That is too cool! Love to hear how that’s working?

kmal2t Great read! Hard to put down, especially if you’re interested in Gygax and the process from the beginning. Well worth it.

2bandai true

Heh it absolutely did come true. Take a look at Critical Role sometime. Ever once in a while they will do a live show at a convention setting with a huge audience in attendance and it is mindblowing to think the cast are simply playing a game of D&D (5th edition)

I think that is probably the longest non-movie I've ever watched on KZfaq, but it was well worth it. It has probably been around 25 years since I've played D&D, but still remember it fondly. I recently discovered there are some communities here on G+ for D&D gamers that I've joined. Been enjoying reconnecting with the game. Just need to dig out my old bag of books to really bring back some memories. Who knows - may even give it a spin (roll?) again.

I agree with you Roy. D&D had a huge impact on my life as well. It helped me come out of my shell. I was a fat shy kid, and D&D introduced me and my friends to another world, where we could be heroes. It helped me also to have the strength to stand up for what was right, and stand up against bullies. Keep in mind I am from the Bible Belt, and yes it was the "Devil's Game" as my parents and local culture said. I still played it, and am getting back into it again with some friends that I used to play with when I was a kid of like 8 or 9.

Same here Roy....And a huge part of almost all my personal successes....Hell, im a "professional hacker"...play shadowrun for a living.. :)

Roy, you should rejoin your friends and play on Roll20.net! All my gaming friends moved away after college, but we are together again once a week around the table once more via Roll20. =D

Cody Lewis roll20

Keep rollin'

He definitely called the big revival. D&D is larger now then it’s ever been.

*Bahamut.

*Himself.

We all know how much Lorraine likes gaming.

She is a monster better left unmentioned and forgotten.

I thought about doing this with Dark Souls 3. How is it working out for you?

v2099 did you accomplish it or is it still in progress?

the D&D group or bloodborne? with bloodborne it's harder than expected as i need to reconfigure the maps. at the moment my players are in my version of the story peter pan

I don't think it'll ever be replaced by games. Games, as good as they're getting, will always be limited to their programming. You can't change rules, invent new classes or options (beyond modding which not many know how to do well or properly and which many games don't really allow) new combat mechanics, monsters, worlds, lands, cities etc. You can't just visit an npc at any time and have them talk to you like old buddies unless there's story there for them to talk to you about. But you're limited to a select few responses and can't ever do anything outside of the box really. You can't join the bad guys on a whim, fool them into thinking you're one of them while leaking info to your friends in the neighbouring Kingdom, eventually leading your enemy into a trap and slaying their leader leaving them in disarray unless that's what the game has been set up for you to do in it's main story. You can't really live the world, only do what the world has allowed you to do. And that will always be the case. No matter how large or seemingly endless a game's options become, they will always still be limited whereas Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplaying games, aren't. You can make them anything you want them to be; High Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Political, War, Mystery, Horror, low magic, high magic. Anything you want and that's the beauty of them.

@Jhakaro All you say is exactly true- today. The way 'deep learning' AI is going, with programs learning and writing their own subroutines. The programers are having trouble trying to figure out what their programs are doing after they (the programs) start learning and making their own decisions. I can see the same sort of tech that's going into self-driving cars making mmos that approach the level of true simulation.

No because the problem is, firstly the worlds won't look nearly as good if just procedurally generated. Won't ever make a game as nice as say the Witcher 3 if you just did that. The other reason it won't is that the program will still always have boundaries. Like this bookshelf can't be moved or this door is locked until this part in the game, you can't get on the other side until then. Invisible walls when the computer reaches its limit and can't produce anymore content. If the game is set up to be mostly combat heavy, you can't have it not be combat heavy. The biggest reason as well why it can never happen is voice over. If you have voice work in a game, you'd have to have thousands of voice artists doing dialogue for every single possible event you could ever conceive. You just can't do that. No matter how advanced ai gets, it won't ever be able to replace a human's touch when it comes to creativity. Tedious, monotonous, repetitive technical jobs, those they can do amazingly well, far better than any human but creative stuff, no. Robots can't create and I don't think they ever will be able to. They'll only be able to create what we tell them to create after we teach them how. They have to built for that task specifically. Programmed to do it. They can't just do it. There's also the fact of bugs. An endless open game world with infinite possibilities would be absolutely unplayable as they could never actually test the game as every person who plays it would have an entirely different experience with untold possibilities and eventualities. Buy a loaf of bread an hour in rather than an apple and fifty hours later the game breaks. You can't account for that. Also as far as I know, no humans have trouble understanding a robot and they don't and can't make their own decisions. They're programmed specifically to do a specific job. Always. Like one of the supercomputers made a horror movie trailer for an A.I. film a while back and it was pretty good. People were freaking out as to how it knew what to do as if it could think and feel emotions in order to make us scared in the trailer. The answer though is really simple and far from the headlines that made out the machine knew what it was doing. It was fed like 4000 horror movie trailers and programmed specifically to pick out peaks in sound, to recognise certain visual shots, to take reference of the music etc. the pacing. All meticulously programmed into it by a human. Then it did that task it was told to do mindlessly. Then it was programmed by a human to take the shots from the film and put them into a trailer with certain music and such and it used the references it had obtained from the information it received to then put together a generic horror trailer. It could only do that because it was programmed to multiple times. Even then, the actual trailer it made was fairly unusable and a human editor went in and cleaned it up and fixed things re-editing it to a good standard and removing some questionable choices the computer had made. I don't believe computers will ever obtain true a.i. that allows them to think or make decisions for themselves. They can only ever do what they are programmed to be able to do.

