Off Topic: Inside the 40 Year-Long Dungeons & Dragons Game
August 8th, 2022The video below reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to ask…
I never DMed, ever, and I don’t want to start now. I’ve looked for tabletop RPG systems for my own children to use DMless and came across Four Against Darkness, which they played until the books fell apart.
I bought the Legend of Drizzt board game for one of my sons, who has read all of the Drizzt books through twice. It’s quite clever how it manages to run the campaign without a DM.
What I’m wondering is if there is something like Four Against Darkness, all paper based, but much bigger? More crunchy than 4AD would be fine.
In the 80s, we used to play D&D with graph paper, dice, our character sheets and the monster manuals. No figurines, no dungeon boards/tiles. Remember the 1983 Red Box? Is there something like that, but with an automated/RNG/scripted dungeon master?
Apologies for this off topic distraction, the regularly scheduled doom will now continue.
Via: Wired:
4AD is a great system and a lot of fun.
There are a couple of system-agnostic books that I use a lot – Mythic; and DM Yourself.
For years I used a ‘troupe’ style with rotating GMs which worked well with Ars Magica where players have a bunch of different characters of varying heirarchies.
A great example of solo play to watch is Me, Myself and Die on Youtube.
I have dozens of other useful books and methods too. Maybe drop me an email with more specific questions?
Forgot to mention a couple of others that I routinely use – Ironsworn; Scarlet Heroes; Stars Without Number; Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox; D100 (Which is a bit like 4AD); Thousand Year Old Vampire is great too; also Mork Borg with Solo Defilement is good; lots of Powered By The Apocalypse stuff (PbtA) like DungeonWorld, Perilous Wilds, etc; Free League also publish 4th edition Twilight 2000 with a good solo system included and their Year Zero Engine runs their other games too like Things From The Flood.
I mentioned Trevor Duvall’s YouTube channel ‘Me Myself and Die’ which is terrific to watch adn learn from as he uses different systems in each season – for example Savage Worlds + Mythic in Season 1; but also ‘The Bad Spot’ by Matt Risby is great and he uses Ironsworn Starforged (which is a great system too); also Three Skulls Tavern doing Forbidden Lands Solo is a good watch for ideas.