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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4687730" data-attributes="member: 4937">I would have told my bosses at Hasbro that history was sort of repeating itself.  I would have explained to them that PnP RPGs have been dominated by two competing desires within the fanbase - to have a comprehensive detailed system that facilitates complex sandbox play and also to have a quick streamlined system that facilitates playing the game quickly.What I would have suggested to Hasbro is that the market which had been dominated by D20's style play was beginning to tire a little, and that alot of 'retro' titles were popping up advertising simplier play.  At the same time, there were alot of players who were generally happy with D20 but felt as if the game was starting to getting buried under the same burden of errata, mechanical flaws, and house rules that had ultimately stifled interest in pre-3rd edition D&D.What I would have proposed is going back to D&D's roots, and splitting the game into two separate lines - D&D and AD&D.  The first line would be 'revolutionary' in design, would be marketed as '4e Dungeons & Dragons', which would have featured streamlined, fast, simplified play that experimentally borrowed narrativist technology from other modern gaming systems.  The goal would be to first satisfy the needs of players that felt 3.X was too complex, too slow, etc. and who had been gravitating recently towards simplier systems, and second to draw in younger players that had different sensibilities from the existing customer base.  For 4th edition D&D I would have created a much simplier cosmology - probably with just an underworld, overworld, and dream lands.  The other line would be marketed as '3rd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons'.  It would have maintained a high degree of compatibility with existing 3.X D&D material, but would have incorporated what had been learned about the system over 8 years or so of play, would have focused on making the skill resolution system more robust, fixing known problems with diplomacy, known problems with crafting, the spot/hide contest, balance issues between classes at high level, problems in predicting EL/CR, and so forth.  It also could have imported some of the best technologies from 4e (for example, healing scales to target's level, not caster's level), contextualized to 3.X style rules.  Essentially, it would be a highly polished version of 3.X featuring lots of optional rules to satisfy the needs of players that felt 3.X wasn't deep and complex enough, but for whom 3.X was ultimately still there preferred system.  In 3rd AD&D I would have retained the traditional D&D cosmology.</blockquote>

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