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Punish also meant punish. As in, cripple PCs abilities and limit their options. Ravenloft weakened turn undead and most spells to make sure you can't get an advantage against the main antagonists. Planescape would restrict cleric spellcasting based on how many planes you were removed from your...

No its not. D&D is a blend of sword & sorcery, high fantasy, mythology and smear of horror. Its not generic fantasy. It quite frankly sucks out for anything that isn't its particular blend of fantasy. The best you can do is overlay a skin emphasizing one aspect of it (which is what settings like...

And unless you view Shadowrun as a "toolkit" to customize, you're pretty much stuck with urban fantasy cyberpunk. Where's my hard sci-fi planetary exploration setting for Shadowrun?

We knew about the starter set, Dragon Delves and the FR duology. Eberron was announced later with a secret October book they finally announced was Stranger Things in September.

Frontiers of Eberron has some interesting death rules you may want to review or incorporate Life and Death What sort of story do you want to tell? The Western Frontier can be a harsh and unforgiving place. Is this a tale where a hero can die in the blink of an eye, or is it a story where the...

DMs who feel their players are too powerful seek to increase the challenge of the game in two ways: harder monsters and fights and curtailing PC power via restrictions. Neither is bad in a void, but DMs can easily fall victim to either creating encounters that are death traps for anything but...

DMs too (unless you were including them as players). There is a lot to be said about the arms race between players and DMs in the interest of "challenge".

Ironically, so has 5e. I can't think of a year I didn't buy anything. Be it a supplement book to add new options (SCAG, Volo, etc) or an AP I mined or ran.

Absolutely this. Take the berserker. You got a powerful boon (a third attack) at a tremendous cost (exhaustion). There was a risk/reward element to much of the barbarian kit, but none so much than that. But the vast majority of players did not jive with that and wanted more consistent and...

Its not just 1 to 1, but there is ZERO correlation between NPCs and PCs, an issue they have made painfully clear as 5e monster designed progressed through Monsters of the Multiverse and the new Monster Manual. Hit dice are an exceptionally bad way to measure PC stats because NPC HD does not...

And I want a unicorn with a shiny saddle. But I've never seen a system that can handle that. The mythical Lego RPG that can be used to build any genre, any complexity and any power level is just that, mythical. Or GURPs. But I don't want my character sheets prepared by H R Block.

I think the disconnect remains that somehow we want characters who are both good but not great. A good example IMHO is the 2014 ranger. It's a great example of a fiction first class with skills for survival, combat and magic but people always dogged on it for being weak. If the problem was PC...

This has always been my problem with setting like Dark Sun: it tries so hard to emulate the genre it paints you into the corner as far as expansion goes. I'd rather sacrifice fidelity to genre emulation and have a wider selection of options than I would banning and homebrewing the game so much...

That's my point: if you have to make a pretty big rewrite/homebrew, then I don't feel the game is particularly suited for the genre. For example, if you have to ban or change half the classes that use magic, then the game a poor fit. Especially since that has knock-on effects to species, feats...

I kinda feel using 2014 and then wanting to fix it is pointless. You have 2024, Level Up and Tales of the Valiant that all fixed the biggest issues.

I only used it as an example because it's the current topic. You can easily make that argument about horror, or noir, or wuxia, etc. D&D's take on a genre like horror compared to a bespoke horror game is like comparing authentic Mexican food to Taco Bell. D&D can borrow the names and ideas, but...

Optional rules, like piety or dark gifts, I can understand. When you are rewriting whole chunks of the PHB, you are creating a new 5e d20 compatible game, not playing D&D anymore. I feel a lot of people mistake the two and feel as long as you are still rolling a d20, it's D&D. Whereas I feel the...

Me: D&D should really only support one setting. Enworld: Noooo! D&D's strength is that it can handle many different genres and settings! Me: oh? How do you make a S&S setting for D&D? Enworld: well, first you create a bunch of house rules that change the player options, combat and magic system...

Part of the problem 4e had with roles was trying to use the classic MMO roles (tank, DPS, healer) and place them on the classic D&D roles (fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue). They don't align right. First, there are only three MMO roles so a fourth had to be invented (controller) that felt ill...

For some DMs personal pet project, go nuts. For an Official D&D setting published by Wizards of the Coast? Hard no. Personally, I think D&D is a terrible system for anything that isn't Dungeons and Dragons with a pinch of genre tropes sprinkled on top. But that's just me. I'd rather have a...