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2Cuil4School19 karma

I'd like to try my hand at answering your question about how to get into D&D, hopefully providing some extra insight and assistance along the way.

Both D&D and Pathfinder (one of its largest and most successful competitors) offer boxed sets to get started playing the respective games--in fact, this tradition of "all in one" box sets goes back to some of the very earliest days of D&D and its famous blue/red/gold/black books like Basic and Expert.

D&D 4th Edition (D&D4E) is the latest completed version of D&D, and represents a very significant evolution from what came immediately before. It has a heavy tactical focus, a very broad array of balanced character classes, some great online tools for managing your characters, and there's great ways "in" like the Encounters games hosted at many comic shops and game stores across the US. Since it heavily emphasizes the basic rules of "Striker / Defender / Leader / Controller" in combat (that is, someone to do lots of damage, someone to soak up enemy hits and hold them in place, someone to keep the other party members strong and focused, and one more person to affect and hamstring large numbers of foes at once), it can be pretty easy for a group familiar with other RPGs or even videogames to quickly segue into the proper roles.

You can start playing 4E today by buying The Essential Starter which contains just enough rules, characters, and game pieces to get started playing with a group of friends. The game pieces/maps are there to help track your characters' positions in combat relative to the monsters they'll face; 4E's heavy tactics focus makes this a virtual necessity.


Pathfinder was started in some ways as a response from the move from 3rd/3.5E D&D to 4th. Some players feel that 4E overemphasizes tactics, party balance, and simplified roleplaying mechanics to the detriment of the game, and so Pathfinder branched off of the open-source elements of the 3.5E ruleset and became its own, tweaked and rebalanced version of that game.

Pathfinder focuses heavily on character customization, a heavy "simulationist" element (e.g., there are very detailed rules for things like getting a job, building castles, going to war with other empires, alcoholism, etc.!), and compatibility with the very large amount of 3E/3.5E material available, in addition to the many Pathfinder-specific books that have been published in the last 4 years.

The Pathfinder Beginner Box, much like the D&D4E product above, contains just enough game pieces, character classes, and rules to get started on a basic adventure with other new players.


Unfortunately it's worth noting that both of these products are currently sold out on Amazon itself, and the third party sellers that do have them are a little more expensive, so you might want to wait to purchase them.


Both games rely on similar basic assumptions, tools, and modular rule systems:

Basic Assumptions: Players control [usually] one fantastical hero each, and each hero is primarily defined by their "class." Quintessential fantasy tropes are covered: powerful and hardy Fighters; sneaky, thieving, dangerous Rogues; arcane spellslinging Wizards; and devout, healing Clerics. Each game also has more specialized classes, like 4E's shapeshifting animal-like Wardens and its spell-shooting Seeker archers and Pathfinder's bomb-making Alchemists and Western-style Gunslingers.

Fantasy races are also represented in both games, from nimble, mystical Elves to hardy, gruff Dwarves, from sneaky, affable Halflings to brutish, powerful Half-Orcs. Many other specialized races are also available in each system.

The players make their way through the world by describing what they do to a Dungeon Master, who in turn describes what they see and controls the plot, other characters, villains, and indeed, the world itself. In some cases, the players may simply explore the DM's world, learning and investigating, but sooner or later, a challenge is bound to ensue.

Both games provide rules for engaging challenges through combat and "other" skills. In either arena, the games calculate the effects of random chance and risk through the use of dice rolls. Even the greatest warriors can sometimes miss a slippery foe, and not every cut from a sword is immediately lethal; similarly, even an expert thief is sometimes stymied by a lock when pressed for time, but even such failures won't always necessarily set off the trap hidden within.

