Jama

@Jama

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Tabletop, video games, sports and maybe someday some other things if I get the ambition to learn.

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Jama @Jama3/25/2024, 5:21 PM

I have pulled up the D&D 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide to research something I was curious about, for a different post, and glancing through nearby sections really reveals to me how people who ran this game didn't do so by reading the book. It really was a passed down sort of role.

An entire section here is about how the encounters you run encourage specific play types, even if you don't intend to do so, and it gives six different "types" of encounter: Combat, Negotiation, Environmental, Problem-Solving, Judgement-Calls, and Investigation. Even this excerpt seems wildly out of place given 3.5's reputation.

Always be aware of the sorts of actions you're rewarding your players for taking. Reward, in this case, doesn't just mean experience points and treasure. More generally, it means anything that consistently leads to success. An Adventure should contain encounters that reward different types of behavior. Not everyone prefers the same kind of encounter, and even those with a favorite enjoy a change of pace.

#d&d #TTRPG

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Chris @LiteraryWizard3/25/2024, 6:16 PM

I actually learned to play and run TTRPGs from D&D 3.5 in college. Prior to running it myself, I had a one-day character building event for a PVP tournament that never happened (thankfully, it would have been a disaster in retrospect) and then maybe four or five sessions of playing a mix of 3.5 and Pathfinder my group called 3.P before the GM (a recent college graduate and the oldest among us) had to stop running to focus on his job, all within a four-month span. I took over after spending the rest of the summer reading the books he gave me and I like to think that I ran a pretty balance and varied game as a result, since I learned how to create an experience from those sections of the book.

Since my gaming group was pretty isolated, us all attending a small college with few niche clubs that might have brought TTRPG folks together, I never discovered The Tradition until my first time playing with another gaming group which I absolutely hated. The games that group played were horrible meat-grinder style combat experiences that put me off trying to join other groups for years, especially after my second dip into other groups found me in the same position.

I've always wondered how people's experiences with the game being passed down as a part of a tradition, from GM to player/future GM would have been altered if there hadn't been this consistent perception of the rule books as incomprehensible and dense, so don't bother reading anything you don't absolutely have to or use an online SRD to find the specific bits you need, entirely removed from context or the supporting text around them.

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