Visions of Grandure
Monthly obligatory update:
Dungeons and Dragons. The name conjures up dark basements, smelly preteen boys and weird elves and gnomes killing monsters with the help of dice. Not something most people would think of as a good way to spend an evening. But D&D, at its core, is interactive story telling. Most people love reading, and especially love to project their wills and emotions onto the protagonists of the story. How many times have you finished a book only to want another one continuing the story? A good story with great characters and setting is hard to close up. Readers will always want more story, what happens next? and after that? what then?
D&D is a novel solution to that problem, mixed with the unusual history of war gaming. The mechanics and dice and rulebooks are direct descendants of the D&D’s war-gaming past, but the stories that people can tell are so varied and creative that you don’t really need the dice, papers, rules, etc. How is it a solution? Well, take any book, story, idea you want and actually be the main character, let your friends be his companions and you’ve got the beginning to a story that you will tell. There is no ending unless you run out of ideas, and by then the story should already be over!
Most people are afraid of D&D because of the stigma of ‘gamers’ and complexities that are inherent in the game play. But I want to simplify. Take out all the rules for “how many miles and small statured elf can run while encumbered with 50 lbs on his back” or “percent chance to hit someone under their rib cage from 50% cover while its raining”, leave the game with the best part, the Story. It puts a lot on the shoulders of the Dungeon Master (Storyteller) at first, but as the players learn to feel and think like their characters everything balances out and the game is enjoyable for everyone.
Revamping D&D has happened many times. Systems like GURPS or Amber Diceless (notable for removing dice from the game, which I don’t like) haven’t made gaming accessible to the casual gamer. The Wii has opened doors for casual gaming and invited demographics usually opposed to gaming to the video game. The Wii is to video games as GatewayGames is for D&D. But I can’t do it alone and you can help!
If you are a gamer, leave a Comment! I can’t stress how important it is for me to hear your ideas. I want to create a small, compact, and understandable rule set that is 100% compatible with D&D but ignores large parts of the technical details. Over time, details can be added, but it shouldn’t break or be contrary to rules made for Gateway D&D. I have character sheets, but I don’t have any play testers. If you can download the sheets and get your friends and parents together to play a short game or 2 and tell me how it went, that would be wonderful! Working on a ruleset is my next big task, now that I have character sheets. I have played a game with some advance speakers of English here in Russia, but I mostly made up the rules as I went along. Now I have to set them into stone… or at least into Wiki form.
If you aren’t a gamer, find a friend who is and ask them to run, tell them about GatewayGames.net and get people interested. If you’re a wealthy non-gamer, pay-pal donations are a wonderful thing. The more money I have the less I have to work at a desk job and the more time I can spend on this project!
