D&D 3E/3.5 4E Ruined My Love For 3.5

[Campbell]

As soon as few enough players want to play Merlin or Gandalf, then fluff will be out of date.

This will of course lead to a debate over which brand of bat poop Gandalf and Merlin preferred to use.

 

[Steely Dan]

I loved 3.5., I really did. But the thrill is gone, and I will soon be leaving it for a young trophy wife, in the parlance of our times.

Drunken Master treats RPGs, like women, man..

 

[pukunui]

It was kind of like... the first time I realized that I could just declare that players were taking 10 on spot checks. That's probably in the rulebook somewhere, but I hadn't noticed it. I'd always had players roll spot. Then someone suggested to me that, rather than have this awkward "everyone roll a spot check! Oh, no one made it, umm, continue on as if nothing happened!" moment, and the resulting heightened awareness of the metagaming players, I could just assume the characters took 10.

It's funny you should mention this one because I had only just started having static Spot and Listen numbers for all the PCs in my 3.5 campaign by the time it was revealed to be core in 4e. It was an instance of me saying, "Thank you, WotC, for taking d&d in the direction I want it to go!"

 

[pemerton]

I just find it hard to believe that so many people would "hate" D&D v3.5 and yet still play it and that it would remain the most popular RPG in the world.

I can't speak for D&D, but for various reasons I primiarily play (GM) Rolemaster despite it not being my preferred system. I would probably rather play RQ (mechanically much more straightforward, but has its own problems in deprotagonising players) or HARP (uses RM-style simulationism to support a more narrativist agenda, although perhaps a little incoherently), or even something like TRoS or HeroWars. Or perhaps, once it comes out, 4e.

At least from my experience, it is quite easy to end up committed to playing a system that doesn't really deliver the desired gaming experience. In my case, RM is the group's preferred system, and we are playing a multi-year high level campaign using it is coming towards its climax. So a combination of a collective action problem and path-dependency leaves me in a sub-optimal (but still satisfactory) situation.

IMO roleplaying is the dice-less part of the game; acting out the role you play.

When I think of what distinguishes an RPG, it is the capacity of the player to contribute to a narrative. This can be done by acting out a role, or by more 3rd-person/impersonal description. Either way, I think that 4e will support it better than any earlier version of D&D, because its mechanics (deliberately? I assume so) produce many more points at which player narration is invited and applicable: use of powers, interpreting hit points, skill challenges, etc. Having recently re-read the mechanical chapter of HeroWars, it is surprising how close 4e is to that system (and there is a lot of good advice in that chapter applicable to 4e GMing, like how to describe the effects of combat without committing to results such as death or maiming which the mechanics have not yet locked down).

 

[Xanaqui]

I find it odd that many posters are complaining about the time and effort it takes to prepare for and run a 3.x game; I find that it takes only marginally more time than the most rules-lite published RPG I've run (AMBER: Diceless RPG). The typical creature or trap takes me on the order of 2 minutes to create (ab initio - obviously using a pre-created creature takes less time), and the typical complex encounter (multiple creatures, varied terrain, 1 or more traps or special features) under 20 minutes. Obviously, this is largely because I've memorized substantial portions of 3.x, but I'd presume that anyone who's DMed for 5 or more years will have memorized the portions that they use the most.

Which means (of course) that the primary obstacle I'll have to running 4E is that I'll have to learn a new game (and not just the base mechanics, but typical ACs, appropriate DCs, Defenses, HPs, powers, etc. of creatures and PCs at various levels). The primary thing I do like about 4E is that they're apparently (finally) making an effort to make the classes closer to each other in terms of power curve. However, since I'm already familiar with the ins and outs of 3.x, having played/run it into LV 21+ multiple times, I'm familiar with the pitfalls, and have created work-arounds with only 1-2 pages of house rules.

At the moment, I'm more likely to steal a few ideas from 4E into my present 3E campaign than convert wholesale or start a new 4E campaign.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

However, since I'm already familiar with the ins and outs of 3.x, having played/run it into LV 21+ multiple times, I'm familiar with the pitfalls, and have created work-arounds with only 1-2 pages of house rules.

Xan, if you're willing to share them, please do. I'm as done with 3E as I am with eating bacon on my ice cream, but I'm sure as heck curious.

Mid-high level 3E magic killed my campaigns. Three times. Even though we soldiered on.

Wis

 

[parvatiquinta]

Amber is hardly the most rule-light RPG I've seen. It's diceless, but not rule-light. You might want to check Elegant Role-playing for a truly light system.

As for 3.5 - I've been playing it on and off for years. Maybe it's because I was playing OGL games in between, maybe it's just that I have poor memory or that I don't like it, but I can't quote it by heart and it takes me a couple hours to prepare a full-statted encounter (if I bother, which I often don't) and many breaks during game to check this or that other rule (again, I usually skip this too, by winging it), despite having read the rules many times.

 

[Midknightsun]

Meh, like some others mentioned, my love of 3.5 had gone cold at least a year and a half ago for so many of the reasons already mentioned: ridiculous prep time, combat slow down, always referenceing rules even after 8 years, too much math and not enough action, far too easy to powergame, no power for the DM to innovate. Yeah, I' looking forward to 4e, but if it sucks there are plenty of other systems out there I've been meaning to give a try. The other DM in our group has gotten pretty tired of it as well, so while we plan to run our current campaigns as long as we can muster, we're going to be leaving 3.5 behind regardless of which system fills the void. It was a great system as a player, but my time DMing it just encouraged me to go back for my Masters. I figured if I was going to be doing this much prep work, I might as well get an education out of it.

 

[iskurthi]

Just too cool

4E has renewed my appreciation for the heights that 3E is able to achieve.

The 4.0 info that we've seen so far is certainly a lens - they put parts of 3.x into perspective. I've also kind of perked up about 3.x since then; I was feeling kind of tired (partly because I DM, which is inherently exhausting regardless of the system) but being told that I didn't like how 3.x did things made me actually go back and think about it and come to the conclusion that, no, I actually do like 3.x.

If there's one thing that I'm looking forward to with 4.0, though, it's that it has reanimated the mouldering corpses of some of the local DMs with a tonic of enthusiasm for new shiny (wether or not that shiny is any good), so I might actually get to play some.

 

[thc1967]

I'm DMing a 3.5e game through Monte Cook's Ptolus. The party is on Night of Dissolution, and the next adventure is Chapter 3: Surgeon in the Shadows.

I expect we'll finish NoD at about the time 4e hits the shelves, and I can't wait! I'll keep running Ptolus because I absolutely love the setting, but the characters are all getting restarted under 4e once we're done with NoD.