Monte Cook has commented in the past about how AU was intended to put more control back into the hands of the DM.
In a conversation with my friend last night we were reminiscing about some of our first edition games. A common theme that materialized from that discussion involved the vanilla character classes, elegant systems, and what I called organic character development. In 3rd edition and beyond, you can begin with the end in mind. You could say with a high degree of certainty exactly what your character would be like, and his abilities, at any level. In many of my 1st edition campaigns the characters were radically different than in the books using things like psionics, dual wielding, weapon mastery, rare powerful spells, and rare powerful items.
In our experience we looked back very fondly on those characters and those games.
Why did we give up that control?
Is it better for the pen & paper game?
Could all the excellent toys of 3rd edition be used to develop a more organic pen & paper game experience?
In a conversation with my friend last night we were reminiscing about some of our first edition games. A common theme that materialized from that discussion involved the vanilla character classes, elegant systems, and what I called organic character development. In 3rd edition and beyond, you can begin with the end in mind. You could say with a high degree of certainty exactly what your character would be like, and his abilities, at any level. In many of my 1st edition campaigns the characters were radically different than in the books using things like psionics, dual wielding, weapon mastery, rare powerful spells, and rare powerful items.
In our experience we looked back very fondly on those characters and those games.
Why did we give up that control?
Is it better for the pen & paper game?
Could all the excellent toys of 3rd edition be used to develop a more organic pen & paper game experience?