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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9633326" data-attributes="member: 6790260">As with many other "simple, obvious" changes (like "replace ability scores with direct modifiers"), one of the problems with doing this is that even if it only affects 20% of the userbase, that 20% is part of your diehard support.Any activity that depends on a community to function (one key way that TTRPGs do in fact resemble MMORPGs--or perhaps MMOs resemble TTRPGs?) tends to produce this kind of situation. A dense core nucleus of deeply enfranchised fans, and a large but diffuse cloud of slightly-engaged fans. Remove or weaken the nucleus, and the cloud disperses, often leading to a vicious cycle. But neglect the diffuse cloud, and the nucleus (which depends on contributions from the cloud) slowly bleeds out.Pure-mods is almost certainly never going to be popular with enfranchised D&D fans--but the savings from switching to them is, honestly, pretty minor compared to the cost. Hence, this is one of those areas where you can easily give a sop to old-school fans with relatively minor cost. By comparison, moving back to the 1e/2e save categories ("wands", "death" etc.) would be a massive shift and almost certainly wouldn't be well-received by casual fans, even if some old-school fans would be over the moon about it.This is, in part, what I mean by still putting like 15% of your "idea generating" budget toward old-school-leaning stuff. There's an awful lot of "tradition" in D&D that is...well. It's paper-thin already. So it's not hard to make a paper-thin rendition thereof without really paying that much of a cost in terms of clunk/cruft/bloat.Strategic decisions on this topic, finding the places with the biggest impact to old-school fans while still making meaningful change, would be one of the most important parts of designing a book that needs to appeal to an enormous audience.</blockquote>

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