"I hate math"

[Ourph]

Honestly, I don't understand what the rancor is about.

Surely a little reading in order to be informed before making a comment isn't beyond the capabilities of someone who apparently doesn't have a problem with the intricacies of D&D's combat rules.

I find it quite humorous that you and Quasqueton seem to be so offended that someone might not want to have to deal all that crap while trying to relax and play a game. Does it really hit that close to home?

'Nuff said, and then some.

I agree wholeheartedly. Those comments are my justifiably disgruntled and well deserved replies to several unsolicited and uninformed responses directed toward me over my simple little unprovocative statement (to another poster) that I've given over playing 3e D&D for Warhammer. So what's the problem?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

So what's the problem?

It's always the person who responds to the foul that the officials blow the whistle on... (a little basketball wisdom for ya... )

 

[RithTheAwakener]

Actually no. We've never had a problem with high level math, it has actually tought some of our players to add, subtract, multiply, and divide very quickly. Mind you, our group doesnt consist of the brightest people (mathematically) but its only made us better at math. Yet another reason for kids to play D&D? Maybe...

 

[I'm A Banana]

You don't have to be trained. In the early 80's, we played D&D very ad-hoc like, probably more than I do now, and it was loads of fun. We also played games with even less rules than Basic D&D, such as Das Schwartze Auge (the Basic version) and even used straight-up Fighting Fantasy (only has 3 stats, the entire rules fit on a few pages) to run games at school. We were 12, 13, 14 years old maybe and didn't know or care about game design.

Well, I didn't say it was impossible, just that it isn't my cup of tea. IMHO, 3e is BETTER because it involves less of that. It is more fun, more like a game, and less like collaborative fiction. The wargamy elements are enjoyable to me. Make it much more abstract, and it's not something I really like to do, because it's not like playing a game anymore to me when what my roll means is defined almost entirely by the mood the DM's in and if he's a good storyteller or just relies on cliches, or whatever....

This is mostly just a personal thing, but if D&D today was like that, I wouldn't be playing and loving it. I'd be pretty much playing videogame RPG's, because they feel like playing a game....

 

[RFisher]

Though like RFisher said (perhaps it was in a different thread though, can't remember): make sure you know if your players are enjoying the game to the same extent you are. Some of them simply don't care for all that extra detail, and some of them crave it.

Rereading this thread I caught saw reference to myself that I'd missed... & it's a point worth expounding on, because I think it is one of the most important things I've learned about this hobby & how I want to play it.

My group at the time played GURPS with the advanced combat system & all the options. We played Rolemaster with every option we could. (You can't use them all because there are so many & some of them are mutually exclusive.) We reveled in the segmented Hero combat round. A couple of us were even trying to build our own system that combined the "best" of all of them & then some.

When I say "we", though, it was--I began to realize--really only the two or three of us who usually GM'd. The other players didn't complain. They just tended to go along with whatever we wanted. But once I started looking, I realized how often we were boring them.

Playing a campaign of AD&D2e without all the options made me realize that I had just as much fun & the "other players" almost never got that old glazed expression.

Now there was one person who resisted. Other factors led us in different directions before I ever discovered whether he couldn't enjoy a less complex system as much as the rest of us or whether he just needed to come around to approaching it with an open mind.

I'd love to have an entire group that enjoyed all-options-on GURPS combat as much as I do, but I haven't. Thinking about it now, though, I don't know that I would love it. I think I like more diversity in my group.

Anyway, that's a bit of my own story, for whatever it's worth.

 

[Abulia]

Its not an issue of trust. its an issue of expectation.

if the rules we are playing by, as in the books i told them to use, define explicit numbers for this and that and the other, then the players will EXPECt that. They will if they have sense even plan on that.

My following those numbers is me keeping my promise to them. They expect me to keep my promise.

if, on the other hand, they rules i gave them are less specific, giving more general guidelines, then their expectations are not so precise. Smaller variances caused by seat-of-the-pants handling wont be a problem they percieve.

You, dear sir, are right on target.

When I run D&D I do everything I can to be "fair." That means following the rules for all the players. That also means being consistent and ensuring that the NPCs and monsters also follow the rules. Not because I'm a slave to the rules, mostly because D&D is so insanely intertwined and "balanced" that hand-waving one little thing aside can have huge repercussions.

Trust? There's plenty of that at my gaming table. What I don't have plenty of is time. I'm sick of 3 hour D&D combats that cover 5 rounds. Haven't seen a player take his character from 1 to 12 and still not know what his total bonus to hit in melee is? I have, regularly.

Mostly, the past few D&D games have had stacks of books on the table, with people constantly flipping through them, trying to make sure they know what spell they're going to cast will do what, or looking up that last feat selection. There's so much rules metagaming going on ("use two hands; better damage curve!") that the storytelling/game aspect is nigh forgotten. Game prep is a statistical orgasm of numbers that makes me want to claw my eyes out.

YMMV, of course.

Use the rules; don't let the rules use you.

"This homespun wisdom sucks."

 

[ashockney]

Well it is interesting to see the divergent opinions on the subject at least. Thank you for all your contributions. I'm sure we can keep it civil moving forward. I'd love nothing more than for a mod to edit this thread of several unnecessary comments and retorts.

So, I tried out some new stuff for high level play at Origins this weekend. Here it is in a nutshell:

Use average rolls (for attack and damage).
Use a simplified "buff" system.

