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I have tried DMing 4e and had a terrible time, I have DM'd BEMCI/1e/2e/3.xe, but 4e seems like so much non-game work (i.e. getting maps and figures etc). BUT before someone reads this as a bash at 4e...
I made up a 4e Wizard played and well had fun, then I made up Shifter Druid. Well 4e is about as much fun as you can have with your trousers on and no cheer leaders! The DM was really good, we did what I would have called role playing under the older editions* and the combats were intellectually stimulating. My Druid moved all over the place doing crazy stuff.
So the point of this post?
How many people prefer either being a PC or DM in 4e? I prefer to DM in all D&D's except 4e in which I would rather play hands down.
S.
PS: He didn't use skill challenges much as he like I agree they are a tad silly and counter to actual role playing when used in "social challenges".
I've mostly only been a dm, and I've done lots of dm for 2E and 3E, and now quite a bit for 4E. I haven't noticed a big difference in dming 4E over 3E. I enjoy them both, but there are a few things that stand out.
In terms of spending time digging through my minis and making maps, I find that's still about the same.
In terms of running the game, I find 4E a little easier because I feel that the system is better balanced. For example in 3E I found that I had to monitor the PCs a lot more closely, because it was much easier for players to find wierd game breaking combinations of feats, spells, magic items, prestige classes etc... In 4E I find that all the characters feel pretty balanced in terms of their power in relation to both each other and the monsters. When I build a 5th level encounter it generally provides the appropriate challenge for a 5th level party. In 3E when I put the party up against a CR 5 monster or encounter it was nearly always way too weak to provide a challenge.
I also like that 4E monsters are really easy to scale up or down, and that if I want a stat block I can just go onto the compendium search what I want, cut and paste it into a word file and then make any changes I want. This saves me tons of time.
One of the big challenges for me in 4E is that there are more choices for the dm when building monsters- should I use minions for this encounter? Should this monsters be an elite or maybe solo monster? etc... In particular, I find this an issue when building NPC spellcasters. In 3E if I wanted to build a nasty evil wizard I'd pretty much build him the same way I would a PC. The problem was it would take a long time and if I didn't think it through real carefully the PCs would take him down in 2 rounds. If I did build him with all the nastiest tricks I could pull out of the system he could usually hold his own, but it would take even longer to build. As an example, take a look at the stat block for Iggwilv in the Savage Tide campaign. It's awesome and inspiring, but even it has room for upgrades, and if you're running any kind of high level game which require stat blocks like that on a regular basis you will get bogged down. 4E is way different when it comes to NPC spellcasters. I find most of the ones published in the adventures to be kind of boring and bland. They have a couple of at will spells and a couple of encounter and rechargeable spells. I fully understand their design rationale for this, but I still find that it doesn't appeal to my tastes. I don't mind running complex villains, and I want my evil spellcasters to have plenty of options. The ones I see in the 4E books usually seem rather dull and I have trouble getting excited about most of them. Furthermore, because you don't build monsters the same way as you build PCs, I now find it tough to decide how to approach building villainous spellcasters. Do I make them elites? Do I make the wizard a solo monster? How many spells should I give? How much damage should I make them do? Should they recharge or be encounter only? How much magical equipment should I give? etc... The list goes on about it, and though there is advice about it in the dmg, I find that I'm still always asking these questions whenever I try to stat up this type of character. I wouldn't have been asking those sorts of questions in 3E. The spellcaster issue is probably my biggest gripe about monsters in 4E. I really like a lot of the basic monsters and their abilities.
How many people prefer either being a PC or DM in 4e? I prefer to DM in all D&D's except 4e in which I would rather play hands down.
BECM(I) - Play or DM
1st Edition AD&D - Play2nd Edition AD&D - Play
3.x Edition D&D - Play
4th Edition D&D - DM
I'm amazed at how consistently the game has played as the PCs have progressed in level. From a DM's standpoint, I no longer have to anticipate dramatic jumps in character ability at any point - when they gain flight, teleportation, clairvoyance, etc., it's all in very manageable doses that still let the player feel like they're doing something cool without being a potential headache for the DM to work around.
