Giant Bomb Unplugged: Dungeons & Dragons: Episode 03

cool

hahaha Danny O'Dwyer coming out firing with the goatsee and onomatopoeia jokes in the first 90 seconds.

Rorie is God DM if he can wrangle this band of misfits back together.

Dan plays D&D like a crazy person......and i love it.

Although, there is something to be said for diplomacy during a hostage stand off.

The correct answer when someone threatens to kill a hostage if you dont comply, is, --- "you hurt the hostage, we kill you...."

I cant believe Dan couldnt pin that goblin on the first try.....he needs a finishing move.

I need to catch up on this series.

Kudos, to Jason on production of this vid, the splash page alone hooked me in. Great fucking job

Love the show!

bout time.

Dan not making the masturbation joke at the start and giggling to himself is a highlight already. Cant wait to watch the rest.

I typically love this series but found myself very bored during this one

Dan is a fantasy bully! The mask comes off.

Here there be gerblins.

This one as much better! Rorie is still a bit disorganized, but things certainly moved forward at a quicker pace than last time.

hopefully Barry Bluejeans will be making an appearance

This series needs WAY MORE drama and creativity! What the heck guys..role play!

My favorite part of D&D is playing fast and loose for the sake of fun and story.

Grapnar may have been far too low leveled and foolish to take on an Ogre, but with gusto, and a lucky 20 crit for max damage, the Human warrior's adopted family heirloom, an ancient orc greatsword, Cleaves the large beast in two, down the middle. and so on, and so forth.

My character had a medicre backstory so I decided to spice it up during our first session, and claimed my character worshiped Cap'n Crunch. Justifying this to my DM, my more peaceful (by orc standards) adoptive tribe worshiped Kord, however in spite of being raised from a child by the tribe, Grapnar's less than average intelligence did not allow him to properly grasp the Orc tongue, and he may have fumbled more than a few words, ergo, his prayers to Kord were to the orcish equivalent for "Cap'n Crunch." I may actually have his character sheet from some 10 years ago around here somewhere.

Look at these April Fools!

This was a much better session than the last. I really hope Rorie ends up using the second pair of figurines are doppelgangers or "evil" versions of the characters.

Please please please put copies of the character sheets on the forums Rorie! The mistakes are eating at my soul!!

Dan was a bit toned down on this one, probably tired.

You guys are right here, that's a dick, that's a stream....

The group doesn't seem too interested in this. Maybe it will change in the next one but this seems boring. Especially Dan.

@gorozilla: to be fair Brad didn't talk to the DM in private like he should have.

I'm glad this is back, but I hope it starts to go a bit faster, and the crew gets more interested. Right now, it's a little hard to get into it if the players themselves don't seem to be.

Thankyou thankyou thankyou

Rorie needs to step up his game and be more creative, not just follow what the DM book says. We need context and situations. Not just "you are doing a mission". Meet the employer in the tabern, have a chat, accept the mission. No cut aways!

*Watches the archive, they use my character sheet I built for Dan specialized for unarmed grappling, huzzah!*

*Dan proceeds to use a longsword, apparently did not read my grappling advice.*

Sigh... I tried.

At least at the end they kind of sorta got to grappling. To be clear, whatever they have fun doing is fine by me.

Generally speaking, there are no Japanese plural nouns, so "Ninja" can mean one ninja or multiple ninja.

If they continue this series after this game, I hope they play a non-rpg. My dream is Twilight Imperium 3, it would take multiple videos to complete and with most people's love of Star Trek and other space political fiction, it would go down a treat.

My only concern is teaching people the rules. I would prefer someone (probably Rorie) to learn them off camera and show the other players off camera and in the first show give a brief rundown for the audience.

Others games I'd like to see is the Xcom board game or a co-op game. A man can dream.

I thought the guy on the left was Richard Branson for a second.

Rorie could totally be a librarian, keeping track of various papers and books. He does have +1 in that skill.

@mrwakka: I remember I once had a wrestler character. The way my GM worked it was my damage was just the same as a standard big hefty weapon (like Dan's sword) but we just flavoured the attacks as being via wrestling moves like slams and dropkicks off tables. It was fun and allowed me to use the environment to flavour my attacks.

@rorie @danryckert

And I cannot recommend this enough. It would allow Dan to enjoy his concept more without complicating the rules at all. If you want to do something complex? Resort to grapple rules, otherwise SUPLEX THEM GOBBOS.

Dog with a sword!!! Fuck I hate them from ninja gaiden.

It’s a shame it feels as though the group just aren't interested in D&D the whole thing just feels forced and forced things are never fun.

Or simply put, it's missing roll play.

That's a really funky picture of Drew.. He looks so old. xD

As written a couple of times, I think more "role playing" in the sense of acting out dialogue (instead of mentioning the bullet points) and exploring the world more free-flowingly would be awesome. Right now it's much more like you guys play a video game without the video game.

I think the entire group would benefit from listening to the first few episodes of the McElroy's Adventure Zone podcast, to compare how they've approached it, and how much fun they are having with it as a result (exactly the same starter campaign they're doing here). The comparison couldn't be more drastic as to how stale and bored everyone here appears to be.

I was really looking forward to this feature coming back, but without the experience of Dave and Vinnys enthusiasm, its mostly coming across as pretty stale at the moment. Hopefully it will continue, but maybe source some people from Gamespot or Tested (Will or Norm) with some experience of role playing (and enthusiasm) who could help push everyone else along.

@dekushrub: this needs a special episode with guest DM Griffin McElroy for sure.

Someone needs to step up and roleplay like Dave and Vinny did, cause this series is way more stale and lifeless this time around. Though it picked up a bit in the last battle with Dan's antics, for most of these videos everyone seems kinda bored and just going through the motions of combat with no fun RP craziness added in like Vinny brought. Hopefully it gets better from that last battle onwards.

If no one is really interested in spicing things up in the long term I think they should just play other party games on unplugged like the Avalon one they did, that was a lot more entertaining than half hearted D&D has been this time around. In fact they should do other party games regardless because the Avalon video was one of my favorite premium features on the site and the crew actually seemed to be having a lot of fun playing it.

@pierre42: The grapple rules are really simple though in 5e, its the same as his attack, except the enemy gets to roll to resist.

He would do a little less damage unarmed, but it would also grant free grapple attempts on hit, it was the whole reason to give him the tavern brawler feat; that and the ability to wield improvised weapons without penalty and to the same effect.

I did chuckle at him immediately throwing away the lute, per the entertainer background he got a free instrument, wasn't sure what Ric Flair would have, so ended up just going lute for him.

sweet

@dr_insane: i got to agree i felt asleep last night watching this live.

Brad and Drew are starting to look alike and dress the same.

Have to agree with the others, I went back and watched thte original D&D series and V bomb + Melanie's antics still cracked me up but this just seems perfunctory at this point with very monotone roleplaying. Hopefully it'll pick up!

This whole thing seems so half-assed and everyone is so bored/boring. Maybe give Wizards of the Coast a ring and see if they'll send out a DM? The early Penny Arcade DnD podcasts with a WotC DM were hilarious.

Sorry, duders.

This man also has good ideas.

This session was a big improvement, I hope they keep it up and can continue to get better.

The trick is finding the balance between roleplaying and mechanics. They did a bit more roleplaying last time, but things really suffered because Dan was roleplaying a selfish dick character (he roleplayed it pretty well, to be fair to him). Finding the middle ground can be tough, but it seemed like by the end of this session everyone was getting more into it, so I have hope for the future.

Jason locating the majestic dick-on-floor for good background image. Fine work.

Fucking lol if they just walked on past the cave at the start.