Believe me, I get the rules, I know how to roll the dice. How does one play? What mindset and philosophy does one need to be able to play and enjoy this game? A friend of mine is starting a very big game of great personal importance to him, and I just loathe the thought of it.

I find an addiction to Jack Vance novels and the Dragon Magazine Archive helps a bit. FOr a newcomer, I'd suggest investing heavily in Knight of the Dinner Table comics and write 'em up as "research material" on your taxes.

Are you loathe to play the setting or the system?

The setting is custom, and I don't know anything about it yet. Its really the system that bugs me.

'course, my last major character was a monk... my therapist says all it takes is time...

I used to play nothing but 1st ed, with a guy DMing that was in his 50's. Best games I ever played.

What really makes it work is to get that good ol' old school feel going. He came up with the best stories. Another big part of it was to make every sort of monster capable of being something more. One of the best games involved a dire wolf (extremely intelligent dire wolf) as the enemy. Another big thing is the hordes of monsters. If the number appearing can be 300 ( say like kobolds) , let it be 300, a community. The thing that always made it the most interesting was that evil was SMART.

Lots of guilds, lots of orginizations. Ever played the original Bard's Tale? If you enjoyed that, you can enjoy first edition. Get used to the art work, it gives you a good feel. Check out the Swords and Sorcery adventure Rappan Athuk: Dungeon of Graves. One of the nastiest dungeons I've seen, but it's got a great 1st edition feel. You'vegot to get the feel of it

It takes the same mindset to play any version of any RPG as it does to play SR. Find out who the "power players" are in this world, determine how your character feels about the ones that the general populace knows about, and figure out your motivations. People look at the alignment system as too structured and rigid, that's baloney, there are infinite ways to play each alignment, if you are creative enough to see them.
D&D will always be near and dear to me, it was my first intro to RPG's, I played SR1&2, AD&D2nd, Rifts, Battletech, and a host of other short lived games all with the same bunch of guys in high school and we loved every system.
The folks on this board that love to dig on D&D or any other system for that matter other than their beloved SR need to get their head examined. We're all geeks, no matter the system we play. It's easy to dig on other systems here because we are really discouraged from in depth discussion of the other systems and as this is an SR board you gain the mob mentality of different = evil and stupid.
I also frequent the WotC forums and you know what, they don't dig on non-d20 games, ever that I've seen. This is the only game fan site that has that, which should be telling of the mindset being percalated here.

Just do what you would do with SR, figure out your motivations, give yourself a little wiggle room on the gray areas and have fun just with a sword instead of a SMG and a mage that doesn't take a nap every time he casts a spell.

The big issue is that I've played AD&D before like I said. And I didn't have a good time with it at all. I would have strings of characters not surviving more then a single session, my one surviving character was nearly useless in any situation. Character backgrounds and motivations aren't rewarded at all by the system.

Maybe I've just never played with a real pro.

That can be true in any system. I run pretty lethal games in every RPG I run, and PCs die. Sometimes, if they don't think, they die alot. Sometimes, when I roll three 20s in a row, or they roll all 1s for damage staging, they die alot.

Not having PCs die, IMHO, is in no way indicative of the "pro"ness of a GM. I very much enjoy games where if my character is stupid at the wrong time, he dies. Where if the group decides to fight instead of flee with the wrong baddies, they die.

One thing to keep in mind is that at 1st level, AD&D is much more deadly then Shadowrun is to starting characters. No karma pool in AD&D, that's for sure.

Nah, play an assasin, then you have a flat out percentage chance to kill anything.

Holy crap. Quivering Palm is a lvl 13 ability! Do you have any idea how much XP that is? You can't possibly be serious.

Playing a monk was so painful. You have to be able to touch someone to use Quivering Palm, and my monk couldn't even do that. *weep*

moks are a pain at lowe rlevels. But by the time quivering palm comes around... god look out!

I also liked the level caps, although it screwed me more than a few times.
And the titles, nice for the feel

Grandfather of Assasins

I always liked first edition bards.

Who wouldn't?

3.5 newbies.

Do you mean 1st Edition AD&D or the original D&D where Elf was a class?

That was D&D, IIRC.

Bards are still a good choice in 3.5, though not the demi-deific they were in 1st.

I prefer druids, in most versions.

I've never seen a monk survive first level. I played one from lvl 7 to lvl 9. It took a year. And one of those levels came from a lucky roll on a potion with a random effect.

Doesn't mean they don't.

Ok, but this is the problem I'm having with the game. What's the point of starting a new character, playing them, developing a backstory and having them die nine out of ten times, usually ignobly, by a bear trap or a disease or something inane?

