If D&D was being released tomorrow an you were in charge whateoukd you do? Assume D&D never existed.
My thoughts.
1. 10 levels only.
2. No dailies everything is short rest and at will. Every class would get short rest abilities.
3. Vastly lower hit points and damage.
If a genie granted me a wish and I was in Chris rocks position I woukd not do the above. Mostly hands off with the occasional order eg make a new FRCS or more oversight on updated legacy campaign systems.
In comparison to current D&D:
1. Design for 20 or more levels but make it
very clear that only the first ten or twelve of those are the intended-to-be-playable range; the higher range is mostly so the DM can populate the setting with fish that are bigger than the PCs and so that there's a logical progression should anyone desire to play higher (ignoring the clear warnings given that the system might not work very well up there).
2. Everything long-rest (a.k.a. daily). No short rests other than to recover a very few hit points.
3. Vastly lower hit points and damge but also vastly less ability to recover said hit points when they've been lost. A long rest doesn't get you all your hit points back every time. In-combat healing is risky and if you find you have to do it, something's gone wrong. No ranged healing of any kind; you have to touch to heal. Going to or below 0 h.p. is a long-ish-term problem even if you do survive.
4. Much more danger and risk for the PCs and-or their equipment. Survival is priority one. Get attached to the campaign as a player, rather than to your own character.
5. Fewer mechanical differentiators between characters; it's on the player to provide the in-play differentiators through the character's roleplayed personality, alignment, etc.
6. The focus is on playing the character, not building it. The character-build piece gets chopped way back and becomes considerably more random.
7. As I'm in charge (and, I hope, not beholden to shareholders), I'm looking to make my long-term steady profits off adventures, setting supplements, and accessories; expecting the core books to only ever be bought once by any given player or DM.
