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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1618014" data-attributes="member: 151">BWA-HA-HA-HA-HAA!      Best Post EVAR!      LOL!      ....      Wait...was he serious, there?       (coughs)  Oh.  Ahem.    Seriously, the intent of the rules was to facilitate a game that recreated the heroic fantasy tales that the game's authors enjoyed. Playing battles that brought to mind the tales of Tolkien, Moorcock, Leiber, Vance and others, using a codified set of rules. D&D is an evolution from a set of miniatures combat rules. Removing the combat information from any edition of the game would remove more than half of it's material, at least, possibly far more than that (not just the combat chapters, but combat-based spells, statistics on monsters, details on weapons, armor and equipment and on and on). And unless Gary was referring to Tunnels and Trolls, and placed it in the AD&D book by mistake, I think he's confused as to what constitutes complicated. I mean, have you looked at all the tables, charts and crazy timing calculations? It boggled me as a kid, and it still does, to some extent.  I also happen to think that a bunch of systems that did the kind of detailed combt that Gary dislikes came out almost in direct response to D&D's system, and did it well.  GURPS comes to mind, for one.      D&D isn't JUST a combat game, but if Zeb expected me to swallow the notion that D&D isn't about Combat...well, he's got another think coming. The individual emphasis on combat may vary wildly, but the main task of the game under Basic and AD&D was to resolve combat, and facilitate a larger environment to give excuses to set up combat. That it could grow to be so much more is a testament to the power of the ideas involved, and the delivery of it.    That aside, what the original intent of D&D was is not relevant to me. I'm not the same person that I was 25 years ago....why should my game be the same? 25 years ago, we had characters who'd go into an inn and ask an NPC what his class and level were, and what his alignment was. <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=";)" />  The previous designers and I have different tastes in gaming, and different opinions of what works best in an RPG.    I respect folks like EGG and Zeb for their contributions...but that doesn't mean that I agree with them on the topic of how to play D&D.    And as for the 'abstract' versus 'detailed' issue: 'making it up as you go along' is fun sometimes, and not fun other times. That detailed combat Zeb describes is nothing more than a story hung onto a die roll. Unless you have a consistent mechanic to fall back on, it's really just DM fiat by another name. If that's your playstyle, then more power to you. I prefer having the mechanics at my back. There was no way to accurately guess how that combat would play out in 2e...in 3e, we have mechanics for all of it, and ways to tell who would be best at actually accomplishing it. Both approaches are valid, but I think 3e is much more elegant and consistent, particularly in the portability of knowledge.</blockquote>

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