Advantage & Disadvantage - Looking for a synopsis

[Charlaquin]

I’ve had similar experiences and conclusions, myself. It seems the end result from my days of playing 3e was cutting off the highs and lows and leaving the end result a lot of “mediocre.” The old hands knew what to nip/tuck to make things great, but the new DMs frequently got bogged down with following the rules assiduously and depending on the charts to tell ‘em how to adjudicate. Heck, there’s a debate going on now on the forums about “one gamer’s ‘precise’ is another gamer’s ‘too detailed.’”

Yep. I started playing in 3e and was far too intimidated by all the rules to start DMing. 4e was approachable enough for me to decide to try DMing, but I was too afraid of doing something wrong and breaking the game to make any creative calls, and just stuck to doing things as “by the book” as I could. The 5e playtest was a revelation for me as a DM. Suddenly I felt like I was actually running the game instead of just executing rules functions.

 

[ssvegeta555]

Weird, I must've been using the "5e method" for skill checks with 3.5 from the very start. I never called for a player to roll any dice, not just skills, unless there was some kind of consequence or need to roll dice.

If a player wanted to pick a lock and had all the time in the world with no risk, no roll needed. Just narrate and go. And I used the handy table of DCs based on difficulty extensively just like the one in 5e.

Although I did use multiples of 5 for DCs for years. It wasn't till 5e that 11,12 and 13s were common. That was the hardest adjustment for me as a DM lol, getting use to a new baseline. But yeah, to me there wasn't much difference between the two editions as far as my DMing was concerned. Maybe I was just weird back 3.5 days lol

Also, in 3e you can retry a Open Lock check.

 

[Blue]

Unlikely that our group will make the shift to 5E. We're in our early 50's now, our gaming time is at a premium, and our renewed interest is primarily based on teaching our kids the game (passing the torch). We're very comfortable with 3.5 and still enjoy it, warts and all. We'll see if one of these kids gets the bug and wants to DM in the future. If that happens, I'd like to be somewhat up to speed on the new versions of the game so that I can potentially help/mentor their development.

I'm closer to 50 then anything else, but I'm specifically teaching my kids 5e because so that they'll have a wider base of people to play with. In 2018, 5e games were over twenty times more common that 3.5 games.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...ms-D-D-1-Followed-by-Pathfinder-Savage-Worlds

 

[BluejayJunior]

I'm closer to 50 then anything else, but I'm specifically teaching my kids 5e because so that they'll have a wider base of people to play with. In 2018, 5e games were over twenty times more common that 3.5 games.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...ms-D-D-1-Followed-by-Pathfinder-Savage-Worlds

I will parrot this. I realize that you guys might not have a ton of time to play, but it could be a good fun learning experience for everyone to try starting 5e. That way your kids at least have some knowledge of the game that they would most likely play with any of their peers. And if you guys don't like it, there's nothing wrong with that. 5e is simple enough that you could pick it up quickly. Maybe have one of your kids DM so that you older generation guys aren't letting as many assumptions about the rules leak into the game. But ultimately, play the edition that you enjoy the most.

 

[Henry]

Weird, I must've been using the "5e method" for skill checks with 3.5 from the very start. I never called for a player to roll any dice, not just skills, unless there was some kind of consequence or need to roll dice.

If a player wanted to pick a lock and had all the time in the world with no risk, no roll needed. Just narrate and go. And I used the handy table of DCs based on difficulty extensively just like the one in 5e.

Although I did use multiples of 5 for DCs for years. It wasn't till 5e that 11,12 and 13s were common. That was the hardest adjustment for me as a DM lol, getting use to a new baseline. But yeah, to me there wasn't much difference between the two editions as far as my DMing was concerned. Maybe I was just weird back 3.5 days lol

Also, in 3e you can retry a Open Lock check.

Sounds like you either had a good DM mentor along the way, or managed to figure out the proper nip/tucks to the system yourself in order to be a good DM. Forums like these are awesome, but they are by their nature anomalies - from what I can tell, the vast majority of DMs out there in the 3e days didn’t have good mentors or role models to help, and didn’t know about places like ENWorld, RPGnet, Dragonsfoot, etc. to get advice from; it was also pre-twitter, pre-Facebook, pre-twitch, etc. and many just followed rules as written, even if it gave them a hard time to do so.

 

[Charlaquin]

Weird, I must've been using the "5e method" for skill checks with 3.5 from the very start. I never called for a player to roll any dice, not just skills, unless there was some kind of consequence or need to roll dice.

If a player wanted to pick a lock and had all the time in the world with no risk, no roll needed. Just narrate and go. And I used the handy table of DCs based on difficulty extensively just like the one in 5e.

Although I did use multiples of 5 for DCs for years. It wasn't till 5e that 11,12 and 13s were common. That was the hardest adjustment for me as a DM lol, getting use to a new baseline. But yeah, to me there wasn't much difference between the two editions as far as my DMing was concerned. Maybe I was just weird back 3.5 days lol

Did you DM or play D&D during any earlier editions than 3e? Could have been good habits carried over from then. Or, it might just have been good instincts. It certainly wasn’t what the 3.x rules said to do, but then, 3e was pretty notorious for giving terrible DMing advice.

Also, in 3e you can retry a Open Lock check.

I wish someone would have told that to the DMs I played with at the time.

 

[ssvegeta555]

Sounds like you either had a good DM mentor along the way, or managed to figure out the proper nip/tucks to the system yourself in order to be a good DM. Forums like these are awesome, but they are by their nature anomalies - from what I can tell, the vast majority of DMs out there in the 3e days didn’t have good mentors or role models to help, and didn’t know about places like ENWorld, RPGnet, Dragonsfoot, etc. to get advice from; it was also pre-twitter, pre-Facebook, pre-twitch, etc. and many just followed rules as written, even if it gave them a hard time to do so.

Thank you. I never had a DM mentor. I read a lot of advice here and on rpg.net. And of course learn by my mistakes and try to improve and from other RPGs.

Did you DM or play D&D during any earlier editions than 3e? Could have been good habits carried over from then. Or, it might just have been good instincts. It certainly wasn’t what the 3.x rules said to do, but then, 3e was pretty notorious for giving terrible DMing advice.


I wish someone would have told that to the DMs I played with at the time.

No, 3e was my first time DMing. It's funny you mentioned nothing like that was in the rules back then in 3e, because I could've sworn there was something in there about not just rolling dice for rolling's sake. But I just checked the 3.5 PHB and DMG and yeah, nothing. Just bad advice lol.

I'm not sure where I picked it up from. Could be advice on forums, sussing it out, or from NWoD and Vampire Requiem (I think the storyteller advice was along those lines, been a while since I read those books though). I do distinctly remember playing Baldur's Gate on the PC back in the day wasting my time with unnecessary rolls. I had a thief picking a lock and I was in no danger and kept trying to pick it. After more than 20 tries it opened. And I was just thinking, "why did you waste my time like that game?".

So I guess it's a combination of things over time.

 

[Ferox4]

I'm closer to 50 then anything else, but I'm specifically teaching my kids 5e because so that they'll have a wider base of people to play with. In 2018, 5e games were over twenty times more common that 3.5 games.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...ms-D-D-1-Followed-by-Pathfinder-Savage-Worlds

Solid point, Blue (which, BTW, is the name of my hawk familiar ). Our plan is to give the kids a foundation in the sysyem we know, see how they embrace it over the next couple of years, and be a touchstone for 5e.

 

[Ferox4]

Again, thanks for all the insightful feedback. I appreciate the comparison/contrast between editions. I am not DMing our current campaign, however I'm working on introducing the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic.