Rediscovering D&D | The Covenant Cast - Episode 47

Steven, Jonathan, and Robert discuss their recent dive back into Dungeons and Dragons after a long hiatus, remembering past editions and sharing their thoughts on 5th. Steven buys furniture. Jonathan plays Godtear. Robert adds a dash of bitters.

Answers: 1:19
Everyone's Week: 8:10
Main Topic: 13:10
Questions: 51:49

If you have any questions for us, leave us a comment below, or with #askcovenant on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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[superman]

Hey guys.  

I enjoyed listening to this conversation.  Very happy to see TC get plugged in with Dungeons & Dragons.  

I first played D&D back in the early 80s, beginning with the Red Box.  I've played many other games since then, but since 5th edition came out, D&D has been our go-to game.  According to my records I've run 76 sessions since 5e came out in 2014.  And every single one of them has had at least one of my sons at the table.  My primary play group consist of myself & my two teenaged boys & another dad & his young adult daughter.  

I definitely think that 5e has done the best job of hitting the "sweet spot" between too much or too little complexity.  Plenty of character options are offered without gettign too bogged down in minutiae. My favorite 5e mechanic is definitely advantage/disadvantage.  It simplifies & streamlines so many things in game play.  

Looking forward to hearing more about how D&D will be part of life around the Covenant Store going forward.  Greetings from my family.  We love you guys.  Seriously.

Louis Brenton

[leeprice]

Oh, but Halflings do exist! I was thinking during this whole video that that is what Steven looks like, due to the perspective.

[BecauseOfDragons]

Been waiting very patiently for the end of the video so I can reply properly to this after watching it fully. I agree with you wholeheartedly on everything you said about role-playing and what it envokes within people in a social setting. I think I've had some of the best moments of my gaming life playing with friends, delving into campaigns (short and long) and I still remember so many of the stories (both the heroic and the sad) as fondly as many of my real life experiences.

For me, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition has done pretty much everything right. It has a nice easy to learn system which can be played by anyone. All you have to say is "we'll get to that when its needed" in terms of rules and just let people go for it. In the last campaign we played I had a new player who had never touched D&D in her life, and still had a great time just killing Goblins and being awesome as an Elf - the others who were more experienced got to stretch their role-playing legs and it catered to both sides of the coin very well.

The new rules have streamlined a lot of things that were just too cumbersome, or thrown out in 4th Edition and there are not only lots of new ways to play characters BUT a massive toolkit for someone like me who always ends up being the Dungeon Master.

5th Edition rekindled the love for me that I have for role-playing games. I think it's possibly the best thing you can do around a table since it creates such dynamic and interesting moments - and in some cases lets people who might be more socially awkward play something outside of their comfort zone. For example, I'm quite a reserved guy and I don't tend to talk much but when it comes to the tabletop (if I ever get to play a character!) I love playing the Bards or the Paladins who have the charisma to rouse people, or indeed get involved with pretty much every conversation and role-play my little heart out.

I've played a lot of RP systems over the years, from Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play through to World of Darkness and I have favourite characters from so many different campaigns. But, there's something about the phrase "it's time to play some D&D" that really hits me. I think it's the endless possibility, the chance to create new characters from nothing and entire worlds. I've always wanted to be a writer but never had the attitude to stick with writing something in its entirety, so instead I use the created worlds I've conjured up as the canvas for my players to walk upon and tell their own stories - for me, that's the way I get to see my stories come to life, through them.

A lot of the onus now doesn't have to just me on the Dungeon Master either. Cooperative storytelling (with the right group) can make for a fascinating experience as they do the on-the-fly creation of the world with you. It can make for some stunning twists and turns in the narrative.

Right now one of the strengths of D&D 5th Edition is the toolkit approach it puts forward. People are creating some amazing worlds and ways for people to customise their experience, just look at Critical Role on Geek & Sundry. Cubicle 7 has also created the Adventures In Middle-earth setting books and we're about to embark upon a campaign in Tolkien's world...and I couldn't be more excited.

I know this might be one of those TLDR comments on a Youtube video, but I just had to gush for a few moments. I love Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing in general, and I'm so happy that you guys have found it once again and are going to be going off on your own adventures.

[davidleiberg]

This is great! I don't have much experience with D&D, but have always been interested. Would love it if you guys created a primer video on where and how to get started.

[pixelatedgryphon]

My favourite thing about 5e is the flexibility.

Whenever I played 4th I enjoyed it, but it felt like the same game system every time. With 5th, each group has a lot more say in how the game flows and feels, especially when it comes to combat. There seems to be a lot more room for DMs to interpret the rules and produce games tailored to the people at the table instead of the other way around. I think it feeds into the theater of the mind just having so many more ways to play the game than forcing everything onto a grid.

[xlguru]

wow! 1, 563 views

61 likes

3 dislikes

Who are the 1, 502 people that didn't 'like' the video?! Great Cast guys. P.S. Robert, thanks for fixing my Destiny order :)

[SuperSanjuro]

This is so crazy! Just last week I was reading my new 5e Player's Handbook, and I thought to myself, "I wonder if TC will ever carry DnD products. It seems like something they'd like." It was great to hear about your RPG experiences. I'm not sure this is the place to talk about it, but there are some 3rd party DnD products that I highly recommend. Get at me if you're interested. Thanks for the great video!

[craigbrown]

Please, please, please tell us what we have to do for a Team Covenant actual play

[salv.]

#askcovenant I have been playing D&D with my core group of friends since I was fourteen. We have had some friends come and go, and some younger siblings and children grow and join our group over the years. I have played D&D through the Basic edition Red Box ( which will show my age) all the way to the current 5th Edition. We tried 4th edition for many levels but this is where we took our longest break from the game. On that note, 5th edition has been a great renaissance of D&D for our gaming group and we have played since its launch.

