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One thing I’ve been noticing lately is that beginners want to learn more about how to play D&D before they commit to buying any books. While I cover the very core basics to D&D in Roleplaying 101 and Roleplaying 102, I’ve come to realize that some people want to learn more before committing to buying D&D products.

First of all, you only need one D&D book to get started: The D&D 3.5 Player’s Handbook. This explains all you need to really get started. Of course, it might help to get some dice, and print out a character sheet or two. However, you can just as easily borrow someone else’s dice, and write down your character’s stats on a blank sheet of paper.

So let’s start off with how to create your D&D character!

The Very Basics
At the top of most character sheets, you’ll find slots for not just name, but height, weight, hair color, eye color, gender, etc. For the most part, you can just use your imagination to make up these things. Just envision the character you want to make, and fill in the information based on what you come up with.

You’ll also find spots for Race, Class, Alignment, and Deity on your character sheet as well. A lot of veteran D&D players will also fill this in right off, since they already know what they want to play. If you also know exactly what you want to play, then go ahead and fill those in now. However, beware that the choices you can put in there might depend on the campaign you’re playing! Make sure to ask your Dungeon Master if your choices are okay with him or her first.

Rolling for Abilities
The next thing you’re going to do is roll for your ability scores. These scores are your basic attributes for your character, and largely determine how good your character is in certain areas. Here’s an explanation for each of the six ability scores you’ll be rolling for:

• Strength - Nothing but muscle with this ability. It determines how strong your character is, from how much they can lift to how hard they can hit.
• Dexterity - Nimbleness, reflexes, flexibility, and precision, all rolled into one. This one determines how quick your character reacts, as well as precision with weapons that require it. It also helps when trying to swipe something away, getting out of being tied up, and dodging blows.
• Constitution - Hardiness and just how healthy your character is. Determines how much abuse your character can take, physically. Also helps with resisting poisons and taking certain spells without even flinching.
• Intelligence - How much you can learn and know! This is a huge factor in determining how many skills you know. Also, certain magic-based classes use this ability to determine how many spells you know.
• Wisdom - Experience with the world. A wise one learns from his or her own experiences, not from books or schools. It’s also your character’s force of will, and can even help push back at some sort of mental attack, like mind control.
• Charisma - Pretty much how well your character gets along with people. While most D&D players liken this to attractiveness, it doesn’t neccessarily have to be so all the time. It’s really more the force of your character’s personality. This is the score for leaders, though it also works for those who like to lie to others, or simply intimidate them.

Now that you know what these ability scores are about, it’s time to roll for them! Most Dungeon Masters will use the 4d6 drop the lowest rule (If you need help, read up on dice notation). This basically means that after you roll the four dice, you just drop the one with the lowest roll, and add up the remaining three. Also, most DMs will let you assign the scores in any order you wish, which can make life much easier when you have a certain character you want to create.

What I generally do, as do many other D&D players, is do the 4d6 roll six times, noting down the results in a blank sheet of paper (or even the back of the character sheet). If the results are to my liking I’ll use those for my ability scores, and assign them as I see fit. If the results suck, then I’ll just reroll.

However, be warned that different Dungeon Masters may have different rules on how to generate your ability scores. So make sure to find out from your DM what the rules are before you start rolling!

Pick Your Race and Class
If you haven’t done so before rolling your ability scores, now would be a good time to choose what race your character is going to be, as well the class.

Race I think is pretty self-explanatory, as it is the species your character will be. This game is more than just about a bunch of humans!

Class is more or less what your character’s career is. For example, a Fighter will have focused on combat training with weapons most of his life, whereas a Wizard will have been studying various tomes for most of his life. This is also going to determine how much gear your character is going to start off with as well, but we’ll get to that later.

Now for the more technical aspects.

Race is going to determine what extra abilities your character might have. A lot of races will modify your ability scores that you just rolled. For example, elves get a +2 to dexterity, but a -2 to constitution, being that they’re more graceful but not as hardy. You’ll probably need to modify your character sheet a little bit to reflect the changes that your race will be causing.

Class will have an effect on your saving throws, which help your character resist certain kinds of damage. It will also effect which skills your character is going to be able to learn. Class also has an effect on what feats your character can take as well. It also affects health, your ability to attack, the kinds of weapons you can wield, and all sorts of other things.

Class can probably be one of the more overwhelming things to Dungeons & Dragons. But fear not, I’ll help you through this whole process.

