Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 4496731" data-attributes="member: 151">I'd say that latter statement informs the first.&nbsp; My group plays as much as yours, but my free time for prepping (which can be fun to me, depending on the task) has diminished greatly since 2000.&nbsp; And even when I had more, I've found that spending extensive time building stat-blocks equals Not Fun to me.&nbsp; The issue of 'we play no matter how much prep-time I take' is a personal choice from DM to DM and group-to-group.&nbsp; I know one DM that won't run a game unless he has a fixed number of hours to prepare, while I can run with no prep-time, if need be (the issue of how satisfied I am with that session is another discussion entirely).Under both flavors of 3e, I've found that low-levels are much easier to improvise, while high levels require inordinate amounts of prep-time to make it unique an enjoyable for my players.&nbsp; Simply cherry-picking the Monster Manual ceases to be an entertaining option.&nbsp; I consider prep-time where I make maps, plot adventures and brain-storm to be fun.&nbsp; I consider prep-time where I spend hours going over Excel spreadsheets, reviewing powers and stat-blocks and cutting-and-pasting from various sources to be tedious and busy accounting work that detracts from my enjoyment of the game.&nbsp; If not for fellows like BlackDirge, my campaign might have featured far fewer high-level monsters of note.While running Pathfinder this past weekend, I was highly conscious of these issues when the party steam-rollered a CR12 opponent with a stat-block the ran a 1.5 pages and I still found myself, 8 years in, trying to locate her saves in the stat-block...and then computing spell-effects...and then searching to see which version (raging versus normal) was in effect...and so on.Did we have fun?&nbsp; Certainly.&nbsp; But there are elements of 3e/3.5e that have grown more tiresome to me over the years that 4e, at least so far, seems to address.&nbsp; More focus on the 'fun' prep-time for me is one of them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="WizarDru, post: 4496731, member: 151"] I'd say that latter statement informs the first. My group plays as much as yours, but my free time for prepping (which [i]can[/i] be fun to me, depending on the task) has diminished greatly since 2000. And even when I had more, I've found that spending extensive time building stat-blocks equals Not Fun to me. The issue of 'we play no matter how much prep-time I take' is a personal choice from DM to DM and group-to-group. I know one DM that won't run a game unless he has a fixed number of hours to prepare, while I can run with no prep-time, if need be (the issue of how satisfied I am with that session is another discussion entirely). Under both flavors of 3e, I've found that low-levels are much easier to improvise, while high levels require inordinate amounts of prep-time to make it unique an enjoyable for my players. Simply cherry-picking the Monster Manual ceases to be an entertaining option. I consider prep-time where I make maps, plot adventures and brain-storm to be fun. I consider prep-time where I spend hours going over Excel spreadsheets, reviewing powers and stat-blocks and cutting-and-pasting from various sources to be tedious and busy accounting work that detracts from my enjoyment of the game. If not for fellows like BlackDirge, my campaign might have featured far fewer high-level monsters of note. While running Pathfinder this past weekend, I was highly conscious of these issues when the party steam-rollered a CR12 opponent with a stat-block the ran a 1.5 pages and I still found myself, 8 years in, trying to locate her saves in the stat-block...and then computing spell-effects...and then searching to see which version (raging versus normal) was in effect...and so on. Did we have fun? Certainly. But there are elements of 3e/3.5e that have grown more tiresome to me over the years that 4e, at least so far, seems to address. More focus on the 'fun' prep-time for me is one of them. [/QUOTE]

Verification