Third Edition Culture- Is is sustainable?

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Your players should have this sort of stuff already on their character sheets so they can see it at a glance. I'm complete fascist when it comes to knowing your bonuses going in. If halfway through an encounter someone goes, "Oh, I forgot to add my Weapon Focus for my to-hit during those last combat rounds", my response is "Add them next time, and don't forget them. It's not my job to keep up with them."

You aren't the only one who runs a game like that.

Of course, what is feasible for you is not feasible for every 30-something with a full time job.

...same goes for you(or rather, Sebastian for his starting of this 'I'm 30 and do this so nyah' war)

 

[Akrasia]

...
I think the complaints about the complexity leading to prep time are greatly exaggerated relative to d20.

I will be sure to revise my past experiences in light of this insight.

...
Most of that is easy to wing, which is the joy of the "unified mechanic" approach d20 takes.

People keep saying this, yet I still find myself often looking up the exact rules for a particular spell, feat, special ability, etc.

I guess I'm just slow witted or something (just don't my students!).

More generally, I agree that the stats for most "mook" NPCs can be "hand-waved" when necessary.

But IMC there are always a few very important NPCs. In order for them to pose as serious challenges for the PCs, I need to construct them carefully, and be familiar with all their abilities. Otherwise the PCs walk all over them. It is time consuming to come up with those NPCs. Likewise for any unusual/unique monsters I want to include in my adventures.

Really, it is a mistake to generalize on the basis of your own experience to those of other DMs.

My impression is that you (and Psion) are far more familiar with the rules than most 3e DMs. Thus you are probably not familiar with the frustrations that (some of) those DMs experience with 3e.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I agree that the game system is becoming too bloated.
One thing I've done is streamline some of the advanced combat options and I've tried to limit the number of PRCs in my game that are complete power gaming BS. And lately I've been running low magic item games, that way PCs at high levels don't have to worry about optimizing their magic item slots in order to survive (I give class based defense bonuses and saving throw bonuses).

 

[der_kluge]

I think in the time I read this thread, 6 new posts showed up. Hot topic!

The last d20 campaign I ran pretty much turned me off to the game. It was a high level game (it ended at 15th level), and the combats were so exceedingly complex it wasn't even funny.

All the old arguments apply - templated monsters with multiple abilities, spells, strengths and weaknesses. Add in lots of magical effects, and annoying spells like Wall of Force (on both sides), invisible creatures, mirror image, blur, darkness, Prayer effects, and then in the middle of it all someone wants to charge and do a shield bash through multiple opponents to get to a BBEG and it's enough to make you want to pull your hair out.

And I can handle complexity, but we constantly got into gray areas that I had to adjudicate, and frankly I'm just not that good at that. Plus, my group was made up of people who were smarter than I was, so if they didn't like my ruling, they would debate the point until I conceded. My group had two PhDs, and a masters in it! I couldn't outsmart those folks no matter how hard I tried.

But D&D is a -very- specific kind of game. It's a game where, if you play it as written you've got situations that crop up like - can you dimension door into an anti-life shell? Does mirror image work against a half-orc with darkvision in the middle of a pitch-black dungeon? Does a daylight spell work against a vampir that you have trapped inside an Otiluke's resilient sphere?

I mean, jumping Jesus on a pogo stick - can it get *more* complicated?

I decided that my next game was going to be simple - with an emphasis on role-playing, not micromanagement, and roll-playing. I wanted a story-driven game, with personality and flavor, and history. Not, which PrC should I be planning for, and what spells work best in what situations kind of game. I also decided that d20 was not the game for me, since the kind of game I wanted to create pretty much can not be created with the ruleset that d20 presents. That's not to say that I don't like it, or that others should stop playing it. If people like playing Synnibar, by all means don't stop on my behalf. Play what makes you happy. I'm still shopping around for the system that I think closely matches my ideal. I've gotten HARP, and like what I've read thus far. I intend to get Grim Tales, and my DM (drife on here) informed me that the next campaign he's starting is going to be Harn, so I'll get exposed to that, and I'm excited.

