D&D (2024) Twelve actions for an even fresher 6th edition, or for an ultra-basic retooling of 5e

[Yaarel]

I can get on board with many of the calls in the original post, especially for core rules to be simple, robust, and setting-neutral.

Move complexity over to specific settings.

The part of D&D that I value is world-building.

It is useful to have a hub that can inform diverse settings.

The only call I object to is for forcing all players to accept all settings. You cant have a setting for a light romantic comedy while far realms is invading. It is important to keep separate settings separate.

Obviously, some players want to hop back-and-forth between Forgotten Realms and Gamma World, for example. However the decision to bridge these two settings creates a new setting that is unlike either setting alone.

Not everyone who plays Forgotten Realms wants Gamma mutants and lasers. There is no need to force players to included unwanted settings.

Let players play in a setting of their choosing.

 

[Yaarel]

The key problem with this is that the vast bulk of the D&D rules are the character creation and level advancement options. Take those out, and the rules really could be a booklet; leave them in, and it's hard to see how it could get much shorter than Basic.

Not every setting needs every class. You can build most of the setting using simple ‘core’ rules. Then opt in to include certain complex classes that seem pertinent.

The simple core includes a set of simple classes, that all other classes measure against to determine balance.

 

[spinozajack]

To me a perfect D&D-esque boardgame would consist of:

1) A large randomly re-configurable tileset dungeon, or one world board and several dungeons.
2) Standard sized minis included for the default characters
3) Super simple levelling, which must be in the game for it to be called D&D. You beat this monster after rolling a d20 a couple times? You gain a treasure card from the deck. Some cards say "gain a level'. When each character gains a level, he / she gets a new attack or more hit points. Hit points are very low, and increase slowly. Like, single digits.
4) Monster packs (cards + minis) can be added. Aftermarket sales win.
5) PC race / class cards can be added. Aftermarket sales win.

Each player starts off in their own realm corner of the world board. They have to travel to the other area, with a chance of random encounter while travelling overland. It's a cooperative game, but players start off on their own. Maybe at the end, if they beat the dungeon, they can decide to fight each other for the treasure.

I would start with basic D&D and make it even more basic.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't get why you'd really want to "Eurogame it" D&D is classic Ameritrash in board game lingo, where the story evolves from play and complications as opposed to a more clinical resource management and strategy exercise that largely eschews randomness.

A major part of the reason I can't abide many Eurogames for long, but am still quite enamored of D&D's potential: it's not usually about puzzle-solving to reach a goal, it's about a cycle action and reaction that keeps the game moving fluidly and nearly seamlessly from one game loop to another.

 

[Wik]

Yeah, most of those points have nothing to do with "eurogames". Geez, Settlers of Catan isn't even exactly a good example of a "eurogame", because it has direct player conflict (in the guise of the robber).

A "eurogame", to use a general definition, has these general points:

1. No direct conflict between players (you can bid for resources and whatnot, but you can't play cards that screw over another player).
2. No elimination of players from the game (ie, you can't kill another guy. Games are usually scored by victory points)
3. "controllable chaos" is preferable to games that rely heavily on random chance; games without any random element can be common
4. Engine Building/Economic Engine building is key. Once the game gets going, it keeps going because someone has built a strong economic engine.

Basically, D&D will hopefully NEVER be this. As a board game, it's "Ameritrash", and the D&D board games out there are VERY Ameritrash. (that 'trash' part of "ameritash" is misleading, as is the "ameri" part. Risk, for example, was made by a frenchman, and it's still at least kind of ameritrash).

Ameritrash games, generally speaking:

1. Have direct player conflict, and MAY have venues for player elimination (ie, last man standing wins!)
2. Have lots of fiddly pieces, cards, abilities, etc.
3. Rely more on random chance (who gets dealt the best cards can win!)

For what it's worth, you can have rules-heavy Eurotrash games (Caverna), and rules-light Ameritrash games (various Risk versions out there, RoboRally). And most of the twelve "points" have nothing to do with the board game movement at all; they're just a general "what I'd like to see in 6e", which is a totally fair thing to talk about, albeit a bit early.

