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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 5636177" data-attributes="member: 114">After reading Mike's article, I like the idea of more modularity in D&D, but I think the way he is describing it is all wrong - as if he is describing vertical modularity when what the game could benefit from is horizontal modularity (not that I'm intending to be griddist here, just that I think his thoughts expressed in that article are orthagonal to what would work well).In some ways I think there is a lot to admire in the BECMI series, where increasing levels added extra complexity in terms of rules, options for adventures and so forth.I wonder whether ideally though there ought to be an ultra-simple resolution mechanism for all kinds of things (melee, magic, social, exploration, sailing, politics, traps) which has options for simple checks (single die rolls) or complex checks (series of die rolls) as a baseline. So there are simple ways of handling ALL those things.Then you could have modules which could be plugged in to extend any one of those things in a way which respects the basic mechanics but builds on top of it (ideally in a non-fiddly way!) which expands the options from simple and complex checks to elaborate checks (or some more appropriate name). Not 'more powerful', but 'more options'. A combat module might include more combat maneuvers that could be undertaken during a complex series of checks (and would include the extensions which are valid for PCs and Monsters - so you could seamlessly overlay it on ANY baseline adventure). Not necessarily feats, but rather teamwork maneuvers, or setup maneuvers or combination attack manouvers that could be attempted by anyone.You would never create a module which depended upon another module. Each would independently sit on the baseline system, and have a clear and obvious way in which it extends it. That's what I'd like to see, and how I think it ought to be done.Cheers</blockquote>

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