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Message: <blockquote data-quote="greywulf" data-source="post: 2400661" data-attributes="member: 4285">Uho. We'd better be careful now and back off or Steel_Wind will say "I told you so" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Every game system has it's pros and cons, and D&D is no exception of course. What's fun is that one person's disadvantage may the exactly the thing that someone else loves - be it feats, the skill system, the way magic scales or whatever. I kinda find that genki, so that's ok.It's it's broke, we can fix it too, and that's terrific as well.So no, I've no complaints about D&D as such, because all I'd really be complaining about is my own laziness about mending it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />On to the main thrust of the thread though, and I reckon both Dragonblade and A'koss have it on the head. Both your posts have given me masses of food for thought, and I thank you for that.I'm still on the fence regarding multi-genre rules. They're the Holy Grail of game designers, it seems , and I'm not really sure what the actual benefits of them are to the gamer. IMHO, the grandaddy of multi-genre gaming, GURPS, failed because no matter what era you played, it still felt like GURPS. Ideally, the rules should just fade into the background, be invisible. HERO manages it, very well though, and I'm pretty sure that d20 could do it  too, but........d20 has gone from being multi-genre to just plain fragmented, which is a shame. There's too many different rules for the same thing across all of the game books, and that just adds to inconsistency and confusion. Sure I could pull my Half-Elven Bard into modern times, but I'd have a little conversion to do regards Defense and Action Points first. Not a lot, granted, but the differences shouldn't be there in the first place.I know the reason though, and it's a good one - the game is evolving, and that's excting. Each book aims to refine the core mechanics, make them better than what's gone before. Sometimes, the changes work (Call of Cthulhu's beautifully svelt character generation system), sometimes fall flat on their face (d20 Modern's abstract and pointless character generation system). That's good to. I like proving grounds.I'd love 4th Edition Open d20 to be the best darned game out there. I believe in D&D for all it's many strengths and few weaknesses. Tweaking this thread a little, I'd like 4E to contain:- Action Points. I love 'em- The core classes, plus the generic classes from Complete Adventurer as a DM optional extra- Defense instead of AC. AC should go the way of THAC0 and be put to pasturte- A single book containing char gen, combat, magic, monsters and basic DM rules. I regret that 3.5E didn't have the handful of GM pages at the back like the 3E PHB did.-  Less reliance on miniatures and battlemats, more emphasis on imagination as a tool. I want role-play, not a boardgame- Make everything a feat. All special abilities, all class abilities, the works. That'll simplify the position we're in now, where class abilities are feats by another name anyway.- Every class gets special abilities throughout their level progression. We're prettu much there on this one now.- Make AoE optional in a sidebar. That's where it belongs. We wouldn't need miniatures without AoE, so we wouldn't need 20 pages of text explaining how to use miniatures. Get rid, put it in a 4E Miniatures Handbook or something.And the biggest change of all - make D&D the brand truely cross genre. Put the rules in the one book for all eras of play. Give the core classes 'era focus' so a modern Rogue has one skill list, a fantasy one another. I'm pretty darned sure all of the core classes work in any era (Bard = Info Junkie/Journalist/Musician, Paladin = Action Hero, etc). The class abilities might change a little, but probably by less than is necessary. I don't want to play a Smart/Fast/Tough Hero. I want to play a Fighter!Of course, that'll mean a lot of rules in one book, so something will have to give. The PHB contains a LOT of text that's just there to explain the exceptions to the rules, which is necessary for newcomers to the game, rules-junkies and the just plain lazy. The Combat rules can fit on 8 pages of clearly written text (especially without the miniatures and AoE stuff). Character generation in perhaps 30, DM stuff in 10, Monsters in around 20. The original D&D Cyclopedia prove it can be done, and wonderfully so.So yes, I love 3.5E, very much. Doesn't stop me dreaming about 4E though!</blockquote>

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