Making a D&D 3.5 crash course: What do I need to teach?

[qwertyu63]

As the title implies, I am making a crash course on the basics of D&D 3.5e. It will be a series of YouTube videos, and this is a break down of the few I have thought up so far:

Episode 0: The point to it all (wherein I teach how tabletop games work, and how they are different from CRPG's)
Episode 1: The commoner and the blank sheet (wherein I teach the basics of character creation, the core mechanic and the 6 ability scores)
Episode 2: The fighter and his sword (wherein I teach the basics of combat [BAB and AC, HP and damage, actions and move speeds])
Episode 3: The rogue and the heist (wherein I teach skills [opposed and static checks], flatfooted and sneak attacks)
Episode 4: The wizard and his books (wherein I teach spellcasting [preparing spells, spell slots, casting spells])
Episode 5: The cleric and her friends (wherein I teach how divine casting is different, and how healing works)
Episode 6: The bard and the orcs (wherein I teach how spontaneous casting is different, how supporting your allies can help and social encounters work)
Episode 7: The druid and her pets (wherein I teach how monsters work [HD, creature types, special abilities, and ECL])
Episode 8: The paladin and his stuff (wherein I teach about higher level characters and magic items)
.....
Episode ?: The DM and his job (wherein I teach how to DM)

The basic format is that I will be acting as the DM while my sister/assistant will be acting as the (level 1) character in the title of the episode. Via a brief solo adventure, we will demonstrate the lesson for the episode.

Those are all the episode I have thought up so far, but I can tell it needs more. So, I turn to you guys. What else needs to be taught?

[Juntao112]

As D&D is not a videogame, you can come up with creative solutions to problems.

If you are told to clear orcs out of a cave, for instance, you do not need to go in. You could negotiate with them, or buy a few barrels of oil and smoke them out.

[qwertyu63]

As D&D is not a videogame, you can come up with creative solutions to problems.

If you are told to clear orcs out of a cave, for instance, you do not need to go in. You could negotiate with them, or buy a few barrels of oil and smoke them out.

I'll put that on the itinerary.

[Alefiend]

You might find some inspiration here (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4A1E3A8F7AB89CD5), which is a series for teaching the basics of Pathfinder. I haven't seen it, but the other content from DawnForged Cast is pretty good.

[GilesTheCleric]

Going over character creation might be useful. It can be a bit overwhelming to someone who has never done it before.

Theming each episode by class is a nice idea. What's your YT username?

Edit: also, teaching a few important rules that aren't immediately obvious would be good, too. Like how modifiers of the same type don't stack, and other important things from the Rules Compendium.

[Juntao112]

Theming each episode by class is a nice idea. What's your YT username?


I can see it now.

"Wizards: POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!"

[Socratov]

I'd make an episode teaching about how equipment works (you can add in the incarnum system here)

then there is psionics.

DM-ing. With a movie about bieng a good DM you can stimulate players or new people to take up the mantle of the DM.

And you could even bring in other types of classes/casting like maneuvers, shadow casting, truenaming (though you might want to hol doff on that one before people all over the world lose their ability to taste ice-cream), binding and what not out there...

[Zero grim]

Episode 0: the Blank Character sheet

Something id add for people who are new to RPG in general, knowing what you need just to start playing, such as Dice, pencils, spare paper, where to find character sheets, how to find groups, and most of all the most important rule of all.

roll a dice add the thing the GM just said, read out the number.

I'm aware other RPG's work on a different core system then that listed above but you could make more Tutorial videos, like how to play Call of cuthulu or world of darkness for two other types of RPG

I like the idea of having a learn to play D&D series, most of the online help I've found has been pretty poor quality so having a dedicated series in an episode format i think would be a nice boon to new players.

[Urpriest]

You really ought to have an entry on monsters. "The Druid and her animals" or the like. Understanding the monster rules (in particular, the concepts of HD and the types of special abilities, but also creature types, natural weapons, and ECL) are really essential for understanding the basic game engine, even from a player perspective.

[Doc_Maynot]

The Chameleon (or any other PrC), and Character Versatility (An Episode about Prestige Classes)?

[Red Fel]

I'm going to second character generation.

Playing the game, using your abilities, is something you can learn on the fly. Different tables may have different houserules, or different shortcuts. A player may learn or develop her own tricks.

