The Switch

October 2, 2007

This wasn't a session.  This was the group sitting down and talking about the game.  As much as we all enjoyed Alternity, the deeper we got with the characters, the fewer fun choices there were.  And I figured this was because of the fact that Alternity was an OOP game.  During this time, I had been reading about 4E and getting excited about it.  It still has some items I am not thrilled about but it seemed to be more about the fun than the wargaming, and that was a step in the right direction for me. 

Actually, there is more to it than that.  Not only had I been reading about 4E, but for the past couple of years I have been reading about 3.x.  What I found was a lot of interesting perspectives on it and how I could approach it in a way that worked for me.  I found ways to make things work for me that weren't working for me in the past.  I still don't like some aspects of the DND game but there is so much support and so many choices, that it seemed foolish to keep playing Alternity, especially when it had no material for Fantasy. 

So, we spent this evening converting the characters over to DND.  Even at the end, we weren't close.  I ended up making them 17th level, 15th level for Notch since the player had just joined.  In DND terms, then, they are quite powerful.  I was happy, though, that at least one player didn't try and min/max.  He had a character concept and he stuck with it.  That was encouraging.  And I realized that as the GM, I can keep encouraging this in some of the things that I do.  So, I am very hopeful that we will have a fun time with DND.  It's more about the story than the game mechanics we are using. 

We did decide to go with spell points instead of memorizing spells.  I think it cuts down on the total number of spells they can cast but they have much better choices.  We are also using Dork20 cards for the players, which is fun!  Finally, I got the critical hit deck that they can do on a crit instead of the normal damage multiplier.  So far, it has been a lot of fun! 

One thing that really helped was how much support for d20 there is out there.  I was able to easily stat up the NPCs in a way which fit them and made sense.  That has helped a lot in figuring them out.  I haven't statted out all of them but the ones they deal with most have been.