How Do You Get Over All Of The Number Crunching?

[Aluvial]

I am starting to have some trouble with my group and I could use some advice and some discussion.

I have been playing D&D since the Red and Blue Basic and Expert Boxed sets. I started DMing in 1987 and fought my group with switching over to the NEW version of the game in 1993 (we just didn't want to switch at the time). It was the 2nd edition Monster Manual (hardback) that got me to change. Everything still had an air of mystery in the game for us then, even though we were all graduated from college.

Over the next 6 or 7 years we bought up the rules expansions (the Player's option, and the brown handbooks) and fought over rule variations and vagueness with some degree of success. At the end of our second edition campaigning, I had a house rule notebook that was over 75 pages in length, completely organized, with various rulings I had made. I had always felt that the 2nd edition rules had gotten out of hand, but what else did we have??? We made do.

The birth of 3rd edition held a lot of promise for us but my longtime group of 8 players (we've been playing for 13 years at this point) again rejected switching gears. It took a year from the release of the Players Handbook and many "extra practice" sessions from the core players to learn the new rules. I started to convert.

First came the initiative situation, which dramatically sped up combat. We switched the round length too. Next and my biggest achievement was adding in the new calculations for AC. We converted the attacks, (BAB) and used the new system. THAC0 was dead!!! Thank the gods.

Soon the players were buying the books and with the promise of rules clarifications and character choices, we switched. I had pushed for a year and a half and I did it! I was thrilled. No longer would I have to determine which of three rules applied from the books, never again would I have to reference the House Rules Tome.

Today, I am up to 28 pages of house rules. The game reeks of rules faults and vagueness (just check the rules boards on any given day). I feel like you need a photographic memory and working internal scientific calculator for all of the number crunching this version of the game calls for. Where is the air of mystery?

My players are all in their upper thirties. We are getting married, some of us considering children (ahh, there is hope for mystery there, but it will be at least another 15 years). We love getting together to play, but I can't seem to get over the rules ambiguities. To craft anything takes 15 minutes of calculating copper pieces per day... Stacking bonuses kill play for my group. What adds, what doesn't, when does it apply. To make one effective NPC takes me over an hour, even with generators like e-Tools or PCGen. I have a laptop to help speed up looking up info like spells and monster data (I have almost all of the books entered!!) and still I'm afraid combat is nothing more than crunching long chains of modifiers. Grapple, Trip, Overrun! I still have to look these things up after having the books from day 1.

Ok, I'm rambling but it helps me... I need to try and get some of that mystery and role-play back into the game, but with the current system, I (and the players) seem to be just looking up rules constantly.

My question is, am I alone (I doubt it) or have you all experienced this as you've gotten older and switched editions? What are your experiences and how are you combating the problems?

Thanks, I appreciate if you've made it this far, and I appreciate it more if you've decided to answer!

Aluvial

 

[Drawmack]

I deal with it by running a rules light game.

What does this mean?

I use whatever skill seems to make sense at the time.

I keep battle simple, someone's turn comes up you hand me the book open to the spell page or you can't use the spell.

As far as making up NPCs, it usually takes me about 15 minutes to make up an npc, I don't fully flesh them out, just the stuff they're likely to need.

We use a custom character sheet that has the AC and AB rules right on it.

As far as mystery and role-playing, that is not dependent on the system but on the gm.

 

[scarymonkey]

Yep, I know how you feel. I Dm'ed a group for a few sessions and got burnt out. It was just too much of a chore. I then started playing around with the idea of going back to Basic D&D and bought up a bunch of basic stuff on eBay. Then I ran across this-

http://www.peginc.com/SavageWorlds/index.htm

I'm still waiting on my rulebook to get here, but this looks like it could be the One.

 

[MarauderX]

I throw more burden on the players to keep track of things like encumberance, skill points, weapons, attack bonuses and the like. Thing is you gotta trust your players a lot to do that, as I always had 1 bozo who would just add a little bit to see if he could get it by me. I hate that, so I tagged him for experience points and he stopped.

I also DMed since the old Red & Blue basic sets, so I was reluctant to add the "A" to D&D, but by 2E we made the transition over through countless changes to my house rules. When I picked up 3E I was astonished at first with how simple the multiclassing is, then I started realizing how completely different it is compared to what we used to use. I think I am at the point where I really like it but not starting to abuse the rules that I see a lot of questions about.

Another thing is when the PCs level I ask the players to tell me what has increased when they update their character sheets so I know exactly what's going on, and it tends to get the players into the game a bit more as they usually write a description of why they wanted to increase certain abilities over others.

 

[maddman75]

There are several ways to handle this. Here's a few of my tricks to keep things manageable.

- Don't obsess over DCs. Remember that 15 is the DC for a typical task, and make it up from there.

- Recruit one of your players to keep track of everyone's initiative. No real reason the DM has to worry about all that.

