‘Advanced’ Dungeons & Dragons

Yaarel · Jun 3, 2018

‘Advanced’ Dungeons & Dragons

Split D&D 5e into two separate design spaces:

• Advanced D&D: setting-neutral core rules, with lots of customizability options
• Setting D&D: setting-specific rules, premade builds, baked-in flavor, vetted for balance

Advanced D&D is a toolkit to customize world building and character building. This rule set continues to update to add new content and to errata of old content. The Advanced D&D core rules are always changing to respond to new desires and concerns of DMs and players.

Setting D&D never changes. It is a one-time purchase that is evergreen because the rules for that setting are always true for that setting. Once a group purchases a Setting D&D product, they know, future updates will never change the book. There might be an expansion pack, to add to the founding setting book, but it will never change the rules.

By contrast, Advanced D&D is always changing. It continues to update and evolve, including the addition of features from a recent setting to present the mechanics in a setting neutral way. Updates might also errata certain features and combos because they are overpowered or underpowered and require more precise balance.

Setting D&D is a stand-alone product with a specific setting rule set. Its rules have fewer moving parts, picking between a handful of premade classes and races with prechosen features. These ‘fewer but bigger’ choices, include baked-in setting flavor, and are guaranteed for reasonable gaming balance.

Dark Sun is an example of Setting D&D, where this setting presents a unique cosmology and only certain races and classes. It would look like a ‘Dark Sun Players Handbook’. Likewise, the current ‘Players Handbook’ is Setting D&D, where a ‘modern’ Forgotten Realms setting ports in certain features of Greyhawk (races), Planescape (great wheel cosmology), and even Nentir Vale (fey and shadow cosmology, and tiefling and dragonborn races). Eberron is an other example of Setting D&D, with its own unique cosmology and its own bake-in flavor for races. Each Setting is its own stand-alone gaming product, independent of the other.

Each Setting D&D is essentially a premade cosmology offering pregenerated races and classes to play. If the DM and players want to customize a Setting, then they use the Advanced D&D Core Rules as the tool kit to do this.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is the lifeblood that connects and unifies the different Setting D&D products. ‘AD&D’ compiles all of the mechanical options from every setting, and becomes the toolkit to help customize any specific setting.

pukunui · Jun 3, 2018

They tried that with 4e. Didn’t seem to work so well (or else they’d still be doing it that way).

You could also argue that TSR did it that way with 2e, and while they managed to make it look like it was working for the better part of a decade, we now know it wasn’t really ...

flametitan · Jun 3, 2018

This is one of those ideas that sounds elegant, but is unlikely to produce the results you want. It just reminds me too much of AD&D 2nd, wherein every setting line produced was assumed to be mutually exclusive, and it eventually split the market. There were ravenloft players, planescape players, Birthright players, rather than D&D players. This was generally seen as one of the reasons TSR collapsed, as it produced too many "setting D&D" lines, and no book sold enough to keep itself profitable.

Making different "Setting D&D" books screams to me as TSR 2.0, and instead of solving the hypothetical problem, just makes D&D compete against itself.

neogod22 · Jun 3, 2018

flametitan said:
This is one of those ideas that sounds elegant, but is unlikely to produce the results you want. It just reminds me too much of AD&D 2nd, wherein every setting line produced was assumed to be mutually exclusive, and it eventually split the market. There were ravenloft players, planescape players, Birthright players, rather than D&D players. This was generally seen as one of the reasons TSR collapsed, as it produced too many "setting D&D" lines, and no book sold enough to keep itself profitable.

Making different "Setting D&D" books screams to me as TSR 2.0, and instead of solving the hypothetical problem, just makes D&D compete against itself.

This

neogod22 · Jun 3, 2018

Unfortunately that means the only setting for 5e will probably always be FR. If they put anything out for any other settings, they will probably be some one off book that's not going to really get supported

Yaarel · Jun 3, 2018

pukunui said:
They tried that with 4e. Didn’t seem to work so well (or else they’d still be doing it that way).

You could also argue that TSR did it that way with 2e, and while they managed to make it look like it was working for the better part of a decade, we now know it wasn’t really ...

4e did different from the design proposal in the original post.

4e was ‘Advanced D&D’ in the sense of continually updating, but it lacked ‘Setting D&D’. It made the mistake of trying to combine all of the *unique* settings into one mash-up homogeneous supersetting.

What 4e should have done is let the Forgotten Realms setting remain true to the Forgotten Realms setting. And likewise, let Dark Sun and Eberron and so on be completely separate settings that had nothing to do with each other.

pukunui · Jun 3, 2018

[MENTION=58172]Yaarel[/MENTION]: Perhaps, but 4e did have a "one and done" setting book model of sorts. FR and Eberron each got a player's guide and a campaign guide and that was it. Dark Sun got a campaign guide and a monster manual and that was it. Adventures not included.

Yaarel · Jun 3, 2018

flametitan said:
This is one of those ideas that sounds elegant, but is unlikely to produce the results you want. It just reminds me too much of AD&D 2nd, wherein every setting line produced was assumed to be mutually exclusive, and it eventually split the market. There were ravenloft players, planescape players, Birthright players, rather than D&D players. This was generally seen as one of the reasons TSR collapsed, as it produced too many "setting D&D" lines, and no book sold enough to keep itself profitable.

Making different "Setting D&D" books screams to me as TSR 2.0, and instead of solving the hypothetical problem, just makes D&D compete against itself.

The hope is, unlike 2e, the ongoing 5e ‘Advanced D&D’ will continue to update with *all* of the options from all of the unique and separate settings. Thus there is a unifying core 5e rule set.

This unifying rule set is only possible because it is setting neutral. If needing setting flavor, purchase an official setting, or build your own. Either way, DMs will tend to want the AD&D continually updating rule set when wanting to tweak a particular setting.

If each official setting only has ‘fewer but bigger choices’, the desire to customize it by means of the AD&D rule set will be strong.

Yaarel · Jun 3, 2018

pukunui said:
[MENTION=58172]Yaarel[/MENTION]: Perhaps, but 4e did have a "one and done" setting book model of sorts. FR and Eberron each got a player's guide and a campaign guide and that was it. Dark Sun got a campaign guide and a monster manual and that was it. Adventures not included.

To be fair, the Forgotten Realms settings was violently transmogrified into the 4e supersetting. To some extent, Eberron too.

For 4e, all options became ‘core’ for all settings.

The hope for 5e is. The system encourages each setting to be unique, with a cherry-picking of races, classes, backgrounds, and cosmology that has no purpose but to further the setting tone and flavor.

By itself, AD&D is unusable without a setting. So purchasing an official one is a desirable choice. Symbiotically, each setting only has a limited number of options. So consulting AD&D to customize the setting is a desirable choice.

Zardnaar · Jun 3, 2018

flametitan said:
This is one of those ideas that sounds elegant, but is unlikely to produce the results you want. It just reminds me too much of AD&D 2nd, wherein every setting line produced was assumed to be mutually exclusive, and it eventually split the market. There were ravenloft players, planescape players, Birthright players, rather than D&D players. This was generally seen as one of the reasons TSR collapsed, as it produced too many "setting D&D" lines, and no book sold enough to keep itself profitable.

Making different "Setting D&D" books screams to me as TSR 2.0, and instead of solving the hypothetical problem, just makes D&D compete against itself.

You could do it but each setting would not get any support after the initial book and TSR supported each world with novels. Some settings could be folded into one book and use the old material for fluff. Still you would only do a handful of settings mostly converting the mechanics required for that setting. They do not get a novel line, follow on adventures or anything like that.