Jeff Carlsen
Adventurer
That's an odd approach. Whether or not something is a version of D&D is based on whether people have heard of it?
13th Age, to me, is very clearly D&D. Numenera, from what I've heard of it, is very much not.
I should have broke those into separate thoughts. I don't think that 13th Age and Numenera aren't D&D because nobody has heard of them. I think that they're derivative of D&D, and also that no one has heard of them.
Pathfinder is the only game without the D&D logo that I see as a version of D&D, because it was billed as such. It's a direct revision of the 3.5 SRD with the explicit intent to be compatible with D&D 3.5. It's a robust series of third party D&D supplements.
But that's where I draw the line, because to some degree, all RPGs are D&D derivatives. 13th Age, as on example, is simply one step too far removed. It's not a judgement of the game. My last comment is meant to say that those games aren't different enough from D&D to draw the support of people looking for something different, but are too different to ever be adopted as an alternative to D&D.