Recently I've been invited to play in a 3.5 game where there is no role playing. Its just 4 party members pit themselves against challenges set up by the dungeon master.
I was wondering if anyone has tried that, and if it worked out for them?
Many D&D campaigns do work on that premise: cities are only save points between dungeons, character backgrounds don't exist, and the PCs have names only so that people will know which character's being talked to.
Nothing wrong with that at all -- it certainly fits the image of the wargaming roots of the hobby -- and it's no different from Squad Leader or any other small-unit tactical wargame. If you think you'd have fun at that, why not?
3.5 is actually fairly well set up for this kind of thing, what with its whole emphasis on movement in squares, grids, attacks of opportunity,etc.
Even so, I find it gets dull after a while.
Wasn't there a 3E variant using minis for just this kind of thing? Miniatures Handbook or something like that? I never read/played it, but I was under the impression that it was skirmish miniatures rules using the d20/3e system as its basis.
I'd just grab Descent, personally.
A friend and I spent a while where we would each make 20 characters with various rules as to levels and such and battle on a game map. Each battle would take hours and was a heck of a lot of fun. 3.x works fine as skirmish rules.
Quote from: Andreichekov;688746Recently I've been invited to play in a 3.5 game where there is no role playing. Its just 4 party members pit themselves against challenges set up by the dungeon master.
I was wondering if anyone has tried that, and if it worked out for them?
3.5 IS a war game.
No adjustments needed.
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;689267Wasn't there a 3E variant using minis for just this kind of thing? Miniatures Handbook or something like that? I never read/played it, but I was under the impression that it was skirmish miniatures rules using the d20/3e system as its basis.
Yes, that is a campaign style from the 3.x
Miniatures Handbook. It worked pretty well for a continual series of scratch games (like when you have only an hour or less to play), but would seem to get a bit dull if done without the role-playing.
Quote from: 1989;6893333.5 IS a war game.
No adjustments needed.
So I've been doing it wrong all these years by treating it like a roleplaying game? Good to know. :cool:
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;689575So I've been doing it wrong all these years by treating it like a roleplaying game? Good to know. :cool:
Go and sin no more.
I can see playing a star trek rpg and pulling out star fleet battles for ship combat.
Or Advanced squad leader for combat in a ww2 rpg.
I did run a mechwarrior rpg once using the battletech rules for mech combat.
The trick is that all the players need to enjoy both the rpg and wargame elements.
Quote from: Bill;689784I can see playing a star trek rpg and pulling out star fleet battles for ship combat.
Yep, been in one of those campaigns.
Heck, I decided for my
Champions runs that the vehicle combat rules sucked, but that
Car Wars looked like it'd port very elegantly into the mix. This was a couple years before Steve Jackson and Hero Games came to the same conclusion, and came out with
Autoduel Champions ...
Quote from: Bill;689784I can see playing a star trek rpg and pulling out star fleet battles for ship combat.
Or Advanced squad leader for combat in a ww2 rpg.
I did run a mechwarrior rpg once using the battletech rules for mech combat.
The trick is that all the players need to enjoy both the rpg and wargame elements.
There's a world of difference between that and just playing the game without any RP, story etc etc, just "you enter the dungeon and take turns moving".
Just grab Descent, it's a better game for that.
Quote from: Bill;689784I can see playing a star trek rpg and pulling out star fleet battles for ship combat.
Or Advanced squad leader for combat in a ww2 rpg.
I did run a mechwarrior rpg once using the battletech rules for mech combat.
The trick is that all the players need to enjoy both the rpg and wargame elements.
Um, the trick is compatability.
Mechwarrior is a RPG subset of
Battletech wargame. Prime Directive (a
Star Trek RPG) is a subset of
Star Fleet Battles, FASA
Star Trek RPG has the
Star Trek Starship Combat Simulator as a subset.