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OK, fine. Equal opportunity, through the mechanics of the game, to impact the story in ways that give them reasonable claim to being the protagonists of that story. Obviously, if someone shows up, and does nothing, they have no right to claim anything. I'm talking about good-faith efforts at...

Exactly. It's just plain degrading to know that another player could be playing more effectively (and more true to their character), but is deciding not to, to try to make you feel useful. This is why, as one who enjoys powergaming and optimization, I like 4E much more than 3.5, even though 3.5...

That's exactly what balance in a primarily player vs. environment game means. Fighter vs. Wizard is really about what capabilities each has in interacting with the world and achieving their goals. The could have radically different abilities and approaches, but have similar overall power in the...

My group does one-offs of different systems with pregen characters quite frequently, so we'll probably give the playtest a go as one of those games.

He might mean "this is how it could reasonably play out", or perhaps "expected to play out", not "this is how it will always play out". But, really, if we are getting a system where there are major tradeoffs between combat, exploration, and interaction, then shouldn't the Fighter, if he's as...

Yes, that's a good reason not to simply make the Fighter the best at fighting. There will be an intense pressure to just play a Fighter, and get as much non-combat stuff out of Backgrounds as possible, to get both the best fighting, and "good enough" non-combat. Since when dealing with DM fiat...

Big thumbs up on this one, with this caveat: I don't want any one class to be "the best at fighting", to the degree Mike suggests. No more than a minor edge to make up for a relative lack of non-combat stuff. But even then, I'd rather carve out a decent niche for non-combat capabilities for the...

This is not what balance means. Balance does not mean that everyone is the same. There can be wild differences between classes, that are well balanced. Ultimately, the important thing is that there be balance between players. And that can be summed up as: each player should have equal right to...

I think it's a huge mistake to try to balance game mechanics through pure roleplaying limitations. Balance mechanics with mechanics. So whether or not other alignments can have limiting creeds or not should be irrelevant.

First, Dragonborn aren't lizards. Second, I don't get the impression that the default fluff for Tieflings was very popular, so I could see that getting dropped (along with the changes to Gnomes). But anyway, why should they modulize them because you don't "need" them? Are you really not...

It's a good idea, but I'm not sure I like the terms. They imply a prevalence to those races within the game world, as opposed to options for the DM to choose from in populating the world. It suggests that those "rare" races are "supposed" to be in DnD, just in small quantities, so I'm not sure...

There's really two kinds of "difficulty" here: system mastery, and game design. Your "experienced" players are good enough at on-the-fly game design that a heavy system isn't required. Your "newer" players aren't good enough at on-the-fly game design, so require a heavy system, which means...

I think there's a problem with treating the "Core" of 5E as simply being the "basic" version of the game. I would expect that the basic version of the game would have just Race and Class, and would look a lot like early DnD. Then, Themes and Backgrounds would be modules. But the problem is...

Also, better be sure there's a big, new market to draw in. There's clearly a big market for big action movies, that wasn't necessarily the traditional Star Trek market. Turns out, there's not that much of a market for 4E's style of RPG, that wasn't already a part of the traditional DnD market.

Oh, I agree 100%. The issue for me is that I don't like how pre-4E DnD plays out. Been there, done that, wasn't for me. The flaws (as I see them) are too fundamental for me to accept something like those editions, but just evolved a bit. So for me, a new DnD either has to be an evolutionary...

I really dislike the idea of every Cleric of a given diety being exactly the same style, reflective of what their diety is. That would be like every religiously-devoted Christian being a carpenter, because Jesus was. I'd much rather dissociate character mechanics from Diety. Let the players...

My feeling on 5E is pretty much that it either needs to let me play an improved evolution of 4E, or it needs to provide a game that is as revolutionary compared to what came before as 4E was. I certainly don't expect that in core, but if there's a set of modules that can deliver either of those...

I think what might work well would be to have the classes be set up in the Core game with specific Themes and Backgrounds pre-chosen. So the Core Cleric class could look like the traditional D&D Cleric with armor and be good with a mace, because it would have a Theme for that stuff built in...

I've never doubted that using a grid will be an option. It's always been an option. Theater of the mind combat can always be represented using a grid. What I have concerns about is whether there will be rules that truly embrace grid-based combat, and uses it to produce a game with the kind of...

Strands of Fate has Social and Mental combat (Interaction), that works essentially like Physical combat. Donjon doesn't quite have Exploration as Combat, but the die rolling mechanics for Combat largely apply to Exploration as well. The caveat is that it is strongly based on narrative control...