Has the 3.x Era Helped or Hurt the Development of Good DM's?

[Hussar]

Like others have said, the communities built around 3e has had a huge impact on the ability of DM's to improve their game. There's just so much material out there all centered around 3e. That has certainly helped my game, and I doubt I'm alone in that.

One thing that I think that d20 did was hurt, at least for a while, other game development. There was a fairly lengthy period there, while the bubble lasted and perhaps a bit longer, where every game under the sun flocked to the d20 system, whether or not it really fit. In the last couple of years, the indie press games have really skyrocketed in both quantity and quality, and I think that has to do with a number of people trying d20 and then realizing that, while a fantastic rules set, is not the best for every game.

One other area that d20 really opened up is the 3rd party sources. I mean, if you want to use D&D, you can find support for your playstyle, no matter what. There is at the very least, one sourcebook or advice book that will suit your tastes.

One thing that I do think has come out of 3e is players take a much stronger look at mechanics now. Every mechanic has been hashed out, rehashed and folded, spindled and mauled repeatedly. The transparency of the rules has made evaluating mechanics a more methodical process.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Moral of the story: A blank canvas gives more creative freedom than a paint by numbers, but the quality of the art in the latter is more consistent; a blank canvas might yield an amateur Picasso or a group of stick figures and rude graffiti.

This experience is called learning. Learning by doing, making mistakes, and improving is a good way to develop skill. If a person keeps making the same bad calls over and over, then the process isn't working. Some people who DM cannot admit that they make mistakes and thus are unable to learn from them. If a paint by numbers set is required to keep the DM from being a dork then the game only has so much potential anyway.

 

[Mallus]

Those are also great systems that also do the same job. How does that contradict me?

Mainly because I don't think D&D 3e offers DM's 'the tools to do, literally, anything they wanted'. It's nowhere near that flexible. Unlike more full-fledged toolkit systems like GURPS, Hero and even the d20-based M&M.

The mechanics of D&D 3e offer you the tools to do anything you want only if you want to do a fairly narrow range of things (well, 'narrows' a relative term... we always found it easy to wander places the mechanics didn't tread). Which isn't to say it's a bad game.

My group, with their love of... idiosyncratic character concepts, found it hard to match our concepts to the mechanics. In fact, we're currently converting our old 3e campaign to M&M/W&W, and it's a much better system for representing the PC's (even though they spent 13 levels as D&D 3.5e characters)

You call "DM'ed 3e campaigns that ran successfully for years, which were turned into popular Story Hours here" evidence of it being "the wrong tool for the job""? boggle

I call it evidence of talented and experienced DM's deciding to move on from 3e because running 3e was becoming a hassle.

Moving on after nearly a decade is completely different than finding the product inadequate.

Make no mistake, we found the product inadequate for high level play. More trouble than it was worth. Not an uncommon sentiment, from what I understand.

I agree. Why are you bringing up such a dumb idea?

It sounded like you were implying that. My mistake.

 

[Dyson Logos]

IMO, it seriously helped.

Mainly because it increased the number of people playing the games again. There was a distinct reduction in D&D players in the dying days of 2e, and 3.x helped revitalize the market, bringing hundreds of new players in my immediate area, and who knows how many in the grand scheme of things.

More people playing = more experience in play.
More experience = better gamers.

 

[Crothian]

I think it helped people become better D&D DMs. But each game is different so running a lot of 3e is not going to really make one better and running Burning Wheel or other games that are not much like D&D.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I think it has helped.

Dming is something best learned through experience. 3rd ed had more rules, yes, but those were guidelines that helped new DMs, allowing them to get their feet wet.

Also, the plethora of products served dms I played with as well as myself as sources of inspiration as much as "adventures out of the box".

 

[Doug McCrae]

Mainly because I don't think D&D 3e offers DM's 'the tools to do, literally, anything they wanted'. It's nowhere near that flexible. Unlike more full-fledged toolkit systems like GURPS, Hero and even the d20-based M&M.

