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If I don't want to play it, then I won't care if it's popular or not. Give it a try? Sure, as long as I can try it before spending money on it. I won't support it or get behind it unless I like it, though. I believe they're all those things, but they're also people who want to bring home a...

Agreed on the spells. As far as races, themes, and backgrounds go, I think they should be modules, not part of the base game. Generally speaking, it's a lot easier to add stuff like that to a simple base than it is to remove them from a more complex game.

Judging from the playtest, I wouldn't buy 5e. Between racial features, class features, feats, backgrounds, themes, etc., there are way too many fiddly bonuses and rule exceptions built into each character. Keep the core simple, please.

IIRC, 1e gives XP for magical and non-magical treasure, while BECMI only gives XP for non-magical treasure.

Appendix N contains more than just sword-and-sorcery. There's horror, science fiction, and high fantasy mixed in there as well.

The idea of a character willing to pledge their life and soul to an otherworldly being in exchange for power is very appendix N. If the term "cleric" seems too D&D, then call them "cultists" or "warlocks" instead.

I like the art on the cover of the re-release of the Dungeon! boardgame. A dragon in a dungeon... I think it would be perfect for the cover of 5e:

This isn't a standard railroad adventure. The caves are a setting. If you need them, a purpose and objective take less than 5 minutes to come up with. The module even gives you several examples. Better yet, the players may decide what they want their objective to be. The plot is determined...

I don't buy this argument. The D&D brand always had value, even if TSR as a company did not. Some company would have bought D&D. It just happened to be WotC, for better or worse. There was never any chance of D&D disappearing.

The dark nature of dungeons is one of the difficulties of that environment. Torches require a free hand to hold and can be blown out by a gust of wind. The wizard's light cantrip makes darkness a non-issue. It's like having an automatic "warmth" ability in arctic areas or "cooling" ability...

I have a problem with the at-will spellcasting in general beyond turning the wizard into a magic missile machine-gun. Detect Magic: There's no reason not to have this active all the time. Items, places, and people that are under a spell will always be obvious. Light: Never a need for...

Your summary is spot-on. 5e is a simplified 3e with some 4e blended in. There's really isn't much OSR here other than making the tactical map optional. Judging from the character sheets, it looks like you gain a new feat, which is essentially a rule exception, every level. Add that to...

One way to look at it is this: The cleric is the vessel through which a deity projects his or her power into the world. A wise, experienced cleric is capable of handling more of the deity's power. An inexperienced cleric would be damaged or destroyed if a deity pushed too much of his or her...

The problem with ability checks as written is that random factor is a wide range (20 points) and is linearly distributed. The ability factor is a smaller range (9 points) and is distributed on the bell curve (assuming classic D&D roll for ability scores). Because of this, the random factor of...

I was thinking a little more about the randomness of ability checks today. If a 3d6 roll were used instead of the standard die roll, that would go a long way towards alleviating the problem of excessive randomness.

Regardless of the example, the random element in the check mechanic definitely outweighs the ability element. When a character with an ability score of 3 has roughly a 1-in-4 chance of outperforming a character with an ability score of 18, the randomness of the check mechanic seems to be too high.

My first impression is that there is some good, some bad, and some ugly (funky stuff that will likely get tweaked in playtesting). The thing that jumped out at me the most was the check mechanic. It seems that the random factor far outweighs the character's natural ability. It looks like a...

No. Nostalgia has little to do with it. - In movies, the original is often times better than the remake. - In music, a band's early albums are usually better and more influential than the later ones. - In television, the seasons before "jumping the shark" are better then the ones after...

A 12th level 1e MU has 11d4+1 hp (+/- any modifier for constitution). A magic missile cast by a 1st level MU does 1d4+1 points of damage. In 1e, a 12th level MU is in no danger of dying from a single magic missile cast by a 1st level MU (unless, of course, he was severely beaten up ahead of...

If this is even remotely true, then the solution is simple: Create a rival fantasy RPG that's based on Redwall, Last Airbender, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Harry Potter rather than Elric, Frodo, and Conan. The new generation will flock to your RPG and abandon D&D. If your theory is...