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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rogueattorney" data-source="post: 5726870" data-attributes="member: 17551">This point was raised by me and others when Mearls had a similar column awhile back.  One of the big issues with complexity dials or layers or whatever you want to call it is presentation.If you bury your 90 pages of lowest level complexity rules in 450 pages of rule books filled with expansions and options, you're not going to attract the people who want low levels of complexity.  Speaking for someone who is definitely on the Basic D&D-like complexity side of things, I could take a big black magic marker to my 3.5e PHB and DMG easily enough if that's what I really wanted to do.  But, whether it's me with my magic marker, or the author labeling "optional" on 80% of the book, I'm still buying way more rules than I ever intend on using and wading through way more rule book than I ever want to read.I imagine the other side of the spectrum will have the reverse problem if the main rule book is the bare minimum to get the game played.  They don't want to buy multiple products to get the minimum amount of game they want to play and they don't want to be required to have the pre-campaign discussion figuring out which half dozen supplements are being used.I think the ideal spot for what Mearls and now Cook are proposing would probably be some middle ground between the OD&D-B/X D&D 90-ish page minimum and the 600-ish pages of core rules you saw with 3e.  Would a single core rule book edition roughly formatted like the 1991 Rules Cyclopedia be enough for those who are looking for more complexity?  Speaking from the other side of the spectrum, when using that rulebook, I ignored roughly half the rules and eventually moved to the more stripped down 1981 B/X rules.  As much cache as the RC now has among a lot of D&D'ers, it completely bombed when it first came out 20 year ago.  Would a 5e roughly modeled off of it hit the sweet spot, or would it be the compromise that makes nobody happy?</blockquote>

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