Rules vs. Story oriented game...

[Cergorach]

If your players are not focusing on character development then I say it's the players and the GM's fault and not the set of rules. If you only throw a dungeon crawl with a several combats every time you play then when do they get a chance to "develop" there characters. You have to give them a chance to roleplay! (I am not saying that you do that but it sounds like it from your discription)

The campaign was most certainly NOT a glorified dungeon crawl, but the idea was to have a challenging combat once per session (as per player request). As the campaign progressed, there where new and inovative ways needed to torture, erm... challenge ;-) the players in combat. This detoriated (through the advancement of levels and the resulting complexity of the rules) into combats that started to be the center of attention, both in game as out game. Players wanted to be strong enough to survive, the DM wanting to challenge the players (this worked well for a long time btw). At the end of it all it actually became boring and a burden, but by then one has built up a certain 'rules heavy' game. It's a bit like an addiction, you have this great 'core game', but there are so many kewl toys out there that we kind of OverDosed on kewl toys.

In reflection it was certainly educational, a campaign needs limits, both story wise, as rules wise.

I just started watching Babylon 5 again (on DVD finally!) and realised that the B5 'campaign' was a closed story and very good because of it. I would love to run something of that scope (campaign wise)...

 

[bwgwl]

it sounds like you and your group just got "seduced" by all the options out there... you kept on adding stuff to the game without really thinking through the effects they would have.

Now though a big part of the 3E game is accumulating the plusses, instead of focussing on character development. For example, choosing a prestige class should be a big roleplaying event, not the optimum choice...

(unfortunately) the onus of making that kind of choice a big roleplaying event is on the DM and the players. the rulebook can't force you to roleplay better (or worse). if your players are choosing prestige classes just for the "plusses," and you let them, then you really need to step back and assess your campaign style instead of thinking there's something wrong with the rules.

as i and others have said, if rules bloat and "kewl toys" are a problem for you, try another campaign but only run it with the 3 core rulebooks. ban everything else. see how that goes.

 

[Cergorach]

it sounds like you and your group just got "seduced" by all the options out there... you kept on adding stuff to the game without really thinking through the effects they would have.

Yep, that's what happened. The problem is that WotC promotes this behavior with all their books (because crunchyness sells) that come out. Of course it's up to the DM and Players to make the choices of what to use and what not, but that's pretty difficult, even for us 'veterans' (been playing DMing for 15+ years). Players spent money on books and want to use them, very understandable.

Although the 'problem' i presented could be solved by the people playing, it doesn't reslove the issue. It's like saying that the addiction of smoking is a people problem and isn't related to the addictive chemicals in a sigarette, thus when you smoke a sigarette there's a big chance that you'll get addicted (i have never smoked btw, smoking BAD!). The same could be said for D&D3E, when you play it, there's a big chance that you want to buy more than just the core books, and when you have bought it, you want to use it. Another problem is that you play as a team (in my case that means 5 people) and you do what's 'best' for the group, if the majority wants to do such and such, we'll do such and such.

I'll admit that as a DM i should have used better judgement in the beginning, but as i said, it grew with each D&D book that came out. The new campaign we wanted to start did have some limitations (maybe a bit to much), but it was more like the players set the rules of the game instead of trusting the DM to learn from the mistakes of the past. I now have decided that 'the take it as it is' concept will be something i'll use in the future. It's not that i won't listen to the players, but i will not let them dictate the game. A total democracy doesn't work for a rpg IMHO...

 

[woodelf]

The subject of this discussion is a Rules vs. Story oriented game, and the relevance of the game system used.

[snip...] New 'setting' books now dedicate abou 40% of their page count on rules and statistics. Can i say rule and statistic overkill?

Of course it's always up to the people playing the game to make it either a roll or role playing game, but the rules used are still a very big temptation.

[...] D&D3E is a very good game for the beginning gamemaster because everything is explained in all the detailed glory. [...] playing the DM is just like playing a character, only with more characters. [...] But i do find that the game system hinders a game that's more about the story instead of the rules. [...]

These are of course my own 'findings', but i'm curious whether other people are also finding the D&D3E rules starting to hinder them in their creative storytelling. Have people solved these issues within the D&D3E rules, and if so, how so. Or have people migrated to other game systems (fat change that they are still hanging around a D&D3e board).

I've played some White Wolf Storyteller games in the past (Mage, Vampire, Werewolf) and my experience with that system is that it's less complex than D&D3E and also allows for greater creativity in the rules department on the part of the DM (rolling a Firearm + Intelligence for figuring out how to put the sniper rifle together for example). Now i'm sure that there are other 'simple' game systems out there, but are there any OGL (or similar liscence) systems that have a simpler rule system?

In sort-of-reverse order:

Action! system is released under the WotC OGL. Go to <http://www.action-system.com/> to download your free core rules, and a bunch of add-ons. Looks pretty good to me, but i've really only skimmed it. Similar detail/realism to default D20, but not quite as crunchy.

