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The only "D&D" worth a jot is the idea of the game; the lifestyle brand is meaningless. Even if WotC were to fold tomorrow and Hasbro were to shelve the IP indefinitely, D&D would live on in every retro-clone, Pathfinder, Castles & Crusades, etc.

This. I play BXCMI, and so I use 3d6 in order, but I also acknowledge that 3d6 in order is a method that works best when the impact of scores on gameplay is minimal. That's why I don't use ability checks at all, I limit modifiers to no more than ±1 (after the fashion of Swords & Wizardry White...

I might buy this if it weren't for the fact that every time I've followed one of these discovered forgotten paths, it has consistently led to improving my games across the board. That this was part of the early design-intent of D&D is well-documented and uncontroversial, even if it didn't...

Well that's certainly a take. For the sake of argument: if I make a world with no arcane magic, then there simply won't be any wizard PCs or NPCs in that world. So the diegetic relevance of classes to worldbuilding is at least demonstrably nonzero.

Not really, no. Deciding what classes exist in the setting is a pretty fundamental part of creating a campaign.

What's good for the goose is always good for the gander. A monster might very well have unusual powers that PCs never will, but if an NPC has a class and levels, then it plays by the same rules as the PCs. The NPC might be able to do something extraordinary via an unusual spell or a rare magical...

Just get Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy RPG or a D&D Rules Cyclopedia. Much less confusing.

In my Europe-analog steampunk setting, not!France is chiefly populated by gnomes, and it's ruled by l'Empereur Gnapoleon. (In the Middle Ages, it was unified under the great Gnome King Charlemin.)

The overmoderation seems to have succeeded in razing the place to a barren and uniform flatland where no interesting discussion ever happens.

I don't play 5e, so that's meaningless to me. That holds for WotCisms in general. When I see the word "sorcerer," I think of Conan villains or Elric. When I see the word "warlock," I think of goofy Bewitched and Sabrina characters, or that one horror movie from the 80s with the time-traveling...

Precisely why I didn't want to give any context when I first posted the poll. But by now, I think I've gathered enough data by asking the question blind. Sorcerer is ever-so-slightly better than wizard, and that's all I was asking, and that's all I needed to know. So thanks!

Pretty much. To lend a bit more context to the project, I'm reworking a game with a very simple class system. Four base classes, each of which can promote into either of two sub-classes. So I want to keep the names very archetypical; I don't want to use any silly-sounding nounverber compounds at...

In The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), Mombi the witch calls herself a "wizardess" because it would be illegal for her to call herself a witch — only a ruler of one of the four countries of Oz is allowed to hold the title, and Mombi used to be the Wicked Witch of the North, until she was defeated...

I'm working on a revision of one of my old game designs, and EN World has in the past been pretty great about helping me name character classes. But this one might prove a conundrum: when to comes to naming the archetypical warrior-mage, which term conjures the stronger image of a sword-swinging...

A combination of basic practicality (all the rulebooks and modules I use already have it written that way) and the fact that I just genuinely find it easier that the numbers involved get smaller (and therefore easier to add and compare quickly) as the campaign itself rises in level and grows...

I love Necco Wafers and Peanut Butter Kisses. (I haven't been able to find the latter at all this year though. Not even at the local old-timey candy shops.) Good & Plenty is just about the only candy I'd sooner throw away than risk inflicting on anyone else.

I'd guess that ascending AC and not using THAC0 have become sacred to mainstream D&D players. I ignore that.

Overall, this looks to me like a good idea and an elegant mechanic. Do this, and also base initiative on Int instead of Dex, and suddenly the stats are looking quite a bit more balanced.

Languages matter a lot in my campaigns. I'm aiming for verisimilitude, not convenience.

I've had experiences that felt uncanny at the time, but nothing I could ever consider supernatural. Every single time I've ever experienced that deeply uncanny sensation, it's always been in conjunction with a dangerous situation where I've feared for my life — full-on heart-pounding...