 

[Polyhedral_Columbia]

most of the twelve "points" have nothing to do with the board game movement at all; they're just a general "what I'd like to see in 6e", which is a totally fair thing to talk about, albeit a bit early.

You're right...most of the specifics of the points are not about Eurogames--that was a holdover from me cut-and-pasting it from the Eurogame conversation on another thread. However, the business model and overall aim is inspired by Catan: how can D&D be streamlined enough for a general audience? ...And yet still be truly a RPG...not a boardgame.

And, like Catan's expansion sets, how can D&D expansion products be crafted in a way so that they are supposed to stay in print for decades?

If I understood his tweets, Mearls was lamenting how TTRPG aficionados expect several brand-new 300-page books to be produced every year, and then more books, and more books, on and on. Which led to speculation on how to just turn D&D into a cooperative boardgame. But in my view, that would be the end of the TTRPG. If that's what people want, then might as well just ditch everything but the D&D Cooperative Boardgames. (Which are fine, but they're not TTRPGs!)

So I tried to sense out the middle way which is really better than what 5E is right now, and is also better than "boardgamizing" D&D. That's where I'm coming from. I feel pretty satisfied with the general thrust of these twelve points.

 

[Polyhedral_Columbia]

I can get on board with many of the calls in the original post, especially for core rules to be simple, robust, and setting-neutral.

Move complexity over to specific settings.

The part of D&D that I value is world-building.

It is useful to have a hub that can inform diverse settings.

Exactly.

The only call I object to is for forcing all players to accept all settings.

I wouldn't say "forcing." The Core D&D booklet could be used for any setting. All the Fantasy Excursions would have an appendix which gives detailed suggestions about placing it and adapting it to each of the main D&D fantasy worlds...so that a group could stay within a single world if they wished.

The World-Hopping Nexus "Core Setting" would be there to instill a new tradition in the next generation of players; so that more groups might be open to purchasing Excursions from other worlds besides their usual favorite (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Eberron).

But the Core Setting wouldn't be mandatory, anymore than Oerth was mandatory for 3E or Nerath for 4E. And the big Advanced book, chock full of worldbuilding guidelines, would come out before long.

You cant have a setting for a light romantic comedy while far realms is invading. It is important to keep separate settings separate.

The D&D Simpsons excursion into Springfield, or the D&D Fat Albert excursion to North Philly, wouldn't be purchased by groups who only want to play in one particular fantasy setting...that's fine.

Obviously, some players want to hop back-and-forth between Forgotten Realms and Gamma World, for example. However the decision to bridge these two settings creates a new setting that is unlike either setting alone.

That's true. However, a similar thing could've been said about the "forced" change in FR for 3E which connected all of the countries via teleportation gates; from an out-of-game perspective, this was done so that DMs and players wouldn't stay in the habit of only purchasing products which are set in the particular region of the Realms their adventuring party happens to reside. There were probably purists who were against that change, and who still don't include Gates in their campaigns. Fine. Yet Gates did become a widespread element of many FR campaigns...and likewise, a 6E world-hopping aspect could be instilled into the Realms setting.

Forgotten Realms has had cross-overs throughout its existence: there are officially gates between Mystara and Toril described in the back of the BD&D Gazetteers, the Kids from the D&D Cartoon Show have been spotted in the Realms, there's Elminister's visits to Modern Earth to meet with Ed Greenwood, and some of the pantheons came from Ancient Earth.* So there are Modern and Past elements in Forgotten Realms already. I don't know of a direct tie between FR and the SciFi settings off-hand...though if you count the Realms ties to Spelljammer there are connections (some of the Spelljammer races are actually from Star Frontiers).

*Even these other genres could fit in a traditional Realms campaign: "D&D Egyptian Adventures" and "D&D Babylonian Adventures" might each be an Excursion/Worldbook...and there would a Localization appendix telling how to use these in a Forgotten Realms campaign, either by involving some scheme from Mulhorand and Unther to reconnect with their ancient homelands on "D&D Earth", or by rebadging the map and proper names to actually take place in Mulhorand and Unther.

