An Examination of Differences between Editions

[Ridley's Cohort]

I think you make a good point here. Just because we have a more detailed system now doesn't mean we have to use it.

Through the bubbling cauldron of experience, it eventually dawned on my DM that it was extremely unlikely that the players would ever notice whether he spent 2 minutes or 20 minutes designing the typical NPC.

90% of the time that NPC would be dead within 11 seconds of hostile contact, not the slightest hint revealed through play what his full set of Feats and Skills happen to be.

Now obviously this does not apply to every NPC. Making a few special ones carefully is one of the joys of being a DM.

But on the grand scale of things, most NPCs that make it to the battlemat are mooks. They might live through the first 3 hits instead going down at once, but they are still just Orcs in drag.

I am a bit of a Balance Nazi. I also advocate that the DM should "cheat, fair and square" in order to speed things up for the sake of everyone's fun. What I mean is that the DM should feel free to take short cuts that on average will be fair to the PCs.

The number of standard humanoid types you really need are small. Stat them out simply. Vanilla Guard Level 2, Vanilla Guard Level 4, etc.

From there you can just use simple deltas. How tough is the leader of a band of Vanilla Guard 2's? Give him +10 HP, +2 to hit, +2 damage, +1 to all saves and all skills, and call that close enough.

You do not have to get all the details "right". You just need to make sure that you are assigning reasonable CRs when designing the encounter and that NPCs are not "cheating" in some strange way that gives them a really unfair advantage due to bizarreness. But surely it is not possible to make NPC so boring as to be unfair, so you know which way to lean when in doubt.

 

[Thurbane]

But, in earlier editions, DM's were encouraging players to do the same thing? I don't think so. At least not the DM's I played with. And probably not myself either. "No" was the easiest word to say and got said an awful lot.

My experience in 1E and 2E was quite the opposite - most DMs were pretty flexible with writing PC backstory into their own campaigns, as long as the player wasn't trying to introduce some truly ridiculous character ("Oh, you say you're the OTHER son of Odin, and your hammer is the twin of Mjolnir?")

...of course, I've basically played with the same group of 8 or so people for the last 20+ years, so maybe we're not a "typical" group...

 

[Hussar]

I don't think I've often seen player entitlement. When I have, I think it's always been when the DM excludes something that's printed in a core book. Usually that person doesn't remain in the group for long.

Though, I've read about player entitlement a lot online.

This was basically my experience as well. I've played with about 50 players over OpenRPG in the past three years. Of those, I can say there was one or two that I had problems with entitlement over.

IMO, this isn't an edition thing but simply a bad player thing.

I normally find myself agreeing with a lot of what you right, but no, that's incorrect. If, as a DM, I don't want warforged ninjas in the 7th Sea game that I'm running, or simply a homebrewed pirate adventure, then that's my prerogative as the DM, just as not allowing Drow or Duergar in a heroic campaign or LA +1 or greater races in a low-level game.

It has nothing to do with your imagination as a player. Games have a certain flavor, and mechanics can torque that.

I don't own Eberron, and I would never allow someone to play material from it in my games because I dislike the setting.

Effectively though, that's what you are saying. I'm not saying that you are wrong to say that, but, from a certain perspective, it becomes a lot less palatable to simply say that the DM's vision of the campaign should always prevail. I agree with you and RC. If I have a certain vision for my campaign, then I will do the same as you and limit options. But, we should recognize what we are doing when we do so.

But on the grand scale of things, most NPCs that make it to the battlemat are mooks. They might live through the first 3 hits instead going down at once, but they are still just Orcs in drag.

ROTFLMAO. That is SO siggable.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm not saying that you are wrong to say that, but, from a certain perspective, it becomes a lot less palatable to simply say that the DM's vision of the campaign should always prevail. I agree with you and RC. If I have a certain vision for my campaign, then I will do the same as you and limit options. But, we should recognize what we are doing when we do so.

If it becomes "a lot less palatable", it is likely that your vision differs so greatly from your DM's vision that you should either start your own game, or find a new DM.

No one is obligated to another person's vision. If you don't like my vision, don't play in my game. If your vision doesn't mesh with my vision, you won't be playing in my game. Which is not to say that my vision is absolutely inflexible -- I'd be sitting alone in the dark, if that were the case -- or that my imagination is better than yours. What it means is that, for the effort that I am putting in, I get to create the world I want. If you put in the effort, you get to create the world you want.

