Hey, all.

Just moved to the area about a month ago with my fiancée.  I'm a long time video game player of all sorts and ahve especially loved adventure/fantasy/LoZ/RPG type games.  Both of us play WoW, but that's beside the point.

I've wanted to play D&D for many years now, even trying once or twice with some friends who already played.  These never amounted to much more than one or two sessions.  I always felt a little out of place coming in to a group of people who have played before, and it never seemed geared towards new players.  So what I'm looking for is a group of people that will be patient with a newcomer.  I'd also really like it if the rules were pretty by-the-book.  House rules are not a bad thing, but I'd like to know how the game is quote meant to be played unquote, at least at first.  

If there's not a group like this here, could you guys point me in the right direction?   Or at least some resource to start with to get an understanding until I'm ready to jump in anywhere?

I do have a copy of the Player's Handbook v 3.5 that I picked up a year ago or so.

Anyway, thanks for reading, sorry for the rambling, and I hope to hear from someone soon.  :D

The starkville group has two people that have been playing together for a few years, one whose been in for the last year, and one who joined 4 sessions ago.   All 4 of us have played various games for years but the newest guy has only played 3.5 with the group and the player whose been around for a year has only played 3.5 for that year.

We do have some house rules but I don't think you will find a game anywhere that uses only the written rules as they are written.  That's one of the things about RPGs... one of the common rules is only use the rules that your group think add to the fun.  That is the way its supposed to be played.

In our case, the House rules are there to make the game a little more realistic.   The House rules document can look a little overwheming but it breaks down into just a few changes and it wouldn't be hard for us to point out in play what the normal rule would be.

We play on saturday night.  If you want to meet in person and talk about joining we could do lunch or dinner and see if we'd be a good fit for each other.  You could try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes.  (As it happens we aren't meeting at the regular time this week because I have a conflict and I just realized NOLA con is this weekend.   Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or )


I can't say much about other groups.  I've looked on craig's list, yahoo, the wizards site, meetups.com and other places.  The gaming options since Katrina aren't great.   We've had a few people find this forum and post but like most forums, there aren't enough people for a critical mass that will keep new people checking daily.  There is the halfing from Baton Rouge who posts a lot and he might know some people there but I assume you are in New Orleans.   There is a convention coming up soon and we are going hoping to meet more locals and getting a few new players.

As far as the house rules go, that's cool.  It's better to make the game more enjoyable, yeah?  I was cautious in my first post because one of the groups I tried playing with had some house rules that seemed more like cheating than enhancing or changing.

Anyway, I'm still interested in meeting up to see how this goes, if you guys are okay with brinigng in someone who has no seasoned knowledge of table top games.  If not, that's perfectly alright.  I feel like I can pick it up pretty quickly though.  It's not a completely foreign idea to me; I've read bits of the player's handbook and have tried once or twice.  Just don't want to slow you down or make it unenjoyable because of my ignorance. 

And yes, I'm in New Orleans.  Oh, and my fiancée and I are no longer playing WoW.  Dunno that it's important for you to know, but there won't be competition with Saturday nights and raids and such.

Also, I can't open the character sheets or spell sheets in the Game Resources thread.  Dunno if that's a permissions thing or something else, but I did want to take a look-see.  

Go look here:  Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or

The same basic reply applies.  Post when you could meet before saturday.  Maybe I can do lunch with both of you and the DM can do something early one evening.

Or i could meet you in an evening.