Dungeons and Dragons, a return

[Flying Crane]

It’s a great idea. I’m just revealing myself for the nut I am. I have spent too much time working on this stuff. For me to DM, the story has to make sense. I typically go too far in fleshing out story lines that the players might not even discover.

Oh I hear ya. I spent weeks writing extra material into the end of the Dragon of Icespire Peak because the challenge and adventure levels were weak as it was written. But I didn’t want to just add some random encounters with a few monsters. Instead, I added additional storyline and did my best to make it coherent so there was a reason the extra monsters and extra conflict was there. Gone are the days of just wandering from one cavern or room to another and having a random encounter behind each door. Why are the monsters there in the first place? What are their motives?

 

[Flying Crane]

are their any rules that more comprehensively deal with empty-hand combat? The PH has some simple guidelines for striking someone with an unarmed body part like a punch or a kick or a headbutt, and a very simple determination for grappling an enemy, which seems to translate into merely restraining them. Are there any more? Has anyone written their own rules for this? I’m putting some ideas together but don’t want to re-create the wheel if it’s already been done.

 

[MetalBoar]

are their any rules that more comprehensively deal with empty-hand combat? The PH has some simple guidelines for striking someone with an unarmed body part like a punch or a kick or a headbutt, and a very simple determination for grappling an enemy, which seems to translate into merely restraining them. Are there any more? Has anyone written their own rules for this? I’m putting some ideas together but don’t want to re-create the wheel if it’s already been done.

Historically, this is something that RPG's in general, and D&D in particular, have been kind of bad at. I've done homebrewed rules for Chaosium's 'Basic Roleplaying' that I really like, but to make them make sense in the larger system I had to integrate the concepts into the armed combat system as well. It turned into quite a project and it still requires tuning any time I use it to make sure that it A) fits the flavor of the setting and B) isn't too powerful. The really nice thing about it was that, since I incorporated some kinds of wuxia and western mystical elements, it makes melee characters scale in power in a similar fashion to spell casters. I can generally incorporate that kind of thing into my settings without ruining the flavor, but it doesn't work for every story nor every setting. Unfortunately, I think it would probably be very difficult to port what I did to D&D, though I might figure out some way to incorporate some of my ideas into a different format for d20.

I've only played a little 5e and I haven't looked for its unarmed combat rules at all yet. I know there's a lot of 3rd party content for D&D these days, so even if the official WOTC products don't cover it someone else may have done a good job with some sort of supplement focused on the topic. I'm way out of the loop on everything d20 these days though, so I'm afraid I really don't know what that would be or if it even exists. I may have to go look. If it doesn't exist I might try to create something for that space, I think it's a really underdeveloped segment of the market that people might be excited to buy. I think it falls within the bounds of the OGL, but I'd have to research that too.

 

[Flying Crane]

I just saw the Dungeons and Dragons Honor among Thieves movie and to be honest, I loved it. It is campy in the way the recent Jumanji movies are campy, it pulled from authentic D&D lore and was set in the Sword Coast, referencing several actual locations and NPCs in that world. What I really liked about it was that it felt like the story could have been lifted from an actual gaming table. Some of the dialog actually felt like players trying to figure things out before they role the dice, there was commentary on how arbitrary some of the D&D rules can be, some of the connections between characters and NPCs were only strong enough to get the story from one point to the next (which is typical of the game: the storyline is never airtight, only good enough to get to the next point of action), and I found the whole thing to be hilarious.

That is my vote.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

I just saw the Dungeons and Dragons Honor among Thieves movie and to be honest, I loved it. It is campy in the way the recent Jumanji movies are campy, it pulled from authentic D&D lore and was set in the Sword Coast, referencing several actual locations and NPCs in that world. What I really liked about it was that it felt like the story could have been lifted from an actual gaming table. Some of the dialog actually felt like players trying to figure things out before they role the dice, there was commentary on how arbitrary some of the D&D rules can be, some of the connections between characters and NPCs were only strong enough to get the story from one point to the next (which is typical of the game: the storyline is never airtight, only good enough to get to the next point of action), and I found the whole thing to be hilarious.

That is my vote.

My crew of gamer friends liked it quite a bit, despite low expectations. I’m planning to see it sometime soon

 

[drop bear]

I just saw the Dungeons and Dragons Honor among Thieves movie and to be honest, I loved it. It is campy in the way the recent Jumanji movies are campy, it pulled from authentic D&D lore and was set in the Sword Coast, referencing several actual locations and NPCs in that world. What I really liked about it was that it felt like the story could have been lifted from an actual gaming table. Some of the dialog actually felt like players trying to figure things out before they role the dice, there was commentary on how arbitrary some of the D&D rules can be, some of the connections between characters and NPCs were only strong enough to get the story from one point to the next (which is typical of the game: the storyline is never airtight, only good enough to get to the next point of action), and I found the whole thing to be hilarious.

That is my vote.

There are a couple of prequel books that have come out attached to the movie as well.

 

[Steve]

My crew of gamer friends liked it quite a bit, despite low expectations. I’m planning to see it sometime soon

It was great. Really cheesy, but I really enjoyed the lowbrow humor. And it was obviously written by people who know and love Dungeons and Dragons. And I also appreciated that there is money being put into some fantasy that isn't dark, gory, and so dense you have to read several wiki articles and listen to a podcast to understand what the heck is going on. I mean, I appreciate the Game of Thrones and LotR stuff, but there's also room for things like this and the Willow series... just some light fantasy fun.