I realized it's been a while since I made my last post about Dungeons & Dragons. You might have read my last two (1, 2) posts where I talked about DnD. It's long overdue that I continue this series.
I want to spread the word on Dungeons & Dragons to the general public. I hope to do this over the course of several blog posts. Topics I intend to touch on include:
- What is Dungeons & Dragons?
- What do you need to play Dungeons & Dragons?
- How do you play Dungeons & Dragons?
- Why should you play Dungeons & Dragons?
I intend to make these posts here in the Dungeons & Dragons community and do some cross-posting in hope that it might get some traction.
From here on out I will use the term DnD as an abbreviation of Dungeons & Dragons.
The general premise
The general premise is that you play DnD with other people. There are however several ways to do just that. You can meet up to play in person or you can play over the internet, utilizing both voice chat and web cameras. You can choose to play entirely with the mind as the playing field or you can run a system of maps and/or grids. You can choose to play by the rules or you can simply choose not to. How you choose to play DnD is yet another choice that is entirely up to you. Just like with everything else in DnD it's up to you to decice.
In person
One of the ways, and my favorite way, to play DnD is to play it in person. It probably speaks for itself but this would mean that you physically meet up with a group of friends, or strangers, and play together. You sit around the same table. You breathe the same air.
In my opinion this is the best way to play. There's something about sitting around the same table with your sheets and pencils. The excitement you feel around the table as the dice is rolling. The faces and emotions you get to see and feel as something succeeds or fails. It's how the game was meant to be played!
That of course doesn't mean it's the only right way to play. It's amazing that we have the internet in this day and age that let us play with our friends who live in other cities and even other countries. Still, getting together in the same room to play Dungeons & Dragons just feels really genuine.
Online
The second way you can choose to play DnD is online. We're so lucky to have the technology to connect with friends over great distances. I play both my games online and even if it's not the ideal way to play I'll take it over nothing. With voice chat, web camera and some great tools to enhance the playing experience there's really nothing to complain about.
When playing online I can recommend Discord. Most people on here likely knows about it already. Discord is a great tool. You can create servers that includes both text chat and voice chat. You can even use your web-camera through Discord. This means you can chat with voice while you play and with text in between sessions. This gives you one place to concentrate everything. Both planning and playing.
There's several other tools that can be used when playing online. If you would like to play with battle maps and grids you might want to look into tools like Roll 20 or Foundry VTT. These are tools that act like virtual table tops (VTT) that let's you visualize combat and/or exploration. Many people use grids and maps coupled with miniatures when playing in person, so this is meant to replicate that.
I play my two games online due to having a friend who lives across the country. As mentioned I would much rather play online than not play at all. We use the aforementioned Roll 20 and Discord. It's also quite practical to always be playing from home, I'll admit. No hazzle and extra planning of travelling to and from. It's easy access.
Theater of the Mind
With theater of the mind you play using the mind. There's no visualization involved. All images of how the world, characters and monsters look are made within each players mind.
This has its ups and downs. The Dungeon Master (DM) needs to be extra descriptive in his descriptions. If a detail is missed verbally that detail will be missed entirely. None of the players are gonna build the image of a special character with an oddly shaped wart on their nose if that wart isn't mentioned verbally.
What's great about it is that the DM doesn't necessarily decide 100% how everything looks. A clearly aged old woman with her white hair in a bun who has a very prominent odd looking wart on her nose may look different in each players head. Those prominent featured that were mentioned will be present but the rest is up to each players mind and subconscious to build.
In my games I utilize a mix of theater of the mind and visualization, which will be my next talking point.
Utilizing visualization
Some DMs choose to visualize everything while some choose to visualize nothing and let everything happen in the minds of the players. Visualization is a great tool. This can come in the shape of inspirational images of how a city or village looks. A portrait of a certain character. How the landscape looks. It could be a top down view of where the current battle is taking place.
Visualization is a great tool for when you want your players to not miss any details. You forgot to mention the table in the corner? That's not a problem seeing as your players are looking at the room and will notice it themselves. Don't want to be descriptive? Just say "you enter this room" and show them a picture of the room and they'll do the rest.
It can also be a trap. It's happened several times that I've shown my players a room or a place and they start noticing details that I hadn't seen or planned for. What's in this chest in the corner? There's a chest in the corner? Ok, I guess there's now a chest in the corner even though I hadn't planned for it. It's not really a big issue but it might lead to some digressions. I could just choose for the chest to be empty or I could give them some extra treasure as a reward for being thorough. It could also just contain the clothes of who ever might have been, or might still be, living here. Maybe it's a Mimic?
Visualization is also great when it comes to combat, at least in my opinion. It makes it quite easier to keep an overview of the battlefield. If your party of four adventurers are fighting 10 goblins it might be hard to remember how it all looks and where everyone is standing while playing with theater of the mind. Utilizing a battle map and a grid as a tool will help you keep track. It also makes it easier to determine which creatures are hit and not hit by area of effect spells like fireball. You don't have to answer questions like "am I close enough to hit the goblin" or "how many Goblins do I see?". They'll know by just looking at the map.
Rules or no rules
While this might be weird to some it is actually up to you how much you want to follow the rules. Dungeons & Dragons gives you a premise but it's up to you what you choose to do with that premise.
Your game can be rule heavy. This means you'll follow the rules no matter what. Your game can be more chill on the rules. Will the rules restrict the players in a way that damages the game and their fun? Change them. They don't need to know. You can even choose to learn the rules as you go.
I've been playing my games by learning as I go. If I don't know a rule I'll see if I can quickly look it up. If not I'll just make a ruling and I'll look up the proper rule for next time. My players are quite aware of this and understand wholly that knowing the rules of several thousands of pages of material would be a daunting task. We all learn together as we go. We focused on all understanding the basic rules first and then we've been taking it from there. The more often we use certain rules the better we remember them. Even though I'm the DM, me and my players are on the same team.
In my opinion this is one of the most important things to discuss as a group before you start playing. How will we be using the rules? How well does the DM know the rules? Talk about this early on so that everyone knows what to expect.
How do you want to play?
There are no right or wrong answers about how you play Dungeons & Dragons. It's a game about freedom and part of that freedom is choosing how you play. Discuss it with your group and come to an agreement. Try out different things. Play a little in person and a little online if that's what suits you. Utilize visualization when it's necessary and play with the theater of the mind when that's the right thing to do. If something doesn't work out it's never to late to change it. In DnD everything is up to those who play it. The rules just lay the groundwork and you take it from there.
That's a quick look at the several ways you can play Dungeons & Dragons. If there's any questions feel free to leave them in the comments. I'll gladly answer any and all of them. Also feel free to leave some feedback or come with suggestions about what my next few posts could contain.
Next time I'm gonna take a look at why you should play DnD. And there's so many reasons! Stay tuned.
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