Seconded.
I'm amazed at how consistently the game has played as the PCs have progressed in level. From a DM's standpoint, I no longer have to anticipate dramatic jumps in character ability at any point - when they gain flight, teleportation, clairvoyance, etc., it's all in very manageable doses that still let the player feel like they're doing something cool without being a potential headache for the DM to work around.
BECM(I) - DM
1st Edition AD&D - DM
2nd Edition AD&D - DM
3.x Edition D&D - Play
4th Edition D&D - Play or DM
I found the early editions of the game to limiting as a player. I always felt like I had so many more interesting choices when DMing.
3rd Finally changed that but swung the pendulum the other way. There were now lots of interesting choices for the players but DMing had started to become such a chore that I was constantly fighting off burnout. I'd find myself pumping hour after hour into just the stat blocks and my players were slowly growing more optimized to overcome my devious encounters which in turn meant I kept having to up the bar to try and keep up with them. We entered what amounted to an arms race which I could only hold my own in if I continually pumped more time and energy into design work. I eventually got to the point where I was devoting around three times as much prep work to making the adventures as I was spending playing the adventures.
4E has some issues but I like all the interesting options available to the characters and think their a lot of fun while at the same time really appreciating the fact that it now takes less time to design an encounter then it does to play it and I'm not involved in an arms race with my players or getting into fights with the ones that happen to like optimizing their characters over whether they are 'playing the game wrong and ruining it for everyone else'. By and large the optimizers can do what they want to do and the rest of the players can do what they want to do and the game runs fine.
I do, however, sometimes find that I have to throw away a concept in 4E because it feels wonky or off when I try and implement it. Evil Wizard Solo's (or all the player character Solo's really) are a prime example of this - they don't really feel like evil wizards much of the time since they are so unlike player character wizards. I generally either replace the encounter with something else or go on a fluff spree with the Evil Wizard - He's not just an evil wizard - he's the infected servant of a fungal demon...heck Fungi's growing all over his body...evil fungi...'shrooms with bad attitude! Essentially I make him not just an evil human and that makes the disconnect between what a player wizard is and what a monster wizard is much less.
I have tried DMing 4e and had a terrible time, I have DM'd BEMCI/1e/2e/3.xe, but 4e seems like so much non-game work (i.e. getting maps and figures etc). BUT before someone reads this as a bash at 4e...
I tend to wonder what your DM is doing in this regards because I don't find placing miniatures or drawing out the battle mat that much of a chore. Presuming you have a decent collection getting the required miniature or something fairly close should not take that long and you could even use tokens for bad guys if you wanted to cut back on this part. I had a DM who used the base left after you went through a roll of sewing thread (not sure what these are called) for all monsters. She had a whole range of different sizes and colours and therefore always had what she wanted.
Drawing the battle mat takes a bit longer but its not that bad and with some practice you get good at explaining the situation and the details of the environment as you draw it so your not really wasting game time as play continues even during this period.
PS: He didn't use skill challenges much as he like I agree they are a tad silly and counter to actual role playing when used in "social challenges".
I love the skill challenges but I think they are the single hardest part of the game to adjust to because they are so unlike anything we have really done before. In fact I think this is only half the issue - this is one area of the rules where I very much view the authors as providing guidelines and not hard and fast rules because I don't think design and development were all on the same page in regards to this aspect of the rules.
I've been in a couple of really well done skill challenges and a lot of really lame ones. Here I think a DM really needs to be paying extra attention to how each skill challenge went and really thinking about it afterword. Analyze what went right and especially what went wrong. Think about why it unfolded the way it did and then take those lessons into the next one. There is a lot to be learned in terms of delivery of the Skill Challenge, effectively queuing players for their participation, having the challenge unfold etc. Furthermore not all skill challenges work well if handled in the same manner. Delivery and execution sometimes works better if handled in one fashion as compared to another.
