Remember…. PAY ATTENTION!
When I was in grade school my parents, probably scared silly by Reagan era Republicans, refused to let me play D&D, because it was “demonic”. Leaving how ridiculous that is aside, I spent my childhood mostly immersed in single player video games.
As a result, while I have played pen and paper games several times, I have never really gotten that hang of them. Take for example the campaign I am currently playing. The group, except for me, is largely made up of experienced pen and paper players, most of whom have played several campaigns together. I, on the other hand, have only played several short lived games, most of which not D&D. That, coupled with my general lack of computational skills, and being used to games that hide all the number crunching from me, makes me a fish out of water.
I tend to spend a longer amount of time figuring out game mechanics than my fellow players. This means I have a hard time remembering how much to add to my rolls and in trying to figure out which ability I should use next. This makes me feel like I am always a step behind everyone else, and tend to just ask them what I should do next, instead of figuring it out for myself.
This makes it hard for me to keep my mind on the game. So, when a tiny break from the game winds down, and the story pick back up, I sometimes miss the cues to get my head back in the game. At best I miss some important information and at worst I cause the group to backtrack in order to catch me up. Trust me, when that happens it is as much embarrassing for me as it is annoying for the group.
I intend to spend more time making myself familiar with the rules of the game, in an attempt to make it easier for me to play. Perhaps, more than anything else, I need more practice, and to remember to pay attention.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 4:31 pm and is filed under D&D, Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Don’t worry too much about it; it’s something that comes with time, and you only learn through experience. I’ve also been unhelpful, everyone else has played under me for a couple of years now, so I reveal facts on the level they are used to, which may be a bit impeneterable to a newcomer. I’ll attempt to be a little more transparent; if there’s any questions you have, let me know. I enjoy having you at our table and I look forward to having you play with us.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
What he said. Let’s take some time this week and make you a kick-ass character sheet that makes all of your rolls and stats and stuff super obvious. The fact that my sheet is so cleanly laid out is the only reason I’m able to keep up when the action gets crazy.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Aye, they are right. Once you get a good character sheet setup you’ll be fine. The slim character sheet I have is the reason why I am so adept at manipulating the rules of the game. I spend virtually no time thinking about my own actions which gives me time to think about everyone else’s actions (especially the DM’s).
Once you get that the hardest thing will be to keep track of which enemies are bloodied so you can apply those special bonuses to them.
One thing I’ve been trying to do is force our DM to give more flavour text in combat. Some of our abilities proc off certain types of attacks or when other conditions are met and we aren’t always aware of them when we should be (like radiant damage bonuses against undead the other night).
Now that we all know about how you think and play, we can help you cover things better in the same way everyone else covers my dislike of the roleplaying aspects.