D&D (2024) Let's talk about the Rules Glossary in the PHB

Interviews with Dancey suggest he considered it and did not care (that's why the d20 License existed) but he was also out long before Pathfinder made it a real thing. In either case, I think you are right about DMsGuild being similar in the support way but providing WotC more control. I legitimately wonder who came up with DMsGuild. It was a smart move and many other companies have followed suit.
Dancey didn't anticipate a Pathfinder because it never occurred to him that WotC would ever make more than incremental changes in a new edition, i.e., that 4e would be as close to 3.5 as 3.5 was to 3e, or as close as 5.24 is to 5.14. Level Up and Tales of the Valiant demonstrate what he expected: even someone who republished essentially the same game, with some unique quirks, would be unable to compete with the brand name power of official D&D. Of course, WotC then and went with a completely different system altogether incompatible with the one licensed by the OGL...

As for who created the DM's Guild, I believe it was the brainchild of Chris Lindsay, one-time D&D Product Manager (he got hit in the Great Layoffs of 2023).

As for the Rules Glossary, my take is that the PHB has been fundamentally redesigned for two things: a) to get a new player familiar with and playing the game without having to read the whole book, and b) act better as a table reference. In the GenCon retrospective, Mike Mearls made the very good point that the biggest group of players is not those who have just the PHB, it's the players who have nothing, and borrow a PHB from someone when they arrive to play.

As a veteran player, I can appreciate the design intent, even though it is not necessarily what I need or want.
 

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Yeah, I don't think they expected that they would make Pathfinder or Tales of the Valiant.

Anyway, not going to rehash that argument.
Probably not.

But those helped as friendly reminders for WotC that they have to actually produce a rules system that people want.

Pathfinder showed that producing a system too far frkm its roots won't work. And TotV showed WotC that they better keep the system open.
 

As for the Rules Glossary, my take is that the PHB has been fundamentally redesigned for two things: a) to get a new player familiar with and playing the game without having to read the whole book, and b) act better as a table reference. In the GenCon retrospective, Mike Mearls made the very good point that the biggest group of players is not those who have just the PHB, it's the players who have nothing, and borrow a PHB from someone when they arrive to play.
I am still sad that Mearls had to be left out of the redesign.

He seems to be the one who has the best feeling for what the game should be and how it is actually played.

Even though I like the 2024 rules, I think some important overhauls were left out.
 

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