The Choice
First Post
At the risk of sounding harsh:
The goal of D&D Next is to be the edition that everyone recognizes as D&D, regardless of which version is their favorite. That means making sure the iconic elements of the game are in it. One of those elements is D&D spellcasting, which had existed for 34 years (38 if you count Pathfinder, which many do).
At the risk of sounding harsh: Maybe that's a stupid goal. I know people who've been playing their homebrewed version of second edition for twenty years. They didn't switch to 3E or 4e; they're never going to switch. And that's kinda the point of gaming for some after a while: you find your comfort zone, the system that fits your preferred style and tweak it once in a while to correct. Perhaps, if they are REALLY flexible, incorporating elements from new editions/different games. I imagine that's the case for a lot of so-called old-school gamers. It's also a stupid goal because the market for retroclones is minute, a drop in the ocean that is the tabletop roleplaying market (which itself is a mere puddle when you compare it to the general gaming industry). And make no mistake, Mike Mearls said it himself, they are making a game that plays like old-school D&D. So trying to bring in lapsed D&Ders with blatant grognard bait is an exercise in futility.
Everyone who played D&D within those 34 years (i.e., nearly everyone who has played D&D) recognizes D&D spellcasting as an iconic element, and if the game doesn't include it, it won't feel like that same game to them. We have already seen this with 4th Edition, whose radical changes have led many to declare "it isn't D&D." Even though you are not one of those people, you must understand that 4th Edition is the clear outlier in the big picture, and that both tradition and popular demand mandate that D&D spellcasting is a "core" mechanic in D&D Next.
Ok, and I'm perfectly fine with that, but what is D&D spellcasting? Is it Vancian style casting? Not really because sorcerers and a bunch of other classes broke this universal mold one and a half edition ago. Is it the naming convention? Because I don't feel that the words Otiluke, Tenser, or whatever are actually that important in people's mind. If I called a spell floating disk, gave it a description similar to the one found in the PHB of your choice, would it be less D&D? Is it the power level? Is the fact that spellcasters curbstomp noncasters in all of the so-called "three pillars" of adventuring an element that's essential to D&D magic? Because the list presented in the survey sure made it look that way and it's a position that I feel is both retrograde and bad for the hobbies advancement. Also, I've been hearing and reading complaints about Vancian casting since the days of 2E, it's about time it got retired, just so that we can finally have an edition where we don't have to suffer through those debates again.