Getting to know some of you

You know I was thinking...all these years of Dungeons & Dragons rule sets, 3.5 is going to go down as the best they ever made. Sure lots of people play 5th to start these days and the new rules, but lots of them also get into 3.5 eventually because it offers the most for players and DMs. Its totally my opinion but I think its true. Lots of revived 3.5 players coming back and playing with new players.
I really think anyone really invested in role playing games should roll back to 3.5 and see what it was all about. Be it any of the bazzillion systems that used it.

I don't know... depends upon what you want. I left 3.5 because it was too crunchy and too easy to break.
If I remember the builds correctly there is a dual wielding bastard sword drow ranger and a minotaur with a brute feat. Something like that.
I get the appeal. Been there, done that. But at some point finding the special cases isn't fun for me anymore, it doesn't help the story.
I now care more for the story than the rules.
I guess that's why I even left 5E this year and went oldish school sci-fi opera.

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Originally Posted by LordEntrails

I don't know... depends upon what you want. I left 3.5 because it was too crunchy and too easy to break.
If I remember the builds correctly there is a dual wielding bastard sword drow ranger and a minotaur with a brute feat. Something like that.
I get the appeal. Been there, done that. But at some point finding the special cases isn't fun for me anymore, it doesn't help the story.
I now care more for the story than the rules.
I guess that's why I even left 5E this year and went oldish school sci-fi opera.

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Im not a fan of those players though I get the allure seeing how much material was available and DMs not being able to say no to those types of characters. They ruin alot of fun just like the DM ruining an encounter with adding too much to the challenge rating.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LordEntrails

I don't know... depends upon what you want. I left 3.5 because it was too crunchy and too easy to break.
If I remember the builds correctly there is a dual wielding bastard sword drow ranger and a minotaur with a brute feat. Something like that.
I get the appeal. Been there, done that. But at some point finding the special cases isn't fun for me anymore, it doesn't help the story.
I now care more for the story than the rules.
I guess that's why I even left 5E this year and went oldish school sci-fi opera.

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Im not a fan of those players though I get the allure seeing how much material was available and DMs not being able to say no to those types of characters. They ruin alot of fun just like the DM ruining an encounter with adding too much to the challenge rating.

Remember back in like 1988 there were Bladesinger builds in 2nd edition that were min max to the bone. Been dealing with it for a long time.

Definitely not going to get into Edition Wars, but our group prefers 5E to 3.5E.

For us, there was too big a difference between a "casual" build and a mini-maxed build in 3.5E, to the point that they felt obligated to run spreadsheets and optimise their characters purely because the combat effectiveness was so radically different if you got the right combination of feats etc.. This ended up in them feeling they had to plan what their character was going to take level by level, so they never ended up taking features for fun or for flavour, they took it so as to be able to take this-or-that-feat at 9th level. Honestly, it felt (to us) like WORK. We were OK with that sort of thing back in the days when we were students, but now we all manage or run businesses we just want something that is a bit more kick-back-and-enjoy with the ability to do character generation and experience "on the fly" without having to have a spreadsheet to make sure you didn't miss out on your 12th level feat by taking something sub-optimal at 4th level.

As a GM, I didn't like the endless modifiers of 3.5E. I was forever forgetting a +2 here or there and either feeling like I had to retcon or steam ahead and feel like I was short-changing someone.

In my opinion 5E's most brilliant innovation (for D&D - other systems had it before) was attempting to collapse all of that into the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. It's a shame they rowed away from that as 5E progressed, heading back towards the +1 coz it's Wednesday -2 coz it's twilight but oh no ignoring that penalty because I have such-and-such item/feat.

We played 5E for quite a few years for extended campaigns, with other systems as shorter campaigns in parallel.

We've now largely switched to Savage Worlds which does have a bit of the stacking modifiers syndrome. I never remember crap like unstable platform or recoil, but it feels much easier just to declare that the setting rules for my campaign means we don't use those- SWADE is modular by design, so you can just cross off an edge or two and the whole thing runs smoothly. You can deal with pretty much everything else with "distracted/vulnerable/shaken" or "good idea roll at +2".