Yes, D&D3E is one of the crunchier RPGs on the market these days. Storyteller (WoD games) is better, but still pretty detailed, IMHO. You might look at Savage Worlds, from Pinnacle--it's probably about the same as Action!, or maybe a bit simpler. Close enough to D20 (similar attribute/skill ranges, frex) to make porting D20 stuff pretty easy.

Yes, system *does* matter. If you *really* want to go the other direction, check out Donjon--it turns D&D inside-out, by making rolls about game control, rather than success. Takes a lot of the burden off of the GM. So, frex, you are in the dungeon and want to search for secret doors. In D&D, the GM has already determined if there are, and your roll determines whether or not your search is successful. In Donjon, nobody knows ahead of time if there are, and if your roll is successful, you get to decide if there are (presumably there are, or you wouldn't have wanted to roll for it--but, as you wish). Encourages a *very* narrative style of play, rather than a game-mechanical style of play.

You can get the same flexbility of system out of D20, more or less, by utilizing the rules for using another ability more liberally--don't even bother recording the ability mod next to your skills, and just add in whichever ability seems most relevant for the task at hand.

I agree, there's too much crunch in most D20 books. I think some of the best D20 books i've seen yet are the Slayer's Guides, precisely for this reason: out of a 34p book, there's maybe 2-3pp "wasted" on game stats of one sort or another. Part of the problem is that there isn't a "generic" baseline D20. So when someone puts out a setting like Midnight, it takes that many pages just to detail the rules changes in reasonable form. It's not like GURPS, where you might be able to say "use realistic combat, low-powered magic with preparation and spell chains, and no spellcasting packages for starting characters", or something like that, and have it summed up. [n.b.: i have no idea if those specific options exist, or are called that--it's an invented example, based on my hazy remembrance of a game i haven't really looked at in quite a while.] Me, i want a setting book for an RPG to look roughly like The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, or The World of the Dark Crystal, or, at worst, The Star Wars Technical Manual--with maybe a 10p appendix in the back with the necessary rules baselines.

I think some of the problem is that, as you say, the GM is doing roughly the same thing as the players, only moreso. There are shortcuts for the GM (the NPC tables in the DMG, frex), but no genuine simplifications. The game assumes that GM characters are going to play by the same rules, and thus be just as complex, as PCs. Which can be a real headache for the GM. I've heard of quite a number of GMs who've burned out on running D20, despite loving to play it--prep is just too much work.

As for alternatives: if you don't like the ones above, here's what we did. The GM was getting totally burned out on D&D3E--and this is despite using a setting where he didn't have to worry about a lot of the stuff, and streamlining several areas, and me helping out with a bunch of stuff to lessen the burden. He wanted to keep the game going, but needed less-crunchy rules. So i dusted off and finished up a new set of rules i'd started a few years ago: "Ars Fantasia". The genesis is using the rules of Ars Magica for a D&D-esque high-fantasy setting. I'd burned out on D&D (AD&D2+, at the time) a decade or more ago, but had to homebrew worlds, and a published setting (SpellJammer) that were all built with D&D in mind. So i wanted to keep using the worlds, but didn't want to "put up with" D&D any longer. The core system in Ars Magica is one of the best i've seen anywhere (so good, in fact, that JoT reused it for D&D3E). But it has several assumptions built in abotu the setting (specifically, what magic can do), and is really designed for fairly realistic play (i.e., even very powerful characters are easily killed, if they're not careful). So i basically took the bits that made D&D "D&D" for me (primarily what magic can and can't do), and adjusted Ars Magica to fit, including rescaling things so that it could handle much more powerful characters in mundane skills (it already handles much more powerful spellcasters than D&D3E does). The GM was very happy with it, and so are the rest of us. Much more flexible, less crunchy, about the same detail level, and easier on the GM.

You can get Ars Fantasia as a PDF at <http://woodelf.dyndns.org/ars/>. You'll need a D&D3E or AD&D2 PH (which you presumably already have at least one of--D20SRD would also provide everything you need) for spell descriptions, equipment lists, and a couple other things. You'll also need the Ars Magica 4th ed. rulebook, which can be downloaded for free from Atlas Games' website (<http://www.atlas-games.com/arsmagica/free/index.html>), for the descriptions of the basic mechanics, the combat chapter, and the ad/disad descriptions. (I suppose, technically, you also need it for the skills chapter, but you could probably fake that part.)

As i said, this has been specifically designed to be a drop-in for any setting originally designed with D&D in mind. I tried to capture most of D&D as a genre, without most of D&D as a ruleset. And, as i said, the similarities betwene Ars Magica and D&D3E are immense, so it should look quite familiar. The one thing to watch out for is lethality: since it's skill-based, there's no guarantee (as there are in a class system) that characters are within a certain range of one another in copmetency. Frex, even a wizard gets better at fighting as she goes up in levels, and you don't have to worry about the 10th level wizard getting skewered by an orc (at least, not quickly). With Ars Fantasia (as most skill-based systems), that wizard might not have put a single point into anything combat related--attack, defense, dodge, damage resistance, etc.--and could be mincemeat for a kobold with a shishkebab skewer, if magic didn't do the triick (or they weren't fast enough with the spell).