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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9579328" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I don't think the throughline is mechanics, so much as it is approach. The rest of the TSR era was had more expectations about what characters would do. GP=XP focusing much of the game on treasure-hunting, wandering wilderness monsters soft-gating when you would shift from strict dungeon crawling to hexcrawling, and name level dictating when the lordship began (BECMI even splitting the level-spread out by expected activity). 2e tried to break the mold and make it much more group-decision-based*, empowering the DM/group to make and alter things to fit their preferences. XP rules became customizable and kits and such allowed you to make campaign-themed characters (and the green faux-leather splatbooks discussing altering basic rules of the game to fit setting theme). *somewhat. No discussion about 2e is complete without acknowledging that they only ever took baby steps on things because of a back-compatibility mandateOn the other side is 3e and 4e which (in different ways *and again, 'somewhat') focused on making concrete, solid, formulaic rulebases, with everything within its formula/procedure and a formula/procedure for everything. 5e is similar to 2e mostly in that it's choosing to eschew the concrete play-patterns of basic+1e and the concrete rules framing of 3e&4e for that more loosey-goosey, DM/group-determined framing. Other than 'rulings over rules,' 'natural language,' and just the lack of what 1e or 3/4e had, though, it might not look very much like 2e. Certainly you are right that specific rules like class stat reqs or prevalence of spellcasting isn't the same, but I don't think that's generally what people are talking about when they connect the two.</blockquote>

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