Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreatLemur" data-source="post: 3588366" data-attributes="member: 28553">I've just recently introduced my gaming group to D&D v.3.5.  Previously, we'd been playing World of Darkness (old WoD, that is), but at the end of the storyline, I proposed that I take over the GM's chair and run a quick, one-shot D&D adventure.  They were surprisingly open to it.  None of the other folks in my group have seen D&D since 2E, and a couple of them have never played any version of it.  One of those, our WoD GM, is particularly math-avoidant (possibly to a clinically-diagnosable degree), so I was really worried how she'd feel about it.  But she was completely into it, happy to have some time to develop the next storyline of our WoD game.Anyway, we're just two sessions in, but things have run pretty smoothly.  I gave them a choice of pre-generated characters, for simplicity's sake, and they're actually getting into them and fleshing them out.  The WoD GM sort of re-wrote and embellished her chosen character's history quite nicely, and the other never-played-D&D-before player is really playing up her character's schtick, much to the whole group's amusement.Inspired by David Noonan's <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060929a" target="_blank">Dungeon Delve</a>, I made <a href="http://i9.tinypic.com/62fa3ht.gif" target="_blank">simplified character sheets</a> for everyone, which has probably helped a lot.  I tried to include only what they actually needed to know, plus a little bit of the math showing where those numbers came from.  I even left off class, of all things, since I didn't want the players to see their characters' identities or roles in society in those terms.  (Danet isn't a Fighter; she's a young archer who wants to join the town watch.  Simot and Nian aren't a Cloistered Cleric and a Druid; they're both chosen servants of two very different gods.  Jimphs isn't a Sorcerer; he's a weird kid with unexplained illusion powers.  Bodge isn't a Warblade; he's a wealthy merchant's son who's had some formal duelist training.)  In addition to getting rid of unnecessary information, I also wanted to include a lot of the really useful stuff that isn't usually on a character sheet, such as descriptions of class abilities, feats, and spells.  This blew most sheets out to two pages, but it's certainly saved us a lot of book-flipping.Anyway, they haven't really had much trouble with the rules.  They've been making loads of skill checks and combat rolls, and without requiring me to tell them what to add.  They remember their own initiative order.  They grasped critical threats without any trouble.  Vancian magic hasn't bothered them any.  I've yet to fully introduce them to attacks of opportunity, or the wonders of the grappling system, but I think we'll get through it when it happens.  For a bunch of folks who've mostly been playing Amber Diceless and a lot of damn-near-diceless World of Darkness for years, they're doing a great job of coping with my constant requests for skill checks.Our only problems so far have been the results of my own inexperience.  Previously, I've only been a forum-based DM, so having to prepare materials in advance and keep all the appropriate rules in mind during play is new to me.  I let them do bludgeoning damage against zombies without penalty, and I think I might have let them get crits, too.  And I think I've got a lot to learn about gauging encounter levels and making fights more dynamic.  Also, they've been doing a great job of using the Track feat to skip ahead in the adventure faster than I planned.  And oh how it hurts when they end up not even talking to NPCs who I've written up a lot of info on.  The unexpected monkeywrenches they throw into my plans are half the fun, though.After this one-shot is over, we'll almost certainly go back to our WoD campaign, but I'll probably be proposing more D&D (or d20/OGL) in the future.  I'm really looking forward to letting them create their own characters, next time.</blockquote>

Verification