You're absolutely right. I've recently started running M&M and have a lot of experience with the HERO System and they handle things very differently than 3e. 3e would never let you do anything you wanted with a character, even with a lot of supplements. How could a class and level based system? Those mechanics are by their nature limiting, that's their aim. And rightly so. Simplicity in communicating a PC's job and power level combined with simplicity of PC generation is a major selling point of D&D.

Owning more supplements, like Bo9S or the Completes or whatever would give you a lot more options but you were still much more limited than you are in M&M and HERO. It's a totally different approach.

Hong was, I think, wrong when he talked about the HEROisation of D&D.

 

[Dyson Logos]

I think it helped people become better D&D DMs. But each game is different so running a lot of 3e is not going to really make one better and running Burning Wheel or other games that are not much like D&D.

I'm going to disagree here. I think that any GM experience will make you better at GMing in general - maybe not as much as it improves your D&D GMing skills, but it will help your overall GMing skills as you learn to deal with players, timing, role-playing, providing challenges and so on.

 

[Crothian]

I'm going to disagree here. I think that any GM experience will make you better at GMing in general - maybe not as much as it improves your D&D GMing skills, but it will help your overall GMing skills as you learn to deal with players, timing, role-playing, providing challenges and so on.

There are some qualities that cross over to running any game, but each game also has qualities that could hinder one in running another game. For instance if you are used to finding challenges for D&D which really goes out of its way to help tell the DM with encounter balance. But then when that DM runs a game with out that it could be very difficult to know what encounter balance is needed.

 

[Oryan77]

I will just speak for myself; 3e definitely caused me to be a bad DM. I'll just list my points below:

1. 3e caused me to turn to crack. I bought the BoVD and read the chapter on drugs in the game, and that got me hooked. I spend most of my days roaming around outside mumbling things about Pazrael, Graz'zt, & Demogorgon.

2. I yell at my players a lot more. My players learned the rules much better than I did, and I'm supposed to be the DM. They didn't do this in 2e. I was able to make rules up as I went, but now when I make up rules, they correct me and expect me to look at it in the book. I'm here to kill their PCs, I don't have time to look at the rules.

3. I'm a much fatter DM now because of 3e. During 2e, I only had 1, maybe 2 players playing at a time. Now I have 8 players at my table and every one of them brings snacks. I can't stop eating. I was a pretty good looking DM in 2e, now I look like Fat Albert after he swallowed the Kool-Aid man.

4. I'm a pervert now. More chicks started playing after 3e was released. Half of my group is filled with them. I can't stop being inappropriate with my NPCs whenever they are roleplaying (even when they are playing Half-Orc PCs).

5. I constantly break the DMs code by telling 4e DMs that their edition sucks. I used to do that back in 2e, and I'd tell the 1e DMs their edition sucks. But 2e was the newer edition at the time, so it was accepted. But since I don't DM 4e, I'm called the bad guy for trashing the newer edition!

6. I used to roleplay a lot in 2e. It made it easy because TSR had all kinds of fluff in their books. But the only fluff in my 3e books is at the beginning where it lists who wrote the book & who did the illustrations. So I'm not sure how I'm supposed to roleplay 3e.

7. "Play-styles" "Shmay-styles"...back in 2e, there was only 1 play-style...it was called the "rip their heads off, take their stuff, brag about it in the tavern, then rip the tavern guys heads off & take their stuff cause they disrespected me when I was bullying them" play-style. Now I get new players quitting my games left & right because I have a different "play-style" than they do.

8. I was always a real jerk, even in 2e. A good DM needs to roleplay bad guys well, so I had to become a jerk so I'd be a better roleplayer. But 3e brought about all of these D&D forums where people do nothing but whine about stuff. This caused all of my players to have feelings & they got overly sensitive. So now if I roleplay my bad guys properly, all of my players start tearing up, hugging each other, and complain to me that I'm being mean. So now my bad NPCs are just Gargamel bad...not bad enough to scare my players, but just bad enough to scare a Smurf.

I'm sure there are more reasons why 3e made me a bad DM, but this is all I have for now.