I was an occasional player (whenever my DM older brother allowed it—he and his friends were 4 years older than me, so my understanding of the game was limited). And thanks for the “drink water” reminder! I’m using this method of character attributes going forward! Love it! It also makes me sad that we didn’t introduce D&D to our children. Although they did have their own unique game they made up using Legos and a complex set of rules.
That's awesome. We made up our own role playing game based on the 80s TV show Werewolf, and had a blast. It's all about just using your imagination and making a story together!
I sadly never got to try D&D, but I've played plenty of role-playing video games, most notably the Fallout series. Character creation and leveling up/ skill assignment was by far my favorite part. I tend to go for average endurance/ strength characters with okay charisma but high perception and agility. Then I max out (or near-max out) intelligence because especially in Fallout that gives you more skill points to distribute at every level, so ultimately you get the most points in the end. Just like life!
It doesn't directly. The attribute system uses the SPECIAL acronym:
S = Strength
P = Perception
E = Endurance
C = Charisma
I = Intelligence
A = Agility
L = Luck
And then you have many different skill areas you can specialize in when you get skill points, some of which are tied to and get boosts from your innate attributes. (So you don't want to e.g. create a melee weapons character if your strength is 1 out of 10.)
And you can pick optional character traits, that typically have both downsides and upsides, such as one of my favorites called "Small Frame" that gives you a bonus to Agility but a penalty to how much stuff you can carry.
Finally, as you level up, you can pick different perks. Two of these are Educated and Swift Learner, which give you extra skill points when you level up and a boost to experience points you earn, respectively. That's the closest you get to wisdom-like attributes, I guess.
It's a neat framework. I think rules like this that vaguely describe the real world can help folks think differently, in a way they maybe never did before.
These need not correspond with human characters, either, or even really characters at all. I've learned to immerse myself in silly games and make up my own sorts of representations for actions and events in the game... I'll have to write a bit more about this, but I strongly suspect I'm not the only one who seeks out wisdom in the mundane, even in trivial games we play that seem mindless or trivial.
I definitely feel RPGs have the potential to shape how we view life and interact with the world, or at least teach us something about ourselves. Do you play a "good" character to reflect your ideal or do you take the "evil" path? Or, if you're a completionist like me, play through once on "Good" and then do an "Evil" run through as well?
RPGs also typically do a good job of showcasing how our actions have impact on the storyline and the characters, etc. Obviously it's all make-believe, but the mechanisms can surely teach you a lot if you're looking for it.
I also didn't get to play D&D as a kid of the 80s. I've thought about trying it as an adult but honestly don't have any friends to play it with. It would be fun to have a group of adults to play with (maybe online?) and to learn and play along the way.
Fallout sounds like fun. I have a Steam Deck and just checked that it's fully compatible. Besides some Macs it's the only "PC" in the house. I'll have to look into it. So, Daniel, which one do you suggest I try?
You'll have way more fun with humans, but I do think you could get some of the experience (just to familiarize yourself with the concept, really) by playing around with an LLM. I've heard good things.
True and wholly agreed on the in real life part. I have filled around a bit using Gemini and it's creativity was so far above other LLMs that it was surprisingly engaging. I'll have to try it out with Claude (which is pretty phenomenal).
I'm pretty sure both Claude and GPT4-o will do considerably better than Gemini, as someone who uses both every day! Give it a shot if you get a chance... but it'll probably just whet your appetite for live gameplay with other humans. Still, I bet it's a good time for a while!
It didn't quite follow my instructions but maybe it does better with the GPT-4o model. Give it a try.
Also, I'm not sure I agree with Andreqw about Gemini. Perhaps you've used Gemini Advanced that uses Gemini 1.0 Ultra under the hood. The Gemini 1.5 Pro is significantly better and you can use it for free in Google AI Studio, as I describe here: https://www.whytryai.com/p/best-free-llms
I find myselt turning to Gemini 1.5 Pro more often for "humanlike" chat than I do GPT-4o. And yes, Claude 3.5 is amazing.
"Fallout 2" was my entry into the series but it might feel quite outdated. It's an isometric, top-down game where you lead a gang of characters through a post-apocalyptic world.
