Am I an atypical DM?
TheGM
First Post
Barak said:
Wow, rude much?
I don't know who you play with, but that's condemning every 3.5 group I know, both the ones I've played in and the ones I hang out with players from. People are happy to talk about it and look for solutions, so I don't know how this could be news to you.
don.
Gargoyle said:
It's an interesting contrast between you and me. I don't use any monster/character generator software. MS Word is the most it goes to. However, I'm also a real early adopter of new systems. When you look at my campaign, we use quite a few books: the PCs include an incarnate and a soulborn (Magic of Incarnum), a fochluchan-lyrist wannabe (Complete Adventurer), a knight (PHB2), a dwarf soulknife (Races of Stone & XPH) and a halfling arcane hierophant (Races of the Wild). I'm using incarnum monsters, frost dwarves (Planar Handbook), taint rules (Heroes of Horror), weapons of legacy, and other sources.
There's no doubt that I assimilate rules quicker than many people. Still, I do think that D&D is as difficult as you make it - if the rules options overwhelm you, that's a great reason not to use them.
My last session was a real exercise in not a lot of preparation. I had the basic plan of what was to happen. At present, I try and design each session around 4 combats or so, although I walked into this session with only two, expecting there to be quite a bit of role-playing and planning to take up the bulk of play. (The adventure was for level 8 PCs).
The PCs needed to travel home through dangerous terrain, so I designed two encounters for the trip: a Frost Dwarf Soulborn 9 and his 7 Frost Dwarf Soulborn 2 minions (that took me about an hour to stat, although I was distracting myself by cooking lunch at the same time), followed by an encounter with 2 Inferno Spiders (just crossing out all "fire" references and making them "cold" references). The Inferno Spiders didn't take me long at all to stat - I just had to remember where the entry was in MMIV. Combat map? There was one of the Fantastic Locations that would do fine.
So, about an hour's preparation, and then the ability to "wing it".
As it happened, the PCs weren't able to defeat the Ice Spiders, so they ended up in the middle of a blizzard needing a place to camp. I happened to have Frostburn with me (that was planning ahead!) and used the random encounter table from it to see what happened after the wandering monster came up "01". Hmm. 3 Midgard Dwarves. I changed that to Frost Dwarves, but suddenly needed three Frost Dwarf Fighter 4s. On the fly, I scribbled down their stats, aided by the tables in the DMG. HP, AC, Attack Bonus, Damage and some obvious feats. Didn't take longer than a couple of minutes and we were ready to go again. Well, we needed a map... hmm, PCs holed up in cave... isn't there a FL map? Yes, there was.
The rest of the session was role-playing (and some secrets were learnt, and the plot thickened, etc.)
Other sessions involve more planning by me, but I normally spend well under two hours for any session. There'll likely be one NPC or advanced monster I need to stat, but the rest are stock monsters or low-level minions that don't need much time. Traps and treasure likewise.
There's no doubt that running *lots* of D&D helps me in running the game. Although the Ulek game occurs only once per two weeks, I run a weekly RPGA game and a fortnightly Age of Worms game. (Real trick to running lots of D&D: use published scenarios.) My records tell me I've run 57 D&D sessions in the first 8 months of this year, or almost two a week. (Session length is about 4 hours).
Cheers!
rgard
Adventurer
an_idol_mind said:
Another way is to print out all the spells the character knows from the SRD. When I switched to 3.x from 1e, I did this to relearn the spells (alot changed) and to keep me from wasting time thumbing through the PHB. Pick up some new spells? Just cut and paste from the SRD and print a new copy.
Thanks,
Rich
Gargoyle
Adventurer
MerricB said:
Yep, that's a pretty broad set of rules. We have an arcane hierophant, but the rest are mostly core characters, with one choosing a homebrew race of mine called the vos, a largish race that is sort of cross between concepts from the Arcana Evolved giants, Wheel of Time ogiers, and Races of Stone goliaths.
There's no doubt that I assimilate rules quicker than many people. Still, I do think that D&D is as difficult as you make it - if the rules options overwhelm you, that's a great reason not to use them.
QFT
I want the environment books but I've got just about everything else and it's more than enough for us.
That's certainly much more than I run. We're just getting back into our game every two week after a long hiatus due to a bad case of RL, and I'm starting another small weekly game, and I'm going to play in another bi-weekly when I can. I haven't gamed like you do since I was in the service. Back then I was running one weekly D&D game with one shots on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a weekly Torg game, and card games in between, and playing in ocassional Rifts and Shadowrun games. I didn't know how good I had it.
Lanefan said:You've memorized more of the rules than many have, I suspect.
Yep. The trick is knowing and remembering which items, spells, or abilities give what type of bonuses; my memory for this type of thing is awful even as a player, never mind as DM.
Lanefan
Well I've said before, I've got a great memory for trivia. So I guess that helps. And yeah, maybe people who don't have that quirk will find things harder. I dunno, I'm just saying for me, it isn't an issue at all.
Well it depends. If you have, say, 5 players, they are at level 12-13, some have cohorts, some have "pets", some summon monsters frequently, and they are facing a large, mixed group of enemies.. Then yeah, it can take a while. But that's hardly surprising, or wrong, is it? If they are 4-5th level, no companions, and facing 10 hobgoblins or a couple ogres.. Then yeah, a round shouldn't take that long.
