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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2978549" data-attributes="member: 2067">I don't think D&D can ever be more than one type of car. That's for d20 -- the d20 system is the basic chassis, engine, and wheels. You can take that system and play a game in it, any kind of game, really. But D&D, with it's own particular monsters, treasure, character creation schema, etc. needs to be more specific than that. Few people have the time or inclination to take the d20 system (the D&D rules) and add on the kinks, knots, options, and ideas that make it a good game themselves, and those people are not the ones the design should be catering too. Rather, the design should be catering to those who DO NOT have the time or inclination to tinker with the system, because those people are more common than the others. Car companies would get nowhere fast if they only catered to those who liked to tinker with cars. What they do is satisfy the end user -- the consumer, the person who wants to drive off the lot with a working machine. And if they do it well, the mechanics and autophiles love it, too.EVERY market has it's share of rabid tinkering fans. For ANY item, it would be foolish to cater only to them by making an incomplete machine you had to cobble together by yourself later. The tinkerers will still take apart whatever you design, but for the use of the consumers, you need to have it work right away.And gaming, unlike automobile sales, is not a big enough industry to support much in the way of specialized product.Depends on the rules. If going over to your house was a fantasy gaming experience, I may have a beer, I may have some chips, and I may very well sleep with your daughter because I simply have the high Charisma and bardic music abilities to get away with it while you pat me on the back and start calling me "son." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />And in a fantasy RPG, things that are not expressly forbidden are possibly up for grabs. "Can I run accross the football field and save the princess?" is answered by "Move your speed." "Can I multiclass barbarian and monk" is answered by "You'd change alignment and not be able to go back to Monk." And "can I use this spell to command the man to stand on his head?" is answered with a DM judgement call that will depend on the campaign. So the answer to your facetious question is, of course, yes, because the rules don't say you can't, you can try, and the DM will arbitrate on if it's appropriate, using the guidelines of what the spell and similar spells are already capable of. "Conquer Europe" would probably fail. "Hit me!" probably wouldn't.D&D isn't just competing with other RPG games, first of all. It's competing with STRATEGO, with WORLD OF WARCRAFT, with TIVO, with posting on internet message boards -- it's competing for your free time.And as it does that, it does not do it well. "Twenty minutes of fun squeezed into four hours of gameplay" comes to mind. There's also the idea that you need to coordinate five people's schedules and bring them all together in one place, and that's difficult as well. Change would be good, allowing more people to have more fun with D&D as opposed to watching TIVO. Besides, change for change's sake may not be a virtue, but it is an inevitability. Continents drift, our axis wobbles, stars explode into life or death, you're not nearly as spry as you once were....change happens. That which does not change, dies.Change is happening all around D&D. Computers grow to popularity, videogames gain eye-popping graphix, the internet revolutionizes human interaction, iPods appear, robots land on mars, Conan goes out of style and Harry Potter comes in, movies are made about LotR that don't suck...D&D must embrace and adapt with these changes if it is to continue to exist. If it does not, it will be played only by contented grognards until they die, at which point D&D will die with them.Some things from the new design philosophy are a direct result of D&D trying (mostly successfully, IMHO) to adapt to this changing world. Paladin's mounts no longer are a hassle. Command no longer REQUIRES interpretation. If mearls' rust monster became the new standard, now adventurers wouldn't be brought to a screeching halt. The combat round is one of the parts of D&D most people enjoy, so emphasizing that would make that part more enjoyable. That would depend on the DM, who must interpret the vagaries in the rules. In my game, I'd say no, the living can't transform into the dead. But to rule yes would be a valid judgement (though somewhat scary).Anything there are not rules for is up to the DM to allow, invent rules for, or disallow."Can I swing from the chandelier onto the bar?""Can I play a half-orc paladin of Mother Theresa?""Can I break the lock off this door?""Can I arm wrestle Cthulhu?""Can I save the princess?""Can I light the campfire with Fireball?""Can I Command someone to attack me?""Can I polymorph into a golem?"All of them require that famous DM judgement. Which the rules can never eliminate, but should provide a good framework from which to judge from. "Make a Tumble check.""No, there are no half-orcs in this setting.""Attack an object. It's AC is 18, hardness 8.""...you can TRY.""That depends on if you kill this dragon before it kills you.""No, the flame doesn't linger long enough to light anything. You could blow a charred patch of ground there, though.""No, that's too specific. You can command them to attack, though.""Golems are made, polymorph works only with semi-biological life, not artificial constructs. No undead, either."</blockquote>

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