D&D General Which Sacred Cow Will Be The Last To Slaughter?

[Peter BOSCO'S]

YES! Finally, my dream* of having Richard Nixon DM my games will become a reality!

*As in, I fall asleep and this is what I see. .....don't judge. I can feel it. I feel the judging. Stop it.

I'm not looking forward to the cut & paste substitution of "hippy" for "orc" in D&D Nixon version.

 

[David Howery]

from a simple 'easy to remove from the rules system', alignment seems like the easiest to toss. It doesn't really have much weight in the system, and could be abandoned rather easily...

 

[Scott Christian]

Ability scores are the last to go. AI will take out the DM, and in the meantime, there are paid DMs, which are the same thing. Alignment is almost gone. Classes will be mix and match abilities. Levels and experience will drift to point buy. Races will be homogenized. But ability scores - nope, for nostalgia's sake, they will stay the same.

Now where are the books. I'm ready to give this a whirl.

 

[CleverNickName]

Now where are the books. I'm ready to give this a whirl.

There are dozens of RPGs out there that don't have alignment, DMs, classes, levels, races, and so forth. They don't have to have "Dungeons & Dragons" printed on the cover to be playable. If you try them out, let us know what you think!

 

[Faolyn]

Well, we could either make Luck a skill, or use skill checks in place of save throws.

"The dragon exhales, and the air ignites around you! Make a Luck check!"
"The dragon exhales, and the air ignites around you! Make an Acrobatics check!"

Either way, I still don't see a need for a separate Save Throw mechanic. (There's nothing wrong with having the save throw mechanic; it just seems like it would be a little closer to the chopping block than, say, Hit Points.)

Luck + Acrobatics, perhaps. Depending on how Luck is determined.

Of course, the 5e saves are almost like that. You're basically just really good (or lucky!) at using a couple of particular stats to get away from certain types of danger. Basically, they're just called saves out of tradition.

 

[Scott Christian]

There are dozens of RPGs out there that don't have alignment, DMs, classes, levels, races, and so forth. They don't have to have "Dungeons & Dragons" printed on the cover to be playable. If you try them out, let us know what you think!

I know, and I do try them. I was just making a joke.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Getting rid of the DM would change the game the most--someone has to prepare and run it. The others have all been dispensed with in various other RPGs; I think there are a few indie RPGs with no game master (I think InSpectres?) but it's not a popular choice.

I think someday there will be strong enough support for playing without a GM that people will argue that they've got rid of the DM. There are a lot of ways to do, or not do, the prep, and just as many ways to determine results of actions.

Zero to Hero. Which is a little different than just levels. Lots of games without levels improve PCs as they go.

LAter you change to "progression", but I don't know how that can possibly be meaningfully different from levels. I can certainly see a dnd in the future that either starts out as heroes and never quite gets to demi-god tier, or a game where you never really graduate from "zero" to "hero".


My own pick is Class. I really do think dnd requires classes to maintain any sort of identity. Not only that, there will always be plenty of non dnd classless games. DnD is the fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric, paladin, druid, bard, ranger, monk, warlock, etc. You can remove or add to the list, but if there aren't archetypical class packages that imply a certain approach and style for a specific character, it ain't dnd.

 

[Reynard]

Ability scores are the last to go. AI will take out the DM, and in the meantime, there are paid DMs, which are the same thing.

Wait, what?

 

[Hex08]

I think the DM will be the last thing to go, at least for me. I like being a player but enjoy being the DM far more and if that were taken away from me, I would probably stop playing.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Ability Scores. For the simple fact that, without them, nothing else 'fits'...the exception being XP, but only for 3.x onward (prior, higher Ability Scores granted a bonus to XP gained). As time goes on, they COULD slowly change all the other 'mechanics' listed, bit by bit...and once those are all changed, THEN you might not need an Ability Score number to have any influence in the game.

I was tempted to say DM, but I thought... "That's like removing the 'board' from a board game, or 'cards' from a card game.... are they really board/card games if you do that"? IMNSHO, no, they aren't. They are now something different. Same with removing the DM from an RPG.

^_^

Paul L. Ming