The thing of it is, is this - d20 is a very specific *kind* of game. You can not, without altering the mechanic of the game remove some very basic concepts - all elves have the same modifiers, all clerics are built from the same template, fighters are good at combat, and wizards are not, and at the high levels of the game, it is assumed that you will have a deficit-breaking amount of magic items that are almost required to survive the typical kinds of powerful creatures that you are going to be facing. A 20th level D&D d20 game where the players only have a +1 weapon to their name are going to really struggle in a RAW kind of game. While it's not a requirement that they all have +5 whatevers, if they don't have at least several +3s or better, you've altered the core assumptions of the game, and the entire game only works *well* if you stay within those guidelines. Otherwise, CRs become disproportionate, and things could get really ugly. I don't like that.

 

[Scribble]

"It's my campaign...it's my campaign...it's my campaign..."

YOINK!!!

Now it's mine! mohhoooohhahahaha

 

[Desdichado]

The thing of it is, is this - d20 is a very specific *kind* of game.

I'd have agreed with this if you said D&D instead of d20, but that's probably what you meant anyway. Games like d20 Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars, Wheel of Time, Conan, Mutants & Masterminds, or heck, even d20 Modern, play very differently from D&D. Even settings that straddle the line between being D&D and some other d20 beast, like Sovereign Stone, Rokugan or Midnight, play very differently than D&D.

Although many of the problems with high level still remain; I'll probably never run anything higher than 12-15th level tops, and I'm not really interested in playing anything higher than that either.

 

[barsoomcore]

I run two very different campaigns.

My Barsoom game, we use the battlemat, and a couple of the players are very familiar with the rules, and combats take a pretty long time, but it's a blast. The characters are 12th level now, and I have fun statting up their opponents for them. I like creating characters, so that's fun for me.

My Kung-Fu Angels game features four completely inexperienced players, and we never use the battlemat, and I pretty much make stuff up on the fly. It's an absolute hoot, more like a game of Feng Shui than D&D, and it's just as much fun for me as Barsoom.

I dunno. I find that while 3E has plenty of options, the system is consistent enough that my on-the-fly rulings are almost always very very similar to whatever the actual rule is. I find that as long as I have a few basic stats for an NPC, I can run a combat, but if I spend the time to really tweak them and detail them, I come up with all sorts of cruel and unpleasant tricks to play on my PCs.

I have trouble sympathising with those who complain about the large numbers of feats or PrC's, though -- if you don't like 'em, don't use 'em. Sheesh. It's your campaign... it's your campaign... it's your campaign...

 

[Belen]

I have trouble sympathising with those who complain about the large numbers of feats or PrC's, though -- if you don't like 'em, don't use 'em. Sheesh. It's your campaign... it's your campaign... it's your campaign...

Actually, it's the groups game, so removing stuff without their input could be a bad idea.

 

[Desdichado]

My impression is that you (and Psion) are far more familiar with the rules than most 3e DMs. Thus you are probably not familiar with the frustrations that (some of) those DMs experience with 3e.

I doubt it; I'm not some kind of rules mavin by any stretch of the word. Simply put, I just don't care enough about the rules to worry about if I'm doing things right or not. It's easy to wing, because instead of looking up the rules, I just do something that feels natural and seems to make sense. The beauty of it is, if I do bother to look it up, my "wing it" reaction is usually pretty much the same as the actual, official rule. That's the beauty of the rules consistency; you don't have to actually be very familiar with the rules to do it (more or less) right.

And for at most of my opponents, I either run them out of some monster book, or simply make up an attack bonus, an AC and HP on the fly, and if needed a quick save or skill bonus as well.

True, for the really important NPCs that will be a showcase combat or something like that, I'll generate an NPC that's correct, but I hardly need to do that more than once or twice per half dozen sessions or so.

 

[der_kluge]

I'd have agreed with this if you said D&D instead of d20, but that's probably what you meant anyway.

Right, D&D. Grim tales is d20, and I'm perfectly open to giving it a try. Someone basically took the core of d20 and house ruled it out the ying-yang, so I don't have to.