Y'see, you said the word "backstory". That's what levels 1-6 or so are supposed to be. The D&D approach definitely calls for disposable characters for the first few levels: it's the ones who make it to 8-10+ that get gifted with actual attention.

~J

90 percent kill rate? I play mean, and that's out of my reach. Maybe you should run away from a fight or two, or stop mucking around in every privvy you find looking for the gems.

Funny, I've had monks be among the best suited for survival. They are ready for a fight when they wake up, they can othen deal single-handed with a rust monster and they are just plain fun.

Alright. So, is it better to add new characters at the XP level of the rest of the group, or always start at level one?

Given the degree of power difference between levels, I'd say probably at the approximate XP level of the rest of the group—a Level 8 character is going to be bored by anything a Level 1 character can help against, and even a Level 4 or 5 character is probably going to be awkwardly shuffling his or her feet a fair bit.

~J

I found that playing a Monk meant a lot of ineffectual attacking of heavily armored foes and being ignored or dying hideously in one or two hits.

Jumping off of your previous question, was there a significant XP difference between your character and the rest of the party at the time?

(Microsoft has ruined the phrase "XP" for me forever)

~J

No. I was pretty even with them the whole time.

Don't get me wrong, while my monk was off fighting for his new level I played a venerable age half elf Druid and had a lot of fun. He was 250 years old, had a mastodon for an animal companion, and was constantly chasing our Cleric's skirt.

Mmm, skirt-chasers

I don't know what's up, then. It's been too long since I last played 1e, but I definitely remember Monks being nastier than you describe.

~J

So, what you are saying is that playing a monk isn't for you. That's cool, not every class is fun for every player, certainly true of Shadowrun. (Yes there are classes in SR, just 2 very loose ones :Mundane with cyber/bio options, Awakened, with cyber/bio options)

I've been playing (or mostly DMing) D&D (AD&D. AD&D2, D20) since the mid-seventies, and I haven't started a 1st level game since I was a newbie. There's no point, and it isn't really either realistic or enjoyable.

What wizard is going to spend four or more years training an apprentice just to send him out on his own with the capacity to cast one spell per day? What temple is going to send out one of their hard-won faithful without first making sure he can use more than one or two prayers?

I usually start games around 5th level, but anywhere between 3rd and 7th is more reasonable than 1st.

As for adding characters to an already established group, there are two trains of thought. If the player wants to play a already experienced character, they can come in at the same level as the lowest PC. If, on the other hand, they want to start a new character, and link up with the veterans, starting them at the beginning (3rd to 5th) isn't too much of a disadvantage, because at the rate the higher PCs earn experience, it doesn't take long for the new character to blow through three or four levels and narrow the margin. As long as they survive, which if played right, they have a good chance of doing.

Thanks Fortune, thats some good information.

Unfortunately, the guy DMing it doesn't have a lot of experience. This game will be his big push into it.

We've recommended that he start us at a higher level, and I think I'm going to emphasize that that would be a good idea.

i would say thers a few things to remember (regardless of system really).

if the DM is new to it, don't push too incrediablly hard for a higher level, a better idea might be to let you get a couple sessions under his belt, and see how he does, if he handles everything fluidly, at the end of the first adventure bring it up again, something like "Why don't we all go our own seperate ways for a few months/years, and then track each other down, meet <here>" and in the process, level up a few times, and pick up the new story from there.

Secondly, as has been said, not every class is for every person, experiment a bit to see what fits you. You can even take hints from what you play in other genre's to guide you.

Bah, starting at higher levels then 1st is cheating

And one of the things I love about 3.5 is that caster don't start with 1 spell/day. They can actually buff and do damage on the same day without resorting to scrolls.

Specialists (Illusionists in 1st) can start with more then one spell per day.

Although I much prefer SR's system of casting until you aren't willing to risk death/damage much better.

Yes, but almost nobody I've ever played with used the 'buffs' printed with the game until they got some way to maintain them without penalty, forget reducing penalty.

As a DM I always start my player (if they have never played before) out at 1st level. Then I try very hard to give them a challenge without killing them (because at first level a stiff breeze will kill you.)

And then once they have got the basics down I try to aim it so that they get a level every (or every other) session. I find that it gives them something toll look forward to and keps interest.

As they approach tenth level it becomes once every four sessions, and even less as they get higher. I am not sure after 14 cause I never DM'd a game that went past 14. Though I have played a number of characters who were that high.

I totally recommend D&D3 as apposed to 1st ed. It will be a lot more fun than trying to figure out what the 1st ed rules mean when they say ' as opposed to " when they really mean " not '.

Remember, chopsticks deal 1d3 points of damage.

~J

Sadly, the #1 character type I play in every other genre is social and noncombat oriented.