D&D General Matt Colville: "50 years later we're still arguing about what D&D even is!"

[TwoSix]

Sure, sure.

I'm mostly just thinking in terms of the magic system. Now that you mention it, LotFP also added a dash of additional randomness to that, just through the Summon spell, which both made summoning unpredictable and dangerous, but also had a bunch of absolutely bonkers miscast possibilities, in keeping with the desired cosmic horror theme. LotFP did have a number of other mechanical tweaks and innovations (like slot based encumbrance, as I recall). Though the main one in magic was removing spells which made magic flashy or allowed it to easily circumvent problems like curses, death, or detecting evil people easily.

Definitely.

I think it was pretty obvious to early experimenters that if you wanted to change the stories the games could tell, the first and easiest place to innovate was the magic system.

 

[Hussar]

Funny thing is, in earlier D&D, it was the Psionics system that could blow up badly in your face. I remember the look on player's faces when a psionic power accidentally caused a balor to appear in the middle of a fight.

But, yeah, the magic system in D&D has never been "dangerous". The worst thing that really could ever happen was you just lost your spell. Although, thinking about it, some of the wonkiness of spell effects - fireballs filling spaces, lightning bolt basically doing whateerdahell the DM wanted it to do - rebound away! - that sort of thing. So, I think there's a bit of nostalgia thinking about how casting spells in combat had a very real chance of harming allies.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Funny thing is, in earlier D&D, it was the Psionics system that could blow up badly in your face. I remember the look on player's faces when a psionic power accidentally caused a balor to appear in the middle of a fight.

I only got into psionics for 3.x
The balor appearance was that legit rules or homebrew/DM creative license?

 

[Hussar]

I only got into psionics for 3.x
The balor appearance was that legit rules or homebrew/DM creative license?

Nope, legit rules. When you used psionic powers in 1e, there was a (small) percentage chance of random monsters appearing - most of which were quite powerful.