Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6109215" data-attributes="member: 4937">Complete aside here...It's not just Plane Shift.  One of the reasons that that I think 3e really soured on a lot of people is that it encouraged high level play as the norm, and high level play is just so much more challenging for a DM that they really shouldn't even attempt it until they've had a lot of experience.  The prospect of improvising a 100 mile journey doesn't particularly daunt me, but I can definately see how people could stumble all over that.   But everything about high level play is tough to manage for a DM, but in terms of preparation and the pressure it puts on you to improvise.   That's one of the reasons why I think 'Gandalf was a 6th level wizard' is such a hugely important essay, because it attacks the misperception that usually lies behind high level play that you have to be 15th level or something in order to have epic meaningful story lines.  Looking at 1e level tables, I don't think I ever assumed as a player or DM that we'd reach the last entry in the table.  If you look at 1e adventure paths like GDQ (possibly with lead ins from ToEE), or Desert of Desolation, or DL, they always end well before the last entry in the level table and there is no assumption that the epic stuff only begins when you hit very high level.   Yet, right from the start 3e applied pressure on the DMs and players to see playing at 10th or 15th or 20th level as the normal experience of play, rather than something you'd do because you were highly skilled and experienced.  Right from the start there was pressure to feel 'left out' if you didn't get to 20th level, and pressure to see the game as incomplete if it didn't finish at 20th level.  You see this implicit design pressure all over how people responded to the 3e game, from how the tiers of classes are discussed, to how preparing to play is discussed, or in how where the character is going to be at 20th level is considered so critical to describing chargen.  And, I'd argue that many people who fell for it ended up really ruining themselves on the game not just because 3e really didn't deliver on that level of play without a lot of help (and it got worse over time) but because the GM just didn't have the experience to deal with it and ultimately found they didn't have the desire to deal with it either.</blockquote>

Verification