Filling in a Few More Things
Now that you have your ability scores, race, and class all squared away, you can now go ahead and fill in several more things on your character sheet. One of the first things you’ll want to do is fill in your character’s ability modifiers. This is what directly affects everything else that’s dependent on your ability scores. Your ability modifiers are, of course, based on your actual ability score.

If you look at page 8 of the 3.5 Player’s Handbook, you’ll find a table called ‘Ability Modifiers and Bonus Spells’. Starting with your first ability score (which is probably strength), match the score with the number range listed under the Score column. Then on the row you find it on, you’ll find your modifier under the Modifier column. So if you’re lucky to have an ability score that’s 20 (such as with a 18 rolled for dexterity and +2 to dexterity for elf), you’ll have a very nice +5 modifier for that ability score.

Next up, go ahead and fill in your Saving Throws. You’ll find your Base Save on the table in the Player’s Handbook for your character’s class. Each Saving Throw has an ability score linked to it, as should be shown on your character sheet. Go ahead and fill in the Ability Modifier for each Saving Throw with the appropriate modifier listed. Just in case, the saving throws and associated ability score modifiers are:

• Fortitude - Constitution
• Reflex - Dexterity
• Will Power - Wisdom

Also, the saving throws are abbreviated as Fort, Ref, and Will, just in case you get confused when looking at your character sheet.

For the actual saves, you just add up your base save with the ability modifier, and you’re set to go. Over the course of playing you can potentially get other modifiers, but for now there’s no need to worry about them.

You’ll also want to get your current hit points for your character. Each class uses a different die to determine hit points, so make sure to refer to your class’s information in the Player’s Handbook to figure that out. Also, a lot of Dungeon Masters will let you have the max possible value for your character’s first level. So if your hit die (the kind of die you use to determine hit points) is a d4, then you’ll get the maximum possible value of 4 for your hit points. Also, make sure to add your Constitution modifier to the result! You get to add that for each hit die (aka level) your character has. Though, if you have a negative modifier, you’ll be subtracting instead.

Next there’s your character’s movement speed. This is derived from your race, so refer to the race you’ve chosen for your movement speed. However, your speed can be affected by how much you’re carrying. And how much you can carry is determined by your strength, naturally.

On your character sheet (and it might depend on how it’s formatted), you should be able to find Max Loads for Light, Medium, and Heavy loads. You can find out what the maximums are for each category by referencing table 9-1 on page 162 in the Player’s Handbook. Just find your strength score on the table, and you’ll find the max values for each category of encumbrance.

Now, as I mentioned, how much you’re carrying can affect your movement speed. You can easily find that on table 9-2 on the same page as Carry Capacity. You may notice that the entry for light loads is left out on that table. This is because light loads are easy to handle, so there’s no penalties for carrying your typical gear.

Another part of your character sheet you can now fill in is your Initiative. This determines how quickly you act when combat begins (or any other situation when reaction time counts). As I mentioned above, Dexterity helps to determine this. So go ahead and mark in your Dexterity modifier for that, as well as marking the main value. There are some things that can make your initiative higher, but I’ll cover that later.

Finally, the last thing you can fill in before we move on to the next step is your Attack Bonuses. First, you’ll have your Base Attack Bonus, which is determined by your class and level. So just go refer to your class, find what level you are, find the Base Attack Bonus for that level, and mark it down on your character sheet.

Now depending on your character sheet that you have, you may find entries for Melee, Ranged, and Grapple attack bonuses. Fill in the Base Attack Bonuses in the appropriate places next to them. Then fill in the appropriate ability score modifiers as well, which will be strength for both melee and grapple, and dexterity for ranged. Just add them up and write down the total value for your Total Attack Bonus for each of those three.

Whew!
Admittedly, this has probably been a lot for you to digest. However, there’s still more to do with creating your character for D&D! Yes, I know this can seem like a long, arduous task, but it does get easier once you get accustomed to it. Once you’ve created a few characters, creating them will seem like a breeze.

So keep your eye out for next week, where I’ll be covering skills, feats, languages, cash, and equipment. And depending on how long it gets, I may even throw in spells too!

As you may already know, if you’ve read some of my previous posts, I have this tendency to deviate a little bit from pure D&D talk to something a bit different. And today is just one of those days.

Garry’s Mod is a modification to Valve’s games that are based on the Source engine. Even though it’s now a mod that you have to pay for, it still requires you to own at least one Source engine game that was developed by Valve Software.

