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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5028788" data-attributes="member: 59082">Ariosto, I think you are completely missing where I am coming from and polarizing into an old school vs. new school debate, which is not my intention (or interest), mainly because I'm not really invested one way or the other in terms of trying to prove that one is better than the other.And yeah, I agree that it is a double standard; actually, I was pointing this out by emphasizing the fact that 3E and 4E effectively smother an elegant and simply game engine with tons of stuff (modifiers, conditions, etc).Yes, I agree that in practice d20 (3E and 4E) are more complicated, but in theory they shouldn't be. And that is what I'm dabbling with: designing a variant of D&D that combines the best elements of each edition (according to me, but based upon the input of others).I love using the entire array of dice--actually, it is a bit of a turn off when an RPG doesn't use the full spectrum (which is why I like Savage Worlds).But it seems that you are going a bit far afield in your apologetics of pre-3E D&D. As I said, I am not interested in a "this edition vs. that edition" back and forth by deeply entrenched parties; what I am interested (as evidence by the "Good, Bad, and Ugly" thread I started) is a discussion of what the strengths and weaknesses of the different editions are. A lot of this is subjective (heck, arguably all of it is). And we can go through all of the usual postmodern rigamarole of "IMHO" ad infinitum. Blah blah, moving on...What I am getting at is that, in this context, I see the base d20 mechanic as "superior" to the heapist approach of pre-d20 D&D in terms of mechanics and adaptibility and applicability. I just don't think that it has come to fruition yet and has gotten lost in the video game mentality of choosing between pre-configured packets of information rather than creating your own packets of information (and the game providing the tools to do so, or at least guidelines).Yes, agreed. This is why I differentiated between "complicated" and "complex." The game should be complex but not complicated. Simplicity and complexity are like yin and yang; they are complementary but not antithetical. Complications and simplicity are antithetical because complications arise when complexity goes sour (just as stupidity is the byproduct of simplicity gone bad).</blockquote>

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