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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5027719" data-attributes="member: 59082">Sounds good to me! Actually, I have a theory that this sounds good to most D&D players, that the vast majority actually want a simplified core system with tons of optional customizations ("modularity"). For some reason WotC is hesitant to go this route (actually, the reason is clear but I'll leave it unspoken for now).It is interesting that 75% of the poll voters want LESS complexity than 3E, when this forum is populated by DMs and serious-to-hardcore types; so if we want something less complex than 3E, what must the casual gamers think?That said, I would differentiate between "complications" and "complexity." The latter is not the problem and what people don't want, the former is. Complications come from rules, mechanics, crunch; complexity arises within game play, it is situational and what we all love. Complexity is not antithetical to simplicity, whereas complications are. This was the great step forward that 3E made: the realization and enactment of the new paradigm: core simplicity can "hold" greater complexity. Of course then they started complicating things.Yes, very well put, although I don't think OD&D or BECMI (or AD&D) is the answer. I think a simplified post-3E D&D is. In other words, I don't want to lose the core d20 mechanic; the early editions allowed greater flexibility of imagination by not railroading folks into choosing options ala a video game, yet they had proverbial feet of clay because they didn't have the strong spinal cord that the core mechanic provides.In other words, modular 5ed D&D: D&D with a very simple "Core" game (akin to True 20 or even simpler) but with endless "Advanced" options. So everyone would play "Core" 5ed D&D, but each playing group or even campaign would include different "Advanced" options. (This is touched upon by different folks in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/269198-good-bad-ugly-about-every-edition-d-d.html" target="_blank">this thread</a>).Yes, truly. This is what I was trying to get at in the thread about what 2E had but 3E and 4E have lost, or more specifically what I feel like the D&D Insider is in danger of snuffing out. It is almost because 3E and 4E offer so many options that they fill up the "imaginative space" and limit fluidity and flexibility and ad hoc play. Rather than giving us a good cookbook with recipes to make our own meals, 4E has been pre-packaging TV dinners. You can't really cook your own meals from scratch with Character Builder; what you can do is choose which meat to combine with which vegetable to combine with which grain. So if you have meal lists of:Meat - chicken, beef, lamb, pork, turkey, tofu, seitanGrain - rice, barley, millet, cous cous, quinoaVeggies - corn, broccoli, peas, beans, kale, spinachIt is easy to think, "Wow! that's 7 x 5 x 6 = 210 possible combinations!" And yes, 210 is a lot, but it is a lot less than infinite. This paradigm is, as Ariosto points out, taken directly from video games, which give you the 210 options and more. But if it is 210 thousand options, or 210 million...it is still limited, still finite. The imagination is not.So the big question, in my mind, and the one we should all be asking whether or not you agree with anything I have just said, is:WHAT SORT OF D&D GAME PROVIDES THE BEST FRAMEWORK FOR THE FREE PLAY OF IMAGINATION?A trend within some indy games is that you define your character by various descriptors that you, the player, come up, rather than choose from lists. So you make up your own feats, so to speak, you color your powers....all you "need" Is a basic system, a skeletal structure, to hang that on. This is why I wanted guidelines, a rubric if you will, on how to design the game rather than more and more pre-designed and pre-formulated rules options. More TV dinners ("Now with wild rice!"). Again, sure, let's see them in supplements, but one of the early statements of 4E is that "Everything is core", which encourages people to buy everything. So we're back to economics dictating creativity when it should be the other way around.Yes, this is the great joy of no only being a gamer but being a human. Coming up with new stuff. Let's keep on doing it.</blockquote>

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