Tabletop roleplaying games--of which D&D is the most visible, but certainly not the only example--have a couple of advantages over computer RPGs that seem unlikely to go away. First is that even if we are close to a point where computers and programs can generate whole huge fractal worlds, they aren't anywhere near having *soul*--a sense of artistry and drama that makes even mediocre tabletop RPG sessions compelling in a way that computer-moderated games just aren't. And of course, there is the rigidity and inflexibility of the rules governing the game world in computer games--it will be a long time before a computer program can make rulings on unanticipated player actions. Not never, but a long time. But most important is the fact that computer games afford players anonymity, which leads inevitably to unaccountability, which quickly degenerates into ass-hattery. I played World of Warcraft during its open beta; I helped found a guild on launch day. For about two years, the game was great--everyone was enjoying the social experience of the game, as well as exploring it at a reasonable pace. Eventually, however, the positive social aspect faded away, as people realized that the anonymity of an MMO let them be as jerky as they wanted to be, because they'd probably never see the person they were abusing again. The game devolved into a Darwinian rush to the endgame content in the latest expansion, abusing anyone along the way who hadn't already run every dungeon a thousand times, and didn't know exactly where to stand and what spell to use to get through every dungeon as quickly as possible--just so they could do it again! When MMOs starting introducing "innovations" like automatic group-assembly systems, they killed any social accountability in the game. I stopped playing MMOs a few years ago, for that reason. I've gotten interested in tabletop RPGs again recently, hoping to recapture the fun we had with D&D in the 1980s--something that MMOs won't be able to do for many years, if ever.

Ronark dnd is bigger right now than ever before thanks to the nerd explosion and live-streaming. Oh and stranger things.

+Bradley Kell 5th Edition is playing very well. Maybe you should revisit it. Before 5E, 2E was my all time favorite. 3.5 was a great "apology" for 3.0.

What I loved about 3rd (especially 3.5, the 'hot fix patch' lol) was that anyone could be anything. However, my best enjoyment in 2nd Edition was playing a Rogue... that wasn't a Rogue. I was a Run Away Wizard (from the Red Isles) and my plan was to not use Wizardry so I would be harder to find by those my Parents sent for me. So... I told everyone I was a Rogue. Such intense moments trying to keep my cover. Skulking about acting like I'm looking for Traps, when I wouldn't know a Trap even after it killed me. My first Locked Picked for Treasure (it wasn't locked, but no one knew it... myself included). The only distraction was a Meta-Gamer who kept worrying about my Character instead of his "Hey, you're a Rogue... shouldn't you be doing this? Hey, do this. Do that. Let me see your Character Sheet." That was the only thing that came close to ruining the awesomeness of the adventure. I worked harder crafting his Back Story and getting his details (Handem Swyndel) than I had on anyone ever before, poured my soul into that attempt. So I can always thank 2nd Edition for how things were Restricted, and how that became my Challenge. LOL! "You see a Chest. It looks locked." Hey guys, we need to be safe... I need you guys checking the other corners of this room for Traps, Secret Doors, things like that. Don't worry, I'll be coming around and checking what you find." Hmm, did they buy that? While they aren't looking, what's the incantation for 'Knock' again? Gotta be quiet, can't let them see me gesture. Loved it. But from a Rules and Lay Out point, 3.5 was all me. But then they went HEAVY into Forgotten Realms, and THAT is right up my alley. I'll have to look into 5 again, but it just seems so much like Warhammer RPG.

3.5 is good, but best? I wouldn't say that. Pathfinder has manage to improve on 3.5, although it does manage to do a few things which annoys me.

***** It was incumbent of the Player/GM to keep those things in line. As you said, only 50% of the Orc Race is 'evil'. So the other 50%... can absolutely qualify as a Paladin through Axis. I actually did a Half-Orc Paladin, who was the product of an Orc Chief raping his Elven slave (obviously she was a Princess, so turns out I was Nobility as well). I was the product. He was disgusted by me and ordered the Elf to kill me, and of course she did the 'Jesus down the river' thing, where I was found by Priests/Monks and raised by them (which is how I found Religion). Prophecy stated of a savior coming in the darkest of times, yada yada yada... and here I was. So I was told by a wise Monk that I was to be the Champion of a God, a Defender of the Weak... but the catch was we didn't know WHICH God had selected. Only that A God WOULD. So I worshiped all the 'Good' Gods, like many Greeks/Romans did. My journey was to find out WHICH God wanted me to be this Righteous Defender so I could go forth and fully unlock my ability. So I had no Specific Deity Bonuses, I was a Generic Paladin. I think the GM, who I allowed to control all the behind the scenes stuff (like which God was the actual one I was chosen by, so it would all be a surprise to me), actually had NO GOD choosing me. I wasn't actually the one of the Prophecy... but through my journey I'd help many, earn respect for my actions, and find the God I would follow and pledge myself to. Despite not actually being the Chosen, I would indeed still become a full Paladin. Now, I like this Story. It wouldn't have been possible in previous Editions. All 3rd Edition did was open up the restrictions so we could be more creative... it's us to the Gaming Group to use it in ways that make sense.

***** Actually, to me, this had the exact opposite effect. Why can't such and such race be a thief? Is there no crime in their community? Why can't nonhumans have templar-like orders of holy knights? Do they not revere gods as well? Why can't there be provision for the rare exceptional member of a given race? So on and so forth.

how do you do that?

It's honestly just beyond you.