One of the cool things about Garry’s Mod is that you can create different game modes for it, so that you don’t have to always play in a sandbox. There’s several cool game modes to choose from, such as Spacebuild, Prop Hunt, and Stranded, just to name a few. There are even a few roleplaying mods now available, and the number of them seems to be growing recently.

Roleplaying In Garry’s Mod
It seems that one of the first roleplaying game modes created Garry’s Mod has been Role Play Gamemode by cg123. However, that mod is no longer supported, and you’ll be lucky to find a Garry’s Mod server that even uses it. There are many other roleplay game modes out now that are worth exploring! They include:

• LightRP - The first of the more complex roleplaying game modes.
• DarkRP - Based off of LightRP, it expands on various ideas.
• MesaScript - Based off of DarkRP, but is specific to roleplaying in the Black Mesa Research Facility
• StargateRP - Also based off of DarkRP (though may be switching to a newer one), and is specific to roleplaying in the Stargate universe.

These roleplaying modes the ones that you’ll find most prevalent on Garry’s Mod servers. However, as a word of warning, it does appear that DarkRP is a bit strongly biased towards combat, perhaps even to the point of being a simple deathmatch rather than any kind of roleplaying occurring. If you don’t mind combat heavy roleplaying though, then it may still be worth checking out. Though, despite this, not every server is going to be the same, so be sure to explore a bit!

There’s also been a few new roleplaying gamemodes in development to try to overthrow DarkRP. There seems to be many people who are upset of DarkRP becoming more of a deathmatch game mode rather than an actual roleplaying game mode. A couple of the new game modes are CakeScript and Catscript. I’m sure that once they’ve matured some more, they’ll eventually replace the predominant roleplaying game modes that are available now.

Freeform Roleplaying - A Quick Guide
Even though the above mentioned roleplaying modes can give you some structure, it can still be rather disarming how much freedom you have with them. There’s no experience points, skill points, feats, or even ability scores to keep track of.

However, the lack of numbers should not hinder you one bit with roleplaying. Besides, it’s supposed to be more about imagination, not numbers!

With most of the roleplaying game modes listed above, you’ll be able to choose some sort of job. Depending on how the server is configured, you may be paid a different salary depending on the job you take. Once you’ve taken a job, use that as your guide as to how to roleplay your character.

One example I can think of, using MesaScript and roleplaying in a recreation of Black Mesa, is one player taking the role of an engineer, while I was the chief of security. The engineer came in to start his day, but required a security access code before he could continue. So he contacted me, a guy in security, so enter the code for him. One cool thing this player did was create a screen using WireMod that he was able to change. While I pretended to enter the code for him, he changed the readout of the screen he created, so that it sort-of looked like I did something.

Another instance during this same roleplaying session was again him contacting me. His device was picking up some sort of anomaly, so he asked me (the security guard on duty), to investigate. The player actually lead me to the place he wanted me, but it was more of an out-of-character thing. Once getting to a good place, he spawned a bunch of headcrabs, which my security guard character dispatched using his available weapons.

So, as you can see, despite the complete lack of numbers (aside from salary and money saved), you can still roleplay. This is really the core of what roleplaying is about, just using your imagination and having fun with it. Besides, Gary Gygax did apparently say:

The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don’t need any rules.

Whoa… mid-week post!

As I’m sure you’ve all have noticed (unless you’re using an ad blocker ), I’ve got couple of banner ads at the top and bottom of these pages, as well as one that’s right smack in the post itself. In fact, you’re probably seeing that just to the right of this. >.>

Anyhow, I just wanted to mention that I’m experimenting a bit with ad placement. I’ve done quite a bit of reading in the past about it, and just want to see how things go on my own. I think after a couple more months, I may go ahead and remove one or two, depending on how well they do. So far, though, the ads that are right in the posts seem to be doing the best! Just a hint to you other bloggers who are visiting.

Also, I want to take this time to plug a couple of people who’ve been plugging me!

• Thanks to Yax at Dungeon Mastering for not giving up on me! Yes, I am back! Also, I sent you an email a while back now that you haven’t responded to.
• Also, thanks to e at Geek’s Dream Girl for making mention of my post for beginners on Player vs. Character Knowledge! I’m glad my post is giving you a bit of a hand with your character log posts.

This pretty much sums up everything I wanted to cover in this random mid-week post. Keep your eye out Monday morning, as I’ll be getting into some free form roleplaying!

(Wow… lots of smilies in this post )

Welcome to Roleplaying 102!

