D&D 4E Casual DM - 4E made for ME

[Wormwood]

So, just a quick question. As a casual DM, how many books do you buy?

I have the 3.5 core, the class splats, Bo9S, a pile of Eberron, all the Fantastic Locations and most modules, and enough miniatures that my wife asked me to stop.

I'm a *very* casual DM, but I'm a serious gamer. Heck, I play about a dozen RPGs, but I don't want to devote a bunch of time to world/campaign-building. I *definitely* don't want to fight against the rules to have a good time.

 

[Nebulous]

I'm not so much a casual DM, but let me tell you, the one thing I hate doing more than anything is statblocks. I'm doing an adventure where the PCs are stumbling into an area with multiple NPCs with different classes (Warlock, Barb, Psywarrior, etc), and it's all I can do to muster the attention span to crunch all those numbers.

Which is why i almost always run premade adventures and modify them. I don't like doing statblocks very much, and if i do, they are streamlined, short, and don't include skills. Just hp, AC, attack/damage and a special power or resistance.

 

[Keldryn]

The OP echoes my own sentiments and experiences pretty much exactly (I don't have a kid yet, but I am married and we may be starting a family in a couple of years). I can't imagine weekly game sessions anymore (even bi-weekly are pretty hard to schedule and have the energy for now). I don't have the luxury of copious amounts of time to prepare for adventures.

And I do buy a lot of 3.x books... not all of them, by any stretch of the imagination, but any of the ones that look interesting, I buy and read. Just don't play very often. Probably played and DMed less than two dozen game sessions combined since 3rd edition came out in 2000.

 

[Gundark]

I'm not a casual gamer. I play every week on thursdays ( yay tonight!!!). It's my main hobby.



That said I agree 100% with your post.

I have a wife, 3 kids (one more on the way), a job, church, etc. I don't want to be preping a game for hours at a time. When I sit to play I don't want to spend long amounts of time looking up stuff.

So far it sounds like 4e was created with people like us in mind, as well as new players.

BTW welcome to EN world, enjoy your stay

 

[MichaelSomething]

I also agree with what is said above. Horaay for more time gaming instead of prepping and looking up stuff!

 

[Spinachcat]

I hope 4e does deliver on the promise to be amazingly flexible for GM creativity and also be easy to design adventures and create worlds. 3e failed miserably at this goal. So badly that I abandoned WotC because I don't game to write statblocks or fight mechanics or worry about builds. That wasn't D&D for me. The joy of the D&D as a DM was creating cool situations and cool stories, not number crunching.

BTW, those of you looking for a great toolkit that is super easy for the GM, I highly suggest looking at Savage Worlds by Great White / PEG games. I know its a horrid sin to ever look at books not published by WotC, but for those of you GMs who are crunched by time, Savage Worlds really sings. I have converted D&D settings to SW and wow, I got all the fun for 1/10th the setup.

Best of all, you can get the SW starter kit for free and the main book for less than $10.
http://www.peginc.com/

 

[drothgery]

Welcome to the boards. The condensed quotes above fit my position on gaming as well.

I totally hate how 3e has given most players a sense of entitlement, since most of them have seen p. 135 in the DMG and think they know how much money they should have in equipment at any given level.

They never believe me when I tell them I work hard to keep a lower magic but still balanced game.

FWIW, this may be because they have experience with otherwise pretty good DMs who failed miserably in attempting to do this. I'm sure I'm not unique on that score.

 

[DaveMage]

This is my first post here, so please cut me some slack if this tread is redundant or out of line. I tried finding a Search option for similar threads (I'm sure there are others), but it alluded me.

So why am I posting? This forum has a good mix of Pro-4th and Anti-4th and I can understand the views of both camps. What's more important, though, is that I think I understand the position of WotC. For that reason, I'm posting here.

See, I believe 4th ed was built for me.

Sounds to me like you're right.

 

[MojoGM]

Yup, the only way D&D can thrive is to bring in casual players. And the only way to do that is to make the game less of a pain to prep and run. If they do that, and market it right, they'll do well.

Welcome to the boards!

 

[Novem5er]

OP here, thanks for the warm welcomes.

Whew! I thought 2 things when I clicked the Submit button:

1) My thread will be ignored or buried, or
2) Flame wars will ensue.

Thank you for dashing my fears It's great to hear that there are other D&D fans who are just like me, serious about the game, but too busy to run the complexities of higher level 3e games. I had a feeling there were a bunch out there like me, which is why I opened my mouth in the first place.

To answer a quick question, I own probably a dozen 3/3.5 books and my gaming groups has bought a half dozen more between all of us. I would have bought more, but at a certain point, you realize that "I'm never going to use this stuff", especially when all your campaigns die before 10th level. Typically buying a new source book is what gets us BACK playing, albeit with a new campaign at level 1. "Hey, this looks cool... let's try D&D again!"

I want to say that I totally understand why some people hate 4e. If you have the time and love crunching numbers, then 3e is a great system. Skill checks, feats, unified XP chart, "higher is always better", etc are all fantastic improvements over previous editions.

A lot of 4e complaints have nothing to do with the gripes that I've listed (Golden Wyvern, ex.). It might be be possible to fix 3e without the dramatic changes that WotC has proposed. Maybe they are throwing out the baby with the bath water.

However, since they are aiming to fix the major problems that most time limited player agrees with, I choose to trust that their other decisions wont be horrible. I'm just glad to hear that there are others who agree.

For those who love 3e, as is, it must be frustrating to feel like you're being "left behind", especially when your dedication probably included hundreds of $$ on source books, etc. Unfortunately, WotC must feel that there aren't enough players of that nature to sustain or grow the business where they want it to go. Capitalism? Corporate greed? Or are they simply trying to make a game that more people can enjoy? Perhaps they are one in the same.