Friday, July 30, 2010

A Return to my Roots: DMing a 3.5 Campaign

I'm super excited I get to take my place behind the old DM screen again, and I mean the OLD screen.

For the first time in over two years, I'm going to start a DnD game that isn't 4th Edition. By the looks of things, I'll be going back to good ol' 3.5, full of it's ugly tables, confusing rules, and overall lack of a grapple mechanic (SHUT UP. IT DOESN'T EXIST).

While I never really found much ease working with 3.5 in the past, I think my time spent in 4th Edition will help me out greatly. 4th Edition is much, much easier for DM's, and allows them to tell a great story without having to come up with too many weird mechanics, or having to have a Ph. D in game logic. All of this comes at a price, however, and it's at the player's expense.

After going back and reading (parts of) the over 100 books written for 3.5, I realized how much of this was true. Sure, DMing 4th Edition was just as fun for me, but it really did limit the players by quite a bit. I really came to see how it was more board-game like then 3.5, and how that can be boring for some.

At the end of the day, I came to this conclusion: 4th Edition is great for a pick-up and play game, with lots of kick-in-the-door style of puzzle solving, and not very much room for whatever else. 3.5 gives the players a huge selection of character creation options, with all kinds of neat tricks, spells and feats, and is clearly meant to last much longer then just a few short games.

Long story short, I'm glad I'm back to 3.5. Next stop: Azeroth!

(ALSO: Happy Birthday, me!)

No comments:

Post a Comment