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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8907982" data-attributes="member: 6988941">So I had already more-or-less decided, for reasons of a deteriorating opinion of Wizards of the Coast, combined with a general disappointment with the direction (or in some ways lack of a clear direction) of OneD&D, that I was basically in the market for a 5e clone more to my liking than WotC's upcoming official 5e clone (ie: OneD&D), and might even create my own personal cloned heartbreaker. The silver lining I saw in all this OGL related self-immolation of a brand was that with all the people turning away from official products and all the 3rd party publishers reevaluating their relationship with D&D, there was going to be a great blossoming of similar-to-5e games in the near future. The AMAZING PLATINUM LINING of the whole thing, from my perspective, is that today, presumably in hopes of mollifying the angry mob, WotC made the core rules (basically everything you find in the SRD excluding the specific races, classes, spells, monsters, backgrounds, and feats) available on a creative commons license. Anyone can use it, however they want, with the sole requirement being appropriate attribution.Now while the value of that to most people who would want to use the OGL to make products for WotC's D&D is questionable, the value for people who just want to make their own damned version of sort-of-5e is incalculable. Sure they've mostly made available "rules content" that a would-be cloner could have arguably used anyway, but that cloner would have been working in fear of some unknowable threshold of similarity at which WotC might come calling and a court might come ruling in their favor (if our cloner somehow had the funds and gumption to fight it all the way to a ruling, likely with their product under injunction). Now that same, would-be cloner can just freely adopt the core mechanics of the system wholesale with no doubt.This also means that other cloners can do the same (give or take whatever tweaks they actually want to make) and their products would thus (depending on how many such tweaks they make) be broadly compatible with each others products, as well as official D&D content of the 5e/OneD&D/Probably6e era. Heck the day is not far off that someone could reasonably be playing "5e" with classes, races, monsters, and spells each made by different publishers for separate or semi-separate 5e-derivative games (probably already possible, but a much easier thing to achieve in 6 months or a year I'm betting).What's so great about the 5e core rules and why not just make up your own? Well, aside from the potential product intercompatibility mentioned above, some of us do actually kind of like them, practically everybody in the hobby already knows them, most seem to tolerate them, so many people came into the hobby in the 5e era that even if its not their favorite it'll always be a nostalgic touchstone for a lot of players, and they are a decent compromise between different playstyles.So, preamble ambled through, the question I put to those of you who, like me, are excited by the inevitable coming waves and waves of clones, what would you actually want in a 5e clone? What would draw you to one over another? What original sins of 5e would you want solved? If you have your own possible clone project in mind, what's your pitch for it?Personally I think my first priority, as the most easily achievable as well as something that fills an under-served niche, is a low magic, possibly humans only clone. Certainly such a project saves a lot of time on designing spells and races (and possibly monsters). Of course I'd have to come up with actual class mechanics ideas, rather then just giving everyone spells.</blockquote>

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