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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oligopsony" data-source="post: 9103819" data-attributes="member: 56314">I think most of the rules and design decisions are Pareto optimal. Which doesn't mean that it's precisely to my taste, just that it would be difficult to make most parts better for me without making them worse for others, or for riding rough on the baseline of familiarity that the game also depends on. The Current Edition of Official Dungeons and Dragons operates under different design constraints than any other TTRPG; the success of every other one is basically "how can we make this really exciting to run for the GMs who will most appreciate and pitch it?" or just "how well does this express the vision of the designer?" whereas CEoODnD has the success criteron "how many people is this a pretty good experience for?"That said, I think a lot of the most common issues that come up are:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Experience. The default system of XP by monster involves a lot of bookkeeping and isn't particularly apt for any of the major playstyles. From what I can tell, milestone leveling is vastly more common; what you need is probably a second system that relies less on GM fiat. (Because of familiarity constraints, you'd probably have to keep a vestigial encounter XP system in there, like alignment.) A gold for XP chart would work (and solves the gold issue people have mentioned - go blow it on carousing or charity or a pretty princess castle, either way it helps you level up) but has the bookkeeping issue; I like to have checklists. You could even have a few different checklists for different campaign styles - that would be a very useful GM tool.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Lack of mechanical support for exploration. I like to port in dungeon/wilderness exploration mechanics (a turn system with the hazard die) from OSR systems and it works well. The DMG should at least offer that and maybe some tools for a GM/narrative driven approach (like the Journeys system by C7.) So many people hate dungeon crawls because they just see it as a sequence of combat encounters and haven't experienced it as a real exploration game with time constraints.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Combat doesn't have enough interesting decisions or consequences per unit of real world time. I think this is one of the hardest things to fix without removing familiarity. But I think combat tends to be unsatisfying as a tactical game and overburdensome if you're just using it to support play based around exploration or social interaction. The minimum thing the DMG can provide for newer GMs is to offer less insane pacing advice (I can't imagine anyone here throws 6-8 pushover encounters at a party per adventuring day and plays through them, but one has to wonder how many groups went and tried that and said "this game sucks"), maybe some advice about where to turn a combat into a montage, reaction and morale rolls as optional tools (with support in the MM), and maybe a bunch of example battlemaps with interesting tactical elements.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">A tight link between character concept and character complexity. Each class should probably have a simple subclass and a more mechanically complex one. When I'm a player I'll often go Champion Fighter not because I'm especially interested in the concept but because I'm mostly completely uninterested in the player mechanics-facing side of the game.</li> </ol>Of course, even here I'm probably violating some Pareto optimality.</blockquote>

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