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And I dispute your claim that house rules were the result of complication. 80+% of the house rules I've come across playing 20th century D&D had the effect of adding complication rather than seeking to simplify the game structure. The very sparseness of formal rules in BECMI, 1e and early 2e led...

This is a pretty good working definition. Though, with feats/multi-classing/prestige class rules I think 3e and its variants no longer have distinct classes that are really distinct in the way they work. Your Mileage has clearly Varied.

The edition history of D&D is fairly adversarial at an organizational level. 2e was largely a result of the forced ouster of Gary Gygax and the perceived need of a product they wouldn't have to pay royalties on. Adkinson may have had a lot of love for D&D when he bought TSR for WoTC, but I'm not...

IIRC, in a thread on Dragonsfoot Frank Mentzer said you can double the levels on an AD&D module to determine the appropriate character levels in BECMI. I don't think there is a simple conversion factor between 1e/2e and 4e. I consider a 1st level 4e character to be about a 5th level AD&D...

I'd be very interested in hearing how your game goes. Saturday I am running the second session of a side trek using the 1e rules for my 4e players.

I won't use my Blind Squirrel Summoning I then :p.

I think Lan-"does that make 4e a new subdivision in downtown Rome"-efan neatly defined another data point, at least by implication. It doesn't have to say Dungeons & Dragons on the cover for a game to share the D&D soul.

This right here is as concise a summation as I have ever seen. I couldn't XP you again but this is really good.

Interesting point, I need to think about that a second. It does neatly seperate solo module play from, say, using the random tables in the 1e DMG to solo play a dungeon crawl. An activity that always seemed to be very thin gruel at best.

I basically agree with you on this, Mallus, so the rest of the post may seem needlessly nitpicky. If so I apologize in advance. It seems to me there is an important difference in what you describe as your groups experience with 4e and how HERO system works. HERO system is often called a...

I wondered when someone would point this out. I think the 4e designers took out the multi-class rules and prestige classes because they lose the archtypal nature of the class system in all other versions. It is a question that everyone will have to answer for themselves.

Fair enough. I disagree with Mercurius though, mechanics have too much impact on the experiential feel of a play session to be eliminated from this kind of discussion. We are talking about games here and games have rules. Rules affect play experience. I think it is a chimera to pursue a...

Absolutely, my last game as a player we lost 2 party members in a very brutal fight. They both had more than half of their surges left. As for the consummable, I may retract it. I wasn't reaching for HP in the consummable sense as much trying to exclude wound track, death spiral type systems...

In a discussion of the "soul", "feel", or "core" D&D experience, I doubt that I would exclude any of the direct clones. So OSRIC, C&C, Pathfinder, maybe others I haven't read. They wouldn't satisfy a legal definition of D&D, but their stated purpose is to replicate a D&D experience from a...

I guess I would classify Healing Surges as a recovery mechanic since they require some event to access them, even if its just a short rest after combat. It weeds a handful that use split vitality/endurance type structures; HERO, the old DragonQuest, SAGA, for example. Nagol: This might cause...

OK, I see where you are coming from there. I don't really see the package deals being a good analog to classes for a couple of reasons. First, there isn't really a progression built into most of them. Some have optional points that could be spent later but that isn't universal or definitive...

Nagol and @RC: We're in agreement here I think. Other FRPG's certainly use class the same way D&D does. They are "deeper in the onion" as it were. danny: I only partially agree with you re. HERO. You certainly can do it that way, but it is a limiting effect on the system and I think you are...

Nice thread idea. Some of my own thoughts: 1) Magic requires some innate talent for it. Mechanically, I'm fine with that being represented by a minimum attribute value (13 Int, say) or a specific point based Talent (various ways to define in HERO or GURPS). 2) Magic is hard. It requires...

Interesting, After days and a some heat from the flames the thread seems to be distilling down to something meaingful about the essence of D&D. Like some internet-born alchemical process. :) Now my engineering driven brain wants to define test cases and begin to peel the onion. Several...

Raven, you're using the same alphabet but I don't think you're talking the same language.