Any Dungeons and Dragons players here?

I used to play a few years ago and want to get back into it, and the boyfriend/future husband has been pretty keen on giving it a go (he's never played before).

I'm not moving out there until the autumn, and I'm not sure if we'll still be around Milton Keynes or Leeds (he's hoping for Leeds... waiting to see if a school there wants to hire him, though), but we'd love to get a group of people together and roll some dice when the time comes!

Keen dnd player myself, although I like to give any tabletop RPG a try. Unfortunately I'm up in Newcastle, but there will certainly be groups in your area (Leeds is a big city afterall). My advice would be to try the local hobby/comic shops as a start point, maybe try the Leeds Forbidden Planet store (if it's like Newcastle's it will have about 20 flyers for different groups on a noticeboard or similar).

There are a few sites I know that have info on groups, but there seem to be slim pickings in the Leeds area atm. I'd advise you to try to get a group started. It's a bit of a chore tbh, but sometimes you get some really good group chemistry and the players click really well.

To help, here's a nice link that seems to show a fair few interested parties http://dnd.meetup.com/cities/gb/leeds/groups/ [nofollow]

Do you play 4th Edition or are you still working v3.5?

Thanks for the advice! I figured we might have to start up our own group. I think it might be fun to try my hand at being DM, since I've never tried before.

And yeah, I'm up for trying any tabletop game with a good premise.

Last time I played D&D, I think we were using 3 or 3.5... can't remember. We were also using some supplemental books that I can't remember the name of right now... haha, that's going to drive me nuts!

But the boy just picked up the 4.0 player handbook, so it looks like we're moving up to that one.

It's a bit of a chnage to the 4th Edition and there's a lot of divisive opinions to whether it's an improvement. If you're a fan of spellcasters and using magic creatively to solve problems, I don't think you'll be too keen. If you've always liked big brawls with your character or if you got annoyed because your wizard always ran out of spells then it might be for you  .

Being DM can be great fun, I will say that being DM of 4E is easier with regard to making combats.

A great little helpful site to help keep your camapign organised is http://www.obsidianportal.com [nofollow] which allows you not only to make a blog-like record of each session, but also wiki format pages to link all the characters, items and places together.

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/avernii/ [nofollow] to show off my attempt.

Hmm. May have to go back to 3.5 then... but we'll see. Mainly I'm concerned about story above everything else, so I like just using the rules/stats as a structure for the characters to move within the story.... not so much into big brawls and such just for the sake of getting loot and power leveling... that's just not entertaining to me.

Also: thanks for the website link! I'll definitely explore it a bit more (when I'm not at work)... it'll probably help a lot for developing a campaign.

Personally I think that 4th Edition does view roleplaying as something that's just there with the game and although it does include game mechanics to allow you to use skills instead of hitting things to achieve your goals (in the form of 'Skill Challanges'); it seems a bit artificial and dry.

If the best thing for you has been the story and you find others who feel the same, the rules system can become almost a side part of the story, although v3 or v3.5 is a bit better at fading into the background. 4th Edition does not like people to be outside of initiative.

Have you played Vampire: The Masquerade? I haven't but as I understand it, that's pretty much all story and very little combat.

No, but I've played other stuff by White Wolf, and ALL of their games function that way... all storytelling and fistful upon fistful of d10s. LOL.

Played Exalted specifically, but I was bored with how overpowered the Solars were, which is what the basic beginner plays as. But there are other character types I think I'd like a lot more... I should give it another shot with some of the expansions for the Lunars and Sidereals...

I was much more of a WW fan (VtM, as well as its companions WtA, MtA, etc). I haven't touched the D&D world since AD&D 2nd edition. I'm a fan of the simplicity of the 1-2 dice type systems (d20, d10, whatever) over the many different dice for AD&D (one friend even had a d100 for "real" percentage rolls). When I played VtM (2nd edition, not the newer 3rd), it had a good number of dice rolls for simple skills, much like AD&D.  Combat was a lot faster (1-2 dice rolls per attack), but it was definitely there (not in an overglorified action film kind of gratuity...mostly). It really depends on how the DM organizes the story.
Anyway, I'm up in Glasgow with no books (even Cyberpunk 2020 is packed away in the States). I'd love to play again!