i ... nurn Wednesday, april 29, 1981
page 2 daily nebraskan
Fantasy game thrives on survival quest, escape
By Ward W. Triplett III
J.D. Alonzo, Brad Hitch, Bob Davis and Dave Thaut
are all college student with average course loads and some
free time. But instead of spending that time just partying
or relaxing in front of the television set, these four, like
hundreds of others, engage themselves in another sort of
fantasy.
Dungeons and Dragons, a complicated fantasy game
developed by Gary Gygax in the early 1970s, has taken
students and others into encounters with dinosaurs, intel
lect devourers, bulettes, windwalkers, stirges and black
puddings among the ordinary dragons, demons and giants.
"D&D puts you back into the old days withhobbits
the supposed Dark Ages," said Thaut a psychology and
art major at Hastings College.
"D&D is just a game of survival. Anything you'd do in
life to survive, you'd do in D&D," said Barry Sklenar, a
sophomore construction management major at UNL.
D&D isn't played with a board, and the only similarity
to one is the graph paper that the Dungeon Master, usual
ly the most experienced player, draws out for his own use
before the start of the game.
Within the graph, the master will plot out his "world".
That may be a castle or a forest or an underground
labvrinth or anything eke the master desires. Within the
world, the master will place the monsters, traps and
treasures the players may or may not run across during
the course of the game.
The master has the right to include as many traps or
monsters as he wants.
Assume characters
The players, having already assumed physical charact
ers (human, elf. gnome, dwarf, elf, half-elf, magic user),
then go forth into the world. Each has alignments-good,
evil or neutral-and although it isn't a rule, in most games
the players tend to stick together and share in any wealth
they may achieve.
The dice really control the game. An advanced game
calls for a 20-sided die, two 12-sided dice, an eight-sided
die, a six-sided die, and a four-sided die with the numbers
16 through 84 on it, and others. The dice are used mainly
for combat, Sklenar said.
"You move by description of where you're moving to
the DM (dungeon master), and the DM tells you where
you are," he said.
By roll of the dice, the master can determine if a player
will be attacked or not, and by what character.
Player has some control
Life and Death in D&D depends on several character
istics the player himself can control. The most important
of these are hit points, special defenses, magic resistance,
armor class and fighter level, all of which improve as the
game goes on and the character survives.
Hit points are ' predetermined for monsters and men
alike. For example, if a monster inflicts seven points of
hit damage on a fighter, and the fighter has only seven
left, the fighter is deemed unconscious. If the monster
does nine points of damage, the player is dead. jr.
The average fighter will carry at least 25 points of hit t
damage, although the trick of the game is to obtain as "
much as possible.
The defensive part of the players' existence also is
where player level comes into importance. A first-or
second-level fighter will automatically be paralyzed with
fright at the mere sight of an ancient red dragon. Third
level players and above stand a better chance of resisting
the initial shock and fighting on.
Continued on Page 9
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