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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Moonmover" data-source="post: 9111290" data-attributes="member: 7042230">I think we need to start by locking down what fantasy media would be out there, influencing the game in this alternate timeline.I'm going to disregard any influence from video games. There is no Skyrim, there is no Final Fantasy, there is no World of WarCraft (but there may still be a WarCraft RTS series). Without D&D to inspire them, those games don't get made.You can throw out most of Appendix N, as well. Howard, Lovecraft, Tolkien, and maybe Moorcock have staying power, but IMO D&D is the reason that the rest of those authors have not faded completely into obscurity. Some of them were out of print already when D&D came out. Consequently, I think we're looking at a game that is much more "high fantasy" than "swords and sorcery."The Lord of the Rings is still going to be around as the foundation of the modern fantasy genre, and it's still going to be important. As a consequence, we still have the core nonhuman races - elves, dwarves, and halflings. Half-elves and half-orcs may also be there. But, I think there's an off-chance that you can just play as a straight-up orc. Modern culture is much less in favor of the idea that there might be a race of people who are just inherently bad, and the orcs are a significant part of Tolkien's universe.Elsewhere in fantasy literature, we'll have A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, Discworld, and A Court of Thorns and Roses. I don't have sales data or anything for these books, but they just feel like they're the most mainstream expressions of fantasy literature at the moment. Two of them got TV shows recently. Wait, so did the Shannara Chronicles, so throw that in, too (now we definitely still have half-elves).Then there's manga/anime. If D&D were first coming out today, this would absolutely be a huge influence, because it is a huge portion of fantasy media.The animanga franchises that seem most relevant, and which also have large audiences in the west, and which are not themselves descended directly from D&D, by my reckoning are: DragonBall Z, Naruto, Berserk, Bleach, Demon Slayer....and a lot more but that's what I have off the top of my head. Notably, all of these except DragonBall have human protagonists, and I don't think game balance could withstand Saiyan PC's.With all that in mind, what changes do we see to D&D in this universe?Vancian casting is right out. If any person on this forum tells me they heard of Jack Vance before they got into D&D, I'm inclined to call that person a liar. We'll still have spellcasting PC's, but they'll play much differently, mechanically.I feel like the more recent fantasy series tend to focus a lot more on characters who are important not just to their own stories, but to their settings. The heroes of modern fantasy fiction are often either chosen ones, or they are involved in courtly politics and major wars, or both. We might actually see a lot more domain-level play because of this.The power level of melee characters is going to be much higher, because anime.The implied setting is likely to be more anachronistic and less strictly medieval, because anime.Psionics is gone, because that fad has faded. The Monk class is gone, because regular Fighters are going to eat his kung-fu-flavored lunch.At this point, ASoIaF has overtaken even the Arthurian mythos in terms of shaping how people perceive knights. So, the Paladin class is out, replaced by nonmagical armored warriors who can lead troops.Alignment may not be gone. But, the Good-Evil axis is going to be given much more weight than the Law-Chaos axis, if the latter is even present.My tentative race and class list looks like this:Races:•Human (obviously)•Elf (inspired mainly by Tolkien, but also by Maas)•Dwarf (Tolkien)•Halfling (Tolkien)•Orc (Tolkien)•Half-Elf (partly from Tolkien, but mainly from Terry Brooks)•Dragonborn (these are D&D originals, and cool enough to fit into the current fantasy zeitgeist)•Tiefling (see above)Classes:•Warrior (who wields weapons and wears armor. Can have supernatural power)•Martial Artist (who does not wear armor, may or may not wield weapons, and definitely has supernatural powers)•Barbarian (because vikings are hot right now, rather than because of Conan)•Wizard (who comes from a magical bloodline like a sorcerer, and who does not use Vancian-style magic at all. Magic is probably mostly elemental)•Warlock (too cool and edgy to exclude!)•Rogue (a universal archetype)Clerics are gone, because there's a "white magic" style Wizard subclass that can perform magic healing.The mood: you're all heroes and you're all badasses. Light-hearted campaigns are about saving the world (LotR); gritty campaigns are about conquering it (ASoIaF). Dungeon crawling is a sideshow that does not enter into many campaigns. You fight monsters because they're threatening the countryside, not because you want their stuff.</blockquote>

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