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In my game, death and dying rules work on the same basis for pretty much every living creature.

Were I a player and found the spell in the looted spellbook worked differently than the same spell we'd just had cast at us, I'd raise one hell of a stink. You've got to do that write-up process before the spell ever enters play, be it from an opposition NPC casting it or the PCs finding it in...

IMO the PC rules are for PC-playable species whether they have a player attached or not. A PC Elf is first and foremost an Elf, and the PC rules for Elves thus inform us what makes Elves in general tick in the setting. Monsters, because they're not playable as PCs and thus don't have to adhere...

And? That's a very strong feature, not a bug. So the PCs' foes are never intended (or allowed?) to be another party of adventurers?

Even at the lowest levels the differences in rules-style-tone-intent between a 1e-like game and a 4e-5e-like game are big enough that they likely can't be reconciled under one system. And in most aspects those differences only get wider as levels advance.

Early in the process one of the questions I specifically asked was whether I'd be able to play characters from different previous editions side-by-side in 5e (then called 'Next') and was told that this was indeed the hope. And then....... ----- poof -----

WotC could still do this and without a whole lot of work on their part. All they need to do is track what's on D&DBeyond and each month find a well-written interesting module. Then, make an offer to that module's author of X-amount of money to sell the rights to that module to WotC, who then...

I still maintain, however, that it's possible to get the fanbase to settle for two official versions: very broadly a 1-2e-like (more gritty, harder, war, more sim-based, more detailed) and a 4-5e like (less gritty, easier, sport, more game-based, streamlined).

Well, then, I have to seriously question the quality of the comb they were using. All I remember from the Next process was an initial promise of being able to play in the style of (or, if read differently, even compatible with!) any prior edition - the whole "modularity" piece - which then went...

Yes. Otherwise, why bother? You don't have to have that rule; there's nearly always ways to tweak or re-do it such that it does make in-fiction sense, and if that can't be done then it's probably a bad rule to begin with (which playability might demand that you accept anyway, but that doesn't...

My main objection to minions is that in many cases they're out of play too quickly, e.g. when the minion is a big creature (a Giant, a Dragon, etc.) that would otherwise have lots of hit points, or when the minion is fighting something other than the high-powered PCs and yet still goes down on...

Not for the first time, I wish this site had a facepalm emoji as a 'like' option.

I agree with this, to a point. I think there needs to be some vague macro-level balance, but trying to fine-tune it much further runs aground very quickly. Probably depends on what we'd each define as extraneous as I suspect those definitions might differ somewhat. :) But in principle, you're...

To the bolded: that's a connection I have a hard time seeing no matter how hard I squint. DCCRPG is, if anything, somewhere between a 1e-adjacent and a 1e-parody.

Reading this makes me feel far too old, given my current campaign started about 4 months before 4e was released. Thing is, in order to see what might be changed in current 5e to make it more palatable we first need to look at the prior editions - all of 'em - to see what made them unpalatable...

I see "UA" and think Unearthed Arcana, which probably isn't what it means here. So what is it here?

A measure of success-failure might be how many people are still playing it today as their go-to regular game. I'd expect, if success had been roughly equal across the board, the player-base numbers for each prior edition to tail off as the editions get older, thus 4e would still have more...

Any idea how extensive and-or diverse in playstyles-experience-preferences this "private playtest network" is? Or is it just the designers at their own gaming tables?

And yet that houserule document, if widely distributed, can still help inform others about that hobbyist's ideas and what worked and what didn't. One can then take those ideas, apply and test them oneself, and maybe learn from them. And therefore... ...I still see little if any functional...

Anyone can roll 1000 on 10d% when it comes to a skill or talent, and then be lucky again by ending up in an environment where that skill or talent can be realized. Michaelangelo and Michael Phelps did. That doesn't deny that every other person ever born at least had the inherent chance of...