In trying to do games with minimial prep time, I got double whammied when I switched to 3e.
The first whammy was adjusting back to a lot of the DND sacred cows, I hadn't done DND in years -- sticking to classless and leveless systems. (3e seems like a comprimise system I could live with, yet attract players with no motivation to learn new games.)
The second whammy was that I had been with a creative group that gave the DM a lot of leeway, in fact we all rotated the duties so we all knew how it felt to be in the captians chair. In addtiton to that most of us loved to improv and go with what the players were doing. My new group is very rules lawerish and some of them like to see how they can push the GM and other players. The funny thing is that as DMs they are very strict (I never heard so many no's until I played in this group.)
So in my old games with my old group, I could just come up with an outline and almost literarly make up the foes when the PCs met them (Mostly White Wolf). The biggest trick would be overestimate the party and then keep pouring on the powers and damage until the group seemed challanged, after that any additional (and unknown) powers were "forgotten."
It seemed in DND 3e my numbers were off, either too low or too high, and a lot of the players have memorized the books to the Nth degree. If I throw out a power, they know what level it is -- no going back now. In additon to that, a lot of lower level powers are a lot weaker (duh!) so PC don't get slowed down as much as they need if you want to play the "step it up until they hurt" tactic. I've noticed a lot of GMs usualy bring out the biggest guns first to soften up the crowd (and give players a clue about the level of enemy they are facing) and then resort to other tactics when they run out of slots for the big spell.
So for my personal experience, in order to improve in DND 3e I need to be much more precise than in my other games. This isn't a bad thing, but it was good for me either as I dealt with a larger learning curve than I anticpated.
The first whammy was adjusting back to a lot of the DND sacred cows, I hadn't done DND in years -- sticking to classless and leveless systems. (3e seems like a comprimise system I could live with, yet attract players with no motivation to learn new games.)
The second whammy was that I had been with a creative group that gave the DM a lot of leeway, in fact we all rotated the duties so we all knew how it felt to be in the captians chair. In addtiton to that most of us loved to improv and go with what the players were doing. My new group is very rules lawerish and some of them like to see how they can push the GM and other players. The funny thing is that as DMs they are very strict (I never heard so many no's until I played in this group.)
So in my old games with my old group, I could just come up with an outline and almost literarly make up the foes when the PCs met them (Mostly White Wolf). The biggest trick would be overestimate the party and then keep pouring on the powers and damage until the group seemed challanged, after that any additional (and unknown) powers were "forgotten."
It seemed in DND 3e my numbers were off, either too low or too high, and a lot of the players have memorized the books to the Nth degree. If I throw out a power, they know what level it is -- no going back now. In additon to that, a lot of lower level powers are a lot weaker (duh!) so PC don't get slowed down as much as they need if you want to play the "step it up until they hurt" tactic. I've noticed a lot of GMs usualy bring out the biggest guns first to soften up the crowd (and give players a clue about the level of enemy they are facing) and then resort to other tactics when they run out of slots for the big spell.
So for my personal experience, in order to improve in DND 3e I need to be much more precise than in my other games. This isn't a bad thing, but it was good for me either as I dealt with a larger learning curve than I anticpated.