As a DM, I firmly believe that you should cater to your strengths and bolser your weaknesses. As a player, simply because the workload and responsibility is less, you don't have the same concerns about catering to your strengths. It is easier to be a player than it is to DM. The more your strengths run toward complex world-building, the more true this is.

I would never DM Eberron, because that setting doesn't cater to my strengths. The experience would be subpar to my homebrew, not because Eberron is subpar, but because my homebrew is designed to cater to my strengths as a DM and bolster my weaknesses. I would have no difficulty at all playing in Eberron. Likewise a whole host of other settings/game systems I'm sure.

This is not at all the same as saying "Your imagination isn't as good as mine."


EDIT: One further thought. I can easily imagine a character that would be interesting and fun to play in any setting that I have ever encountered. If the sum total of your ability to come up with a character for a 7th Sea campaign setting is "Warforged Ninja", the DM's imagination probably is better than yours.

(And that is a general "you", not a specific "you" directed at any actual person.)

 

[molonel]

No one is obligated to another person's vision. If you don't like my vision, don't play in my game. If your vision doesn't mesh with my vision, you won't be playing in my game. Which is not to say that my vision is absolutely inflexible -- I'd be sitting alone in the dark, if that were the case -- or that my imagination is better than yours. What it means is that, for the effort that I am putting in, I get to create the world I want. If you put in the effort, you get to create the world you want.

As a DM, I firmly believe that you should cater to your strengths and bolser your weaknesses. As a player, simply because the workload and responsibility is less, you don't have the same concerns about catering to your strengths. It is easier to be a player than it is to DM. The more your strengths run toward complex world-building, the more true this is.

I would never DM Eberron, because that setting doesn't cater to my strengths. The experience would be subpar to my homebrew, not because Eberron is subpar, but because my homebrew is designed to cater to my strengths as a DM and bolster my weaknesses. I would have no difficulty at all playing in Eberron. Likewise a whole host of other settings/game systems I'm sure.

This is not at all the same as saying "Your imagination isn't as good as mine."

I agree with all of this, and it is well said.

 

[Hussar]

I agree too actually. I'm playing more a Devil's Advocate role here than anything. Don't get me wrong, I fully support the idea that the DM gets final say.

But, this does get to the apparent shift in attitude between editions. DM's are advised in the 3e DMG to work with players to try to fit the player's ideas into the mix. I'm not sure if that was true previously.

EDIT: One further thought. I can easily imagine a character that would be interesting and fun to play in any setting that I have ever encountered. If the sum total of your ability to come up with a character for a 7th Sea campaign setting is "Warforged Ninja", the DM's imagination probably is better than yours.

My character was crafted by a wizard looking to make the first clockwork helmsman. He spent years gathering the parts and creating me. He took my lifeless shell to the Reefs of Despair where many ships have met their end and infused me with the souls of those sailors who haunt the reefs. But, he made a fatal miscalculation. In the final infusion, the spirits took form and they were unhappy for being disturbed. They ripped my creator assunder and bound his soul deep within the reef.

I was left, not quite complete, lacking the knowledge of the sailor's spirits but still powered by them. Their eldritch energy infuses me, allows me to move and sometimes, to do much more. I can cause the spirits to cloud the eyes of my enemies and perform other tasks. My precision crafting allows me to strike with unerring skill to swiftly end the life of my enemies.

After my creator was destroyed, the spirits cast me adrift upon a broken spar of a drowned ship. I washed ashore miles from any habitation. I spent the last several months trudging here.

There, one warforged ninja for a 7th Sea campaign. With a side order of fries.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There, one warforged ninja for a 7th Sea campaign. With a side order of fries.

And, when the next player wants a warforged ninja?

And the one after that?

And the next after that wants a T-Rex Samurai?

I didn't say that you couldn't come up with a way to fit a warforged ninja into a 7th Sea campaign setting. I said

If the sum total of your ability to come up with a character for a 7th Sea campaign setting is "Warforged Ninja", the DM's imagination probably is better than yours.​

(Emphasis mine).

