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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 6375816" data-attributes="member: 6778044">I know there are a bunch more responses after this one that I haven't read yet, but...You are also making a point that you may not be intending. There are and have been all sorts of other RPG rules systems out there. And while there are a lot of reasons for it, D&D is still the one that people play the most. Perhaps, at least in part, that's a reflection of the rules.Having DM'd for over 30 years, I can say that I absolutely love the 5th Ed rules. They have a distinct feel of the 1st Ed game precisely because of the lean nature of the rules. But they are much better written and consistent than the 1st Ed. I also find a lot of this discussion interesting, because in all that time I can't really remember any real problem regarding the rules. Oh, we've absolutely had discussions, but in the end we've found what works for us. And for most of that time I allowed pretty much any rule, class, etc. from any published material (of which I had 90% on hand). I ended up essentially compiling the rules we had into our own rulebook. And we've already done some of that with the 5th Ed. Maybe it's because to me the purpose of the game is to write a collective story where the players are the heroes. The campaign is built (mostly on the fly) based on the players and their characters actions. If they are designing a character for a specific purpose, then I take that into account. My daughter is playing now, and she loves dinosaurs. She wants a pet dinosaur. I said we can do better, you can be a druid and you can become a dinosaur. The rules state that as a druid of the Circle of the Moon she can choose any CR 1 beast that she's seen. I don't have stats for a deinonychus right now, but the lion or tiger stats work just fine. She just looks different.Organized play has been more (and less) organized over the years. But the RPGA was always pretty good about detailing what rules, classes, etc. were allowed, and which weren't. I can say this - I DM'd the same campaign from the 1st Ed through the release of the 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, and into the 4th Ed. There were plenty of reasons why it finally petered out at that point, but part of it was that none of us were particularly excited about the new rules. We could have stuck with 3.5, but it basically just signaled a good place to end it. I ran a few things in the 4th Ed but certainly not anything long term.We loved the 3rd Ed rules because it basically made the 2nd Ed rules more coherent and less contradictory. It fixed some of the balance issues, and allowed us all sort of choices and specific bonuses and penalties for just about everything. But after you've done that quite a bit, you realize that a simplified mechanic to do the same thing without all the math is a beautiful thing. As soon as I started going through the first release of D&D Next I was hooked again. It was everything I that I loved about the game. It was exciting again. So once the 5th Edition was officially coming out I went looking for some people to play with. I haven't purchased many 4th Ed supplements, but I'm back in 'buy everything' mode. And based on the sales figures that people have been reporting, the 5th Ed appears to be doing very well. Again, perhaps it says something about the rules.I do wonder what the mix of people who prefer certain types of rulesets might be. Are the folks that like things to be more codified those that started playing in later editions? Particularly the 3rd and 4th? Are they folks like me those that started pre AD&D and 1st Ed?One of the other things I like about a more open rules system are these types of discussions altogether. The early years of Dragon magazine were a lot of articles about rules interpretations and expansions. It got particularly interesting when Ed Greenwood showed up because there was a very distinct difference between the Gygax 'you must' approach and the Greenwood 'why not? approach. Obviously we lean very heavily in the 'why not?' side of things.Back in the 1st and 2nd Editions this was also very evident in the game worlds themselves. By the release of the 3rd Ed it seemed like they decided that having essentially different games for each world wasn't a good thing, and they started to homogenize everything. The 4th Ed was the most extreme example of this 'the core rules must apply equally to all worlds' approach. And the game worlds have suffered for it. Of course, we still just picked what we liked and dropped what we didn't. But it meant that we ended up a lot farther from the 4th Ed rules than we had with any other approach, and really ended up with a hybrid.In the end, I do see the rules as a common ground to support the cooperative storytelling. Clarity is important, but I don't think that means that all of that clarity has to come from the rule books. It should also come from the group playing the game. That doesn't mean I'm right, or that I necessarily oppose your position. It just means I'm very happy with the direction Wizards has taken with this edition.Randy</blockquote>

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