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Message: <blockquote data-quote="M.L. Martin" data-source="post: 4557272" data-attributes="member: 4086">Forked from: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showpost.php?postid=4556786" target="_blank"> Predict the Future:  How will what we have today EVOLVE INTO 5th Edition? </a>   I think you have a point, but I've seen the "D&D as generic fantasy/toolkit" idea around enough, and from people who've worked closely with the game (such as Steven "Stan!" Brown, who was with TSR/WotC during the 90s and early 00s), to think that it also has some merit.   IMO, D&D has long had two strains within it competing for dominance: A Gygaxian/dungeon-crawling fantasy game, and a more general fantasy toolkit. This starts with OD&D, which was very much a toolkit, and shifts somewhat with the continued popularity of OD&D, BD&D (which had D&Dish assumptions but was still loose enough to kitbash) and AD&D 1E (which was very much "Gygax's D&D" but still had that kitbashing side).   I think a look at the kind of stuff going on in DRAGON and the general community during those years may be a good indicator of the game's schizophrenia. If the game was specific, why all the variants and adaptations instead of starting from scratch or a more amenable base? If the game was generic, why the popularity of setting-style details like the Outer Planar articles, and the terrible arguments about whether or not female dwarves had beards?   2E did much to tip the balance mightily towards the 'toolkit' side of things, IMO. From an ad in DRAGON #230 (June 1996):       Emphasis added. Things like the various settings and their rule variants (Al-Qadim introduced whole new spellcaster systems; Ravenloft almost completely rebuilt character creation with their Requiem rules for building undead PCs) further emphasized this.  3E?  We're schizophrenic again. I think they wanted to hold on to that flexibility, and the vast array of character options certainly helped on the character side. However, they also wanted to return to the 'core D&D experience' and standardize the game again, and they maintained this more than 2E did, with fewer settings and with rules options being more extensions of the core rules than alternatives to them. (Plus, there's the whole wiff of "one system/setting/campaign to rule them" I got from some of Dancey's wilder ravings. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) In addition, I think the increase in rigor and interrelation of the rules without an increase in transparency hurt the game's sense of customizability. A looser, more modular system like the pre-3E versions can be a bit more opaque and still be kitbashed--there's more 'give' to it. With 3E, there was the impression that if you didn't know what you were doing, it could blow up in your face--and there were several spots in the rules where they didn't really tell us enough of what was going on. The OGL and d20STL helped with this, true, but it wound up being a victim of its own success, and eventually, almost everyone either wound up keeping to the core or creating their own d20-based games.   4E? Too early to say. The mechanics kept 3E's rigor, but they've increased transparency, so that's a plus in the toolkit direction. The news that they intend to do more settings also swings it that way. However, the books so far have given a very specific 'D&D' feel, a la 1E and 3E, even if it's a different slant on the D&D feel.</blockquote>

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