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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aluvial" data-source="post: 858903" data-attributes="member: 6862">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</blockquote>

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