- When making NPCs, don't mess with adding up the masses of skill points. Just figure out how many skill points they get a level. They can have that many skills maxed out (level+3 ranks). For most NPCs, you don't even need this much. For a wizard, he would likely have Concentration maxed, probably spellcraft too. Don't worry about it if he doesn't have anything else.

- Just understand the basic engine and make rulings as you see fit. Give them a minute or two to check something, but make clear you are not going to spend all night debating some minor rules point. If they want a debate, contact you after the game.

- Are you using minis? IME they really do make the game go faster and reduce arguements. Jsut don't let them obsess over placement and such - come on man, this isn't chess!

- Post it notes! These are great for running combats. One for each bad guy. Not only a handy spot for hit points, but you can denote spells, feats in effect, etc. on them.

 

[shilsen]

28 pages of house rules? Whoa!

Sounds like you seriously need to hire a rules lawyer . My job in my group, whether I'm DM-ing or playing, is to know all the rules so that other people don't have to look them up mid-game. Since (when someone else is DM-ing) I just use the rules knowledge impartially and not to aid either the PCs or the NPCs, nobody wastes times looking up stuff and when someone forgets a detail I just mention it and we continue. Speeds games up tremendously.

I'd also suggest your players do some more work. They really should know their PCs' abilities, spells, modifiers, etc. well enough for it not to slow down a game. We've got people in my group who couldn't come up with the stuff off the top of their heads, but since they've got it written down, it takes a second to locate, if necessary.

And as for the air of mystery, I don't see that as linked to rules. That's got more to do with the DM and the players, not the system (as Drawmack commented above).

 

[NewJeffCT]

Well, we had a similar situation, but the end result ended up a lot different than yours. We have a large group of guys in their early to late 30s. I am married, as is one other guy. The rest of the geeks, I mean guys, are single. We have all been gaming a long time – myself and the other married guy going on 25 years or so.

We had a similar book of house rules in 2E, and our DM had just about everything published by TSR/Wizards for Second Edition. (By the way – looking back at old Dragons when 2E was announced, the letters to the editor were very similar to responses about when 3E and 3.5 were announced…)

We switched to 3E the weekend after it came out. We also brought in two new veteran gamers who’s group had recently broken up. However, they were dedicated 1E players.

Pretty soon, the group got into all sorts of arguments. The newer 1E guys just hated 3E (one went so far as to claim 1E offered the “cleanest and tightest” set of rules for any RPG game, ever) and a couple of the other guys had problems with some of the new rules. It just led to a lot of frustration all around.

At the time, I was the biggest 3E proponent, and I had to leave the group because I had gotten a new job that required me to work a sweatshop level amount of hours. So, the group soon bowed under the pressure and went back to 2E soon after I had left.

Meanwhile, the group DM took it upon himself to really learn the basics of 3E and liked it more and more the more he read. With me still out of the picture due to work (and marriage, and now a baby) they started on another 3E campaign. However, they kept it simple – everybody is human and no spellcasters to start. So, basically: fighter, rogue, ranger, monk, paladin. By keeping it simple and getting the guys to learn the rules slowly over time, the group was able to have a terrific 3E campaign that lasted 15 months and ended up with some guys around level 25 or 26. As the campaign progressed, spellcasting classes for the PCs came into play (first, when the ranger reached that level, then when one guy who died early and came back as an elf decided to multiclass.

As far as I know, we still have no house rules. But, I think we also only used one prestige class and did not introduce any extra feats from the supplemental books until after level 10…

 

[Shadeus]

It's funny reading these posts because we went through the same thing ourselves. Some of the things we implemented to make things go faster:

- no talking out of turn during a combat (suggesting strategies etc.)
- give initiative to a player and use note cards. It makes it incredibly easy.
- use a spreadsheet to keep track of bonuses and stacking. Have categories for each bonus type and then have it calculate out the attack bonus.

As for making NPC creation faster, be concerned with full stating out NPCs that are going to be around. There is, of course, using pre-published modules as a solution to creating NPCs. There's several products out there that are helpful in creating NPCs:

Ambient's Everyday People
CMG's questus Whispering Woodwind has excellent rules

Uh, that's all I can think of at the moment. Of course, every pre-published adventure has an NPC or two you could borrow for your campaign as well.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah, 28 pages of house rules does seem like a bit much. I think the thing you might want to consider is simply not sweating the small stuff quite so much. I expect that most fo the time, you could do away with the vast majority fo those, and not really notice.

 

[Zappo]

If you have 28 pages of house rules for 3E, what did you have for OD&D? The rules have inconsistancies and vagueness, but nowhere near any of the precedent editions. And from what it seems, it will only get better in 3.5e.

The only aspect where older editions were faster is character (and NPC) generation, and that is only for one reason: that older editions gave you almost no options at all from which to choose.