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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6221554" data-attributes="member: 17106">It's really a misconception about the notion of evolution. The concept of evolution is that traits that lead to reproductive success will slowly accumulate over generations, while traits that disfavor it will slowly become less prevalent. Those traits are only better or worse on one particular rubric.The same is true in business. Traits of products that lead to customer sales and repeat business are favored, but that is only "better" in terms of sales. Practically speaking, this results in a sort of "lowest common denominator" effect; wherein products are designed to appeal to the largest number of people, rather than being the best for any one individual.4e seems like an odd exception to me because of the OGL. Rather than continuing to slowly grow and change, the game was forced into a radical shift to try and get away from the OGL because someone decided it wasn't working well enough. Because they were trying to get away from the OGL, backwards compatibility was actively avoided. The lessons learned from almost a decade of 3e play were not only ignored but actively neglected. I think the actual game mechanics that emerged were fairly incidental and that they're a result of trying to reboot (rather than evolve) the business model.For me to spend money on it, it would have to offer something distinct and new. Whether the market as a whole would be better off not innovating I don't know.Yes. D&D isn't a zero sum game; it's open-ended. Each character you create is an idea that you've spent, and it leads you to want to create a new one. Eventually, you'll run out of distinctive options and want something new.Perhaps more importantly, whatever flaws are present in the game will become more apparent the more you play itNot automatically, but sometimes. I doubt that every individual revision was better in every way, but I think there have been some improvements.I think the game evolved modestly over the length of AD&D (through all kinds of experimentation, some good, some bad). I think it evolved tremendously when WotC took over. I think it hasn't much since. I attribute the inconsistency behind the scenes to inconsistent personnel behind the scenes. The combination of designers that worked on 3e had a really magical alchemy going. They had great goals that were distinct from what had been done before but reverent to the game: make the game simulate better, make it simpler and more consistent, and make a system generic enough to be used for non-D&D settings. If all of them still worked there, then the system could have continued to grow in this direction.</blockquote>

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