Shardstone
Hero
Here's what I mean--
The core, mainline 1st edition game should be streamlined and simplified, as is happening in 1D&D. By making things easier to understand, a little bit more fluid, and a little bit more organized, they encourage both third party developers, their own freelancers, and homebrewing DMs to build on top of their game easier. A lower level of power, as seen in a lot of the nerfs, alongside bite-sized class features means you can bolt on your own subsystems with less worry. Ad hoc balancing will be easier and, most importantly, feature overload won't overwhelm new players who use the 1D&D skeleton.
I think this is the absolute best move WotC could make. They update their game so it can streamline easier, be easier on digital services, and also be more customizable for people who were going to hack it anyway. There are misses here and there, but I think many people are saying that rules are changing just to change. I don't see that. I see rules getting easier to both use and manipulate, which has been my biggest gripe with 5E -- how hard it is to manipulate without deep study.
I guess most people disagree online, given the huge atmosphere of displeasure I run into everywhere, but I find it really hard to understand that displeasure. 1D&D to me looks like an ease of access upgrade in every possible way. At a certain point, if what they're forecasting continues, using 1D&D to fork games ala the OSR will be way easier than it was with 5E (which many people did successfully regardless). In other words, this promotes diversity and blanches the rules so that you can have even more "out there" forks and more easily create your own classes for your games.
What are others seeing that I'm not?
The core, mainline 1st edition game should be streamlined and simplified, as is happening in 1D&D. By making things easier to understand, a little bit more fluid, and a little bit more organized, they encourage both third party developers, their own freelancers, and homebrewing DMs to build on top of their game easier. A lower level of power, as seen in a lot of the nerfs, alongside bite-sized class features means you can bolt on your own subsystems with less worry. Ad hoc balancing will be easier and, most importantly, feature overload won't overwhelm new players who use the 1D&D skeleton.
I think this is the absolute best move WotC could make. They update their game so it can streamline easier, be easier on digital services, and also be more customizable for people who were going to hack it anyway. There are misses here and there, but I think many people are saying that rules are changing just to change. I don't see that. I see rules getting easier to both use and manipulate, which has been my biggest gripe with 5E -- how hard it is to manipulate without deep study.
I guess most people disagree online, given the huge atmosphere of displeasure I run into everywhere, but I find it really hard to understand that displeasure. 1D&D to me looks like an ease of access upgrade in every possible way. At a certain point, if what they're forecasting continues, using 1D&D to fork games ala the OSR will be way easier than it was with 5E (which many people did successfully regardless). In other words, this promotes diversity and blanches the rules so that you can have even more "out there" forks and more easily create your own classes for your games.
What are others seeing that I'm not?
