Dungeons and Dragons

For my first forays into the vast and infinite universe of ruthlessly breaking down and scrutinizing the various role playing games that have been and are presently inhabiting computers and televisions across the planet, I figured that I would start off with the big names in the genre. For this week's example, I decided to examine the original pen and paper 'Dungeons and Dragons'. Despite the fact that it is only a book based game surrounded by high resolution counterparts, this grandfather of rpgs has been and still is going strong since the 1970's. It's mechanics have gone through several revisions over the years, making the game much more inviting for newcomers, and much less of a pain in the ass for those with more experience beneath their sword belt. As I am simply looking at the rules, and cannot critique anything other than that, (because that would be absurd)... Don't expect me to go into story lines. The combat rules are fairly straightforward, allowing for a well organized and fast paced fight. At least that's how things are with my particular group and DM. Their leveling system however, I have found to be a tad confusing at first, and could prove difficult to use for less imaginative dungeon masters. I don't believe that I have spent so long assigning level up rewards in any other game. Of course the fact that the way that the game is played can be customized by each group of players makes the experience much more forgiving for people who are just starting off, and those who are too lazy to actually look for each and every rule in the books (like myself). All in all, D&D is a very well structured system that provides everything needed for saving everything from a small frontier village, to the entire material plain. I apologize for the briefness of this first post, but I have lots more to talk about on next week's subject. Feel free to suggest anything for a future post, or leave a comment. Lok'Tar Ogar!