Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 9609260" data-attributes="member: 58197">You can make enormous changes while preserving backwards compatibility. D&amp;D rules consist of &quot;elements&quot; (spells, feats, equipment, classes, species, etc.) and &quot;systems&quot; (movement rules, resting rules, combat rules, etc.). There are well-defined interfaces through which each system interacts with each type of element. So long as you keep those interfaces the same, you can rewrite any number of systems and any number of elements, which is to say, the whole rulebook. Old elements can then live alongside new elements within the new systems.That is what happened in 3E -&gt; 3.5E; those editions also could be, and were, combined with basically zero effort. 1E -&gt; 2E tried to achieve the same thing, but TSR-era D&amp;D was not as modular as the WotC versions, so there was considerably more friction. Still, they were similar enough that teenage me bought a bunch of 1E and 2E books without realizing they were different games.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 9609260, member: 58197"] You can make enormous changes while preserving backwards compatibility. D&D rules consist of "elements" (spells, feats, equipment, classes, species, etc.) and "systems" (movement rules, resting rules, combat rules, etc.). There are well-defined interfaces through which each system interacts with each type of element. So long as you keep those interfaces the same, you can rewrite any number of systems and any number of elements, which is to say, the whole rulebook. Old elements can then live alongside new elements within the new systems. That is what happened in 3E -> 3.5E; those editions also could be, and were, combined with basically zero effort. 1E -> 2E tried to achieve the same thing, but TSR-era D&D was not as modular as the WotC versions, so there was considerably more friction. Still, they were similar enough that teenage me bought a bunch of 1E and 2E books without realizing they were different games. [/QUOTE]

Verification