"Fallout 3" and "Fallout: New Vegas" are first-person reimaginings of the game. Fallout 3 made me go "Whoa!" when I saw the world from the "Fallout 2" universe reimagined from the first-person point of view.
I haven't played "Fallout 4," but it's a successor to Fallout 3 and I hear it should be good.
I think it'll be hard to go wrong with either of them. I believe "New Vegas" is considered by many to be the best in the first-person-view series, but I loved Fallout 3 too.
Played D&D for a good few years back in the day. Still have the old Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide as well The Village of Hommlet module. Loved playing it and, like yourself Andrew it still influences me to this day. I wrote about it a wee while ago :-
Yes! I think we started playing around the same time, and I also didn't play forever, but it affected my life profoundly. The older I get, the more I appreciate the rule of law, so I'm not sure I'd be chaotic good these days. I don't actually think chaotic good people help more than they hurt these days, but I also can't help myself from framing folks and events through D&D lenses!
D&D mostly didn't cross my path as a kid- my friends had other interests, and I preferred to get my fantasy jolts watching TV and reading. I mostly know it more as an animated television program from the 1980s than any sort of game.
But as I have gotten more familiar with the game's history (that whole "satanic panic" thing), that may have been a good thing.
There was quite a bit of ostracism still intact when I was playing, although I think I started right at the tail end of the panic. It was truly a mania, but once we kids had played the game, we sort of dared anyone to talk smack about the game, because we knew what it was really about.
Are you going to turn this into a health regimen and sell it?
Now is the time for the nerds to officially become jocks! We are now the health gurus. Yes, let's do it.
Didn't play it back then, but two of my sons have roped me into a spinoff (Call of Cthulhu) that I'm kind of enjoying, now that I'm in my dotage.
Hey, that's great! Are you a player or the game master?
I was an occasional player (whenever my DM older brother allowed it—he and his friends were 4 years older than me, so my understanding of the game was limited). And thanks for the “drink water” reminder! I’m using this method of character attributes going forward! Love it! It also makes me sad that we didn’t introduce D&D to our children. Although they did have their own unique game they made up using Legos and a complex set of rules.
That's awesome. We made up our own role playing game based on the 80s TV show Werewolf, and had a blast. It's all about just using your imagination and making a story together!
I sadly never got to try D&D, but I've played plenty of role-playing video games, most notably the Fallout series. Character creation and leveling up/ skill assignment was by far my favorite part. I tend to go for average endurance/ strength characters with okay charisma but high perception and agility. Then I max out (or near-max out) intelligence because especially in Fallout that gives you more skill points to distribute at every level, so ultimately you get the most points in the end. Just like life!
Does Fallout have wisdom as an attribute as well, or is that sort of up to you?
It doesn't directly. The attribute system uses the SPECIAL acronym:
S = Strength
P = Perception
E = Endurance
C = Charisma
I = Intelligence
A = Agility
L = Luck
And then you have many different skill areas you can specialize in when you get skill points, some of which are tied to and get boosts from your innate attributes. (So you don't want to e.g. create a melee weapons character if your strength is 1 out of 10.)
And you can pick optional character traits, that typically have both downsides and upsides, such as one of my favorites called "Small Frame" that gives you a bonus to Agility but a penalty to how much stuff you can carry.
Finally, as you level up, you can pick different perks. Two of these are Educated and Swift Learner, which give you extra skill points when you level up and a boost to experience points you earn, respectively. That's the closest you get to wisdom-like attributes, I guess.
It's a neat framework. I think rules like this that vaguely describe the real world can help folks think differently, in a way they maybe never did before.
These need not correspond with human characters, either, or even really characters at all. I've learned to immerse myself in silly games and make up my own sorts of representations for actions and events in the game... I'll have to write a bit more about this, but I strongly suspect I'm not the only one who seeks out wisdom in the mundane, even in trivial games we play that seem mindless or trivial.
I definitely feel RPGs have the potential to shape how we view life and interact with the world, or at least teach us something about ourselves. Do you play a "good" character to reflect your ideal or do you take the "evil" path? Or, if you're a completionist like me, play through once on "Good" and then do an "Evil" run through as well?