One of the key aspects to roleplaying, especially for a beginner, is that what you know isn’t necessarily what your character knows. For a practical example, let’s say you’re a computer nerd, and know all sorts of things about computers in real-life. However, your wizard character that you’re playing with in a fantasy-based roleplaying campaign is going to know nothing about computers at all. The reverse is true too. Your wizard knows all sorts of things about magic, but your real-life self is probably going to know very little, if anything at all.

Of course, this is just very basic. However, there are times where things can become a bit vague, and possibly confuse someone who’s new. So why don’t we take a bit of a deeper look at this?

Shared Knowledge
There are definitely times when the knowledge you gain in-character easily translates into real-life knowledge. For example, both you and your character are going to know how much gold you’re lugging around (unless a thief ran off with a bit, and you haven’t noticed yet ). And of course, both of you will be aware of what equipment you have on you.

Something that might be a bit vague may be when you’re trying to solve some sort of puzzle. Perhaps you’re playing a character with a high intelligence and high wisdom, but you’re having trouble figuring out a particular puzzle. Fortunately, a smart Dungeon Master will give you a few hints, since your character’s that smart. Those hints will then help synchronize what you know with what your character was able to figure out on his or her own.

However, you may also have times when you know of something for sure, but are not sure if your character would share the same kind of knowledge. Perhaps you know a lot about architecture, but the character you’re playing knows very little about it. When you enter a building that you know for sure isn’t structurally sound, and even unsafe, your real-world self would of course think to get the heck out of that building. However, if your characters doesn’t share that same knowledge, then he wouldn’t be having those same thoughts. On the other hand, if your character had extensive knowledge in architecture, then he or she would definitely be sharing the very same thoughts as your real-world self.

Meta Gaming
This is generally considered a very big no-no when it comes to roleplaying. Basically, it refers to using real-world knowledge to help out your fictional character, particularly when your character would otherwise be oblivious to such knowledge.

For example, you’d probably know about how many hit-points a goblin would have. You’d also know about how much damage your weapons and spells are capable of doing. However, your character wouldn’t always know if that goblin might be in better shape than other goblins, or perhaps even in worse. And your character isn’t going to know the exact amount of damage that a weapon or spell is going to do. More likely, your character will only know an approximation of the extent of damage that can be done, especially after more experience with using such things.

Perhaps a slightly better example of this would be spotting a trap, and knowing for sure that your character cannot disarm it, without the character itself even examining it. Perhaps the trap is so good that even trying to examine it to determine how hard it would be to disarm could trigger it and possibly kill your character. So, logically, you’d want to keep your character as far away from that trap as possible. Unfortunately, that right there is meta-gaming right down to the core. How would your character know that the trap she just spotted would be so deadly that even trying to examine it could trigger it and kill her?

She probably wouldn’t.

So now you might be wondering, “How the heck do I figure out what kind of knowledge my character should and should not have?”

An Analogy Of Knowledge
So, your character knows a certain set of things. You, of course, are going to know much more than that character. However, what you know isn’t going to neccessarily be what your character knows.

Let’s take the theory that all living things are a part of a singular consciousness. This consciousness knows everything that was, is, and will be. And even though we all share this same consciousness, we are pretty much only aware of our own knowledge, and our own thoughts. We do not know everything that the universal consciousness knows.

So, in respect with roleplaying a character, your real-world self become that consciousness. You basically know everything, from the past of the world you’re playing in, the present form of it, and what it can become. You probably know a lot about the politics of that fantasy world, wars that are on the brink of happening on different continents, what underground groups are doing, and maybe just even those underground groups themselves.

However, your character is probably not even aware of even a tenth of what you’re aware of, despite both being of the same source. Just as we are each a small part of the universal consciousness, our characters are each a small part of our consciousness.

I hope this article helps you out a bit when it comes to character knowledge and out of character knowledge. Also, if you want a little more info on the universal consciousness theory, this post on Subjective Reality by Steve Pavlina should help. And feel free to explore his site for more information on it.

It’s been a while since I’ve shared videos related to D&D with you all, so here’s 3 to amuse you all!

First up, a video of a bunch of bored people playing Dungeons and Dragons for the very first time, courtesy of Role Playing Public Radio. They each take turns being the Dungeon Master, until one is chosen as the best DM of the group. Oh, and beware of Cthulhu!

Next up are two videos of what could happen if a bunch of random celebrities got together for a D&D campaign. These two short videos are courtesy of Screaming Halibut:

Hope you all enjoy these videos. If you know of any other good Dungeons and Dragons videos, please share them in the comments!