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In the past few years, since D&D 3rd ed came out, I've seen a lot of truly b0rken stuff come out of the minds of my fellow gamers. Most of it's been based on rules misunderstandings; like Wizards' other major game design project, D&D has suffered from a very open rules system which lacks some clarity and standardisation of phrasing.
A lot of it has also come from taking pieces out of highly diverse sources and putting them together - numberhacking something horrible out of the vast quantity of material which has been written by multiple game designers with a wide variety of ideas as to how the game should work.
Having discussed Magic with my roomate regularly for some time - or, really, listened to his learned discourse about said topic and made the occasional comment based on my poor understanding - I see a significant need for the equivalent of the Magic Type I, Type II, Standard, Extended, etcetera type game delineations. If you limit the elements from which a player can draw their characters, not only are you likely to avoid introducing feat conflicts of the type mentioned above, you'll have an easier time building your own challenges, since you know what your PCs are likely to have access to.
I'm currently working on campaign and character design for a game where I've limited the party to standard point buy (25 points), and nothing beyond six core books from 3.5 - the three core, Complete Divine, Complete Warrior, and Expanded Psionics. I'm fudging slightly in one case where a PC wants something very specific and I can't find it - I sniked a small rule out of the Unearthed Arcana book. But with this limited set, a low-level party (5th), and average stats, I'm limiting the amount of unbalancingly strong effects the game can have.
The end goal here is to make a low-level game which doesn't feel low-level (i.e. boring) by using the rules to their fullest extent and providing the party with encounters and situations which allow them to take advantage of the fact that they've got _levels_, fer crying in silence.
After testing a couple concepts, I'm looking forward to the PCs getting level 6 - things should get sparkly, particularly for the non-multiclassed players.
So yeah, I'm running again. I'm going to miss this when I get north; maybe I'll try to design a game to run up there once I'm settled in and employed. Hee.
A lot of it has also come from taking pieces out of highly diverse sources and putting them together - numberhacking something horrible out of the vast quantity of material which has been written by multiple game designers with a wide variety of ideas as to how the game should work.
Having discussed Magic with my roomate regularly for some time - or, really, listened to his learned discourse about said topic and made the occasional comment based on my poor understanding - I see a significant need for the equivalent of the Magic Type I, Type II, Standard, Extended, etcetera type game delineations. If you limit the elements from which a player can draw their characters, not only are you likely to avoid introducing feat conflicts of the type mentioned above, you'll have an easier time building your own challenges, since you know what your PCs are likely to have access to.
I'm currently working on campaign and character design for a game where I've limited the party to standard point buy (25 points), and nothing beyond six core books from 3.5 - the three core, Complete Divine, Complete Warrior, and Expanded Psionics. I'm fudging slightly in one case where a PC wants something very specific and I can't find it - I sniked a small rule out of the Unearthed Arcana book. But with this limited set, a low-level party (5th), and average stats, I'm limiting the amount of unbalancingly strong effects the game can have.
The end goal here is to make a low-level game which doesn't feel low-level (i.e. boring) by using the rules to their fullest extent and providing the party with encounters and situations which allow them to take advantage of the fact that they've got _levels_, fer crying in silence.
After testing a couple concepts, I'm looking forward to the PCs getting level 6 - things should get sparkly, particularly for the non-multiclassed players.
So yeah, I'm running again. I'm going to miss this when I get north; maybe I'll try to design a game to run up there once I'm settled in and employed. Hee.
