions of the normal stuff as a personal barometer to see how things go and how your play styles work before adding content

I am good to go whenever then. I'm just sitting around this weekend studying/gaming/relaxing, so I'm down for mini-sessions whenever.

If you want to send me a link to the documents I'll start getting myself familiar with it.

@Everyone: Tonight is probably going to be a no go crew, but I will put the documents out there so you guys can look them over, check your pms in a bit and ill give you some pertinent information

Just as a heads up, I'm running the same thing with with a local group. We've got through 3 5-6 hour sessions, and so far we are barely 1/4 the way through it. It is a rather long module.

Okay, just let me know ahead of time when you think the next good time is. :)

Thanks Matt, its amazing how dense the campaign is when is basically just fighting. Trying to read through the first 3-4 pages and my head was spinning. They are definitely not catering to the 4.0 or 3.5 crowds with its simplicity.

Yeah definitely, The module itself was originally from AD&D, and they are trying to pull from AD&D, 3/3.5, and 4th for the new edition. If it helps you, the letters for the headings correspond to the entrances on the map, and the room numbers are shown on the map. If you want to understand it better outside of reading it straight through, plan out a route you would take if you were a PC group and read through it that way.

Do you think it's too simple or too complex? IIRC the map was very dwarf-fortressy with clearly marked levels and elevations. I don't remember all the details of the map (and given that I don't want to ruin the game, will actively avoid checking them out again), but it seemed like a lot of caves were individual sections without necessarily forming one entire network. I liked what I remember of it, although it seemed like a lot of places were too small for much environmental detail.

It's not so simple that its linear, yet not so complex that my PCs have no idea where to go. A few of the paths/entrances interconnect, but in order to actually clear the whole thing (which you'll pretty much have to do if you want to get to lv3-4, I've been giving my party slightly more xp and they pretty much just hit lv2 last session) you have to actually go between entrances. Most of the rooms are pretty much only fleshed out in flavor text, so it's up to the DM if they want to try to bother with hazards. The rooms themselves are small to mid sized, but the numbers of minions they try to jam in are just unusual, such as about 20 minions + PCs in a 20x40 room. For things like that I'm pretty much wave-spawning the minions to try and keep things from just getting clustered which happens a lot.

Hmmm, I remember a lot of people saying they were running large groups of minions like 30+ at some points. It has been mentioned that numbers do more than power, and swarming a fighter with 7 weaker enemies pretty much ensures a situation that doesn't result in the continued existence of the fighter. In my custom game I've kept the battles a bit smaller as many of them are fairly new to rpgs (having only played in a campaign of mine (Pathfinder), and that which one of my players started (4e) in order to try out DMing), rarely going over 10 of anything, and they still manage to just eke by a bit. The exception being possibly the last battle as they all rolled 8 for initiative, and I explained that this is a very unfortunate situation and they thought nothing of it until after a bloody battle with goblins in and around a river that almost cost the party a cleric and fighter (the DM's d20 was a holy roller that day). Well, as soon as they got everyone revived I rolled on the chart of fate (totally not the bestiary) due to the unluckiness of 8's and an ogre charged them from the woods (it was also a pretty good way to give them a trail of broken branches they couldn't refuse. I think I hear a train, there must be rails nearby ^_^ ). Interestingly enough, the single ogre did not fare nearly as well as the goblins, so I guess there is some value to the "overwhelming numbers" philosophy.

are you still looking for players if so i am interested