Playing D&D in SL Project: Help Requested

Hi all,

I am working on a project to create a place and tools for people who wish to use SL as a medium to play the game of Dungeons and Dragons. I am looking for people who might be interested in getting involved in the project. It doesn't really matter what SL content creation skills you have, if any, mostly I am looking for people who are interested in getting involved in any form.

Also, I am looking for people familiar with the game of D&D. I have actually only tried the game once myself so I only have a very basic understanding of it. I am more of a SL builder and scripter who thought this would be a fun project to tackle. I need help from people who can tell me what kinds of tools a player would need and give feedback on how they should function.

So far I have created a few sets of dice. That actually took me a lot longer than I thought. Sculpting rounded versions of the more complicated platonic solids was more challenging than I expected. My next step will be to create the chairs and gaming table. After that it will be time to create the building itself to play in. Also, in between those things the tools that people say they need will be created and scripted.

Anyone interested in the project please send an IM to Stacy Hansen.

Interesting idea to play P&P in SL

Are you sure, you understood, what D&D is about? In SL you would rather roleplay in 3D environments than playing with dice and paper sheets. Look at the gor sims for example or at Carima, Neldoreth and the other RP sims.

cu
Aleco

That is unless the entire sim is the board and the dice are huge. Using a boardgame styled layout with inter teleports to get to the different points on the map. That would be fun. Maybe a bit larger than you planned. I think there would be a demand for text based games as well. They are so retro. And I played D&D as a kid. It is all text, you would have to build a database to store people's specs and inventory as well. In the actual game that is. D&D relies heavily on 'collecting' items to use with other items to achieve something. Locked doors and such, hidden keys. Yup thinking a sim sized game would be amazing.

double

You are aware, that D&D is just a framework of rules for RPGs? Besides of the basic player and master manual, there are many more manuals for thieves, mages, regions like dark sun or forgotten realms, for the different races like drow...

It's no board game. Collecting items and combinig them is none of the main goals, even slaying monsters isn't. The main goal is to play roles and to fill your character sheets specs with a real personality.

There are adventures you can buy as scripts, but every master normally creates his own campaigns.

D&D was called AD&D, current version is 3.1 IIRC. The most material exists for AD&D 2nd Edition. The Baldurs Gate games are based on those rules.

cu
Aleco

Thank you all for the replies, though I think perhaps the main goal of my project has been misunderstood.

I am not attempting to create a Second Life game based on D&D. Instead, what I am trying to do is create an environment that facilitates using SL as a telepresence tool to allow people to play the real life game of D&D with others over a distance. The purpose would be to allow people who do not live close to others they can play with to enjoy the game with people from anywhere in the world.

Sorry, I don't get the point. I'm a RL (A)D&D player and master. If I understand you right, you want to create all the diferent dice like the 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, 1d20 in SL? Should the players have their character sheets in SL as well? Would those sheets automatically calculate the values according to the rules? Which version of the rules do you intend to use? Should the master then describe the setting via voice?

People that do not live close but want to rp together normally meet in one of the online rp worlds like Ultima online or even the hack and slay World of Warcraft.

cu
Aleco

AD&D V4.0 was just released actutually, V3.5's been around for 3 or 4 years, but I still prefer version 1 myself before it became a bookfest. Dumb thing is you have to dig for old adventures or on the internet, because they rarely release any actual adventure modules to use the $300 worth of books to play.
I'm wondering how loing before someone releases a 3rd party RPG viewer, that would enable you to use a universal inbuilt combat system based on charachter sheets instead of FPS, also restricting movement of characters and their actions in combat dependant on their stats, inventory and abilities, accessing a database to keep track of significant items and even game currency. As well as allowing for GM's to run NPC's so be able to change the displayed title on the character when viewed by other players using the same viewer.

[ot]
You buy adventures? We use to play even on our own worlds. That's one of the fun parts, creating your own adventures and stories. With bought adventures you always have the problem, that the party will very soon behave in a way not covered by the script. What do you do then?
[/ot]

cu
Aleco

I do make my own advaentures but I also find some adventures have good plots etc, I couldn't come up with myself, mapa are all done and I usually change details anyway, and play them on the fly after a quick read of the plot, keeping the party on the adventure is part of the challenge. My parties were smart enough to realise they were suppossed to follow the plot, on a couple of occassions they did things in the wrong order or took off on tangents, which when they realise I hadn't opened the module all session they kept going anyway, returned to the module eventually, found the Royal family had given the Kings evil brother the throne after weeks of no news from the party, and the kidnapped Princess and rest of Royal family sold into slavery or beheaded anyway. Then I just read them the list of items they missed out on. You let the players generate a story they enjoy but feed them the consequenses.
I did have one case where a player had brought the module and read it and used that knowledge to pre plan a major encounter, but I just let them prepare their tactics outside the messhall door to slaughter the eating orks within, what followed was a was a perfectly planned Monty Python worthy 4 person charge into a 5x5 foot broom cupboard containing a fireball cast by the mage as soon as the door was swung outwards by the theif, who was the only person left conscious being protected by the door. A few guards investigating the smoke soon forced the party to flee from the dungeon in their feeble state

Well I rarely get short on Ideas and even if, I've read enough fantasy literature I can steal from Your own worlds have the advantage, that you can have epic campaigns and that you can settle high level characters and even have them as NPCs. Forgotten realms for example is too well and detailed described to change much on the history.

cu
Aleco

Yes well we play Cyberpunk or Shadowrun now and often use our home town street directory for the map, most of it would still be the same 30-50 years in the future.

Never got into Shadowrun or Cyberpunk, only played Call of Chtullu a few times. I'm playing for well over twenty years now, so our world developed quite a history. It's always fun finding traces of your former deeds

cu
Aleco

I get the point, and I find it interesting. AD&D, or most any other RPG, via SL. The ability to use and move miniatures ... heck, scripts for dice rolling and random number generation. I think it's a great idea. Heck, the dice set alone could be a nice resellable item once scripted properly.

How to handle such normally paper elements as character sheets would be an important issue. Somethign new would have to be done in that regard, I think.

totally interested, i'm a builder and cut/copy scripter and not to bad with particles. i know nothing about D&D but willing to learn more, please IM me in world and we'll chat

-Crunch

You might want to look into setting up your own OpenGrid server, as this would remove the limitations of land ownership and allow for big D&D. Even just for developing your grid/objects/whatever this rocks (so much faster).

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

As for the NPC's, use LibSL as a basis.

http://www.libsecondlife.org/wiki/Main_Page

An OpenGrid server is great for testing. If the NPC client app(s) and server are on the same LAN, you can run 100+ NPC's from a basic desktop.

He's not looking for a sim to replicate the environment of a D&D scenario. He's looking to replicate a playing environment. He doesn't want the castle, he wants the game room.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Neko_(D&D_Race)