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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elrith" data-source="post: 3306570" data-attributes="member: 2103">HmmInteresting concept, but:1 D&D has no where the learning curve of other games. Lots of  moderately succesful games like Ars Magica and Shadowrun are more complicated, while D&D dominates the market, in part because character creation and development is linear and choice, not point-based. The trick is balance. If the game is too simple, you master it too quick and lose interest, too hard and you never start. As the PHB is all a player needs (and all any DM should expect them to read, along with basic setting stuff) the learning curve is low, but long.2 Boxed sets cost more to produce. This is why WOTC and 99% of companies no longer do them, or if they do, its a rare event.3 There have been repeated attempts to make an accessible or easier D&D, back in the late eighties and through the early ninties, TSR repeated released Basic D&D in various forms, including boxed sets containing maps, minis (or were they tokens, its been over a decade) on through the comprehensive products that built off of the re-released game and boxes (i.e. the Rules Cyclopedia). These were great ideas, but you'll notice the trend didn't hold. That's part of why WOTC dropped the A in AD&D...as history has progressed, AD&D became the only D&D people _bought_. All the reaction against "feat bloat" or the proliferation of PrCs and so on is more a symptom of the way in which WOTC has cast its products as official and their use of F.A.Q. and rules updates to counteract the effect that the original spirit of RPs had: DMs were free to do what they wished. We all tinker and we all use house rules. The hundreds of feats out there doesn't trouble me much because I, as an individual, stopped buy the majority of 3.5 books, especially the Complete series, because they offer little game advice or new direction. The reason White Wolf did so well in the early 90s (and brought in new blood to the hobby without competing with TSR for players) and why Green Ronin, Mongoose and Malhavoc have (or did in the case of Monte's imprint, sadly) stabalized in the wake of the inevitable d20 bust, is becuase these companies offer new directions for players. Well that was long winded...</blockquote>

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