For example, I've found, that in a skill challange where the players have real control of who does what, when, I let them choose their order especially if they could reasonably be talking with each other about the challenge. On teh other hand a lot of challenges work best if they have no idea what the order is and in these cases I have the infinitives worked out ahead of time and I simply focus on each player in turn, explain the situation they are in and have them explain what they are doing before making a roll.
I'm also a bit of an asshat in cases where I think the players are trying to 'game' the system. Save that for combat, in the middle of a skill challenge your not allowed to compare your various skills to the rest of the party or otherwise break the narrative.
As I was on a spellcaster rant up above, I hear what you are saying about solo wizards and the like (usually I use elites for these types instead but I still face the same issue). I too end up fluffing some explanation for their obscene hit points "The wizard has made terrible pacts with demons that have given him an unnatural level of toughness etc..." However, it should be noted that in 3E we start to see this kind of thing happening as well. Take a look at Kazargog's stat block in RofRL. In order to make him a challenging solo encounter the designers knew that they needed to find a way a to ramp up his hp so that he could survive more than a round of combat, but because they didn't have the elite and solo type rulesets that 4E has they had to come up with a creative alternative, which involved bonding tons of ioun stones to him that each gave him a hp boost. Of course even with that he'll likely go to down to a lot of party's pretty quick once they start blasting him with maximized orbs of acid and similar spells. Still, it was a cool idea, but you don't always want to be looking for solutions like that just to give a monster some extra hp, so I do like that they have the elite and solo rules for 4E, it's just that you do still need to do some fluff justification for them when you start applying them to fragile wizards. However, they're great with big, tough monsters like demons, dragons, undead and the like.
BECM(I) - DM
1st Edition AD&D - DM
2nd Edition AD&D - DM
3.x Edition D&D - Play
4th Edition D&D - Play or DMI found the early editions of the game to limiting as a player. I always felt like I had so many more interesting choices when DMing.
3rd Finally changed that but swung the pendulum the other way. There were now lots of interesting choices for the players but DMing had started to become such a chore that I was constantly fighting off burnout. I'd find myself pumping hour after hour into just the stat blocks and my players were slowly growing more optimized to overcome my devious encounters which in turn meant I kept having to up the bar to try and keep up with them. We entered what amounted to an arms race which I could only hold my own in if I continually pumped more time and energy into design work. I eventually got to the point where I was devoting around three times as much prep work to making the adventures as I was spending playing the adventures.
4E has some issues but I like all the interesting options available to the characters and think their a lot of fun while at the same time really appreciating the fact that it now takes less time to design an encounter then it does to play it and I'm not involved in an arms race with my players or getting into fights with the ones that happen to like optimizing their characters over whether they are 'playing the game wrong and ruining it for everyone else'. By and large the optimizers can do what they want to do and the rest of the players can do what they want to do and the game runs fine.
I do, however, sometimes find that I have to throw away a concept in 4E because it feels wonky or off when I try and implement it. Evil Wizard Solo's (or all the player character Solo's really) are a prime example of this - they don't really feel like evil wizards much of the time since they are so unlike player character wizards. I generally either replace the encounter with something else or go on a fluff spree with the Evil Wizard - He's...
Stefan, I would suggest getting an erasable map board and some pens and doing it that way. It sounds like you are sweating too much over maps. I do almost zero prep as a DM compared to that which I did for 3E. I find 4E so much easier. If coutners/minis are a worry, maybe get the players to make/bring/buy minis or whatever themselves, and you could use chess pieces or tiddlywinks for the baddies.
I like to do both. I tend to DM more these days. Back in the days of AD&D I got to play more as my group would switch out DMs. These days I tend to DM more than play. A majority of my play experience has come from Dungeon Delves. When I do get to play as a player these days it is usually in other systems as my group tends to switch to try other things.
