I have a confession. I do not, and have not played dnd the same way that most people think of when others mention dnd.
In our group, we use a type of ‘ speed play ‘ system our friends have house ruled that has allowed us infinite ability during the course of the game. This system was initiated out of necessity. Not enough players being the single most obvious reason. But in this style of play we came across several discoveries that made the game so different and fun that it changed the way we will play the game.
Our speed play sessions start by the number of players. Usually 2-3 (dm included).
Players come up with a party theme. Basically as a player you take control of 2-4 characters as needed. Just before play the players or player will decide on what theme to play as they discuss what kind of game is to be done with the dm.
A few house rules simply are done by assumption, such as for rogues would be that:
Rogues are constantly sneaking, searching ,spotting, and listening and trying to flank whenever possible so checks would be rolled by the dm with that mind sake. Common sense rules the day and some things need not be mentioned to accomplish. This also did away with balance issues as per you used the characters as you needed thus everybody had their task to complete. Wizards druids and the like turned to resources.
This lead to was a shift in the play where the characters were streamlined in what they had to do to accomplish the goals of the campaign. Now that the party acted as one, loot became a proper resource. Most of it when to expand the mages spell books and crafting of items, which in turn enriched the party. Magic items found didn’t go to less then optimized characters but exactly to the person who would most benefit. If no mages in the game then the loot was better used to fix up fighters with the best armor, clerics with what was needed to augment their heals and buffs and so forth.
Evil parties could now be played as efficiently as a good party because no one who conspired against another unless driven by story. As could leadership, and other seemingly broken and impossible things work in our games.
Themed parties fixed unity in characters from a role-play perspective. Gone were the days of a human fighter, a cleric aasimar of pacifism, a bard, and a ogre black guard who eats babies every night made by a certain player to “make it interesting”
Now players were more apt to make a unifying theme to the party that explained why they were involved.
Examples could be racially themed, deity themed, nature themed, urban themed. And so forth.
We also took to using the experience point skeleton of adventures to make our own. So we could finish an adventure, redo it with another themed party, then again when switching with the dm. it became less of learning new traps and much more role-play intensive. And allowed us to reach in and think what would the characters do if something like a trap, a big bad end guy, or other npc’s would do and interact with.
Then take the same adventure , do away with the maps and fluff, and use the experience points as a rough guide to make our own adventures.The 3.0 arshardalon game from our party was done no less then 20 times, each with a differently themed party, and even under different incarnations. Soon we played our ad hoc planescape and ravenloft adventures using the ecl and cr in the game.
There is a lot more to this but I was excited to share to see if anyone else