What we love of 5th ed D&D is the return of magic from the 4th Ed, where they are not just damage abilities like in 4th, but creative outlets that do no damage, like Prestidigitation!!!
We love that the main setting is the Forgotten Realms, we have always adventured there and is as similar as Star Wars in its massive story and details.
Lastly my advice to DM's in 5th edition, Give out inspiration frequently for good actions, otherwise player may horde it. Let the players no it can come often thru good actions and they will spend it more willingly.
The story is always the most important part of D&D for us, its all we remember from all our adventures. Not who did the most damage or found the best treasure, the part we played and affected in the story is eternal!!

[solodragun]

I would like to see FFG put out their own pen and paper fantasy RPG utilizing much of the same dice and mechanics found in Decent and possibly give them an opportunity to flesh out Runewars more with that serving as their initial standard campaign setting.

[Minotaur]

Definitely a big fan of 5e, it's spawned the longer lasting campaign for our group. I think the best thing about it is that it feels like they intentionally designed some holes in the system for the DM to adjudicate. It forces the DM to make design decisions and encourages an active role in the steering of the system's place in the campaign.

[yellow_dogg]

4th Edition gets a lot of hate, but its biggest problem was being called "Dungeons & Dragons". It's actually quite a great system if you want deep, miniatures combat. If it was called something else, IMO it probably would be still around today.

[misomiso]

49:11 One thing on doing campaigns on youtube, PLEASE have a look at Nodes 'call of the wild' and the 'Yogsqust' episodes.

Ok you will not be able to do the editing, but I think it's so important to have a STRUCTURED Limited episode campaign. Ie don't just go for open ended stuff, just say this campaign is going to 4 sessions, and each session has its own 'mini story' (like moive acts.

You can just communicate the story a lot better that way.

It's also best (i think) to go for the EPIC story. So in your campaign maybe they're not fighting Demons, they're fighting THE DEVIL and trying to stop his invasion of earth, or make it Epic for the people involved (they're town will be destoryed).

Epic is great! best guys.

[phillosmaster]

#askcovenant Mechanically 5E was a breath of fresh air.  Our group is also more into theatre of the mind type play.  Sometimes we draw things out to alleviate confusion in a big action scene, but mostly it's storytelling.  5E is probably the best edition of D&D for that sort of group.  That said we still go back to our 2nd edition books for setting and flavor information.  There is just something about those 2nd edition campaign settings that just arrest your imagination.  No edition since then has done a similar job in our opinion.  Here's a question.  Any chance some of you guys would be interested in L5R as an RPG?  that's the other side of L5R, and FFG is working on the new 5th edition of the RPG.  For many fans that is their primary (or only) way of engaging with the property.

[pjlights]

Really wish I had a play group for D&D...

[ejn]

I really appreciate all of your insights and opinions thank you for answering my question! I wish I would have asked before I went in on a core set, two expansions and paints...On an unrelated note does anyone want to buy a half painted Runewars core set and expansions 😂

[vhalantru]

Hey Guys, I wanted to toss out there that Lovecraft would have basically disappeared without other author's picking up his style and world (August Derleth iirc is responsible for the printing of Lovecraft's works postmortem) and Lovecraft himself in his writings borrowed from ideas of other writers (see Hastur and Carcosa). So the idea of other writer's doing Lovecraftian fiction is I feel actually pretty common. (obviously I am biased, so far I find the books decent enough as a book but more enjoyable since it expands the characters)

[NormsRespecter]

#askcovenant Have you guys checked out the L5R RPG beta? It's a great example of a system built around its setting and is one of hundreds of examples of role-playing outside D&D.

[FaiLoadeDice]

I played AD&D as a kid and I had a long lapse now ever the DM I talked a group of reluctant video gamers into playing 4E. They LOVED it, I was spending days prepping maps because of the grids and monster tokens putting everything I needed in bags per encounter. 5E was announced and oh my goodness I couldn't have been more excited as a DM. More creative control, less tile and token prep work, looser rules that I can let the game flow more naturally. If you haven't looked through the adventure guilds for 5E they are a treasure and 10 out of 5 starts for the people who write those. they are full of OPTIONS and extra information for the DMs to use in their world building. 3 sessions in, my players were begging for their maps and tiles and tokens back. Darn, know your audience right? They stuck it out with me I absolutely adore 5E my players still have a slight preference to 4E because they are video gamers and they like to know the rules, not have to wonder what they should do. 5E is the story writers edition great for telling tales. 4E was the video gamers edition and I miss some things about it but it was defiantly a gateway to the game for some people.

[Expersprobi]

#askcovenant I think 5e is pretty great as an entry into Dungeons and Dragons. It finds a nice balance between something complex enough to model a fantasy world and something simple enough to not have a difficult barrier to entry. There are things about it that I think could be fleshed out better - skills have been too condensed and as a result some stats have become overly powerful (Dex and Cha) - but it's still better than the seemingly endless skill list from Pathfinder or 3.5. I love the changes to the feat system, rather than awarding players with a million little things that they need to make their class work, the classes work out of the box and the feats are really that "special sauce" that kicks the character from a 10 to an 11. On the other hand though, I think we're seeing some really cool things elsewhere in the TTRPG space with games like Starfinder which takes a lot of lessons learned from Pathfinder and creates a pretty solid and more middle ground approach to a d20 RPG. Then there are more narrative games like Mispent Youth, Dread, Belly of the Beast, FATE and Dungeon World which really beg the question, do we need so many dice and rules to make a fun and compelling RPG experience?