I've been a DM for almost 6 years. Just about all my experience and research has led up to the point I'm at now, but first, some back-story.
I started playing 9 years ago on a 3e core set. Setting up a character took an hour and a half, longer if you had to add levels to match the other players. Whenever I wanted to do anything I thought as amazing there were rules regarding rules regarding the ruling on what I was trying to do. I think all I wanted to do was jump backward off a cliff and grab the ledge. Jump check, reflex check, bluff check, balance check, second reflex check, strenght check minus the load I was carrying, so on and so forth. It was annoying, complicated and boring.
3.5e was introduced to me by a friend about 7 years ago. I fell in love and have used it since. I tried 4e but it seemed to me that alot of the choice and freedom was taken away. about 2 years ago I started actively recording not just the game, but the players response. this is the knowlege I gained:
Feats annoyed my players. It seemed everytime the feat option came up the either already knew which feat to take for maxing thier class, or were forced to wade through the 300+ options available. Either option seemed like a waste of their time and was annoying them.
Skills were often redundant or overlapping and were too numerous. Skills were getting to be such a nightmare that often times they just went unused. This led to my players only wanting to battle and then growing bored from constant fighting. It was just a bad downward spiral.
There was too much paperwork. Often character sheets took 30+ minutes to write out just one, and there was normally 3 to 6 sheets for a full character. As a DM I normally have a good 3-ring to get things in play. I dont enjoy when my characters have to have the same, and most of them didn't either.
Magic was not for MAGICIANS but for MATHMATICIONS. It wasnt fair for most of my people who wanted to get into flinging fireballs to have to make suer that the do all the component shopping plus metting out the time for study, the enchantments, yada yada yada.
Finally the big one: Lack of choice. Nothing sucks more than a dude wanting to tripple or quadruple class just for certain abilities. And not even broken class stackers, but stupid things like a rouge assassin wanting to take up a ranger class just because he wants to track people through streets.
1 year ago I began something alot of DMs have shunned me for. I began catering and spoiling my players. It started with simple things like custom missions for just their skill sets. Then it was the custom classes. Then, about 6 monthes gao, I just said "to hell with it", and did something I've never done before. I made a world just for them. It's not quite ready yet but here is what I have so far:
Simplified character startup. I've condensed and re-written the character sheet. Instead of leaving a PC's ability scores up to chance they start with a base of 10 and have 24 points to drop where they want it to go. Where there was once a menagerie of descriptive lines including alignment(abolished) and diety(the gods are dead) there is now only lines for Name, Class/lvl, and Race. I found the skills that seemed to overlap or seemed to fall into the same group and condensed them (Disguise, Hide, Move Silently, and Sleight of Hand are all now one skill, Subtlety) Where there was once 45+ skill slots there is now 26.
Feats were replaced with Skill Trees. Taking a cue from Diablo II and WoW, whenever I create the custom class for a player I also give a Skill Tree. Now instead of getting 1 feat per 3 levels you get 1 Class Point to distribute wherever you have an option to place it. They are slightly weaker than Feats but most have stackable effects.
Magic was replaced with a Chi system. You get a certain amount of Chi points per day. Spells cost a certain amount of points and you can devide the Chi as you choose. Spells only come from 7 diferent aspects: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Harmony(heaven), Order(hell), and the Self. You can only be the student of 1 aspect. I actually took a hint of Skyrim and Avatar-the last Airbender for this. Fire, for instance, has flame daggers, flame wave, fire blast, dragons breath, lighning strike, pyre stride, so on and so forth with the start being weak "blasts" and the final spells being more focused on lightning.
I seem to have covered all the things I can, but I want it simpler and more fun. I want it to be accessable and enjoyable to new players and old. Any ideas from old DM's will help so much, as long as they aren't the "Drink their tears" kind of "killer" DMs. Things to better manage my data, to charts for random encounters. I would like anyones tips or tricks. So anyone got anything to help?
I started playing 9 years ago on a 3e core set. Setting up a character took an hour and a half, longer if you had to add levels to match the other players. Whenever I wanted to do anything I thought as amazing there were rules regarding rules regarding the ruling on what I was trying to do. I think all I wanted to do was jump backward off a cliff and grab the ledge. Jump check, reflex check, bluff check, balance check, second reflex check, strenght check minus the load I was carrying, so on and so forth. It was annoying, complicated and boring.
3.5e was introduced to me by a friend about 7 years ago. I fell in love and have used it since. I tried 4e but it seemed to me that alot of the choice and freedom was taken away. about 2 years ago I started actively recording not just the game, but the players response. this is the knowlege I gained:
Feats annoyed my players. It seemed everytime the feat option came up the either already knew which feat to take for maxing thier class, or were forced to wade through the 300+ options available. Either option seemed like a waste of their time and was annoying them.
Skills were often redundant or overlapping and were too numerous. Skills were getting to be such a nightmare that often times they just went unused. This led to my players only wanting to battle and then growing bored from constant fighting. It was just a bad downward spiral.
There was too much paperwork. Often character sheets took 30+ minutes to write out just one, and there was normally 3 to 6 sheets for a full character. As a DM I normally have a good 3-ring to get things in play. I dont enjoy when my characters have to have the same, and most of them didn't either.
Magic was not for MAGICIANS but for MATHMATICIONS. It wasnt fair for most of my people who wanted to get into flinging fireballs to have to make suer that the do all the component shopping plus metting out the time for study, the enchantments, yada yada yada.
Finally the big one: Lack of choice. Nothing sucks more than a dude wanting to tripple or quadruple class just for certain abilities. And not even broken class stackers, but stupid things like a rouge assassin wanting to take up a ranger class just because he wants to track people through streets.
1 year ago I began something alot of DMs have shunned me for. I began catering and spoiling my players. It started with simple things like custom missions for just their skill sets. Then it was the custom classes. Then, about 6 monthes gao, I just said "to hell with it", and did something I've never done before. I made a world just for them. It's not quite ready yet but here is what I have so far:
Simplified character startup. I've condensed and re-written the character sheet. Instead of leaving a PC's ability scores up to chance they start with a base of 10 and have 24 points to drop where they want it to go. Where there was once a menagerie of descriptive lines including alignment(abolished) and diety(the gods are dead) there is now only lines for Name, Class/lvl, and Race. I found the skills that seemed to overlap or seemed to fall into the same group and condensed them (Disguise, Hide, Move Silently, and Sleight of Hand are all now one skill, Subtlety) Where there was once 45+ skill slots there is now 26.
Feats were replaced with Skill Trees. Taking a cue from Diablo II and WoW, whenever I create the custom class for a player I also give a Skill Tree. Now instead of getting 1 feat per 3 levels you get 1 Class Point to distribute wherever you have an option to place it. They are slightly weaker than Feats but most have stackable effects.
Magic was replaced with a Chi system. You get a certain amount of Chi points per day. Spells cost a certain amount of points and you can devide the Chi as you choose. Spells only come from 7 diferent aspects: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Harmony(heaven), Order(hell), and the Self. You can only be the student of 1 aspect. I actually took a hint of Skyrim and Avatar-the last Airbender for this. Fire, for instance, has flame daggers, flame wave, fire blast, dragons breath, lighning strike, pyre stride, so on and so forth with the start being weak "blasts" and the final spells being more focused on lightning.
I seem to have covered all the things I can, but I want it simpler and more fun. I want it to be accessable and enjoyable to new players and old. Any ideas from old DM's will help so much, as long as they aren't the "Drink their tears" kind of "killer" DMs. Things to better manage my data, to charts for random encounters. I would like anyones tips or tricks. So anyone got anything to help?
