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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 231347" data-attributes="member: 2013">A dearth of replies...Wow, a dearth of replies to this...One of the things I loved about 3e was that everything was "new" again.  Players weren't really sure what to expect, because they hadn't been able to pore over all the rules and didn't know what a DM was going to throw at them.  Even those in my group with 15+ years of gaming said, "this is cool because of the unkown factor."One of my own personal favorite ways to play/DM the game is to go with the "unknown" as much as possible, rather than the stats.  If a player rolls the dice for an attack, I don't ask them, "did you beat X" but rather, "what did you roll?"  If it's enough, it's a hit, and I describe it.  If not, I describe the way the creature brought its shield up in the nick of time or dodged easily out of the way (depending on how much they missed by).  After four or five rolls, the players usually know what the AC is (based on what has hit and what has missed) but you still get that initial "unknown" factor.I've found that the easiest way to avoid the "boredom/burnout" problem is to concentrate more on the "storytelling" surrounding the roll than the roll itself.  In other words, "I know what the outcome is based on the roll, now how do I describe the outcome in words?"  Think of the game as a story, with each die roll determining whether your next sentence will describe success or failure.Furthermore, I always tell my players to expect the unexpected.  With all the stuff that has been published for D&D, finding a new monster description should be the least of your worries... just grab a Monstrous Compendium PDF from wizards.com for 5 bucks and use the descriptions of the creatures there.  My 8th-level PCs were scared spitless when they went into a crypt and instead of zombies and skeletons, they found themselves up against a Grey Philosopher and his Malices, followed up by a Wyrd (from the old D&D Creature Catalog) and a Fleshcrawler (from Creature Collection I).  New monsters should NEVER be a problem. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />I also make it a point to always try to include at least one newbie in a group, so that everyone else can see the game through a newbie's eyes.  In fact, I'm starting a new campaign tomorrow... thus far, I am looking at 7 players... three of them have been roleplaying less than a year (they were part of my previous campaign) and the other four are brand new.  This is going to be great because there will be no problems with metagaming knowledge... even the "vets" aren't really. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />More reports on how we do with this group after we get into the meat of the campaign for anyone who's interested.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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