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Can you expand on that?

It might explain the Lost Golden Age in most fantasy settings' distant past. No one would quite understand that using all that magic to keep everyone alive and fed wouldn't keep the next, even bigger generation alive and fed, etc., until they'd created a huge but fragile society that needed...

Magically reducing infant mortality is a recipe for short-term good feelings followed by long-term misery. Unless economic productivity improves, and continues to improve, as quickly as the population explodes, the quasi-medieval society will become even more miserable than before. (If...

What was so great about early D&D was not the rules; it was the lack of rules. In fact, the rules generally got in the way. If you had a decent DM, he was constantly making judgment calls and rolling a die to suggest whether something better or worse than "normal" should happen. Obviously 5E...

Thanks for the link, Rune, but sliding the scale of damage output or hit point gain goes beyond a little change, I'd say, because it has so many knock-on effects. (Surprise! Magic missile is the most powerful spell in the game now!) I love all those ideas, and I'd love for the new DM's Guide...

When I first saw the 3E Fighter class, I thought it would make a good model for other classes; just switch out what other special abilities go on the "bonus feat" list -- and which skills go on the skill list, which save is best, etc. But I was surprised the Paladin and Barbarian weren't just...

Exactly. And should the metaphysical nature of a quasi-medieval universe share progressive 21st-century values with the modern college kids playing it? Maybe, maybe not. I think it would make for an excellent campaign to have each side call itself Good and its enemies Evil, and to have...

I agree completely that encounter design plays a vital role, but it's far from independent of how the game models combat. You can play out the "same" encounter in OD&D, 3E, 4E, GURPS Fantasy, and Fantasy Hero and get totally different results. Imagine a game where most attacks hit and do...

I see nothing wrong with playing Olympians and their servants, as long as the game doesn't present a super-powerful 1st-level Olympian as an equal choice against a very mortal 1st-level servant. Also, we have to remember that D&D's notion of "powerful" isn't typical or universal. For instance...

Fictional heroes tend to be super-competent at spotting danger; it's on the short-list of things almost all fictional heroes are good at. (They're also good at hitting things and not getting hit.) I don't think it's a problem that RPG heroes generally spot things. Yes, "realistic" perception...

Or, in a non-modern setting, is that even Good?

Level 20 is god level though, isn't it? If the game had simply presented levels 1 through 10, would it have been a better game? (Or just levels 1 through 6, as the E6 folks suggest?)

Perhaps we should examine how we want the model to handle a few representative cases. How do we want a fight between N orcs or castle guards and one hero (mid-level Fighter)? One superhero (high-level Fighter)? Hero vs. superhero? Do we want a competent but unimportant character to have the...

Or hit points need to expand their role beyond soaking up physical "damage" -- because players tend not to like pure save-or-die situations. If you look at how D&D evolved, you can see the tension between hit points serving the useful role of keeping high-level -- and hard-earned -- characters...

Presumably someone who got out of the way -- or otherwise "saved" against a threat -- also got most of the stuff on their body to a safe place, too. I wouldn't mind an exact roll to imply that your barely got away, and something got singed (or whatever).

Rolling a natural 20 really isn't that rare. It only feels too unlikely to matter when the resulting damage is too small to matter and you'll need multiple natural 20s to make a difference. Compare needing a natural 20 in order to do 1d4 damage with needing a natural 20 to decapitate your...

Wait, what?

For most of D&D's audience, anything resembling typical attitudes from the past is also breaking strong modern taboos -- and I suspect few modern players could play along with casual racism, sexism, nationalism, etc. without overreacting either against it or (nervously and "humorously") for it...

The Wizard's attack bonus and hit points go up with level, so a high-level Wizard is a better fighter than a low-level Fighter.

If a natural 20 always hits, you already have an effective cap.