But the blank character sheet is something every player faces (unless using pre-gens). New or veteran players, your first campaign or your fifty-first, the blank character sheet is the first major obstacle in a campaign. And for someone truly new to the game, the thing is overwhelming. Why does my race matter? What is my class? What do all these boxes mean, and why do I care? How do I calculate this? Where do I record that?

Walking someone through the step-by-step process of character creation is a good way to help someone develop a rudimentary understanding of their abilities before explaining all the details. It's also a way to ease someone over what is often the largest hurdle to entering a campaign.

[Maginomicon]

You also might want to draw inspiration from Counter Monkey (http://www.youtube.com/user/countermonkeybard), particularly the episodes on Getting Started With Roleplaying (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH4z1vmubpY), Dungeon Mastering a Great Game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrU0_A-PFk), Don't Be That Guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-TWXdSQYxU), and Problem Players (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQMTw45l84g).

[Pesimismrocks]

Prcing, Multiclassing, Monsters, DMing and perhaps an episode where you explore the different classes and their abilities

[ryu]

Point out at some point that the game is not actually balanced as the designers thought it was when they invented the system, then explain the tier system and why it works.

Follow that up by saying that weaker or stronger characters are fine and a choice of playstyle so long as people in the group are in the same general league of effectiveness.

[Gavinfoxx]

I have this essay for new folk... I like to get this sort of thing as part of any intro I give to new folk.


D&D 3.5e is a very...interesting game system. At it's heart, it is a game which started with several assumptions: that fantastically wealthy, violent hobo land pirates go underground to the homes of things that look different than them, kick down the doors to these homes, kill the inhabitants, and take their stuff. Then they go back to town, sell most of the stuff, keep the useful bits, buy things that help them go to newer and different places where things that look MORE different then they, kill them, take their stuff, et cetera. It is a game where the stalwart fighter stands in the front and swings his sword, the rogue looks for and disables traps, or perhaps sneaks around to stab bad things with a dagger, the Wizard stands in the back and blasts things, and the Cleric keeps all of them healed while doing this. This is the 'heart' of the game because that was how the game was played in the past, in the editions before 3.5e, often because it was a competitive, team event played at tournaments where people wargame for points, and there is a single team which is the winner. Further, you might not know the people on your team, having just met them five minutes ago at a convention, and so everyone played a simple role that was easy to understand and pick up and go, and in the old rules, was actually generally a fairly solid way to get through modules in a short amount of time. This is also where the idea of an adversarial GM that is trying to kill the player characters comes from. Every assumption that is 'weird' or arbitrary in the game stems from things inherited from this idea (or similar ideas from 'back then') regarding how the old games used to work.

However, that's not often how the game is *played* these days, and for the most part, we aren't interested in playing that particular legacy game with it. It has been quite some time since 3.5e books started coming out, and people have had lots of time to look at them and think about them and tinker with them and figure things out. They've come up with several interesting conclusions. Namely, that if you look at the toolset represented by all these books, you essentially have a fantastic array of lego pieces to make characters to tell any sort of fantasy story you want, because Wizards of the Coast tried to be inclusive of a huge variety of fantasy gaming styles in their rules. People have also figured out that there is a dramatic and huge variation in the power level of the 'lego pieces' -- that is the classes and options tied to them -- when you start doing things with them other than the old edition legacy assumptions. So given that, the question is this: what sort of story do you want to tell with your characters, and what power level and complexity level do you want in the rules? Do you want to be people altering the fabric of reality to fit their very whims, or the gritty soldier for whom permanent death is a real possibility in any fight -- in other words, something lower power level like Lord of the Rings, or the wuxia swordsman who is somewhere in between the two examples? Any sort of Fantasy story is a possibility, but you have to know what you want, first!

Of course, just because anything is possible, doesn't mean that there isn't something close to a consensus amongst experts as to what the system is best at. What they say is something along these lines: the system is best for fantastic characters, fantasy superheroes of some sort (but not silver age uber-superheroes though), doing crazy, incredible things to the world around them, things which are overtly superhuman and heroic. While 3.5e is capable of much lower power and grittier things, it really starts to shine when you accept the power level of 'everyone has superpowers of some sort', provided you make choices of the correct legos appropriate to that power level. This is the case especially because of, if you are attempting to actually simulate reality with the game rather than simulate certain types of stories, things get 'wonky'. Of course, if you want to use rules based on D&D 3.5e to simulate actual reality, there are third party products such as Codex Martialis which do this admirably.

