Simplistic or Complete (and why we can't have both)

I'm with other posters here, there are at least three major "axes" of RPG design and play styles that versions of D&D mess around with (sometimes inconsistently within the same version as the OP suggests).

Simple <-> Complex (Basic .... 3E & 4E)

Gamist <-> Simulationist (4E ... 3E)

Storyteller <-> Dice game (not that clear a split to me, although I think there's a tendency for 4E games in practice to drop storyteller style, if only to allow 2 hours of boardgame combat to play out)

Now these axes are not completely orthogonal (e.g. a Simple game is quite likely to skip over details that some Simulationists would like to see included such as wounding), but they do define "lines of battle" in many heated forum discussions.

. . . I am sure there are many more axes and sliding scales of play. Not all of them are part of a published game rules however. E.g. Sandbox <-> Linear is more about adventure design and DM story telling style.
 
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Do you want to play a Roleplaying Campaign, or do you want to play Fantasy Chess?

I am interested about discovering things, making descisions, and finding solutions. Fights can be incredibly interesting and existing, but for me all the good and important start is before initiative is rolled and after you stop tracking it. The only interesting parts are if there is a battle and who is standing once its over. That part in the middle has to be done somehow, but it should be uncomplicated and not interrupt the action for too long. Combat can be interesting when it is about being faced with descisions like chosing to stay or run or if you have to make sacrifices. The dice rolling and hit points counting I don't care for at all.
 

Do you want to play a Roleplaying Campaign, or do you want to play Fantasy Chess?

I am interested about discovering things, making descisions, and finding solutions. Fights can be incredibly interesting and existing, but for me all the good and important start is before initiative is rolled and after you stop tracking it. The only interesting parts are if there is a battle and who is standing once its over. That part in the middle has to be done somehow, but it should be uncomplicated and not interrupt the action for too long. Combat can be interesting when it is about being faced with descisions like chosing to stay or run or if you have to make sacrifices. The dice rolling and hit points counting I don't care for at all.

It's interesting to me how exploration and combat are like two sides of a coin, or more appropriately, like the classic illusion of the two faces and the vase.

D&D, even classic D&D, is all about scenes. Say you have a dungeon with 30 rooms. 4 of the rooms have groups of monsters. Is this a situation of combat set-pieces with some linking exploration, or exploration set-pieces with some combat as one of the possible methods of resolving the exploration?

You could run the same dungeon in both Basic D&D and 4e, but the feel would be very different. In Basic, each room becomes an exploration set-piece, with the monsters simply as more time consuming obstacle to overcome to keep exploring. In 4e, the rooms with the monsters are set-pieces, with the other rooms possibly having hazards or rewards which may affect the outcome of the battles. Same situation, but the game you use and its related emphasis brings different aspects of the game into sharper focus.
 

You could say, and actually I do say this, I want 2nd Edition with math that is as simple and streamlined as 3rd Edition.

Which so far, 5th Edition seems to be.
 

You could say, and actually I do say this, I want 2nd Edition with math that is as simple and streamlined as 3rd Edition.

Which so far, 5th Edition seems to be.



I'm digging it so far, comes as across as a cleaned up Basic/1st Ed, which is perfect for me. *said like Ox in Stripes*
 

Which things can't be dialed around at all?

The whole purpose of 5e (from design POV, not the business POV) is exactly to be a dial-able game in many different aspects. Which aspects do you think can never be made dial-able?

The Basics.

Ability Scores (and modifiers)
How Armor Class is determined (and its effects)
Hit Points, Damage, and Conditions
Movement and Exploration Rules
Monster Design
Saving Throws
Bounded Accuracy math

You can't have an advanced module that 1/2s the armor bonus from AC and converts it to DR (for example) without it messing up bounded accuracy and HP rules for example. Some rules are best left as baseline for the modules to add onto.
 

...simple, abstract, and modifiable to suit the given situation.

...complete, all-encompassing, and try to simulate reality.

If we're talking specifically about D&D, I might agree with you. I think part of the reason is there's too much baggage attached to the brand name.


However, if you're saying a set of rules cannot be both, I disagree completely. Though, as I do not want to threadcrap, I will refrain from posting links to other games that I play.
 

Simple isn't the same as 'simplistic' incidentally.

I think, with the progression of supplements, it can be possible to provide a core game that is simple to learn but can be easily enhanced by "Dungeon Masters' Guides' or the like to develop the game in different directions.

A complete core game, which requires no supplements to play and is accessible to all, has been done by so many other RPGs now that it beggers belief that people doubt D&D could do it too.
 

The Basics.

Ability Scores (and modifiers)
How Armor Class is determined (and its effects)
Hit Points, Damage, and Conditions
Movement and Exploration Rules
Monster Design
Saving Throws
Bounded Accuracy math

Some of those are very hard to dial, but others not so.

Ability scores should probably not change as such, but skills are already a dial of ability scores: if you don't use skills you have simply the 6 ability scores to differentiate characters' abilities, or you can use skills to increase the complexity. I know that most people tend to see "abilities as innate, skills as training" but it doesn't have to be.

Saving throws can be dialled... it's not that hard to group them (like in 3e) or split them into subcategories based on the effect (e.g. splitting Constitution saves into saves vs Poison, save vs Fatigue, save vs Spells etc.).

Eventually both skills and saves tend to work only upwards, meaning that character options usually grant bonuses to them, while a more complete dialing should include also penalties to keep averages more or less stables.

Conditions can definitely be "dialled". 3e has a long list of conditions, but it would have been easy to take the most similar ones and group them together, ending up with a much smaller bunch of conditions. Splitting them up even further (but they are already quite a lot) would be more difficult because you would need to make a decision for each source of a condition, which one of the splitted subconditions it now causes.

Monster design (by the DM) may not be dialable as such, but if monsters were treated somewhat similarly to characters, and characters were dialable, then monsters would be dialable, for example you could skip feats and skills and focus on simple abilities to design low-complexity monsters, or use all possible rules for high-complexity monsters.

Movement and exploration rules... only minimally dialable but something can be done. First of all movement can be dialled down to minimum by just ignoring speed differences and lump all "difficult terrains" into the same one effect, and dialled up doing the opposite. For exploration you can increase the tracking of illumination, require multiple rolls for perception and trap-finding plus handling traps with detailed description (requiring specific ideas to bypass/disable) and so on, or OTOH you can otherwise ignore illumination (just assume you have what you need), roll perception for the whole party, and deal with traps with a single roll.


You can't have an advanced module that 1/2s the armor bonus from AC and converts it to DR (for example) without it messing up bounded accuracy and HP rules for example. Some rules are best left as baseline for the modules to add onto.

Well armor as DR can be seen as a dial step towards higher complexity, but I would not strictly put it into a discussion of complexity but rather in a discussion on variant rules (which incidentally also increase complexity, but that's not usually the reason why people want a rule of armor as DR, the usual reason being the way they conceptually want to interpret armors to work).

It's the kind of variant rules that can have unforseen effects (and problems) on other parts of the game, for instance the old known problems with rendering some low-damage weapons useless.

But it's been presented before (3ed UA) and there are many groups using such a variant. Just because a variant has consequences doesn't mean it's a bad thing... it only means that a good book will warn the DM on the consequences and suggests some possible solutions. But anyway this is more like a mechanical variant rather than a pure dial.
 
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