RPGs also typically do a good job of showcasing how our actions have impact on the storyline and the characters, etc. Obviously it's all make-believe, but the mechanisms can surely teach you a lot if you're looking for it.
Agree, and I share that OCD affliction with you of completing things that don't necessarily need to be completed.
I play the good character 100% of the time, I can’t help myself!
Me too, although I always gravitated toward "chaotic good."
I also didn't get to play D&D as a kid of the 80s. I've thought about trying it as an adult but honestly don't have any friends to play it with. It would be fun to have a group of adults to play with (maybe online?) and to learn and play along the way.
Fallout sounds like fun. I have a Steam Deck and just checked that it's fully compatible. Besides some Macs it's the only "PC" in the house. I'll have to look into it. So, Daniel, which one do you suggest I try?
You'll have way more fun with humans, but I do think you could get some of the experience (just to familiarize yourself with the concept, really) by playing around with an LLM. I've heard good things.
True and wholly agreed on the in real life part. I have filled around a bit using Gemini and it's creativity was so far above other LLMs that it was surprisingly engaging. I'll have to try it out with Claude (which is pretty phenomenal).
I'm pretty sure both Claude and GPT4-o will do considerably better than Gemini, as someone who uses both every day! Give it a shot if you get a chance... but it'll probably just whet your appetite for live gameplay with other humans. Still, I bet it's a good time for a while!
I actually tried to make a GPT for role-playing adventures with optional elements of character crafting back when Custom GPTs first came out:
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-0hEJkhKp0-quest-weaver
It didn't quite follow my instructions but maybe it does better with the GPT-4o model. Give it a try.
Also, I'm not sure I agree with Andreqw about Gemini. Perhaps you've used Gemini Advanced that uses Gemini 1.0 Ultra under the hood. The Gemini 1.5 Pro is significantly better and you can use it for free in Google AI Studio, as I describe here: https://www.whytryai.com/p/best-free-llms
I find myselt turning to Gemini 1.5 Pro more often for "humanlike" chat than I do GPT-4o. And yes, Claude 3.5 is amazing.
I would defer to Dan here, as I can't even keep which version(s) I'm using straight! But don't be afraid to fiddle in there.
"Fallout 2" was my entry into the series but it might feel quite outdated. It's an isometric, top-down game where you lead a gang of characters through a post-apocalyptic world.
"Fallout 3" and "Fallout: New Vegas" are first-person reimaginings of the game. Fallout 3 made me go "Whoa!" when I saw the world from the "Fallout 2" universe reimagined from the first-person point of view.
I haven't played "Fallout 4," but it's a successor to Fallout 3 and I hear it should be good.
I think it'll be hard to go wrong with either of them. I believe "New Vegas" is considered by many to be the best in the first-person-view series, but I loved Fallout 3 too.
Played D&D for a good few years back in the day. Still have the old Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide as well The Village of Hommlet module. Loved playing it and, like yourself Andrew it still influences me to this day. I wrote about it a wee while ago :-
https://open.substack.com/pub/danielodonnell/p/dungeons-and-dragons-honour-among?r=2bfxud&utm_medium=ios
As well as the attributes, I often think of Alignment as well and whether I’d be Neutral, Neutral Good or maybe even Lawful Good 😁
Again, a simplistic way of looking at how to judge a person but I still call it to mind when I watch politicians on TV!
Yes! I think we started playing around the same time, and I also didn't play forever, but it affected my life profoundly. The older I get, the more I appreciate the rule of law, so I'm not sure I'd be chaotic good these days. I don't actually think chaotic good people help more than they hurt these days, but I also can't help myself from framing folks and events through D&D lenses!
Just a player. Not a very good one.
D&D mostly didn't cross my path as a kid- my friends had other interests, and I preferred to get my fantasy jolts watching TV and reading. I mostly know it more as an animated television program from the 1980s than any sort of game.
But as I have gotten more familiar with the game's history (that whole "satanic panic" thing), that may have been a good thing.
There was quite a bit of ostracism still intact when I was playing, although I think I started right at the tail end of the panic. It was truly a mania, but once we kids had played the game, we sort of dared anyone to talk smack about the game, because we knew what it was really about.