Here's the sarcasm with which I entered this thread:
Nowhere have I stated that the 3E mechanics "violate my fluff", although I did imply that some of the rules seem reminiscent of a computer game than did prior editions (I stand by this - take levelling, for instance). I suspect that you're reading stuff into what I'm saying that I don't intend. What I am trying to imply is that the flavour of classes, spells, monsters and magic items colour what D&D means to people. It's a grey area though; remove fireball, rangers and vorpal swords and a bunch of other flavour rules from the game and you'd still have D&D. Remove "dungeon culture assumptions" and you'd alter the default game as people know it some more, but it would still be recognisable. My point is that if you continued to remove this stuff, there would be a point of no return (which would differ from person to person) where it would become unrecognisable as D&D. Replace pure crunch, such as the "to hit" determination system and the like, and keep all the fluffcrunch intact, and it would remain recognisably D&D in feel unless you started doing stuff like killing off the archetypes or increasing the deadliness of combat with your new rules artifacts.
The hat trick which D&D seems to pull is that there is a default D&D setting which it implies, one with magic missiles and elves, planes and the underdark, all floating around a pulp swords & sorcery fantasy genre backbone. The clever part is that this provides a baseline which you can depart from. If you want to run a primitive, dinosaur-infested jungle campaign like RPGA's Living Jungle, you can throw away bits of D&D which don't fit (such as paladins, swords and elves), and hold onto the bits which do (wizards renamed witch-doctors casting magic missiles, for instance). Because you're borrowing bits of the default setting rather than creating it all from scratch, it's still recognisably D&D and you're saved a lot of work to concentrate on the parts of the game that inspire you. The rules fluff effectively acts as spacfiller for that which you don't want to create or replace.
Er, no, you too seem to be assuming that I've taken an anti-3E stance here, and I'm not - at least not intentionally. I've re-read my posts above, and can see how the implication could come across, but I'm actually playing devil's advocate for what Hackmaster specialises in (flavour - often too strong) versus the basis on which it is being attacked. What I intend to imply:
1) D&D is defined to a high degree by the fluff inherent in the rules which provide a default setting and a set of default assumptions, such as the existence of archetypes such as wizards, the idea of magical flaming swords, and the assumptions such as the PCs will probably end up fighting monsters at some stage.
2) Following that, the details of "pure crunch" such as the to-hit system, define D&D less than does, say, things like beholders, traps that get disarmed by "rogues", wish spells and the idea that the game will contain magic items which the players will find. Once again, it's a grey area - take away all of the above and you'd still be playing something recognisable as D&D. You can even dispose of monsters, magic items and magic and fighting, and play a deep-immersion roleplaying historical-based campaign set in the Roman Empire. That said, a new player marching up to the game would be surprised by it's content if he was only told that it would be a "game of D&D", and had the default assumptions of the game in mind.
3) Hackmaster's strengths, according to me, do not lie in pure crunch, such as the "to hit" system. It does provide a strong flavour of fluffcrunch, though, with spells like Aura of Innocence and Saves vs. Apology. If this is your thing, and you dig it, then it can be recognised as a valid variant of D&D despite mechanical rules weaknesses such as racial level limits because, according to me, such flavour defines a game of D&D moreso than AC and THAC0. To turn it around, the highly flavoured fluffcrunch is why I think many people recognisably hate the system, which I can relate to as well.
Yes, that's a strength of 3E. It's also designed that way, which isn't surprising. As stated above, I have a few flavour quibbles with (for instance) the content of the MM, but there's ways around that - such as, don't use the monsters and buy more monster books.
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