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I've got a couple of conceptualizations that I'd like to see changed, right off the bat: Divine vs Arcane magic distinction. Get rid of it -- it's arbitrary in the first place and becomes more meaningless and meaningless over time. The only real driving "logic" behind it is that "wizards...

I've done this, not really for D&D but earlier, when creating a set of attribute scores for a computer/console RPG design. My own set had (mostly independently-arrived-at) analogues to what are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence in D&D (different names for some), but I ended up...

I think that's a pretty arrogant and elitist attitude to take. Of course a good design takes into account the needs of its intended users. However, the intended users of a D&D utility program are not necessarily computer experts who are familiar with the ins and outs of the open source...

Fable is definitely worth $10. I had a great time with the original, pre-Lost Chapters version on the Xbox. It's certainly not the longest game ever made, but reports of its shortness are dramatically over-stated. I didn't do every single side quest in the game, but I did a lot of exploring...

I still haven't seen much evidence of this trend in practice, only in discussions on Internet message boards. My run has been about 20 years now, since I was 12, and we pretty much quit running more than one character per player at about the age of 14. Had a few groups of 6 or more players in...

Sure, it's part of the game, but I think it's better when the players can attribute severe consequences to mistakes on their part, rather than just some random event. Because it leads to behaviour where every freaking door in the dungeon takes several minutes to open, nobody walks anywhere...

You're making quite the assumption there. Where is this mindset and sense of entitlement actually being displayed? It's not something that I or any of my friends (who all play a lot more regularly than I do) have noticed. My experiences are certainly not taken to be representative of the...

That's one (rather stereotypical) way of explaining it. What if the Dwarf-Elf relationship didn't work that way in my world? Why weren't the Dwarves able to craft their own enchanted items before meeting the Elves? It doesn't satisfy my curiousity.

I don't see how failing to use the WBL guidelines stop the other parts of the game system from working properly. If you're giving out less treasure than what the WBL guidelines suggest, then you know that a monster of a particular CR is most likely going to provide a greater challenge than its...

Yeah, I think it might have been me who threw the word "elitist" into the (recent) discussion. Sorry. :p

Not only that, but in 1e (or 2e), the lightly-armoured rapier-wielding dilletante wasn't really a viable character option. There wasn't really any way for a high-dex Fighter wearing lighter or no armour and wielding a lighter weapon to actually be effective in combat compared to a...

I've very rarely ever seen henchmen used in any edition or flavour of (A)D&D. I've never cared for them as a DM, because they're essentially just disposable PCs. Nodwick isn't purely the result of one author's imagination. :p As a player, it's just more bookkeeping, and the heroic legends --...

This is one of my (relatively few) complaints about 3e. Although I have come to realize that the DM doesn't really need to specify every NPC and opponent in that level of detail if his obsessive-compulsiveness doesn't drive him to do it. Some of the stuff in the DMG2 helps quite a bit in...

I'm not saying that the dice shouldn't be able to make major changes. I just don't like setups where the players have no reasonable way of anticipating and/or avoiding what is about to happen, something springs on them, the player or DM rolls a die, and due to an unlucky roll, the PC dies...

Yeah, because Dave Arneson had some claim to the Dungeons & Dragons name. :p When I first started with my old Basic Set, I just assumed that Advanced was some step beyond Basic and Expert. It wasn't that clear to me until later that it was an entirely seperate game, it just seemed like...

That's more a side effect of allowing more freedom in multi-classing. A big part of it is simply in how class abilities are allocated per level, and 3.5 saw some changes here. If a class (like the 3e Ranger) has a lot of abilities granted at 1st level, and your current class doesn't offer...

Yeah, I agree with you. I like that the Ranger and Bard, for example, actually have a handful of spells unique to their lists. The PHB2 Beguiler makes a nice substitute for the 1e Illusionist, and is perhaps a better favoured class for the Gnome then is the Bard. The Wizard spell list in 3.x...

Exactly. I hadn't really read much fantasy before getting into D&D. I had both AD&D licensed games for my Intellivision when I was about 9 or 10. I remembered seeing the cartoon on TV when I'd spend the weekend at my cousin's house (we only got two channels out in the sticks where I lived at...

IIRC, the legendary Dwarven magic resistance was basically a saving throw bonus. I don't think they actually had a Magic Resistance percentage as defined by the rules. And neither race had as much magic resistance as Drow, which strangely enough, were allowed to be magic-users. Dragons had...

Err.. how am I comparing apples and oranges? The post I was referring to stated "mechanically identical." So I was addressing mechanical customization. I think that's BS that 1e's lack of mechanical customization more strongly encouraged unique personality development. There have been...