By rolling dice, players and the DM factor in this random chance. Then, bonuses and penalties are applied based on logical factors (as outlined in the rules). A strong warrior is more liable to hit--and hurt--with his sword, while a nimble thief is better able to evade attacks and dexterously pick locks. Running across a dungeon floor might normally be simple, but if it's covered in ice, the chances to slip and fall are far higher. Casting a spell from memory might normally be taxing--but altogether doable--for a wizard, but doing it while being attacked by a swordsman is all the harder.

Success or failure is then calculated against some target "difficulty"--either a set number (e.g., hitting a bandit in Leather Armor might always require an Attack roll of 16 or higher, after bonuses and penalties are applied) or against an opposing roll (e.g., a thief attempting to hide in the shadows in the middle of combat will be opposed by the general perceptiveness of the enemies he hopes to evade).

Successful resolutions to a problem--either by defeating the enemies before you or by overcoming the intellectual and physical challenges of a puzzle or mystery--rewards players in the form of fabulous treasures and experience points. If enough of the latter are accrued, characters gain levels, unlocking potent new abilities, while enough of the former is gathered, characters might become rich enough to buy a castle or even a kingdom!


Tools: Both games rely on polyhedral dice. These are often referred to as dX, where X is the number of sides on the die. d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, d12s, and d20s are very common. The smaller dice are often used to calculate the damage of weapons or spells (the tiny d4 for a Dagger represents the unlikelihood such a simple weapon has of dealing a killing blow, while a massive greataxe's d12 showcases how a spot-on hit with one could fell even a mighty man in one hit). If multiple dice should be rolled at once (e.g., a Wizard's Fireball becomes more powerful as he grows in level, adding more and more d6s to the damage it does), then a number may be affixed before the "d" to showthat: 2d6 means to roll two 6-sided dice and add their results.

The most important die in both systems is the d20; it is used as the primary generator of entropy in tasks with a random chance to succeed. To attack, you roll a d20 and add your attack modifiers, then compare it to your opponent's "AC" (armor class) to see if you succeed. To climb a sheer cliff, you roll a d20, add your skill and strength bonuses in climbing, and then compare it to the "DC" (difficulty class) of the cliff. To hide from sight, you roll a d20 and add your stealthiness and dexterousness and compare it against your opponent's Perception roll, to which he or she has added their own bonuses.

In both systems, 1s and 20s are often treated specially, particularly in combat. A 1 is generally seen as an automatic--and sometimes cataclysmic--failure, while a 20 is not only an automatic success, it's a chance for a spectacular success (e.g., in combat, it might be represented by a "critical hit" that deals far more damage than a normal strike would on average).

Other common tools are character sheets, game pieces, and maps. Character sheets, either the official ones from the publishers or fan-made ones or even your own, are essentially standardized ways to format and showcase your character's abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and current status in an easy-to-read, quick-to-reference format.

For instance, characters' HP (hit points, a measure of their health and haleness that can be reduced by disease or combat damage) are often prominently placed, since it's such a vital number. Characters' abilities (e.g., strength, dexterousness, intelligence, etc.) are also tracked here, along with skills, possessions, and even magic spells.

Maps and game pieces, as before, provide a convenient way of tracking combat; if a special attack can only be used on an opponent whom you're flanking with an ally, being able to definitively state where you stand is important. Most maps are measured in 1" squares that typically represent 5 feet in the game world, and most game pieces fit into said squares (although pieces representing large creatures may be bigger!).


Modular Rules: Both games come with a central rulebook (the Player's Handbook for D&D4E or the Core Rule Book for PF) that describes, in essence, how character creation, combat, skill usage, death, advancement, and general adventuring are handled in the game. These basic rules, however, are designed to be expanded upon. The small selection of races and classes presented in said books are supplemented by many more in subsequent volumes (e.g., Player's Handbook 2 and 3 or the Advanced Player's Guide, respectively), and additional rules for things like running the game (Dungeon Master's Guide/Gamemastery Guide), monsters to face (Monster Manual/Bestiary), fantastical treasures to acquire (Mordenkaiden's Magical Emporium/Ultimate Equipment), and more (e.g., Ultimate Campaign, a book about kingdom-building) are also written. Both games are meant to grow with your needs, but most of it is optional.

