‘Advanced’ Dungeons & Dragons

[Prakriti]

If you are playing 5E with feats and multiclassing, then you are already playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. There are at least three supported levels of complexity in 5E:

- Basic, using the Basic Rules
- Intermediate, using the Players Handbook
- Advanced, using the Players Handbook with Customization Options

If you want even greater complexity, then try adding supplements like Xanathar's Guide or the optional rules in the DMG into the mix.

 

[ccs]

Advanced D&D is a toolkit to customize world building and character building. This rule set continues to update to add new content and to errata of old content. The Advanced D&D core rules are always changing to respond to new desires and concerns of DMs and players.

So you envision selling me a new set of core books every 12-18 months? Me wasting a lot of printer ink printing & re-printing shifting rules? Or am I supposed to use an App (presumably one I have to pay to keep updating)?

Whatever you're envisioning? No thanks.
If I want to play AD&D I'll walk over to my shelf & pull out the real thing:




& sometimes:


Never had a problem modifying any of this stuff to suit our whims.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

D&D suffers from it's own legacy of multiple variants and popular settings developed in previous editions, most notably those developed and expanded during 2nd Edition days of TSR. If anything good can be said of it, it showed that different flavors of D&D were enjoyed greatly, as is evident by the ongoing cry for continued support from select sections of the masses. And what is so wrong with that? What basis do we have to say there is no room for what others want? Why shouldn't 5e stick to Forgotten Realms exclusively, since that is what seems to be the most popular consensus of what traditionally D&D should be? If the decision to focus on FR as the standard setting makes financial sense because the others are less popular, then why not release them for others to develop on their own? Is Adventures in Middle Earth fracturing the player base? Is Primal Thule? Hardly, but they are giving players different options without shaming them to "just do it yourself". I'm pretty sure people with the time, energy, and talent are already doing just that. We won't hear from them because a) they are the greater minority, b) they're busy working on it, and c) they can't share their work freely. (Also, d) not everyone playing the game is wasting time posting on public forums for the sake of having something to say.)

I say there is room for alternate D&D lines, but I would not expect WotC to handle it beyond a one-off supplement for their core product, not would I want them. They want to keep things consistent and uncluttered for organized play, and that makes sense. They would need a new team to focus on a different line, and frankly, it would not get the attention and support for the smaller, less profitable line suited for a smaller fan base. The demand is obviously there, but it is not big fish to them. So let someone else do what they are reluctant to do themselves. A 3rd party or independent Ebberon, or Dark Sun, or Mystara, etc is better than none at all.

 

[Coroc]

Normally you do not Need more than a dozen altered rules to e.g. implement another of These classic Settings.

If i were to do it some of These rules would be not even rules but restrictions on some classes/ races /combos /Equipment/ Magic. I did that for my first 5e campaign which was a classic Ravenloft Hyskosa hexad and it worked quite well. I did this for my current Greyhawk campaign and included lessons learned and it works even better. Means, my Players like it.

There are classic Settings where things get a bit difficult, especially Darksun. But using one of the two ideas for psionics and reflffing some races and restricting a bit, introducing appropriate inferior weapons (normald die) and steel weapons 1 die higher, Inferior armor (1 Point weaker than metal armor), Inferior stuff breaking on failing a DC 10 on a crit / critical miss, you could resolve almost anything right now.

But i recently changed my mind, instead of waiting for wizards to eventually publish something, i'd rather make up stuff myself when needed and do the conversion of classic stuff. Because: THAT guarantees that the settign will Keep ist flair and feel nad won't feel strange to me when i DM.

With FR it is so over the edge with its multiple worldshaker events that you cannot "damage" it any further (not meant purely negative), so that i do not care what they do with it so much, since if i were to dm in the realms i would base it on Grey box.

 

[Remathilis]

We know the 5e Dark Sun setting will happen. According to your personal preference, how should Dark Sun adventures play out?

Personally, a moderate-sized chapter in a multi-setting hardback with some basic info, conversions of races, rules for defiling, and the mystic class. Lather, rinse, repeat for the other main settings.

 

[Yaarel]

Personally, a moderate-sized chapter in a multi-setting hardback with some basic info, conversions of races, rules for defiling, and the mystic class. Lather, rinse, repeat for the other main settings.

Psionics of Dark Sun. You mention the mystic class, but also possible are psionic subclasses for other classes, and psionic feats: should these become part of the Forgotten Realms setting or become part of the ‘chapter’ on Dark Sun?

Half-dwarves, half-giants, and thri-kreen also become standard races in Forgotten Realms setting, so that the Dark Sun chapter can refer to them?

If I understand you correctly, there should be never be an official Dark Sun adventure? So fans of the Dark Sun setting need to homebrew their own adventures?

 

[Yaarel]

WotC can probably open up the DMs Guild to other settings, and organize it find adventures that are specific to a setting.

This makes 5e conversions of previous Dark Sun adventures available, and allows for new adventure arcs.

