What are your ideal design goals for D&D?

[Aeolius]

In the BECM days, we used our giant piles of gold to buy land, castles, and armies.

And chickens. Aww... c'mon, who didn't take the time to figure out how many chickens a higher-level PC could buy, with the taxes collected from their subjects?

 

[Dausuul]

Cool magic items exist, we're agreed on that. So I, Lanefan the Fighter, go out into the field, clobber some bad guys, and come back to town with a cool magic item: a nice shiny....wand. I'm a Fighter. Wands make very poor weapons. I'm incapable of making it do anything else for me, so now what? Well, I happen to know this Magic-User who could make far better use of this wand than I ever will; and who is willing to buy it off me for cash. How is anything going to stop me from selling it, even if such is illegal in the game setting?

If magic items are mere commodities, technology disguised as magic, then nothing.

That's not necessarily a safe assumption.

I incline toward the view that magic items desire masters worthy of them. Each item has its own definition of "worthy," of course, but taking the item from its previous owner, by force or guile, usually suffices for the kind of items adventurers use. (Although items created by divine magic are more likely to be devoted to a specific deity and not work for unbelievers. If it does work for you, better keep a close eye on your soul.)

Such items are not at all pleased to be bought and sold like chattel. If you're lucky, your newly purchased magic wand will just refuse to work for you and you'll end up with a fancy stick. If you're unlucky, it could get a whole lot worse than that. And the seller may not get off unscathed, either.

Anyway, back to the original topic:

• Accessible to newbies, but versatile enough to keep veterans engaged.
• Combat that minimizes grind and number-crunching, while retaining tactical depth.
• Mechanics that connect in a straightforward, intuitive way to in-world concepts.
• An open ruleset that is friendly to houseruling and homebrewing.
• Modularity in the rules, so it's possible to exclude one part of the ruleset without breaking the rest of the system. In particular, the system should be able to work smoothly without any or all of the following: resurrection magic, magic items, nonhuman races, any given power source (except perhaps martial).
• Classes balanced across three spheres: combat, social, exploration. Every class should have something to contribute in each sphere.
• A limited, but nonzero, amount of long-term resource management.
• The ability to emulate most major genres of fantasy, including both high-magic "wahoo" settings and lower-powered sword-and-sorcery ones. (Well, actually, I personally don't give a crap if it can emulate "wahoo" settings or not. I'm a low-magic type of guy. But I know a lot of folks are into that.)
• New horizons opening up as characters advance. BECMI was the only set that really embraced this principle, with characters moving from classic dungeoneering in Basic, to wilderness adventures in Expert, to ruling domains and waging war in Companion, to questing for immortality in Master, to... well, I do not speak of the Immortal ruleset, but the point is that the game is designed to evolve with the characters instead of just scaling up.

 

[nedjer]

Most of this has been done. The current version of the fantasy system I switched to for the above is 90% of the way down the road described. Other full rules light systems are also around in various forms, e.g. the open Traveller kit, Ars Magica (not so light), . . .

With complete free systems around larger companies maybe look to add more value. There's probably a growable, largely untapped RPG market among jaded videogame players and Catan playing graduates; people already happy with subscription models.

Getting growth probably means making and keeping more experienced GMs. Perhaps a good discount on sets would help? Buy a PHB and get DMG cheap at same time type of deals - real cheap. Leaves the customer feeling indebted and a DMG2 or the like follows.

 

[WheresMyD20]

One thing is certain - PC's need to be able to BUY things with their mountains of gold or there's no point in obtaining it.

Actually, I think that one of the reasons for giving 1 XP per 1 GP acquired in the old editions is so that characters are rewarded for the gold they obtained, even if the gold itself couldn't buy anything of value.

I remember reading somewhere that in Dave Arneson's campaign, Dave would give 1 XP per 1 GP spent (instead of acquired). It became common for PCs to spend gold on frivolous luxuries so that they could cash in on the XP. In a way, it made his campaign mirror the Conan and Lankhmar stories early D&D was based on - heroes would frequently acquire great treasures, then squander that fortune in the local tavern. Then they would need to go find the next great treasure hoard.

 

[WheresMyD20]

Wasn't this already done? I seem to remember a "Dungeons and Dragons" board game that came out in the early 90's, a little while after the Rules Cyclopedia came out. I never played it, but I remember seeing it on the shelf at Toys 'R' Us.

I have that box set. It's not a complete game. IIRC, It only contains the rules up to 5th level. The intention was that you'd buy that box set, then buy the "full" rules once you were ready for level 6.

I'm thinking about something closer to B/X or BECMI - except that the whole game would be in one box instead of 2 or 5 and that some of the newer mechanics like ascending AC and Fort/Ref/Will save categories would be included.

 

[WheresMyD20]

You're right, it's in OD&D. Magic item creation, and use, is an important feature of the magic-user class in OD&D, in fact I would say item use is actually more important than spell casting.

Good point. Creating magic items has always been a key feature of the magic-user class since the early days.

I think that the one biggest change, though, since those days is the difficulty that is assumed in the creation of magic items. In the 1e DMG, pages 116-118, there's quite a bit of detail regarding the components needed to create a magic item. Even a simple scroll has some very demanding requirements.

This, I believe, is why the class is called 'magic-user' rather than wizard or magician.

Actually, I think the name comes from Chainmail. There were only two classes back then, Fighting-Man and Magic-User. "Fighting-Man" being a generic term for "solider" - anyone who would fight; and "Magic-User" being a catch-all term for wizards, witches, warlocks, necromancers, etc. - anyone who would cast spells. Any combatant involved in a Chainmail battle would be classified as either a "fighting-man" or a "magic-user".

 

[Lanefan]

Good point. Creating magic items has always been a key feature of the magic-user class since the early days.

I think that the one biggest change, though, since those days is the difficulty that is assumed in the creation of magic items. In the 1e DMG, pages 116-118, there's quite a bit of detail regarding the components needed to create a magic item. Even a simple scroll has some very demanding requirements.

A significant one of which is time.

There was - and I dare say this was intentional - a decision to be made by the player of a higher-level MU: to go out in the field and do some adventuring, or stay home in the lab for a few months or longer and create an item. Naturally, most if not all PC MUs chose the field-adventuring route, leaving item creation in the hands of non-adventuring NPC types.

More recently, that decision has gone away and a wizard can easily do both. A design goal would be to put this decision back into the game.

Lanefan

 

[Doug McCrae]

Actually, I think the name comes from Chainmail. There were only two classes back then, Fighting-Man and Magic-User. "Fighting-Man" being a generic term for "solider" - anyone who would fight; and "Magic-User" being a catch-all term for wizards, witches, warlocks, necromancers, etc. - anyone who would cast spells. Any combatant involved in a Chainmail battle would be classified as either a "fighting-man" or a "magic-user".

I looked that up and you're right. Fighting man is a generic term for all normal troops from light foot to heavy horse. Magic-user refers to seers, magicians, warlocks, sorcerers and wizards (different power levels of magic-user).

 

[howandwhy99]

Cleric was one of the original 3 as well. -"a priest or religious leader."
They are generic terms redefined as archetypes in the 80's.

It's also why Sub-Classes were not considered full classes in and of themselves. Paladins were a type of Fighting Man, Druids a type of Cleric. Etc. And because they had more abilities they had higher XP tables. Because they had more means to gain individual XP.

 

[MacMathan]

Not to sidetrack too much but how many of these desires do yawl think the upcoming Essentials line will fill?
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