2Cuil4School6 karma

Do you envision any kinds of larger strategic elements at play here? e.g., even if not the player settling colonies and expanding empires manually, can you nudge the galactic course along specific directions, slowly, for instance, increasing the range of what is considered "safe" or potentially tipping scales of power to enable empires to rise and fall? Or even smaller scale: fending off the pirates in this sector allows trade to flourish, making more items available there in the future?

In short, what kinds of lasting impacts on the structure of the galaxy map can players have, and are they all "pre-planned" as a part of the story, or will there be an element of freeform play there, so that players can strategize what changes to try to accomplish first?

2Cuil4School3 karma

Well, I'm also wondering if there is the possibility of, let's call it "one-step removed strategic gameplay": can these little "sidequests" (however complicated) change the galaxy in noticeable, but not plot-essential ways, so that doing them gives you benefits when tackling the main storyline threats. Pursuing these extra goals is thus a strategic choice, rather than just one component of a larger narrative thrust.

I expand on this at ridiculous length below. Sorry, Greg, my fingers got away from me and I just kept typing! D'oh. Whether you choose to come back to this, thank you very much for your prior answer, and I am really excited to see SF3!!!


I realize this is the gaming equivalent to mentioning bacon at a vegan festival, but I think of Star Control 3, which had a very direct strategic element to it: you could cart aliens to new planets and help them set up colonies there, guiding it to success. In plot, this was ostensibly to help out in an ongoing war against an enemy empire, but in terms of mechanics, it meant that you had more places to stop for fuel and new crew members across the galaxy, slowly spreading your faction's "influence" into enemy territory.

Of course, downsides were that the actual colony building was super tedious, and that the enemy faction AI was basically nonexistent, so they never really bothered your colonies at all. Plus, the game was easy enough that the extra fuel and crew were sort of extraneous, anyway.

Obviously, first and foremost, the Starflight games are exploratory RPGs with combat and resource-gathering elements. However, presumably some of these aliens you're diplomacizing, and some of these secrets you're uncovering, might have the potential to reshape the galaxy in more permanent ways, however. In essence, by pursuing optional quests, you might still cause strategic benefits to occur, without, say, directly fiddling with building power generators on each world you visit.

Say, you elect to help one faction in a rebellion over the other, ferrying their resources in secret or maybe even directly attacking their foes. Could you come back X in-game days later and find their empire now peaceful and under the rule of the faction you helped (who'd then be quite grateful to you, presumably, and perhaps offer some kind of ongoing bonus or aid)?

I guess in a way it is a dynamic story element, yes, but can these dynamic miniature plots also reshape the strategic gameplay of the "map" at large? e.g., maybe during aforementioned civil war, resources are low in that sector and no one wants to trade with you, or are maybe even hoarding a resource that you could really use elsewhere. By bringing the war to an end, you might free up the possibility of making extra money or getting access to that super resource.

And then, yeah, there's the question of linearity.

In a fairly traditional adventure game, you might describe a quest progression in similar terms. You need the King's Foozle, but the King is warring with his brother, the Ur-King. You need to convince the Ur-King to give up the fight by stealing his cat using the cat food you get from the butcher when you agree to get him a fine cup of tea from the. . . err, anyway, now that the King and his brother are happy, the King gives you his Foozle and the game proceeds.

In a more dynamic type of cast, maybe there's other ways to get that super resource. Maybe there are other, less efficient ways of making money. Maybe bringing that Civil War to an end is hard, or has extra bad consequences (maybe your best navigator is allied with the other side of the rebellion and will leave your ship if you help them). By tackling and completing that quest, you unlock some secondary benefits to reward your risk, reshape the "game map," and change the flow of gameplay, without necessarily meaningfully advancing the main plotline.