Not everyone who plays Forgotten Realms wants Gamma mutants and lasers. There is no need to force players to included unwanted settings. Let players play in a setting of their choosing.

Most "Excursions" would be medieval/high fantasy. Others would be experimental forays into other genres. There'd be no forcing. Some groups wouldn't purchase some Excursions.

 

[Polyhedral_Columbia]

A major part of the reason I can't abide many Eurogames for long, but am still quite enamored of D&D's potential: it's not usually about puzzle-solving to reach a goal, it's about a cycle action and reaction that keeps the game moving fluidly and nearly seamlessly from one game loop to another.

Honestly I'm not so into Eurogames or any boardgames myself. TTRPGs are so much more fun.

And I'm not making these suggestions just to make D&D more hoity-toity.

I just want to take some of the "streamlinedness" and modular business model of Eurogames to make a TTRPG even better.

 

[Polyhedral_Columbia]

...the vast bulk of the D&D rules are the character creation and level advancement options. Take those out, and the rules really could be a booklet; leave them in, and it's hard to see how it could get much shorter than Basic.

I'm opening up a can of worms here--and I realize the devil is in the details--but for 6E, I'd make the Core D&D game a whole "tier" of complexity simpler than 5E Basic Rules. Something *closer* (I say *closer*, not identical) to the 3E Chainmail Skrimish Game, or the 4E Cooperative Boardgames, or WotC's Monster Slayers kid's game, or Milton Bradley's HeroQuest. Yet still keeping character creation and 20 levels of advancement.

I would start with the 5E Basic booklet. But it can be made even more streamlined. For goodness sakes, the "Player's Rules" alone are 115 pages!

First off, cull the verbose descriptions: do we really need three paragraphs about choosing a PC's height and weight?!?

1970s-era OD&D was in several regards, even more streamlined than the 5E Basic Game. The spell lists were shorter. There were less kinds of armor. There was only one kind of coin. No skills. No feats. Class abilities? Few to none.

The rules of Risk and Monopoly have stayed the same for decades. Why does D&D necessarily have to become more and more granular?

Not that I'd return to the idiosyncracies such as THAC0, Name-Level Titles, and Alignment Languages. But I would take 5E Basic, OD&D, BECMI, 3E Chainmail, and the D&D Cooperative Boardgame, put them together into a crucible and melt them down into a tiny lump of golden D&D essence. That would be 6E Core D&D.

As for 6E Advanced D&D, I would make it possible for a range of complexities to be played at the same table. 5E is already doing it somewhat with how the default Basic builds of each class can be played alongside PCs which have been customized with feats and subclasses. Or how in 4E, an Essentials Fighter could be played at the same table as a PHB Fighter. But I'd go even further...something like how Monte Cook's kid's game "No Thank You, Evil!" will have three complexity tiers, for different ages--but which can be played at the same table.

It wouldn't have to be "perfectly" balanced. The Core D&D Fighter might be hardly more than a slightly more coherent version of the OD&D Fighting Man. While an Advanced D&D Fighter would have a full array of customized feats, bells and whistles. But it would be "legit" for someone to play a Core Fighter at the same table. (And a kid could sit at the same table, and use an even simpler "kid's version" of the Fighter.)

I realize that my vision is easier said than done, but I'd be glad for Core D&D to be even simpler and shorter.

 

[Polyhedral_Columbia]

Some interesting ideas there. I'm curious: what are your bona fides?

I played BECMI when I was a kid. I've played 3E a few times.
I came up with the name for the official Mystara website.
I used to interview game designers: http://www.pandius.com/shenry.html
I'm the author of an ingenious and unique hodgepodge of D&D offerings, which have mostly been either ignored or vehemently despised by the wider community: https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/
I have agreements with two fictive IPs (one cartoon show and one fantasy novel series) to write RPGs for them.

What authority/experience do you base these recommendations upon?

My own sense of what feels right. What I'm looking for.

I'm pretty skilled at feeling my way through systemic "yuckiness" in various fields of life (not just the state of an RPG product line or company), and then imagining what would soothe and wash away that yuckiness.

Thanks for your interest!