[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Crothian]

So let me see if I have this right: his statement and your statement, a whopping sample size of TWO negates the experiences of the four million people who actively played D&D at it's peak in the 80's?

Do you have any data to backs this up? You are a sample size of one just making claims you knew what us 4 million people were doing. But I don't recall seeing you at any of my games.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

In my experience, I just had 5 15th level PC's beat the living snot out of a Marilith demon (CR 17) fully spell-enhanced and a Deathshrieker (CR 15) and 3 CR 7 underlings with only two PCs wounded (one pretty badly, one minorly). A major encounter went kind of flat, because the PCs were decked out with the best that the Complete Splatbooks, the Spell Compendium, and all the Eberron books had to offer. I gotta get me some more challenging foes, because these guys haven't seen a challenge since they killed 12 hill giants, 3 cloud giants and a storm giant AT 13th LEVEL. They fight together well, and thanks to wounding and gravestrike spells, they can obliterate most opponents of their level without breaking a sweat.

If one looks very carefully at the CR system, it is a less than shocking result.

A standard 4 PC level n party can be expected to four separate CR n creatures in a day.

In fact, such a party is often successful against two separate CR n+2 in a single day. Or one single CR n+3 or CR n+4 creature in a single day.

Now the higher CR critters tend to punish the PCs swiftly and harshly for errors or weird quirks of the monster that the party is unusually underoptimized to handle. But if the players play very, very smart, it is not a surprising result that five level 15th PCs can take down the moral equivalent of a CR 19 encounter. Your Marilith and friends would probably weigh in slightly south of that.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Do you have any data to backs this up? You are a sample size of one just making claims you knew what us 4 million people were doing. But I don't recall seeing you at any of my games.

I quote Frank Mentzer and Gary Gygax on those numbers.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

So let me see if I have this right: his statement and your statement, a whopping sample size of TWO negates the experiences of the four million people who actively played D&D at it's peak in the 80's?

Wow, such large groups you guys must run.

Well, I have participated in a many dozens of discussions on the general topic in various forums.

The number of people who have volunteered that they may have tried various particular rules, but did not usually use other 1e rules at all number in the hundreds. That includes Gary Gygax.

The number of people who have said they usually used all the rules reasonably closely to how they were written I could count on one hand.

Do you have better data?

 

[Henry]

If one looks very carefully at the CR system, it is a less than shocking result.

A standard 4 PC level n party can be expected to four separate CR n creatures in a day.

In fact, such a party is often successful against two separate CR n+2 in a single day. Or one single CR n+3 or CR n+4 creature in a single day.

Now the higher CR critters tend to punish the PCs swiftly and harshly for errors or weird quirks of the monster that the party is unusually underoptimized to handle. But if the players play very, very smart, it is not a surprising result that five level 15th PCs can take down the moral equivalent of a CR 19 encounter. Your Marilith and friends would probably weigh in slightly south of that.

However, they had just previously fought 3 Glabrezu Demons and 4 Hezrou demons, 10 minutes in game-time before, and came through that fight with more scratches than this one. Plus, isn't an encounter 3 or 4 levels above supposed to be a "very challenging" encounter? I understand there's lots of variables, but my point is that, under 3.5, using boatloads of splats, the fights really haven't been challenging at all. No unconscious people, no loads of spell power used, no "riding the raggedy edge," etc. It's definitely harder to engineer a challenging but winnable encounter these days. Most of the time, it just gets to be them telling me it was a hard battle, but they didn't use one ounce of their reserves.

 

[starkad]

Add level limits to elves like in AD&D. Suddenly, a whole bevy of prestige classes are out of the question.

I have to ask... Why in the hell would you want to do this? I ran 1e and 2e for many years, and I *never* agreed with level caps. They make the game less fun, and those class/race combos to be even less appealing. Is it just for historical purposes? I am honestly curious - it just doesn't make sense to me.

Take Feats away from the Fighter class and suddenly they are, by the numbers, less powerful fighters than thieves.