The main disadvantage of Savage Worlds and similar classless systems is that the choice of edges (= feats) is overwhelming for newcomers, and we're still finding our feet with them several years in.
The main advantages are (IMHO) meta-game support for more storytelling and player influence over the story, especially if you use adventure cards. It still has a lot of tactical depth in combat but plays much more quickly than D&D, and it's much more flexible in tone and setting than D&D (although it always retains something of the pulp feeling).

So for us it is a better fit for "throw a character together and take options for fun or roleplaying" and still have the character functional and useful in combat and other situations.

I really like the Free League Mutant Year Zero system and its derivatives too, although I think they are better suited to a shorter campaign with a smaller group size.

Cheers, Hywel

If someone ran a spreadsheet they just got eaten by a tarrasque...period. I am also not trying to get in edition war im just talking here.

Has anyone played the newest Star Wars RPG? If so, is the system it uses, i think d6, any good?
I e also been interested in a Voltron kickstarter RPG i saw mentioned here.

Haven't tried the new Star Wars rules. Though I'm trying to get my son to run a Star Wars campaign. He knows the universe really well. No idea what system we would use :)

In the 80's we ran everything we could get our hands on. But starting in the 90s we only ran D&D. It hasn't been until the last few years that I've been running and playing other systems. I don't feel I have to try every new system out, but I am enjoying trying other things :)

The big thing for 3e & 35e that is the big standout, for me at least, was the OGL (& the d20 STL that got dropped along the way). People really don't realize how close we came to D&D largely getting lost with TSR almost going bankrupt. It's future would have been VASTLY different had Peter Adkinson not purchased TSR, and he & Ryan Dancey hadn't championed the OGL.

I started in 1979 with DND. Although I really enjoy 5E, there are times I miss 1E/2E. A little of it is nostalgia, of course, but everything was fresh and new--not simply a rehash or re-invention of established content. Back then, I played everything TSR made...DND, Top Secret, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Star Frontiers among others. I found myself branching out to other companies/systems. Played the hell out of some Rolemaster... Original Rifts. FASA Star Trek. Had some great pulp adventures with a game called Justice Inc. I also began wargaming slightly before DND. I ended up owning probably two thirds of everything Avalon Hill made...man I miss that company...another casualty of Hasbro. Also played countless hours of Star Fleet Battles.

Today I mostly play 5E. All of my gaming is done through FG. I tried Foundry, and while I won't say anything bad about it, I simply like FG more. I have a pretty well established group of 6 players, none of whom I knew before we started playing DND together on FG. We've been playing together almost 4 years now. We are planning our first meet at PAX Unplugged (Philadelphia) in November. It will also be my first game convention. We started out playing 5E together with me as forever GM. Finally one of my players asked if I'd like to play and offered to GM Starfinder. So we alternated weekly between DND and SF. Lately, we're still doing DND, but that same player has fallen in love with Dungeon Crawl Classic. We've had a blast running through a couple of funnels and we're getting ready to start a full Lankhmar campaign. Lankhmar is one of my favorite settings, so I'm really looking forward to playing through it. Two weeks ago, we took a break from DND and played the Alien RPG. Most of my group are fans of the movies/setting. I'm not going to lie, it was the most fun I've had GMing something in a long time and my players, who are usually a pretty crunch loving group, stepped out of their comfort zones and dove into playing the pre-made characters--all of whom have their own secret motivations/agendas. We got just half way through the intro adventure, the Last Days of Hadley's Hope. The game really surprised me and even though I know it's not feasible in FG, I'd love to drag and drop the stress system into my DND game.

While I enjoy the content of Critical Role, I held off on Daggerheart, for now. I'm really intrigued by Draw Steel though. I saw a couple video reviews and liked what I saw. Enough that I'm considering swapping out DND for DS. I'm not trying to get political--I love my DND, but I'm not a fan of Hasbro and while I believe DND will survive, I wonder if it will have the same soul.