How to Play a Role Playing game

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Barry Osser from North Coast Role Playing in Eureka, California and I’m here today to talk to you about the basic game play of role playing games and specifically today, Dungeon and Dragons. When you’ve got your game master set, that lucky sod who’s going to be running the game for you and you’ve got your players set and everyone has got their characters done. You’ve got a nice comfortable setting set up and everyone is ready to play, the next step is play. Now the game master is generally going to set for you the setting, if you saw my earlier part, the setting would be you’re in the forest and you’ve got this campfire and you see some eyes in the distance. Now if everyone reacts immediately to everything you the game master do, you’re going to have a crazy situation that you’re not going to enjoy and they’re going to get frustrated at. So one of the things that Dungeons and Dragons has always offered is the collar or lead. This doesn’t mean that this is the character who is the captain, we’re not talking about Bill Shattner in control on Star Trek, what we’re talking about is the person that speaks for everyone else in an ordered fashion. So one of the things you can do is elect a collar, if you’re the game master have the group elect collar or leader and that’s going to be the person who is going to talk most of the time until there’s something where there’s character to character interaction, that’s a point where let’s say you the thief have decided to go talk to the king of thieves in the town and you can actually speak with him directly, then you’re going to have that interplay. So this character has now chosen to go out into the woods, you’ve got to decide what it was that had those red eyes, was it a wolf? Was it some kind of crazy dragon? Pick what it is, your next reaction is to tell them what happens, there’s going to be a point which dice are going to be used, it’s a big piece in most people’s mind of role playing and it is a big part of the game. You’re going to have to set up the situation, at some point the game is going to switch from a dialogue to a combat. The point when it’s a combat again that leader or that person calling for the rest of the party is going to help a lot, that person can talk about who is going first. Now in Dungeons and Dragons there’s an initiative system that allows for specific characters to go 1st 2nd and 3rd, I recommend you use that in the beginning for play, it makes things easier, there’s not a question of hey you’re picking on this person and you’re not helping this person, it’s a simple fact of numbers, so I recommend using it. But you’re going to move down the line in a combat in the same kind of orderly fashion that you’re moving through the dialogue of the basic game. So the first person with the highest initiative is going to go 1st and so on down. Try and keep everything stream lined, try and keep a lot of the discussion about the rules as opposed to the discussion about the game that they’re in to a minimum. If you can do this, you can kind of continue that suspense of disbelief, you’ll enjoy the game more and so will your players. "