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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5810234" data-attributes="member: 32164">People seem to be getting confused by what Monte means when he says that the "core of the game" looks "a lot like OD&D." He's not trying to say something that all of us seem blissfully unaware of.What labels a game as Dungeons & Dragons, even to someone who's never played it?- D&D is medieval fantasy roleplaying.- Rolling a d20 for combat resolution.- The four iconic classes: fighter, magic-user, cleric and thief.- The Tolkien races: human, elf, dwarf, and halfling.- The 6 attributes: strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, charisma. The 3-18 scale has also ALWAYS been in the game.- Alignment (someone who's never played knows what "lawful good" means).- XP and levels.- Armor Class and hit points.- Magic loot. - Saving Throws.That's Dungeons & Dragons. Other things can be added. You don't have to use ALL the iconic races, but without these things, the game just isn't D&D. Personally, while I feel that the traditional (so-called "Vancian") magic system has legacy - it's certainly the most iconic way to handle magic in the game - I refuse to say that those who use a spell point (or some other) magic system aren't playing D&D. Oddly enough, the spells themselves may actually be more "core" than how they get cast.The point is that all of these things were part and parcel of OD&D - also known around ENWorld as "that game diaglo plays."Obviously, if you cut out all the stuff that was added later, you end up with a system that looks like OD&D. Even if fighters can do more in combat than their OD&D counterparts, or everyone has a skill package, the base game is still going to look surprisingly similar to OD&D.Why won't it BE OD&D? A few reasons. It's highly unlikely that they'll go back to descending AC. Similarly, I don't expect us to need tables for combat or saving throws, or to see the return of different XP progressions for each class. I do expect unified bonuses for the six attributes (a feature of OD&D, BECMI, 3e and 4e) to stick around. I don't expect to see a return of exceptional strength, and so forth. 2e's THAC0 may have been an improvement over the "to-hit tables" of earlier editions, but using attack bonuses and escalating AC was a better idea still. Yes, many of these mechanics come from later editions, but the point I'm making is that the mechanics we're likely to see are modern ones. But without all the modern subsystems, the core, central game will still have an "old school vibe" to it.The biggest discrepancy from edition to edition seems to be in how lethal the game should be. My preference is for characters who are legitimately at risk, but aren't going to die from a single unlucky roll. When I read old school reports like Dougall the thief dying because of a poison needle trap, my nostalgia button dies quick. Poison should suck, I guess. But save or die has NEVER been fun, or cool - in my opinion.I'd love it if a D&D fight played out like a scene from a swashbuckling action movie. I want the game to move fast, and I want to believe the protagonists are in real peril, but I don't want their deaths to come out of left field. To me, that kind of randomness isn't fun.On the other hand, if the party makes a lot of mistakes in judgement and gets in way over their heads? And the paladin chooses to fight a desperate holding action against superior foes so that the rest of the party may live? That's great gaming. But it should be the end result of a number of deliberate player choices - not just "oops, stepped on a trap - you're dead."I think the biggest "playstyle" issue the design team is going to have to cope with are those surrounding the healing, injury, and death mechanics. Those are also, fortunately, among the easiest things to make "modular."That said, I bet characters built strictly off the core won't be quite as fragile as their actual old-school counterparts. They're probably a bit more fragile than their 4e counterparts, but lethality probably should be set somewhere in the middle as a default - with BECMI (1st level characters with 1-11 hp, dead at 0 hp and lots of save or die mechanics) at one end of the spectrum and 4e (1st level characters with 20+ hp, death saves, and no "save or die" mechanics) at the other.Hope that didn't get too ramble-y.</blockquote>

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