D&D General My "Perfect D&D" Would Include...

[Mercurius]

I don't see an option for: "Be very simple, with complex options that can easily be added or subtracted." You know, the mythical "complexity dial."

To me that's the holy grail of D&D. A game that you can play at varying levels of complexity, from at least "rules pretty lite" (e.g. Castles & Crusades or even lighter) to Pathfinder 1 levels of customization and complexity.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It would be work, but I think you could get balance, but at the cost of simplicity.

I think that's probably right, you'd definitely have to make a choice between the two though.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't see an option for: "Be very simple, with complex options that can easily be added or subtracted." You know, the mythical "complexity dial."

To me that's the holy grail of D&D. A game that you can play at varying levels of complexity, from at least "rules pretty lite" (e.g. Castles & Crusades or even lighter) to Pathfinder 1 levels of customization and complexity.

Not trying to be difficult, but has any RPG, in your opinion, really actually managed to pull off a system like that without it being ghastly?

Because I've seen systems try it since literally the 1990s (FUZION, for example), and it's just been one car crash after another in my eyes. Not that it couldn't be done, in theory maybe it could be.

 

[Reynard]

Not trying to be difficult, but has any RPG, in your opinion, really actually managed to pull off a system like that without it being ghastly?

Because I've seen systems try it since literally the 1990s (FUZION, for example), and it's just been one car crash after another in my eyes. Not that it couldn't be done, in theory maybe it could be.

Get your Interlock out of my Hero system!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think PF2 threaded the needle on that one myself. Of course, the simplicity comes in automation so maybe with an asterisk.

I think there's a double-asterisk myself because it not only requires automation to be that slick but also ties itself to a specific setting and is very much non-trivial to convert to another settings, because so much about race, culture and so on is hyperspecific to Golarion. And whilst it wasn't asked in the list, imho, if a game isn't generic enough to play multiple settings without the DM having to do a ton of work, maybe it's not quite D&D?

Which, er, unfortunately has made slightly sympathetic to the "4E isn't D&D" arguments despite my love for 4E, not that I agree fully, but the major changes to the implicit setting, which kind of mad a bit more of a pain to convert to other settings (and indeed caused the absolute foolishness that was the Spellplague and so on - really they should have glossed over it like 3E did and acted like it was always that way).

 

[Reynard]

I think there's a double-asterisk myself because it not only requires automation to be that slick but also ties itself to a specific setting and is very much non-trivial to convert to another settings, because so much about race, culture and so on is hyperspecific to Golarion. And whilst it wasn't asked in the list, imho, if a game isn't generic enough to play multiple settings without the DM having to do a ton of work, maybe it's not quite D&D?

What heritage mechanics do you feel are too setting specific to transfer easily?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Get your Interlock out of my Hero system!

Champions: New Millennium was basically the Hindenburg disaster for my gaming group.

In the sense that FUZION, like hydrogen was identified as the cause, and no-one was ever willing to even contemplate playing a FUZION-based RPG ever again. Also like the Hindenburg disaster it wasn't really hydrogen/FUZION's fault, it was the other parts of the airship being basically thermite, or in this case, the other parts of the airship being the very worst aspects of HERO.

It was so bad because we were so hyped. We loved Interlock. We'd play an absolute ton of Cyberpunk 2020. We wanted to play a superhero game that was a bit more crunchy than some but not at full-HERO levels. All the players spent hours coming up with great characters, really carefully calculating them out. Everyone had some kind of dreadful-but-cool-at-the-time sort of late '90s superhero. We had:

1) A guy with darkness powers who was "never going back to jail". That was the concept.

2) Some kind of flying devil guy, but like, for violent justice not evil!

3) A guy with a miniature alien fusion reactor inside him, which gave him energy blasts, super-strength, super-speed, and so on. Think like edgy '90s Superman. Of course he had extreme-sports style sunglasses, why do you ask?

4) I wanna say "Young Iron Man with attitude". This was the least memorable of the characters. All I remember is power armour and that they had a 'tude.

I had written up a "short" (as I repeatedly told them) adventure, which end with a rumble with like five villains (this seemed to be a fair fight and indeed it was). We just really wanted to see how it all worked, and expected it to take an hour or two tops. I'd done some adventures/scenarios with 1-2 players and seemed to work good.

We got to the rumble in about 20 minutes, seemed fine. I will spare you the details but well over 5 hours later, 3 minutes of combat (game time) had elapsed, and the fight was finally over.

It was universally agreed that we would never play that system again.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What heritage mechanics do you feel are too setting specific to transfer easily?

It's not the mechanics so much, it's the descriptions and stuff leading to specific mechanics - I'd have to look to remind myself, but there were quite a few when I last checked a few months back. I've got PF2 on my tablet and will probably read it again in a few days though.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It would be work, but I think you could get balance, but at the cost of simplicity.

~dons mask and hefts huge knife~

Sacrifices must be made. Come here, simplicity.

 

[theCourier]

Basically everything that Dungeon Crawl Classics already has. Plus, Digimon references