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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tom B1" data-source="post: 7949085" data-attributes="member: 6879023">I'm sure they tried, but they were guided by three things: a) The illusion that you can build a complex system that won't always be broken in a myriad of waysb) The illusion that you can patch any complex system without always having side effects that themselves may end up being worse (and unknown at first because 'hey, we fixed stuff!')c) The commercial reality that if they ever made one perfect set of rules, they would never be able to sell edition after edition which each 'fixed' the ills of the last (and ironically, 5E came part way back to the OSR flavours as a fix... ah, the karmic circle comes around....)In my defense, and in a reasonable case I think, we must acknowledge that wisdom comes from experience. I didn't always have as much of it and I naively believed that 'the next one will fix this broken thing' and that usually led to buying from version to version. That slowed with Player's Option 2E. We stuck there a long time because it was so flavour rich. We skipped 3.0. We skipped 4E. We only moved to 5E because 3.5E was actually more annoying to GM at higher levels (say 9-20) vs. older versions and b) new players wanted books and 5E had that and did, in its earliest core books, have some greater simplicity. We debated going OSR, but 5E had enough callbacks to the simplicity and speed in play that mid to high level 3.5 didn't have. Nothing anywhere has touched the customization and ability to tailor a very specific flavour into characters that Player's Option rules introduced (and I will also say to tailor the magic systems - beyond spell points to different frameworks for 'elder god/monster' games to free casting, to pacts with things in the dark, to ... you name it). They gave the GM a huge toolkit for character and world customization in those rules.We debated going back to AD&D rules, but there were a few minor things we didn't want to go back to:a) Stat mods that were individual by statb) Clunkier save rulesc) Books not so well organized to find stuff In likely over 1000 hours in our long running campaign, I changed my outlook on whether individual subsystems needed repairs (they did and maybe on some level I could see why people think that even now) and hand in hand whether those repairs could make a better game (on the whole, no, because they just exposed side effects and there are too many aspects to patch and EVERY VERSION, including all home ruled versions, is broken in multitudes of ways). It's just experience that taught me to focus on group vs. enemies experience, vs. character vs character worries which really end up not mattering. The only things I ever rules changed because of annoyance were:a) Going to softer crits after an early add on crit system proved a bit too unmitigatedly deadly which could lead to players losing characters in minor fights with bad luckb) Psionics got tossed as a group decision because of its incomplete game integration and thus all sorts of time figuring out magic/psionic interactions or class power/psionic interactions or item/psionics interactions.All other choices were actually made for flavour: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">spell points let casters use what they needed vs and insured sometimes the utility spells that nobody ever memorizes in fixed slot casting got used</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">exhausting casting (it reminded us all of many great books of fiction where wizards would exhaust themselves casting their strongest magics)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a magic system that had varying densities by locations and even some 'meridian storms' which could make areas of magic quite volatile (for flavour)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a magical Talent stat governing magical ability for wizards (Gods just granted the hook to cast to their clerics, arcane casters had to build their own using their raw talent) existed mostly to differentiate clerical and wizardly magic and to help motivate some larger societal views (people feared/hated wizards because they were powerful and ungovered, clerics were okay because they needed their god to grant them casting power and they followed an ethos... and of course churches routinely did fearmongering to keep themselves as the keepers of magic and to scare everyone of wizards so that it wasn't that safe to be a low level wizard travelling alone)</li> </ul>We did things for flavour, not really for balance. Sometimes there was a short glance in balance's direction but again, we learned over time that balance of group and story-driven play meant that individual awesomeness could be okay (or mediocrity for those who wanted to pursue a non-optimized build and do their own thing - whereas if we didn't they'd have been seen as being a weak link in the team maybe).A system like 5E PHB feats, with sane but interesting small customizations that don't stack, is a good character differentiator. A system like 3.5E sells lots of books with lots of new feats and combinatrics but makes for some powerful synergies and a lot of weak ones so that tends to channelize character choices (most low to mid level fighters would benefit greatly from Cleave for instance). I imagine 5E, to keep selling you new books, will continue in a slightly wiser way to splatbook or add things with every module adventure path thingie to keep people buying. We've stayed with PHB, DMG, MM, and some other monster references plus home brew content (adapting out world's long held flavours) in 5E. Because we home brew and have a world, we can't use heavily place-specific and setting-specific hard cover adventure paths (so I have bought zero of them). I thought they'd make Saltmarsh setting-agnostic, but they walked that back and borked that up too. Oddly, the best adventures for new players (our kids) are the original D&D/AD&D ones that were very generic - just do some 5E (or buy some 5E) conversions and you've got a module you can plunk into your own world without gross work. This is something WOTC just does not seem to see as a market - I guess they want everyone in their worlds and buying their adventure paths and they assume people now don't have time to brew their own world (or if they do, they'll brew their own adventures).I'm not anti any particular version of D&D, each gave us good memories (my least favourite to play, and one we didn't adopt for my world, was 4E - perhaps the most thoughtfully balanced and playable - compared to anything that came before it - but the least rich in tactical thinking or character powers that made any sense...). I just realized focus on particular systems is what we sometimes did in our group in the late 80s and early 90s, but by late 90s, we'd realized fixes beyond the dead simple usually came with drawbacks, any new version was just a new passle of bugs waiting to be found (just like a new MS OS!) and that if we rejigged our focus to story and group vs. GM foes, we'd be fine with whatever rules we used. Note, I matured as a GM and also got better at remembering to give spotlight in sessions and between sessions (or to put scenarios where spotlight would logically fall on individual players) to every player. Some crave it more and thus seize it and the others who are more shy sometimes get it with a 'okay, I guess I need to come to the fore and be noticed' look, but it helps everyone be engaged to the extent they are comfortable with. We're mostly all old enough friends to be family now. My play group is early 40s to early 50s. The core group has known one another since 1987-1989 so we all know what sorts of characters people play, how they are going to be as players at the table, and we all want each other to have their time to shine. That community spirit also helps. Age has its drawbacks (higher risk of mortality in pandemics for instance) but it comes with some settling and recognition of what one should fuss about (or can usefully improve vs. just change).</blockquote>

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