The day the magic died

[Droopy McCool]

Howdy everyone. I just wanted to get this out there and see if anyone could relate.

9 months ago, my 4 friends and I decided to start playing 3.5, but only one person had any experience; he played in a group for a couple of sessions at school. He decided to DM, because he said he knew enough just by watching his DM. We rolled up some characters, and started playing.

The DM used the same campaign he played in, so he could use what he had seen, and we played with him doing this for three levels. I have to say: We all had so much fun, and played constantly for a while. I decided to try my hand at DMing at this point, because he was out of ideas. Never before has there been a finer railroad built (I didn't understand the concept of collaborative storytelling). But that was a learning experience, and I've gotten much better at it. That's beside the point though.

Our first time party was my Paladin (Droopy McCool) who smote evil as often as he wanted, a Druid who couldn't speak but spoke through his intelligent warhorse companion (Emphatic Link kinda), a fairly standard Ranger, and a Rogue that would do anything to get one more piece of gold, so much so we had to keep him in check. I know that last one is just good RP, but you catch my drift. Needless to say, hilarity ensued every time we did anything.

After playing up to level 6 or so, most of us had actually read through all the core material and dozens of splat books. This is where the problem started.

We switched it up, the original DM running the game, but now everyone picked character classes based on cool (if not cheesy) abilities. And it felt... Lousy. There was no party synergy, no "family feel" to what we were doing. We went through the motions, "Let's go on this mission, beat the bad guy, buy more items, do the next one." All the magic of D&D had been lost.

After learning a ton about the rules and implementing them, our party turned into a Swashbuckler/Factotum (sheesh), a Fighter/Ninja, another Rogue (same player, not the same feel), and my Duskblade. All of a sudden, we were just moving on to the next mission, didn't really have interpersonal social interactions, and were more concerned with crunch than fluff. Obviously, we could have fixed some of that, but our semi-optimized builds didn't allow for much out-of-the-box action/RP. We were mercenaries, not adventurers.

Many character switches and missions later, we were running through a dungeon (of my design; I was DM) when they stopped to fight a bunch of orcs and some ogres. Somebody cast Entangle, and combat crawled for the next 30 minutes or so. It wasn't over, but my one friend stood up and yelled, "This is ****ing stupid! What the **** are we even doing anymore?!" and left.

I refer to it as "the day D&D died" for us, because most of the group was sick of what it had become. Each DM had tried to create a camaraderie in the group, but failed to do so. after a month without playing, I convinced everyone to give it another shot, and now we're playing a looser campaign type like our first time, but still with crunchy characters. It's more fun than we had been having, but it just doesn't even touch that first group of characters and their adventures.

I really just needed to get that off my chest. But I also would like everyone to share their stories, maybe a similar situation. I've noticed that most of the playground is obsessed with optimizing characters for effectiveness, so I'm intrigued.

McCool

[ComaVision]

My room-mate is like that. He feels that now our group is more rules-savvy it detracts from the story, or game, or role-play, or whatever.

The thing is, I've played in four games with him as DM and he's never been big on story. He never plans ahead, so zany hijinx ensue and nothing you do matters because the world is inconsistent.

I think he's just bored of the game, and frustrated that things he used to do aren't allowed because they aren't rules legal. He's justified it to himself that rules are inherently anti-story.

TL;DR People that aren't great at crunch can feel neglected when the crunch isn't being ignored.

[Âmesang]

I can't help but being a bit rules-savvy; maybe it's from a background in computer programming or something like obsessive compulsiveness or… something. :smallconfused: I know, I guess it's just 'cause I like knowing what my character can and can't do, and if there's something that she can't do that either adds to her overall goals and motivations, giving her an incentive to adventure so as to overcome it (which makes me feel rather clever) …or it just means she has to rely on her allies and work together as a team.

Granted, I'm a BIG fan of fluff and flavor, so I don't tend to make the most "traditionally" optimized characters, either. :smalltongue: "I want her to be the epitome of the sorcerer class. Hey, sorcerers can counterspell, right? So I'll have her take Improved Counterspell!" *

The last group I played with was a bit on the looser side, taking the rules… and the story… none too seriously. There's been some clashes here and there (like the ranger wanting to fly via his armor, drink a potion, and make a full-round attack all in one turn).

* Actually I've been thinking of having her spend her non-important standard actions to ready an action to counterspell… in the off chance someone within line of sight tosses a spell at her all of a sudden. A bit paranoid, but what else is she going to do 99% of the day? Double move actions?

