Started playing for the first time about a year and a half ago, when a friend started a campaign with an American Reconstruction theme and let me be the thing from The Thing. Absolutely loved it. D&D is easily the most fun tabletop game I’ve ever played, due largely to how many bizarre, memorable stories come out of each session.
I’ve proceeded to get sucked into five other campaigns, each with a different friend group, and now I am basically playing D&D twice a week.
Couple things:
- The roleplaying part of this game is far and away the core of the fun here. I have one campaign that gets sucked into long, protracted battles and god does it kill the energy.
- I will concede that this is where the tension can ramp up and the most intense moments can happen, if players are willing to take tactical sacrifices/risks for the sake of character stuff.
- Holy god are Paladins powerful. I worked out a combo move with another player we called “Time and a Half” where he brings 7 coins to life, and I cast a spell that gives everything in range 1d8 radiant damage, so those coins do like 80 damage in a single turn. It’s wild.
- Two of my campaigns use Roll20, and it is definitely growing on me. It gives a way, way better sense of were we are spacially, during battles and during exploration. I had one bring us through a sewer dungeon and exploring around corners and into rooms was very cool.
- Similarly, another campaign laid out a city, and we could move our icons to buildings to explore or chat with people. Also made investigating a murder and remembering a wide cast of characters easier.
- Character voices make all the difference. Being able to drop in and out of character with a minimum of stage-setting does wonders for keeping the flow going. I’ve only pulled off a few of them so far, so I’m open to suggestions if you guys have had good success with others:
- The Tick/All Might over-the-top heroic voice. This one is super fun to do. Used this one for a Kenku paladin that suffered a headwound and got “stuck” in-character while mocking a paladin with the voice.
- Froppy-style perma-congested nerd. Used this one for an aloof broom-riding witch who came from Shadowfell and is allergic to the material plane.
- Carl from Aqua Teen/Harvey Bullock/Danny DeVito crass gnome detective type.
- The Tick/All Might over-the-top heroic voice. This one is super fun to do. Used this one for a Kenku paladin that suffered a headwound and got “stuck” in-character while mocking a paladin with the voice.
- Seems like the amount of work the DM has to do vs the amount of effort the players have to put in is super uneven? That’d be my only real complaint about the system, aside from how long battles take.