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Stefan, I would suggest getting an erasable map board and some pens and doing it that way. It sounds like you are sweating too much over maps. I do almost zero prep as a DM compared to that which I did for 3E. I find 4E so much easier. If coutners/minis are a worry, maybe get the players to make/bring/buy minis or whatever themselves, and you could use chess pieces or tiddlywinks for the baddies.
I would but it's almost against my religion. I'm also from table top wargaming background where 3 colors and "representative" figures are minimum requirement. I'm not going out on a limb by saying that by miniature standard the D&D minis are just plain awful. Perhaps small steps, if I DM again I'll ask players to bring a painted figure for their character - we can build form there.
I really am enjoying playing, but the whole "Sprite Cap" Beholder still cracks me up! :)
S.
Stefan, I would suggest getting an erasable map board and some pens and doing it that way. It sounds like you are sweating too much over maps. I do almost zero prep as a DM compared to that which I did for 3E. I find 4E so much easier. If coutners/minis are a worry, maybe get the players to make/bring/buy minis or whatever themselves, and you could use chess pieces or tiddlywinks for the baddies.I would but it's almost against my religion. I'm also from table top wargaming background where 3 colors and "representative" figures are minimum requirement. I'm not going out on a limb by saying that by miniature standard the D&D minis are just plain awful. Perhaps small steps, if I DM again I'll ask players to bring a painted figure for their character - we can build form there.
I really am enjoying playing, but the whole "Sprite Cap" Beholder still cracks me up! :)
S.
:D
I hear you. My players find it hilarious how much I dote over my card syandups from Steve Jackson Games and the Firey Dragon coutners, as well my ludicrous precision with drawing out battlemaps.
I'm trying to get back into mini painting but I just know I will now be on tenterhooks to protect my babies from sticky fingers and being knocked over!
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I would but it's almost against my religion. I'm also from table top wargaming background where 3 colors and "representative" figures are minimum requirement. I'm not going out on a limb by saying that by miniature standard the D&D minis are just plain awful. Perhaps small steps, if I DM again I'll ask players to bring a painted figure for their character - we can build form there.
The mini issue is plaguing me as well...I like to use the right mini, and while I have a stable of the basic critters, I certainly don't have them in numbers. A kobold horde using goblin mini's to round out the numbers is one thing, but in 4E damn near everything has a minion representative, and I simply don't have that many ogres for the Ogre Thug minion.
As to prep and your OP:
I think 4E is a DMs edition. It harkens back to the "old" days. Its so much easier to customize the monsters, to create interesting/fun encounters, and the prep time is small. Here's my "method" to create encounters:
1) Determine, roughly, what creatures I want to use.
2) Determine XP budget, then "buy" the creatures for encounter, letting my mind try to envision the terrain that would "fit" and give maximum benefit to the creatures.
3) draw the map and small graph paper, quickly, keeping in mind all the 4E design philosophy: terrain has a purpose, map big enough for movement, choke points, etc.
4) go back to 2 and 3 as needed to get a better fit. Maybe I don't need as many minions, but a "lurker" hiding out in these rocks would be a nasty surprise...that sort of thing, tweaking in other words.
5.) Here is the best time saver: Poster sized graph paper. You can buy it at most office supply places, over by the other large sketch pads that business types use for "brainstorming". One inch squares and all. I PRE-DRAW all my encounters. I use the love-able wet-erase battlemap for the BBEG encounter and have it pre-drawn as well. I also have a smaller wet-erase battlemap for random encounters and responding to the players whims...
6) I create a stack-block/hp page for each encounter. I have a photocopier at home, so I basically copy cut and past the MM info into a single sheet. If I create an all MM1 skeleton encounter, there's no point, since I don't have to flip...I just use the book.
