JoeGKushner
Adventurer
I think in some cases, part of this is system mastery.
If you've got the numbers down for your group, AC's, modifiers, etc..., it becomes pretty easy to figure out what type of oppsition and challenges they need.
On the other hand, sometimes the system isn't as clear as it could be.
I feel that one of the problems with 3.5 is that it wanted to embrass the all uniformity of say, Hero, but clung to so much of the D&D elements that it was very easy for memebers to fail to min-max while others in the party over maxed leaving the GM with glass ninjas and ineffectual heroes.
If you've got the numbers down for your group, AC's, modifiers, etc..., it becomes pretty easy to figure out what type of oppsition and challenges they need.
On the other hand, sometimes the system isn't as clear as it could be.
I feel that one of the problems with 3.5 is that it wanted to embrass the all uniformity of say, Hero, but clung to so much of the D&D elements that it was very easy for memebers to fail to min-max while others in the party over maxed leaving the GM with glass ninjas and ineffectual heroes.
I hated doing prep for 3E. I didn't have the time or desire to do it, so I ran published modules. The underpinnings of the system weren't shown, so I had little guidance on how to adjust them for my particular group of players. I stopped running 3.5 because I didn't have time to do an adequate amount of prep time. Instead, I ran Shadowrun, a game for which I had to do literally no prep for other than pick a couple of plot points out of the air 5 minutes beforehand, and try and make sure I was consistent with the emerging story during the session. Now, there's significant mechanical differences between SR and D&D (mostly in SR's favor); but the main reason SR was so much easier to run is that I knew what the difficulty of a task should be to challenge the team and/or individuals, and could literally make up opponents on the fly based on those numbers and have it just work.
4E gives me what those numbers are on p42 of the DMG. If I don't mind only having monsters with basic attacks, I could run an entire campaign out of p42, the PHB, and my imagination. Add the NPC templates for spice.
3E D&D was an excellent toolkit. But it offloaded too much of the game design onto the DM. Prep time is a function of the system. It's not laziness to desire a lower workload for DM prep. The less time I spend prepping, the more I spend at the table with my friends, having fun.