Also, there is a reason we aren't playing 4th edition. The reason is this: Wizards of the Coast realized that D&D 3.5e was laughably, ridiculously unbalanced. However, in their quest to make something manageable, they have reduced the game to only a miniatures tactical combat system where the scope of the sorts of things the characters can do which the actual rules can cover is very, very limited. This is intentional on their part, and is maybe what they had to do to balance the game. Unfortunately, it does greatly limit the sorts of stories that can be easily told with the rules in the system, even if you know your way around it backwards and forwards. This has been mitigated somewhat as 4e went on, but is still somewhat true. This is not the case with 3.5e -- if you know your way around it, you can make anything for any sort of Fantasy story.

Finally, I thought I should make a note about some of the continuations of 3.5e which you might have heard of, such as Pathfinder and it's lesser known cousin Trailblazer. Some folk may have claimed that these fix all of the balance problems in the game. This is not true; what they do is merely continue support for the game, though they do attempt to fix some balance problems that become issues for several groups, but they for the most part ignore the inherent power and versatility differences of the 'legos' themselves, though they have been gradually adding options that allow improvements in the capability of the lower performing classes, much like D&D 3.5e did in it's actual run. They do attempt to make changes so that everyone, especially those very low-optimization level players, has some interesting and fun things to do, and for the most part, they succeed in providing obvious options for lower power gamers. However, you should note that there is at least ONE D20 system which provides the breadth of possible abilities and feel of classes and customizability that 3.5e offers, and large parts of the 'feel' of 3.5e, while keeping balance intact between the classes. This system is Ruleofcool's Legend, and I encourage you to check it out.

[qwertyu63]

Hun, my sub on this thread didn't go through. Sorry for not responding.


Going over character creation might be useful. It can be a bit overwhelming to someone who has never done it before.

Theming each episode by class is a nice idea. What's your YT username?

Edit: also, teaching a few important rules that aren't immediately obvious would be good, too. Like how modifiers of the same type don't stack, and other important things from the Rules Compendium.

An episode on character creation... is so obvious I am ashamed I didn't think of it.

The channel is computermaster124816


I can see it now.

"Wizards: POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!"


I'd make an episode teaching about how equipment works (you can add in the incarnum system here)

then there is psionics.

DM-ing. With a movie about bieng a good DM you can stimulate players or new people to take up the mantle of the DM.

And you could even bring in other types of classes/casting like maneuvers, shadow casting, truenaming (though you might want to hol doff on that one before people all over the world lose their ability to taste ice-cream), binding and what not out there...

I am starting by covering what is in Core. Various sub-systems are important, but I think they will make up season 2 (as there are several I still need to learn... incarnum and shadowcasting are things I don't know yet)

An episode on being the DM is also a great idea.


Episode 0: the Blank Character sheet

Something id add for people who are new to RPG in general, knowing what you need just to start playing, such as Dice, pencils, spare paper, where to find character sheets, how to find groups, and most of all the most important rule of all.

roll a dice add the thing the GM just said, read out the number.

I'm aware other RPG's work on a different core system then that listed above but you could make more Tutorial videos, like how to play Call of cuthulu or world of darkness for two other types of RPG

I like the idea of having a learn to play D&D series, most of the online help I've found has been pretty poor quality so having a dedicated series in an episode format i think would be a nice boon to new players.

So, a intro to RPG's overall first. Great idea.


You really ought to have an entry on monsters. "The Druid and her animals" or the like. Understanding the monster rules (in particular, the concepts of HD and the types of special abilities, but also creature types, natural weapons, and ECL) are really essential for understanding the basic game engine, even from a player perspective.

Animals episode. Alright.


Point out at some point that the game is not actually balanced as the designers thought it was when they invented the system, then explain the tier system and why it works.

Follow that up by saying that weaker or stronger characters are fine and a choice of playstyle so long as people in the group are in the same general league of effectiveness.

I think I will leave out actually listing the tiers, but I will point out the imbalances.