The “CD Game” - A New Way to Play D&D
What do you do when you’re hanging out with your party and you’d love to play a game of D&D but you only have 15 minutes? How about this one: say you’re with your party and everyone wants to play except nobody has their character sheets, dice, or rulebook? Last one: you’re in a line with your party, and you’ve run out of things to talk about, if only you could play D&D!
Your standard game of D&D is goal oriented. There is a quest, mission, or objective that needs to be met and players decide how best to go about it. Character is important but the mechanics of the game are needed each step of the way. These games are great if you feel like bashing some skeletons, working as a team, or gaining loot!
But I think that’s only 50% of the fun! The other half? is simply talking about D&D! How many times have you just wanted to shoot the shit about the game, your character, the world in which they inhabit etc etc? Basically all the time, right? So how do we turn a conversation into an actual game?
Here’s how a “Character Development Game” works:
What you’ll need: a DM, all the players, a means of tallying points. That’s it.
The DM’s job is to award experience points. Each tally is worth .5 points, with 10 tallies totaling 5 experience points. Tallies are awarded when:
The DM learns something that will assist them in composing a campaign.
When players interact, and speak in character.
When the DM observes players thinking, or inventing something about their character.
It’s essentially a win win situation. Points are only rewarded, never taken away. At low levels with inexperienced players this is not only a good way of leveling up, but a great way for beginners to get excited for a real campaign. At later levels the experience points will be fairly minuscule - but CD games can basically be played anytime anywhere. Games last only as long as willing players want them to.
In essence the DM is trying to learn about the characters/players. Questions one might ask could be:
How did you meet? Why are you working together?
Have you thought about the clothes _ _ _ wears? What do they look like?
Where was _ _ _ born? What was their childhood like?
What is _ _ _ afraid of most?
Players need not know the answers to these questions.
But having them ponder these questions, and be rewarded by them is not only fun, it can help to create tighter bonds surrounding the game in general. Just play nice, and make sure everyone gets chance to participate!
The total number of experience points is added to everyone’s character sheets.
D20 Art by flufsor (I think?)
