Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The Future of D&D

Here are some ideas/suggestions/options for us to think about as we move into Phase II of the Ultimate D&D Experience. We've mentioned a lot of these before, but never really come to a consensus as to what everyone wants.

We can keep playing 3.5 or we can move on to play version 4.0, which, according to Brian, is much easier to understand and seems like it would be more fun. The problem with that is that there are a couple of classes (druids, barbarians, and sorcerers) that don’t exist in 4.0 yet, so we would have to wait until March before we know how those classes work.

If we move on to 4.0, we can keep our current characters and just try to adapt them to the new rules or we can create entirely new ones. If we start before March, obviously we have to create new ones because OJ, Julia, and Bethany will all be without a 4.0 version of their character.

We need to decide what we want to do about our DM. It seems like it’s not going to work for TC to come out all the time because of the driving situation. However, I do not have softball again until the end of January and even then we’re looking to move it to Thursday nights instead of Friday, which would allow us to play D&D on Friday. That seems like it would make it easier on TC (provided he doesn't work or have class on Fridays) and whoever drives him home afterward. It would also make it easier on the few of us that have real jobs.

But I also know that Brian is interested in being a DM and some of us have expressed interest in playing a different style than TC may be comfortable with. What I would suggest is that whether or not we start playing 4.0, we can move on with Brian as our DM and ask TC if he would like to join our party as a player.

My personal preference would be to move our game to Friday nights and start playing version 4.0 when a couple more characters become available. I think we can experiment with some fun things like the skill challenge in version 3.5 until that happens.

What do you all think?

3 comments:

Brian Zuniga said...

I like your suggestions. At first I was hesitant to move it to Friday nights because I was like, "sometimes I do stuff on Friday nights." But then I remembered that if I do stuff on Friday nights, it is usually with you guys. So now I could just, you know, always do stuff with you guys on Friday which would be sweet. Plus, my wife would MUCH rather play on Friday. She has way way way more fun doing things when she knows that she can sleep in the next morning so she has already told me that she would prefer Friday.

As far as DMing goes, I really want to give it a try. I think I would have a lot of fun doing it and hopefully you guys would have fun with the sort of campaign I would put together. I know TC has all the maps and figurines, but I looked into it and you can buy these, for lack of a better way of describing it, cardboard cutouts that function as figurines. Just instead of a 3-d little dude, it is just a cardboard square with the image of the monster it is representing. I know that isn't as cool but it is cheap and they are printed in full color so it actually still looks ok. As far as maps go, you can find a surprising amount on the internet so I think I could find enough that we would be ok.

As far as TC goes, I think he would be fine if I gave DMing a shot. That would be cool if he could still come play too.

Finally, in terms of 3.5 verses 4.0, if I haven't been clear already, I am in love with 4.0. From a DM standpoint, everything about 4.0 is better. As a player, looking at the 4.0 rules, everything seems much more intuitive and there is a much wider variety of special abilities and whatnot. Despite the plethora extra things for every class, the way it is laid out is, I think, much easier to understand so all of us (the girls especially) will have an easier time doing the cool ish we always wanted to do but never quite understood how.

The problem, of course, is that the current players handbook is missing three of our classes. Again, I agree with Dan that it would be best to keep on cruising with 3.5 until March when the PHB 2 comes out with the three missing classes. We could convert then (assuming everyone wants to) and all would be well with the world.

Yikes, that is enough jabber from me. Anyone else want to weigh in?

Brian Zuniga said...

As a side note, those cheap cardboard cutouts are fine for our monsters but I think we should look into getting our own character's figurines. That would be phenomenal.

Taran said...

I'd really like to get my own figurine, but I haven't found any D&D ones. Granted, I've only been to two places, but one of them was the very large Brookhurst Hobby store and it didn't have any D&D figurines. They were all miniatures for some wargame or another.

I suppose I could probably find something online.

I would prefer Friday nights because once you have kids, you don't do "stuff" on any night of the week, unless it is at your house and the kids are in bed. So I might as well do that on a night when I don't have work the next day.