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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 6103934" data-attributes="member: 6688858">I dodged that bullet thankfully. From what I have heard from people  who've seen the draft it seems to be an interesting formal example of  the megadungeon, but the content is missing the creative/gonzo spark  that the original megadungeons actually had when all of the standard  D&D monsters/tropes were new and original. If you want to capture  the feel of the original dungeons, you have to go more gonzo than you  think, because the content should be as new and unfamiliar now as it was  then--so goes the argument. I'm sympathetic to it but I'm still not  sure where my preferences are on the vanilla--gonzo spectrum--certainly pretty far  away from dungeon "naturalism", but I still like things to have a theme of  some sort and make sense together, and I'm also into  representing/rediscovering old tropes to give them new life instead of  just throwing them out.That's my hope for DDN basic as well. Although I don't  necessarily associate basic mode with less sophistication. I'm less  inclined to look at is as "dumbed down" but rather minimalist and  focused, and in that sense more sophisticated, or sophisticated in a  different way. Like haiku. It's interesting to me to think about what  sort of emotional terrain you can actually canvas just doing a basic  dungeon-crawl. It's larger than you would think. I like the idea of  seeing what can be done with a very limited form. That appeals to me,  restriction fosters creativity. Regarding one-true-wayist OSR people,  yes they are annoying. I can see how it would be annoying for someone  who actually was playing OD&D in the 70s to be lectured on what it  was like back then, I get that. I think they take the hobby too  seriously, just as people who trash dungeon-crawls and consider  themselves to be above that take it too seriously. It's fine to have  specific tastes of course but it's usually pretty easy to tell when  there's an elitist element to it.I think you are seriously overstating how niche this is--we're not talking about speed factors or other old school minutia, we're talking about the general playstyle of story-light sandbox dungeon hack & slash. Most newbies who have experience with videogames will know what this is--it's Diablo and the Elder Scrolls games, compared to 4e's videogame analogue of a tactical JRPG. Pathfinder's new Thornkeep megadungeon seems to be self-consciously "old school", at least to an extent. I don't know if they've  done products like that in the past or not. Also D&D is definitely  not WotC's flagship game (MtG), and I think soon to not even be the  flagship expression of the D&D brand. I think (hope!) we may be  entering an era where the D&D boardgames/videogames/novels will keep the boat afloat and basically sponsor the RPG to be as  weird and inexpensive as it is appropriate for it to be. That would be  great. I think D&D is one of those things that's just not very  profitable outside of a fad situation and trying to squeeze blood from  the stone makes things worse. Keep a high quality, low splat,  accessible, low pagecount game in print, to add legitimacy to the other  D&D brand offerings, and if you win the lottery and the RPG becomes a  fad again, bonus.They're weird for sure, but it's odd that they would be both too regressive and too out there, isn't it? Maybe not, there are sort of two sides--the  dust worshippers/traditionalists and the indie/experimental types. The  first side can at times be regressive, and the latter too avant garde.  However, I think the cream skimmed off the top of both sides would be a  great contribution to the 5e development process--a little more respect  for older editions (e.g. really try not to use the same word to mean  something different from what it meant in an earlier edition), and a  little more experimentation in terms of semi-random adventure design and  fluff/story (e.g. Vornheim, Tome of Adventure Design).</blockquote>

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