IOW, if you can't create a character that fits within the setting presented, you have a poor imagination indeed. If you can't make a character other than "warforged ninja" the same is true. When the DM limits character creation to characters that fit the setting, there are still an infinite number of possible character ideas that are possible.

RC

 

[Hussar]

So, you're saying that my character concept gets vetoed because there is a chance that someone else might want to play it after me? I created a character that fit within the setting. ((Actually, I'm not sure if that's true since I have only a glancing familiarity with the 7th Sea setting - however, it would work in a piratical/naval campaign set in a more standard setting))

As I said, I agree with you that the DM can set limits. However, in doing so, we are saying to our players that our vision is better than their's. That may be a big bone of contention between players and DM's.

I remember in my Scarred Lands campaign, a player with a Forsaken Elf barbarian wanted to take a PrC from BoED. Some sort of holy rager with a very long name. Basically a barbarian devoted to some god or other. The problem is, the elves in Scarred Lands don't worship gods because their god is dead. That's pretty much the whole hook behind the race in SL.

So, I vetoed the PrC. Thinking about it now though, I think it could have been workable had we sat down and fiddled with the flavour a bit. Something I've come to realize recently is that players do try to get engaged in a setting in a variety of ways, and, every time I say no, I'm making my setting less important to them.

Sometimes, you do have to say no. But, the advice in the DMG which says to "try to say yes" is pretty good advice IMO.

 

[molonel]

My character was crafted by a wizard looking to make the first clockwork helmsman. He spent years gathering the parts and creating me. He took my lifeless shell to the Reefs of Despair where many ships have met their end and infused me with the souls of those sailors who haunt the reefs. But, he made a fatal miscalculation. In the final infusion, the spirits took form and they were unhappy for being disturbed. They ripped my creator assunder and bound his soul deep within the reef.

I was left, not quite complete, lacking the knowledge of the sailor's spirits but still powered by them. Their eldritch energy infuses me, allows me to move and sometimes, to do much more. I can cause the spirits to cloud the eyes of my enemies and perform other tasks. My precision crafting allows me to strike with unerring skill to swiftly end the life of my enemies.

After my creator was destroyed, the spirits cast me adrift upon a broken spar of a drowned ship. I washed ashore miles from any habitation. I spent the last several months trudging here.

There, one warforged ninja for a 7th Sea campaign. With a side order of fries.

That's very creative, and very well written.

And no, you STILL couldn't play a warforged ninja in my 7th Sea campaign.

 

[Imaro]

So, you're saying that my character concept gets vetoed because there is a chance that someone else might want to play it after me? I created a character that fit within the setting. ((Actually, I'm not sure if that's true since I have only a glancing familiarity with the 7th Sea setting - however, it would work in a piratical/naval campaign set in a more standard setting))

As I said, I agree with you that the DM can set limits. However, in doing so, we are saying to our players that our vision is better than their's. That may be a big bone of contention between players and DM's.

I remember in my Scarred Lands campaign, a player with a Forsaken Elf barbarian wanted to take a PrC from BoED. Some sort of holy rager with a very long name. Basically a barbarian devoted to some god or other. The problem is, the elves in Scarred Lands don't worship gods because their god is dead. That's pretty much the whole hook behind the race in SL.

So, I vetoed the PrC. Thinking about it now though, I think it could have been workable had we sat down and fiddled with the flavour a bit. Something I've come to realize recently is that players do try to get engaged in a setting in a variety of ways, and, every time I say no, I'm making my setting less important to them.

Sometimes, you do have to say no. But, the advice in the DMG which says to "try to say yes" is pretty good advice IMO.

Why would your player pick a Forsaken Elf(I'm assuming he/she knew what their "shtick" was in the beginning) and then try to get a divine class? To me, if the events in the campaign and the players actions lead to a reasonable explanation of him starting to worship a new god I might have allowed it as a "roleplaying bonus".

Now if the player just up and decided upon leveling that it would be kewl to be the only Forsaken Elf with divine powers...eh, not sure I would have allowed it. In other words my thoughts would have been you picked a Forsaken Elf because you wanted to play one, not a "human in drag", so play a Forsaken Elf. Explore what it means to be part of a race without a connection to the divine, etc. Otherwise why play a Forsaken Elf in the first place? To me that's the good thing about a structured setting, the opportunities for interaction and roleplay because of how a "particular world" is set up.