But is that essential to D&D? You can play D&D without a reliance on TotM so I would think that is not core.Theater of the mind.
You don’t have your rule books, nor your character sheet.
You have a single pen and a small sheet of paper,
If you rely on theater of the mind, you can play.
No individual element is absolutely essential. For any given element, you could change that one thing, and the remaining entity would still be D&D.But is that essential to D&D? You can play D&D without a reliance on TotM so I would think that is not core.
Is he farting while dual wielding? I didn’t know paladins got a sneak attack?!
That reminds me of a session, when we played the german "The Dark Eye" back in the days. The game just received a new rules companion "introducing" critical hit tables. Before that the rule was, that if you rolled a 1 or 2 (lower is better here), no parry roll allowed and your damage bypasses armor protection (= no points deducted from the damage roll due to the armor of the enemy (natural and worn alike)). Now there was this fantastic table, that you rolled on after you had that critical.The feeling of rolling a 1, or a 20. No other game I've ever played had such an impact for a single result on a d20. D20 = D&D
A class system.
Levels.
Hit points.
Saving throws.
The six ability scores. Whether it's the right way (SIWDConCha) or the wrong way (heh, SDCIWC), you should have six abilities. No more. No less.
"AC, HD, class, level, combat and magic mechanics, saving throws etc. etc. And those are easily to understand even by new players"
Not actually so. Having run for a lot of new players, D&D is not more obvious than Fate, Big Eyes Small Mouth, GUMSHOE, or, I am guessing, many others.
D&D's core advantage is simply that a lot of experienced players can sit down and play it together with little hassle. Not just because it's popular, but also because generic fantasy is both very understood and easy to play a wide variety of play styles in.
D&D's complete failure to make inroads into other genres shows that it is intimately tied to the genre. A reasonable was might be made that the essence of D&D is simply "being the most popular game for the fantasy genre".
If BRP or Runequest was dominating the genre, I don't imagine we'd have much of a different climate for RPGS. I don't think it's anything special about D&D, honestly