How different is 3.5 from what I knew? I read DRAGON through the conversion to 2.0, but never changed my materials (I didn't renew my subscription after the 4 months of missed magazines when TSR was sold). Am I learning a new game if I update? Is conversion possible? How time consuming will it be? (i don't have the time I did in High School and College).
Does D& D still have the stigma it once had? Will I face hostility from the parents?? (when I started, some peers thought it was devil worship, by my collegiate years it was tolerated by all)
please advise
Like you Ive come back after a fairly long avoidance of D&D after getting fed up with 2E for about 5-6 years so it takes a bit of getting used too, in some areas its pretty smooth, others take a bit of getting used to but PC's should enjoy the relative flexibility of character creation. On the other hand theres a lot of us old 1E-2E players that have already cried a river of tears as old characters sometimes dont work out like they used too in the other system.
One thing I have noticed is that the pace of the game is a bit faster in terms of character progression, I think its written that way so people would be playing games that last a couple of sessions or a couple of months through a long module. For my group in particular we've been playing the same characters through 1E to 2E and then brought them into 3E over 10 years, so we've been initially surprised by that and used a bit of house ruling to string it out a little.
Converting over is a case of not a lot of effort for any NPC the PC's dont have to stick a sword into, for your book villans I'd suggest building them from the ground up suit your game and as a warning I would be careful of the "Challenge Rating" given to a lot of the monsters in the book as experience has shown them to be a bit screwed up. Everything else though is pretty easy and theres lot of tables for insta-npc encounters in the 3E DMG and most other things should be more or less how you remember them.
As for how much work, well theres a bit if you want to make up a lot of VIP's but for anyone else just apply a book pleb template and send em into the meat grinder
Theres a bit of 2E-3E conversions here if I remember correctly-
http://www.enworld.org/
or at least links to places that do, failing that-
http://www.google.com
will turn up damn near most things.
The D&D stigma thing was something I remember reading about and like most Australians who deride, heckle and giggle at puritan weirdo religous people who made that much effort over something that-
A: Sounded like silly buggers
B: Didnt happen to anyone we knew
C: Was the product of a closed mind
Like most things that blow up into something that makes a mountain out of a mole hill it can be put down to exaggerations by the press and lets face it, schoolyard shootings are much more more "media friendly" these days and over 15 years of gaming Im yet to meet anyone that worships the devil and plays D&D.
Way I figure it, most parents with half a clue would probably be happier knowing their kids are playing games at home or a friends house, rather than boosting cars, getting drunk and chased by the police.
good luck to you
I say invite the parents over to watch a game so they can understand the play and see how much fun the kids are having. They might get involved themselves.
Once again and I can't state this enough. Treasure this time with your son. He's a teenager who WANTS to spend time with his parents.
I envy you.
Anyway, to answer your questions, I'd say go ahead and update. While it may take you some time to learn the new system, I know that for me, by the time I picked up the game again, I had forgotten alot anyway. I think 3rd ed. is a little more intuitive, which should make it easier for the kids to learn. (For instance, there's no more THAC0 - armor class goes up from 10 instead of down, so the AC is actually the number you need to get on your attack roll to hit.) 3rd ed (and in this discussion, I mean that to include v. 3.5) is also more flexible in terms of what you can do with characters. Any race can multiclass, for example.
I hope everything goes well. My kids are much younger than yours, but I'm already thinking about when they'll be old enough for me to teach them the game. Good luck!
Also I never understand the anti-D&D stigma. Parents are happy for their kids to play Baldurs gate alone in thier rooms for hours on end but getting round a table with six other people and interacting with them to play the same game is somehow a problem? Wierd.
rather than boosting cars, getting drunk and chased by the police.
Ahhh . . . the fond memories of one's youth. Of course, we also plaed D&D too.
Something to think about. If your child and his friends do take to gaming and decide to start their own collection, they're likely to be playing the newest system available. You may want to start them off on the right foot then. On the other hand, starting them with an older system like 1st Edition may give them a sense of roots in the gaming history. So I guess either way, you win out by teaching your child to be creative and imaginative and learning social interaction skills (and a little bit of acting ;)).