Let me talk and ask about something that I’m never going to do, but that I’m suddenly curious about
Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D
I’ve always not understood D&D because I only found out about it when writers in Facebook would talk about their D&D characters or how they’re writing a story around their D&D characters. I knew that D&D is Dungeons and Dragons, but I thought it was a video game. Even when people said it was a tabletop RPG, there are online games that are “tabletop” so card games online or offline. Yes, I thought it was some sort of card game as well.
So, I thought it was a video game (based on the digital layouts of terrains I was seeing) and also a card game version online or offline was available (based on “tabletop”).
Today, I finally watched videos of people explaining how to play D&D for the first time and realized…it was literally tabletop. Like monopoly. But no board. No cards. Just a rule book, a pad of paper, and your imagination.
I had no idea. So, I watched some of a live D&D and…there was a ton of roleplay. I heard that you don’t have to do it, but it seems like many fall into their character’s roles, especially with dialogue.
How does it actually work? How much is preplanned and how much is improvised, and is all the lore preplanned or is some improvised? What if the players come up with things about their characters and that affects the lore? How do people keep track of so much information? They can’t all be writing things down all the time, right?
It also seems that the DM (yes, I learned some of the acronyms! Pat myself on the back) improvise a LOT of dialogue (at least the one I watched) and a lot of the scenarios depending on the points and stuff the characters got.
The DM of the one I watched, btw, I could really imagine this Mad Max type of character he had created by his voice acting. When I wasn’t looking at his face, I was totally immersed And…when I looked at his face, I cringed XD Sorry, roleplay watching isn’t my thing Even though I like watching voice actors behind the scenes. It’s different to me.
Anyway, tell me what it’s really like, how you got into it, how long you have been doing it, and who you do it with, and if you have multiple groups that you are in or is it just one group? ALSO, have you been a DM and what’s that like? I can’t imagine the amount of preparation it takes for DMs to put together a game. That’s all really just fantasy worldbuilding, isn’t it?
If you are overwhelmed by my questions, tell me everything about your experience with D&D.