Tony Vargas
Legend
One pattern I think is almost inevitable with games like D&D (that is, games that are expanded by adding to lists of things - spells, skills, races, classes, items etc) is that complexity increases as the game is added to. So, at the start of each edition, the game is simpler and grows in complexity as it's added to. Thus, one of the good (or bad) things about a new ed is almost always that it's 'simpler' or 'less complex'Personally I think it's time for a pull back to previous levels of complexity, but keeping the streamlining 3e and 4e introduced. ...I hated the 100 splat books with additional powers, feats and races....
(or 'dumbed down').
So that 'pulling back' is almost inevitable.
OTOH, if you compare the editions at the start of their runs, say initial PH/DMG/MM-only, I think you'll also find that the basic structural complexity of the game has also been decreasing. There were fewer disparate sub-systems with each successive edition, for instance. In that sense of 'pulling back' - pulling back whole editions, rather than pulling back to the natural starting point of a new edition - could actually bring more complexity.
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