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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5889478" data-attributes="member: 82106">If you say so <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=";)" /> Well, perhaps you were privy to those decisions, I don't know. Speaking for myself I wouldn't be able to say one way or another what people did or didn't think of. IMHO they were making it all up by the seat of their pants and few, if any, of these decisions were made with any deep understanding of their ultimate implications or an overarching plan. They tried things. Some things worked, some things didn't, other things later got tweaked, and the goals and preferences of people playing the game evolved. I suspect Dave, Gary, etc all had very little idea of where things would ultimately go. I don't find there is any compelling reason to stick to design decisions which may or may not have been good choices at the time and place they were made simply because they were made way back when. In every edition things are open to change and reinterpretation. If 4e did anything for us it certainly showed that a lot of things can evolve and many of those evolutions are likely to be improvements. Technology could be a slippery word here. In the car case it is clear, we're dealing with manufacturing and materials technology, etc. In the case of RPGs we're more dealing with 'techniques'. Certainly many RPG design techniques which are known today were not known to Gary and crew in 1974. We have a great deal more context and experience to draw upon today than they did almost 40 years ago. Well, this analogy too has its limits. Movies (etc) create a 'canon' of established fictional facts. D&D in and of itself doesn't. Each edition is free to be a re-imagining of the game to whatever extent its designers feel like. It need not adhere to past conventions simply for continuity.As for understanding things. What can I say? I've played D&D since basically the beginning. Is my understanding superior to anyone else's? Who knows? I don't claim it is, I simply make observations. They are based on almost as long a history of playing RPGs and specifically D&D as anyone can claim. I don't expect anyone to give my views any more credence than anyone else's. OTOH I think it is reasonable that I feel reasonably confident that they're informed opinions. I don't see any value in different XP progressions. I don't think that AD&D's dozens of different ability modifiers were particularly a good thing. I don't think pre-3e D&D's hodge-podge of mechanics was a particularly good use of design space. What else can I say? I've justified those statements to the extent they can be justified. I will advocate for more 'modern' mechanics in 5e and IMHO they will be a superior choice. We probably don't agree on those things, that's fine. I doubt either of us will change our minds. Not sure what that implies for 5e's chances, but it will be interesting to see.</blockquote>

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