 

[Remathilis]

Psionics of Dark Sun. You mention the mystic class, but also possible are psionic subclasses for other classes, and psionic feats: should these become part of the Forgotten Realms setting or become part of the ‘chapter’ on Dark Sun?

Half-dwarves, half-giants, and thri-kreen also become standard races in Forgotten Realms setting, so that the Dark Sun chapter can refer to them?

If I understand you correctly, there should be never be an official Dark Sun adventure? So fans of the Dark Sun setting need to homebrew their own adventures?

Psionics isn't Dark Sun exclusive; it was a big part of Ravenloft and Eberron, and has been mentioned to exist on Greyhawk and Faerun. It absolutely belongs in a setting-neutral book. IIRC, thri-kreen were also in the normal MM in previous editions, and the half-giant was in the Expanded psionics handbook already, and were reskinned goliaths in 4th. So the only option you've said that is DS exclusive is muls, and they can be put in the chapter on DS in the multiverse book. (You can put PC thri-kreen in there too).

As for a module, I refer back to my original statement; coverage for a half-dozen different settings is a diminishing return. The more esoteric the setting the smaller the audience for it. So yes, I don't see a DS exclusive adventure, nor an Eberron, Dragonlance, or Greyhawk. Think of it as "taking the training wheels off".

 

[Keravath]

Setting source books only matter if you want to run a campaign or module in that setting.

If I was WOTC, I think the best approach would be the one they appear to already be using. Produce a book like Curse of Strahd or Tomb of Annihilation which packages a lot of details about a particular setting including geography, maps and significant NPCs along with a possible campaign for the setting. If there are particular race/class/items/magic not generally available in that setting then it would be spelled out in a chapter for that setting. Similarly, character options or other special rules mechanics that could apply for that setting could also be included in a chapter (for example although Tortles were added separately for Chult - I think they should have been in the ToA source book).

Of course, someone running their home game can choose to abide by those suggestions or not as they wish and pick and choose what they want from any source book.

By including setting content, a campaign, new/optional races and classes, special setting rules into one source book then WOTC creates a broader appeal for the book. Some people might want the new race/class options. Others might want the campaign setting background and others still might want the campaign itself. I think the multi-targeted content likely leads to a broader appeal for the source book and possibly better sales.

The biggest challenge to this is that as the number of books grows it can be harder for newer players to figure out what they should buy ... which is why WOTC should want to keep the single Player's Handbook as the onramp to most of their settings and games run either at home or through DDAL.

 

[Tony Vargas]

4e did different from the design proposal in the original post.

4e was ‘Advanced D&D’ in the sense of continually updating, but it lacked ‘Setting D&D’. It made the mistake of trying to combine all of the *unique* settings into one mash-up homogeneous supersetting.

First of all, D&D has always combined all settings into it's 'Multiverse' conceit. But, 4e's rules, constantly growing & being 'updated' as they were for the first two years, did work for all, what? 3-4 settings that got books in its short run.

5e's rules obviously won't work smoothly for some other-than-FR settings, but they're not even meant to work smoothly for any given campaign, they're /meant/ to have significant table rules and variants ('modules' whatever, I'm old, a module is a pre-packaged adventure, alternate rules are variants). When we get adventures or supplements for other settings ('when' - we already got CoS, Ravenloft isn't exactly 'in' FR), we'll get variants to go with them, probably choices of variants.

What 4e should have done is let the Forgotten Realms setting remain true to the Forgotten Realms setting.

I can't say I'd be broken up about any Apocalyptic shake-up of FR, including it's annihilation. ::shrug::

Psionics of Dark Sun. You mention the mystic class, but also possible are psionic subclasses for other classes, and psionic feats: should these become part of the Forgotten Realms setting or become part of the ‘chapter’ on Dark Sun?

Psionics has been in FR before, though, hasn't it?

Before Eberron, FR was the kitchen-sink setting.

And likewise, let Dark Sun and Eberron and so on be completely separate settings that had nothing to do with each other.

Eberron was a 'kitchen sink' setting (as of 3.5), everything in D&D had a place in it, so that's hardly screaming for it's special snowflakeness, but it does mean there's a lot of stuff in Eberron that's not in 5e, yet - and that Eberron wouldn't be a bad place to introduce stuff, either...

... the conceit of Dark Sun or Dragonlance or whatever being 'cut off' from other D&D settings was more about the fuzziness of the thinking back then, the simple idea that you go from one DM to another, you're playing in a different campaign, didn't really sink in for everyone, some players felt their old (utterly broken Monty Haul) character should be able to just Plane Shift into your campaign from whatever exercise in insanity birthed it. Likewise, too many D&Ders took "in the rule book" to mean "in the multiverse, and thus likely to pop up on any world," DMs could assert the right to dictate what was in their campaigns, and we often did - and so did some official settings, to retain thematic purity - you can't just say 'no clerics' when a Cleric can Gate into the setting from FR any time (actually, you can, you just felt like you needed an extra layer of explanation why not back in the day - you don't, you're the DM, you never did). I think you could safely add material for any number of settings without DMs feeling obliged to let it into their particular campaigns.