That all seems like a LOT of prep, but it isn't really. As long as I have an idea, I can prepare an encounter in 30min or less. For me, that's part of the fun. Sometimes, I create encounters unrelated to the story, its just too cool an idea not to make. Paper clip the folded map and stat-page together and I have encounter ready to go. With a little practice you'll be creating encounters left and right.
Final Note: you can, of course, cut out the encounter map from the poster-map, and lay out each encounter as the group moves to it. I don't worry about the map revealing a door that's around the corner, for example...For the sake of game play, revealing it doesn't give too much info away, and drawing mid-battle when it comes into view slows things down at the wrong time.
Happy TPK!
Some good ideas there. One thing you can do if you don't want to photocopy (assuming you have a DDI subscription) is pull up your monster stat blocks on the compendium then cut and paste them into a Word document. After that it's easy to tweak them a little (ie. move the critters up or down a level or two, adjust some powers etc...) and then print them out or just run them off a laptop.
If you're looking for good prices on minis to load up on monsters, I highly recommend miniaturemarket.com. You can buy singles way cheaper than what you pay on say this site, and they ship them to you fast. They've never messed up one of my orders yet either, and I've ordered from them many times. You can also pick up reaper minis and the like, so its a good one stop mini shopping venue.
I would but it's almost against my religion. I'm also from table top wargaming background where 3 colors and "representative" figures are minimum requirement. I'm not going out on a limb by saying that by miniature standard the D&D minis are just plain awful. Perhaps small steps, if I DM again I'll ask players to bring a painted figure for their character - we can build form there.
The mini issue is plaguing me as well...I like to use the right mini, and while I have a stable of the basic critters, I certainly don't have them in numbers. A kobold horde using goblin mini's to round out the numbers is one thing, but in 4E damn near everything has a minion representative, and I simply don't have that many ogres for the Ogre Thug minion.
As to prep and your OP:
I think 4E is a DMs edition. It harkens back to the "old" days. Its so much easier to customize the monsters, to create interesting/fun encounters, and the prep time is small. Here's my "method" to create encounters:
1) Determine, roughly, what creatures I want to use.
2) Determine XP budget, then "buy" the creatures for encounter, letting my mind try to envision the terrain that would "fit" and give maximum benefit to the creatures.
3) draw the map and small graph paper, quickly, keeping in mind all the 4E design philosophy: terrain has a purpose, map big enough for movement, choke points, etc.
4) go back to 2 and 3 as needed to get a better fit. Maybe I don't need as many minions, but a "lurker" hiding out in these rocks would be a nasty surprise...that sort of thing, tweaking in other words.
5.) Here is the best time saver: Poster sized graph paper. You can buy it at most office supply places, over by the other large sketch pads that business types use for "brainstorming". One inch squares and all. I PRE-DRAW all my encounters. I use the love-able wet-erase battlemap for the BBEG encounter and have it pre-drawn as well. I also have a smaller wet-erase battlemap for random encounters and responding to...
I am not very experienced in that I have DMd probably 30 sessions but only played one.
That said, as a kid/teen DMing was hard and worrisome. I really wanted to DM and do a good job but I had a lot of trouble working out what the 'right' way to do it was based on 1e and 2e materials. It could be that age has brought wisdom but to me the 4e DMG did a great job of laying out how to be a DM and have a fun game result.
And prep for me is usually 1-2 hours when making my own adventures, less than 1 using the published stuff. You can spend a lot more if you want or if you have more elaborate adventures in mind but it seems pretty optional. My notes going into some games has just been a list of page numbers in the MM and a doodle of the map.
Of course maybe my DMing sucks, but it does not seem to be unpopular so far.
So to the topic, 4e seems pretty DM friendly, after all the PCs get a handful of cool moves, you get 1-10 per monster, every fight. I made some PCs to use as monsters in a gladiator type encounter thinking it would be a real serious challenge but they were actually kind of a disappointment to DM in that they were quickly down to at-wills where a monster would probably be packing more tricks up their sleeves.