Ta dum!

There's a bunch of sub-rules to these rules (and I mean a BUNCH!), but the long and short of it, is what you see above. All you really need to play high level D&D (I ran at 14th level) is a 20 sided die, make a small number of calculations in advance, and you're off to the races. Get your game on, focus on the tactics on the board, and focus on your characters/roleplaying and story.

Feedback I received was generally positive. I had a rules-lawyer and dedicated character optimizer at my table (twice) who indicated that they felt it was a little oversimplified, but got what I was trying to do. Frankly, if the reason (sole) you play this game is to optimize a character, you're playing the wrong game (IMHO). In the category of "smashing success" I had two 14 year olds (one male and one female) sit at our table. Neither had ever seen the character before Sunday, and both ACTIVELY participated in the combats, role-played their characters, and enjoyed the adventure. I asked if they felt they could continue playing at this level, to which they both responded, "oh, yeah." That is it!

Please recall, the title of the thread is a direct quote from one of my players, at Origins, one year ago. They were even in the same adventure. This year, I had two young teenagers at the table, actively participating. We also completed the entire adventure in 3:45 min. That's a 14th level adventure, with four encounters, completed with characters most had never seen before, in less than four hours. There were two character deaths (huzzah!), and there was one combat that pitted the six player characters agains 5 Fire Giants, 6 Elite Fire Giants, 3 Hell Hounds, and King Snurre himself (with his 3 pet "uber" hell hounds). How long do you thing this combat would normally take? 24 combatants, 14th level. We did it in an hour or less.

If you'd like to find out more, I'll be posting some information on our website in the coming weeks at www.myrikgames.com.

 

[Endur]

Well, yes, that is what lots of people mean. The Basic boxed set with the wizard, warrior, and dragon on the cover had a circulation of over 1 million. I believe the expert, companion, etc. had circulation of under 100,000. The other boxes, while dealing with the over level 3 situation, had nowhere near the circulation of what most people call "Basic D&D".

Do you seriously think that the Basic boxed set are what people actually mean when they use the term "Basic D&D", do you? Because I've played D&D for years and have heard the term "Basic D&D" used to refer to the rules sytem that was composed of the Basic box, Expert box, Companion box, Master box, and Immortal box... and I knew precisely that people using that term didn't exclude every box that came after the Basic set.

 

[Silverleaf]

Well, yes, that is what lots of people mean. The Basic boxed set with the wizard, warrior, and dragon on the cover had a circulation of over 1 million. I believe the expert, companion, etc. had circulation of under 100,000. The other boxes, while dealing with the over level 3 situation, had nowhere near the circulation of what most people call "Basic D&D".

I think there's no need to try proving anything one way or another since there was a misunderstanding at play... If you hang around old-school players enough, you'll soon find out that many of them use the terms OD&D, BD&D, Basic D&D and Classic D&D interchangably to imply any of the D&D stuff released by TSR that wasn't "Advanced". There is no one true terminology, nor do many of us really see the need for one. One of the strengths of those old games is that they can be easily mixed & matched together or with the original '74 rules & supplements or with AD&D.

P.S. Sometimes to make it clear someone will say B/X D&D to imply the earlier Moldvay/Cook boxed sets or BECM D&D for the later Mentzer boxed sets (or RC D&D, which is identical to BECM rules-wise but comes in a hardbound book format). Or sometimes one will refer to the editor's name (frex: Holmes Basic, to mean the '77 boxed set). But otherwise there is no great distinction made. And anyway this stragegy can be confusing when speaking to people who aren't very familiar with the history of D&D, so the more general terms are often preferred...

 

[WizarDru]

Mostly, the past few D&D games have had stacks of books on the table, with people constantly flipping through them, trying to make sure they know what spell they're going to cast will do what, or looking up that last feat selection. There's so much rules metagaming going on ("use two hands; better damage curve!") that the storytelling/game aspect is nigh forgotten. Game prep is a statistical orgasm of numbers that makes me want to claw my eyes out.

YMMV, of course.

And I assure you, it does. While I agree, it can be a problem, it doesn't have to be. If the storytelling/game aspect is nigh forgotten, that's not the rules fault, IMHO. We have a group of 6 25th level characters...some with characters who have four or possibly five classes, at this point. In their words: "Our enemies were powerful enough to stop a small army....unfortunately for them, we stop LARGE ONES." We still manage to have sessions where virtually no dice roll, because the topic of storytelling takes over.

At high levels, PCs can accomplish astonishing things...and in some ways, that makes things easier. The rogue is virtually unstoppable and undetectable...making skill rolls against her is a pointless endeavour for all but the most canny of enemies. So in almost every situation, we assume success and move on, unless I deem otherwise. Spellcasters flipping through books for exact spell descriptions has been the case since first level in every game I've ever played and continues to the present day and 25th-level. That's because few folks have complete rules mastery of even the basic game...and when you get to higher levels, some things just have to be interepeted: "Does Otto's Irresistable Dance work on a giant fiendish psionic shapeshifting Ochre Jelly?" and so on.

High-level prep makes me want to slam my head into a wall...but it doesn't detract from role-playing, IME, unless you let it. I could do a search on our high/epic level speed-up threads and post links, if you'd like suggestions on how to reduce the length of those combats, btw.