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<blockquote data-quote="dkyle" data-source="post: 5893396" data-attributes="member: 70707">There's really two kinds of &quot;difficulty&quot; here: system mastery, and game design.&nbsp; Your &quot;experienced&quot; players are good enough at on-the-fly game design that a heavy system isn't required.&nbsp; Your &quot;newer&quot; players aren't good enough at on-the-fly game design, so require a heavy system, which means that the difficulty shifts to system mastery of that heavy system.I don't really agree with your characterizations.I think a lot of new players have a tough time with system mastery, as well, and that's what my &quot;Basic&quot; is aimed at.&nbsp; Very few &quot;build&quot; choices, but still producing characters compatible with the full game.And as for experienced players?&nbsp; I think I'm very experienced, but I am not comfortable with a high degree of on-the-fly game design.&nbsp; Not because I can't, but because I think it tends to undermine the game.&nbsp; If there aren't well defined rules, then it's hard to make meaningful decisions.&nbsp; I do not want to play the game of &quot;convince the DM to let this work&quot;.&nbsp; I want to play the game of &quot;these are the mechanics, get creative with them&quot;.I could see calling what I'm referring to as &quot;Basic&quot; the &quot;Starter Set&quot; instead, and just calling the full game &quot;D&amp;D&quot;.&nbsp; Partly, I thought there'd be some nostalgia value in the labeling, while making it clear what the two versions are aimed at.&nbsp; I'm not clear why my labeling scheme would make 5E not a successor to BD&amp;D; seems to me it actively calls out that successorship.But whatever the marketing is, the biggest thing is that I think there are different design priorities for a &quot;core&quot; game amenable to supporting modules, and for a &quot;basic&quot; game.For a &quot;basic&quot; game, I'd expect a Cleric class with Divine spell casting, Turn Undead, Heavy Armor, and healing/religion skills.For the &quot;core&quot;, I'd expect a core Cleric class with a hit die, a divine spell casting progression, and that's it.&nbsp; Leave the rest to Themes and Backgrounds.The alternative would be to put all that traditional stuff into the core Cleric, and then write Themes and Backgrounds to replace class features, instead of just adding to them, but I think that would be really cumbersome.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="dkyle, post: 5893396, member: 70707"] There's really two kinds of "difficulty" here: system mastery, and game design. Your "experienced" players are good enough at on-the-fly game design that a heavy system isn't required. Your "newer" players aren't good enough at on-the-fly game design, so require a heavy system, which means that the difficulty shifts to system mastery of that heavy system. I don't really agree with your characterizations. I think a lot of new players have a tough time with system mastery, as well, and that's what my "Basic" is aimed at. Very few "build" choices, but still producing characters compatible with the full game. And as for experienced players? I think I'm very experienced, but I am [i]not[/i] comfortable with a high degree of on-the-fly game design. Not because I can't, but because I think it tends to undermine the game. If there aren't well defined rules, then it's hard to make meaningful decisions. I do [i]not[/i] want to play the game of "convince the DM to let this work". I want to play the game of "these are the mechanics, get creative with them". I could see calling what I'm referring to as "Basic" the "Starter Set" instead, and just calling the full game "D&D". Partly, I thought there'd be some nostalgia value in the labeling, while making it clear what the two versions are aimed at. I'm not clear why my labeling scheme would make 5E [i]not[/i] a successor to BD&D; seems to me it actively calls out that successorship. But whatever the marketing is, the biggest thing is that I think there are different design priorities for a "core" game amenable to supporting modules, and for a "basic" game. For a "basic" game, I'd expect a Cleric class with Divine spell casting, Turn Undead, Heavy Armor, and healing/religion skills. For the "core", I'd expect a core Cleric class with a hit die, a divine spell casting progression, and that's it. Leave the rest to Themes and Backgrounds. The alternative would be to put all that traditional stuff into the core Cleric, and then write Themes and Backgrounds to replace class features, instead of just adding to them, but I think that would be really cumbersome. [/QUOTE]

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