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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jaeger" data-source="post: 8178237" data-attributes="member: 27996">You do have a point in that I think it would be very beneficial for many if D&D did something similar to the DW chap 19 guidelines on how to change the game. But they would be a bit different than the ones for DW.D&D basically does just say "change what you want!".The reason why D&D has such a short blurb, is due to the cultural assumptions of D&D.I know I am going to express this idea a bit imperfectly here, so try to read in to the spirit of what I am trying to convey...Culturally D&D has a long history of a vibrant rules hacking DiY/Homebrew culture. It is culturally assumed people who mess around with the rules have figured out how things work.I recently played a 5e D&D campaign for the first time in decades. My last experience with D&D was with B/X in the 5th grade.In prep I bought the 5e rules. And IMHO 5e succeeds because there are a ton of people to teach newbies how to play the game. I could make a list of issues, but suffice it to say that looking at D&D after decades of playing different non-d20 systems, (And writing my own homebrew system for my current star wars campaign I run.) to me there was a lot of unwritten rules assumptions about how things are supposed to work. Some things are just not that clear on first read through if you are new to the concepts 5e presents.And for me a good part of it was my Stat+Skill die-pool conditioned brain, having trouble wrapping around the class/level structure the game mechanics bounce off of. Not hard to figure things out, but on my first read through a lot of "Why would you do it like that!?" ran through my head...I am an outlier!For most of the RPG hobby all they play is some edition/form of D&D! So they are conceptually familiar with how things are supposed work. So what to me seemed a rather odd way of doing things; for long time players it is all quite straight forward.D&D is successful because of, and IMHO subconsciously relies on, a lot of cultural assumptions of how things should work.Which is why IMHO why Rule 0 get just a paragraph or so in 5e: It is culturally assumed that people who want to change things around are going to dive into the mechanics and figure things out.My Opinion:SYSTEM MATTERS: Different systems bring a different feel to gameplay at the table. They feel different systems can actually add to immersion with a given settings genre conceits through the way the players interact with the game mechanics. And to many they like seeing how different game mechanics influence the way player play their characters at the table.SYSTEM DOESN'T MATTER: The roleplay, group dynamic, and social interaction of gaming come BIG first with this camp. They do not care to learn new game mechanics (for varying reasons) because whatever their system of choice is they can modify it to be "Good Enough" so they can just "get on with it" to start the game and have fun. They are simply not interested in learning other systems, as they tend to view time spent figuring out a new system as time wasted that could be spent playing the game.I fall more into the system matters camp. To a degree I understand why the system doesn't matter types have the views they do. I can and have enjoyed gaming of this type with people.  I know I would have gotten more enjoyment if a different system was used, because I have played lots of different systems to be able to make that value judgement. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't a good gaming experience overall anyway.Personally, I don't think learning new systems of similar complexity is all that difficult. But it is a point not worth debating as I have learned the other camp will not be moved. They simply value their non-gaming time differently, and for them the potential of "additional enjoyment" from using a different system just isn't there for the time it would take to learn a new system.That is their privilege.</blockquote>

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