Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

Ok folks, it's time for another round of Dungeons and Dragons video clips, courtesy of YouTube. First up, we have a clip that is supposedly from a 700 Club promo video. Needless to say, it offers a VERY unrealistic version of D&D. If the clip isn't funny enough, check out the comments on the YouTube page . Now to help cleanse your pallet a bit, here something a little more realistic, this time from PBS. Wait, D&D is just about story telling, and hanging out with friends? Inconceivable !

There's a new video series that recently started on The Escapist ( www.escapistmagazine.com ) called I Hit It With My Axe about a group of folks playing D&D. Since there's already plenty and plenty of YouTube clips chronicling this group or that in video format as they play their game, the hook here is that most of the players are also involved in the adult entertainment industry. That aspect has no real bearing on the series, other than the same "pique my curiosity" effect that keeps The Bachelor or Steven Seagel: Lawman on the air (for reasons that completely elude me). Right now there's two episodes available for viewing, each lasting a little more than 6 minutes. The video is not from the "set up the camera and record everything" style, but in fact is heavily edited with personal interviews mixed within the context of a game session. With that said, clearly this is shot in someone's cramped dining room (a non-player can be seen hanging out...

I know I talked about The Guild a long time ago. In short, it's one of the funniest web shows out there featuring a bunch of W0W-like players playing their game and also some of their real life exploits. I highly recommend you go watch the first season while the new second season episodes are starting to appear on YouTube. Along with the new episodes, The Guild also released a song and music video. The song is called "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar" and video is equally funny. Check it out here and then go over to iTunes or Amazon and buy the song and/or video. Proceeds will help finance the third season.

Another video series I stumbled on, "D&D PHB PSA", is a sometimes funny collection of skits relating to D&D. The general idea is that on each episode, a few people (iconic D&D character types) talk about issues personal to them. The first episode features Mialee, Jozan, Gimble, and Lidda in "confessional" style interviews. Note, some of the later episodes have a bit of NSFW humor. Creative Juices, the group that produces the series, currently have about 40+ episodes on-line, with each running around 15min each.

Stumbled across a new game-related web series, Fear of Girls. I've only watched the first episode and was cringing and laughing the whole time. Right now there's only two episodes, but #3 seems to be on the way.

For many years, TSR tried to come up with ways to bring new players into the D&D game. Their own research had shown that there was a steep learning curve to the rules set (something that I think has persisted to this day). To that end, TSR created various versions of D&D lite, usually in the form of a board game, sometimes with cards and plastic pieces, and always with a full set of polyhedral dice. One such game was Dragonstrike . One of the things that made this game different was the inclusion of a video. Only a small part of the video casette (remember those!) is actually instructional, most of it is a live action/computer graphics short film depicting one adventure. Be warned that the CG is pretty bad, the acting not too much better, and the plot straight out of a basic adventure... on the other hand, it does have it's moments, illustrates some basic concepts and has a disembodied floating head DM (where else are you going to see that!) So grab a soda, and a small popc...

Not completely related to gaming, but listen closely to the second verse... UPDATE: Newsarama recently did an interview with Charlton Parker of The Deaf Pedestrians . Since Newsarama is primarily concerned with comics, there was no info on his D&D experience.