[Aleolus]

The best way to deal with that problem, in my opinion, is to focus less on what you're playing and more on who you're playing. Don't worry so much about what their powers are or what they are capable of doing, just give them a well-detailed backstory and personality traits you think will be fun

[Telonius]

Being good at optimizing and being good at D&D: the two skills are neither identical nor mutually exclusive. A good optimizer knows how to get the most out of their character. A good player knows how to make the game fun for everybody. Sometimes the two intersect, sometimes they don't.

[Droopy McCool]

The best way to deal with that problem, in my opinion, is to focus less on what you're playing and more on who you're playing. Don't worry so much about what their powers are or what they are capable of doing, just give them a well-detailed backstory and personality traits you think will be fun

This. Obviously having a character than can contribute in some way to he group is nice, but I've found the "who" aspect adds so much more to the game. My characters now have full backstories that we sometimes interact with thanks to the DM.

However, my main point is that if I want my Paladin to be very learned and suave and strong at the same time, the rules don't support that without rolling above 16ish for four stats. When we first started, I just had tons of skill points, because my character was raised with an excellent education, but I only had a 10-12 Int or so. So playing a character certain ways may require extra abilities or skills that the rules can't supply, like not having the prereqs for a feat. Enter the DM, merciful god that he is, allowing a character to have the nice things. And that is where crunch meets fluff.

[Milodiah]

Similar situation, except rather worse. We had a guy in our group, the usual GM, who we gradually began to understand was an absolute munchkin as a player. The kind of player who will look at a single ambiguously phrased rule and then build a character designed to milk his interpretation of said phrasing for all it's worth. The kind who will ignore the fact that there is no logical explanation for his character's existence in-universe, let alone bother developing them as individuals beyond their statblocks. The kind that sits down poring over every book for any potential broken pairings of abilities to let him utterly dominate. He didn't usually have this problem as GM, but it slowly started to slip into his games recently. We hated it.


So we kicked him. And we're having fun again now.

Sadly I don't think there's any one person in your group who's causing this disillusionment. What I will suggest is switching to a different system for a while. 3.5e can have this effect on people; another player of ours, who loves to play the mace-and-mail type of cleric in AD&D, was almost turned off from 3.5 entirely when he realized that the Cleric class is not anywhere near that in 3.5 We eventually got him to build a Crusader/Cleric (he wouldn't dip into Fighter no matter what we said to him) who more or less fits his character design. But he was very offended when he discovered that 90% of the advice for building "good" clerics was the "milk Divine Metamagic boosters for all they're worth and then some".

Try a different game. There are lots out there, and they all have their own levels of fluff and crunch.
Dungeon World's crunch is almost dinner-mint sized, but it can generate fun campaigns just as well as 3.5 if people are ok with that.
GURPS is a TON of crunch on the front end, with character creation being what it is, but if you learn it fluently it will start to click. When it does, it can actually run smoother, because people don't have to sit around blurting a bunch of capitalized ability/spell/effect/maneuver/etc. names and planning their next action.

Those are just two suggestions on different points of the flufff/crunch chart. The first is high fluff low crunch, the second is high crunch variable fluff.

I personally would recommend Shadowrun. I find Shadowrun to be a good balance (for my group) between fluff and crunch. Any given character can have tons of both, and unless you sit down and REALLY try to milk a guy for all he's got ability-wise and neglect everything else(see above, we finally kicked that player because he tried doing so but in the process straight up broke at least ten different rules) you'll end up with a character who's both competent and interesting.

[AvatarVecna]

I usually start with "I have this really cool concept for a character, both in who they are, what they can do, and why they do what they do", and then I use my knowledge of optimization to build the character in a way that doesn't suck. If I want to play Thor from Avengers, and play the character that way, I build a Goliath Favored Soul who wields a Returning Warhammer. If I want to play Batman, I make a Swift Hunter build with a Monk dip. If I want to play Snow White, I build a Fochlucan Lyrist, and optimize to the point that it doesn't suck.

Sometimes, I find a nifty rule thing I can do, and come up with a character to fit it. Awhile back, there was a gestalt game where I ended up playing a priest dedicated to saving others, protecting them, and destroying evil before it could harm the innocent. On one side, he was a standard Sacred Fist; on the other side, he had Fighter levels to give him BAB and a couple templates (Saint and Telthor). The dude was a beast, and I built the fluff around what I'd imagine this kind of character to be: a VoP Fighter/Monk/Cleric who was so strongly tied to a place that he persisted there after death? This was a monk whose dedication to his deity allowed him to transcend beyond mortality and continue serving his faith and fulfilling his oaths into the afterlife.

I use my optimization to make sure my character doesn't suck at the thing they're supposed to be awesome at by-the-fluff. Nothing turns me off of roleplaying more than wanting to play a character who's the "ultimate sneakthief" or whatever, and sucking because I can't sneak my way past most anything in the monster manual.