Yay!! Today I popped my gaming cherry. It's funny to think that just a year ago I was teasing my friend about playing D&D and now I am joining in. Granted I hardly knew any of the rules I would say it went good despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m getting some type of stomach flu or food poisoning, either way I was fighting that the entire 6 hours. I was very shy though and had a hard time speaking out, I knew what I wanted to say but I just couldn't get it out. Damn you shyness...
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Everyone was really helpful and patent with me which was awesome. Hopefully the next time I will be a little more comfortable to get my role playing on! As of now I am playing a level 6 human fighter. I was teased a little by a 16yr player about the name I had chosen for my character "Harlow" but it was all in good fun and I think he was only jealous I came up with a more original name lol. Oh and a lot of the time I had no idea what everyone was talking about sort of like "lost in translation" so learning more of the terminology before next time is a definite must.
Anyways so I’ve posted one thread before how I was new to the whole gaming world and that any tips and help would be still awesome and well appreciated! I do not own a player's handbook (version 3.5) but I have a website someone suggested for me that has some of the core rules. I will try to barrow a friends as soon as she doesn’t need it. Anyways I'm off to bed and wishing I had some healing potion that would magically make me wake up sick free!
since you're playing 3.5 www.d20srd.org/ has pretty much everything you need to know (especially the combat section and skill check section) though it will be more boring than the actuall players handbook.
This forum is mostly 4e specific now, so if you have rules related questions there are some other great forums out there (enworld, rpg.net and many others). But this is a great place for questions related to group dynamics, table etiquette, or anything else you may have questions about.
I have a player in my campaign with an archer named Harlow, strangely enough. He based the character around his Asheron's Call (a MMORPG) character of the same name.
As for this being a 4e forum, that's simply not true. 4e just happens to currently be the most played version of the game. Personally I can't see why, but I guess that's just because I'm old school (and old aged).
What terminology are you having trouble with?
General Terms I use:
Crit Fail/Fumble - Rolling a 1 on a d20 which is automatically a failure
d# - dice(# of sides) d6 is a 6 sided die.
#d# - (Number of dice) dice(# of sides). 4d6 means that you have to roll four six-sided dice.
Sneak Attack - extra damage due to stealth
Leeroy - Person that leaps before looking.
PC - Player Character
Munchkin - Immature players who play to win.
Metagame - Using knowledge that your character would have no idea of, ie cheating. Such as looking at the DM's notes of the campaign.
d2 - Fancy name for a coin
Gazebo - Reference to a joke about a person not knowing what a gazebo is and thinking it was a monster.
TPK - Total Party Kill, ie the entire party is dead.
Roll-up/reroll character - Process of creating a new character.
Alignments:
Lawful - Strict character that follows the rule book.
Chaotic - Throws out the rulebook.
Neutral - Falls inbetween either Lawful and chaotic or Good and Evil
Good - Believes in helping his fellow man(self-less)
Evil - Kicks puppies (selfish)
True Neutral - Seeks a balance in the world between good/evil and lawful/chaotic.
******* Stupid - Usually plays alignment to the 9th degree. If they are Lawful Stupid they will not allow anything done that could be evil(ie. stealing from a temple, torturing enemies). Chaotic Stupid means that they will do crazy things just because they can(ie killing party members or rubbing soup in their hair)
Suggest reading Order of the Stick webcomic for more terms
Yeah I didn't really see anywhere were it said 4e but mind you I wasn't really paying attention and granted I am new to the gaming world entirely and was just looking for a place for advice. This site was the first one that came up on google so I went for it. I tried yahoo chat rooms games/role playing hahaha yeah big mistake. Anyways thanks for the feedback 
I will keep on studying up on the rules and so on so hopefully by next time i will not be as lost.
Like I say in my D&D blog in my About page, when I first played D&D I learned pretty quickly how cool it was - story, game and theater all in one? So cool, loved it, and still love it.
The community here is pretty great, glad you found us.
Enjoy playing! :D
I was totally and completely shy for the first year I played. Every character I made up was the same, whether it was a wizard or a sorcerer or a fighter or a barbarian. Playing the High CHA characters meant mine were pretty but I didn't know how to actually role play. Well, that was until I rolled up a bard back when I was playing 3.5. I was determined that this one would be different. That one was a Queen Diva and I realized how much fun it could be playing someone other than myself. The group thought it was hilarious and understood that the bard I was playing was not me, so nothing was held against me for my ingame actions.
Tips I would suggest are just:
1. Have fun...it's supposed to be highly interactive and fun game
2. Think INSIDE the character instead of outside. If you are stuck with a problem in game, just ask yourself 'what would my character do?'
3. I find that, as silly as this sounds, that keeping a journal after every session in character helped me to stay in character in sessions. Not to mention it was fun seeing the battles through the characters eyes as I wrote them down.
4. Be as creative with the character concepts as you want to be...while character optimizing to a certian extent is a good idea (so you can make sure you can help out best in battles) don't gimp your character's personality because of it.
As for this being a 4e forum, that's simply not true.
It is and it isn't. Nothing STOPS you from asking D20 questions here, but the majority of the D20 players are in the D20 forurms - so rules and mechanics questions most often get better results in the rules-specific forums.
4e just happens to currently be the most played version of the game. Personally I can't see why, but I guess that's just because I'm old school (and old aged).
Because D&D, unlike D20, doesn't suffer from design flaws introduced three decades ago and maintained in the face of everyone else learning from those mistakes in the years since.
Which is to say: Having lived[1] through Ancient Obsolete Incompetent D&D may miscolour your perceptions, but D20 and AD&D and earlier were still objectively bad games, demonstrably superceded in every respect by games that didn't make the same mistakes. D&D Fourth Edition is the first version of D&D to show signs of learning from anything that happened since 1979, and is actually one of the best high-fantasy minis games ever made - which makes it a GARGANTUAN step up from D20, which did nothing well.
[1]: As I did. You're not the only old man around.
I didn't mean to say this is an inappropriate place to ask 3.x question (though a board such as the 4e char op might be). I was trying to get across that most of the traffic here is related to 4e, mostly because that is that currently supported edition, and therefore has the most new stuff to discuss, and is freshest in our mind.
also they buried the d20 forums so its hard to find from the insider page.
That being said, I'd be willing to say that a majority of people here have played multiple editions, and some have been playing longer than I've been alive, so there is a wealth of knowledge and advice.