Again, why would you want to do this? The whole purpose of the class is to do cool spiffy fighter-type things, just like in first edition. That's what the feats are there for. If you don't like it, I would suggest narrowing down the list of feats they can take, to suit your style.


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All that said... I ran 1e/2e for many years. I hated that we had over 30 pages of house rules. I hated that I was the *ONLY* one that understood that half-assed set of kludge in my group. My players became disillusioned with the system, because it just didn't work well (for us, and our style). As a result, we played less and less.

Then we heard about 3rd edition, and figured.. What the hell, we'll try it. So we got the PHB, when NONE of the other books were out. We were instantly hooked, and started playing games. We were ecstatic when the DMG came out, and nearly wet ourselves with joy when the MM came out. Ok, so maybe I am exaggerating a bit. However, there is a point to this:

Both systems exist for a reason. Nobody is telling you that you MUST play the 3.0 or 3.5 rules. Nobody is telling you you MUST play 1e or 2e. Nobody. Zero. Most die hard players/DMs that love 1e/2e create their own content, so the argument that 'they don't make new modules for us!' is moot at best. Take the adventure idea, switch the stats back to 1e (easily done, since most critters existed in 1e/2e, if you have all the monstrous compendiums, and if not, you can easily find stats online), use the plot.. Play. Have fun.

That's the whole point. Fun. I think too many people get caught up in this debate on whether 1e or 2e is better. Who cares? Play what you have more fun with. Play what works for YOU.

For ME, 3.5 works nearly flawlessly. I enjoy it immensely, and we've not missed a week playing in over years now, barring christmas week.

/Starkad

 

[starkad]

<snip> so sometimes the DM has to say, "I'll rule it works like this, and we'll look it up later."

I agree completely; this is the method my group uses now, and it works remarkably well. My players are very honest, as well. Most will point out if I mess something up in their favor.

We also recently started using photoshop, a laptop, and a projector for 'overland' mapping (ie - dungeon overview). This takes a couple of hours preptime for me, to individually block out each room, and reveal them as the party goes.. But it has sped up our gaming at least 2x, if not 3 or 4x over. We tackle much more content, and the game keeps flowing. No more need for mapping, and I make the PCs map out the combat on my tact-tiles. We're large into the miniature tactical gaming, so it works out VERY well for us. I recommend trying it if you have the resources.

Actually, we got inspired by the cool article on d20srd.org.

 

[Lanefan]

I should also probably state that I really dislike rule changes that try to make things more "realistic" for follow "common sense." I have to quotation them because I rarely find them to be the case.

Hmmm...I don't think you'd like my game, given that most of my many rule changes are for one or both of exactly those reasons.

Lanefan

 

[Raven Crowking]

Is this one of those '3E is too easy for the adventurers' tirades?

Is this one of those "What happens in my experience is universal" tirades?

Seriously, I very much doubt that 3E is much harder than the previous editions, although I will also agree that 3E is quite capable of giving PCs hell.

I think I was fairly clear when I said:

Now, that "Soul of D&D" (or the IMHO version of it) can exist in any edition, including but not limited to the current one, and any edition that comes after or before. However, the only edition that I know really spelled it out clearly was 1st Ed AD&D. And I know, in real life, players who gained the idea from the 3e books that their fun and success was the DM's responsibility (since disabused of that notion).

3.x has an advantage in terms of ruleset, but earlier editions have an advantage in terms of social contract.

In other words, it is my experience that it is more difficult for players to get the "as intended" part than in 1e (but not necessarily than in 2e). Clear?

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

What if every single player in one of your games disagreed with one of your rulings? Would you kick them all? Of course not, you'd almost certainly cave.

Try me.


RC


EDIT: I should clarify. No, I would not "kick them all"; rather, I imagine they would kick me out. My DMing style may not be what any given group of players is looking for, but there is absolutely no way that I am going to DM a game that I don't enjoy. Period. It is an explicit part of the written social contract for my group that, when I am running a game, I have absolute authority to do so.

I am willing to listen to argument, but my game is not a democracy. The table is more democratic, however, and you can certainly vote with your feet. I don't force anyone to play.

RC