Camestros Felapton

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How to play Dungeons and Dragons

Our resident game expert Timothy the Talking Cat will take you through the basics of some of the world’s most popular games.

Games! The Oxford English Dictionary defines game as “Of a leg: not functioning properly through deformity or injury.” whereas Webster’s Dictionary defines games as “Animals pursued or taken in the chase, or in the sports of the field; animals appropriated in England to legal sportsmen; as deer, hares, etc.”

These days you don’t need a gammy leg or to appropriate animals in England to play games. Times have moved on! These days you can play two kinds of games. Computer games are very exciting. Fun examples include “hide the laptop”. The other kind of games are table top games. Don’t take the name too literally! You can play them under the table as well, particularly drinking games.

One of my favourite games is Dungeons and Dragons. You can spend a lot of money on books about Dungeons and Dragons but the basic game is very simple. Let me show you how to get started.

You’ll need:

  • At least three people
  • Some dice
  • Some paper
  • Mobile phones
  • A table
  • Chairs

How to play. First you need to decide who will be the “DM”. For the first round it is best to pick the oldest person because otherwise you might get into an argument about who gets to wear the cloak. Sorry, I forgot to mention the cloak. You also need:

  • A cloak

The other two players become the “player characters” or “adventurers”. The next stage is each of the player character determines their alignment, class and race. For that you’ll need the dice!

This is where it gets complicated. Your alignment has two parts:

  • First Part
    • Looking towards the table (1,2)
    • Looking side ways to the table (3,4)
    • Looking away from the table (5,6)
  • Second part
    • Sitting on the chair (3,6)
    • Standing (1,5)
    • Sitting on the floor (2,4)

If you are sitting on the floor facing away from the table, experienced players call this “chaotic evil” because frankly who does that when you are all trying to play a game.

Your class is your job. You can pick your real job or you can pick a made-up job like “business analyst” but I find it is best to stick with the original jobs from the manual:

  1. Spooky
  2. Damp
  3. Sex
  4. Dusty
  5. Serial killer
  6. Natural cavern complex

Finally, you have to pick your race. Roll the dice. If you get an even number then you are a DRAGON. If you get an odd number then you are a DUNGEON.

IT IS IMPORTANT YOU DON’T TELL ANYBODY WHAT YOUR RACE, CLASS OR ALIGNMENT IS EVEN THOUGH IT MIGHT BE OBVIOUS. Write it all down on a piece of paper and fold the paper up.

So, for example, let’s say you roll a 3, a 4, another 3 and a 2 then you are a neutral evil sex dragon. Wow! That sounds like fun!

OK, now comes the best bit: role playing!

The two player characters now have to pretend to be the character they rolled but they aren’t allowed to say anything obvious about who they are! You can’t say “Wow, I’m having such a busy day today as a damp dungeon! So many prisoners here complaining about the damp!”. You’ve got to be more subtle than that.

The DM can send you messages on your phone (aka “direct messages”, hence the name) for extra clues.

You do this for no more than 1.5 minutes. Then everybody has to guess what the player characters are. The DM gets 1 point for each thing they get right about the player characters. You (if you are a player character) get one point for each thing the DM gets right about you. You don’t get any points for guessing right about the other player character but they LOSE one point for each thing you guess right. That’s why you have to be subtle!

Add up all your points. The player character with the most points in that round (not in total for each of the rounds) gets to play the DM next.

BONUS ROUND! Appendix N.

At any point, any player can shout “APPENDIX N!”. Everybody must stop pretending to be a chaotic good dust dragons (or whatever) and must write down 5 fantasy novels. You get one point for any novel that nobody else wrote down.

A whole game can last up to 10 minutes before somebody says something inappropriate or mean and which time it is best to stop playing before everybody just gets upset at you.

camestrosfelapton

12 responses to “How to play Dungeons and Dragons”

  2. For extra credit, during an “Appendix N” break, add a brief sentence after each book title you write down, explaining which malign force is suppressing it, and why. Example: “The Wizard of Oz” – brutally suppressed and only rarely heard of any more because the Rotary Club opposes all pro-Lions Club messages in literature (see also Shel Silverstein’s “Lafcadio, the Lion who Shot Back,” which you’ve never heard of, right? Right!)

    Liked by 3 people

  3. Don’t forget the part where some races and jobs are naturally good or evil. There are no true neutral natural cavern complexes, I’m afraid. That’s just how the world works.

    Liked by 2 people

      • But if you’re sitting on the floor, then couldn’t you bite the other players who are at the table, which maybe you have dragon serial killer spit that could enable you to do more serial killing? Hardly seems fair to the non-evil players.

        Liked by 1 person

  5. Timothy forgot to explain Spell Points, one of the most important additions to modern D&D rules. First you have to know how to spell. Then, pick a word to spell. Then, look at the letters and count the points on the pointy ones, such as A and W. The result is how much magic will fit into your head, in gallons.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Here’s how we played it back when I was in college in the 70’s.

    Stumble into the dorm snack room at 3 AM looking for a 25 cent bag of Doritos. See a bunch of smelly guys with oily hair, some hunched over tables, other sleeping on the snack room couches but only long enough to recharge for another game.

    Stumble out again, thinking: “Man! That was WAY too much of the windowpane.”

    Liked by 1 person

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