Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 3477164" data-attributes="member: 22882">Trust me, I don't take opinion polls on boards like EN World as representative of anything - even EN World itself.Eight years ago, Harry Potter was a relatively new phenomena.  Eight years ago, Final Fantasy 7 had only two years before busted console RPGs out of niche genre status outside Japan and made them a major, if not THE major, determinant of console sales.  Eight years ago, the Lord of the Rings movies had not even begun principle production.  Eight years ago, Everquest had just come out to rave reviews and World of Warcraft was hardly a glimmer in Blizzard's eye.  Eight years ago, the Matrix was brand new, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had yet to introduce the wider moviegoing audience to its wuxia roots.The fantasy genre has changed in the past ten years in a way it hasn't since the initial release and popularity of D&D - if not since Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.Whether the spell system issue has changed or not, never in D&D's history has the been a time when the average person's view of fantasy, and the prospective young player's view of fantasy, has changed so much.Assuming this is correct (it's been a while since I saw excerps from the survey), then it's even less relevant what the existing playerbase thinks of a system.  New players, who would be the most important, will have either nopreconceived notions of a magic system or preconceived notions of a magic system derived primarily from works that didn't even exist when D&D 3e hit the market.Effects-based magic isn't simple, I agree.  Though I love it so, it's totally inappropriate for D&D.Encounter-based but still slot-based magic systems (ala Book of Nine Swords or, from the looks of it, Star Wars Saga) are about the same level of complexity as Vancian per day casting, simply changing per day for per encounter or giving a simple refresh method.The warlock fire-and-fire-again system is much, MUCH simpler than Vancian magic.  Pick your spells and use them forever.Spell points are hit points for the mind - simpler, IMO, and at the very least no more complex.  In any case, they are much, MUCH more familiar to the vast majority of new players; if new players are indeed the lifeblood of the hobby, then spell points are only logical.</blockquote>

Verification