You are D&D's Bible Keeper - What do you do?

[Ry]

I'd think about doing a small generic setting (maps, short description of major nations, a timeline and a brief history) and stick it in the srd. Simple and vanilla, but large enough to potentially have a place for everything d20 related. The maps could also be made to only cover a smaller part of the whole world, allowing for even further customization if needed.
Let all the 3rd party people sort out what to do with it. Additional setting sourcebooks (by my people or others)could be comprehensive or more modular, for either a complete one-world-in-a-book thing or easily customized by gm's (buying multiple different sourcebooks and mixing it up). Additional books could therefore be consistent with established canon for my world or contradict anything previously published (as long as it is easy for customers to figure out which type of book it is). Do a few (depending on the amount of material released by 3rd party publishers) sourcebooks, using the campaign setting in different ways. eg. a grim'n'gritty version, a superhigh fantasy, a lowmagic, an arabian nights, a mists of avalon romance thingy etc. Perhaps even do a write-our-setting contest for this, and publish the best.

That's a really, really cool idea.

 

[Nightfall]

Gneech,

I already suggested that lifestyle to Ranger Wicketts. He's mulling it over.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Barring myself from creating fourth edition, there are at least a few things I would do...

The Arcane/Divine split would be my first victim. Remove that pesky Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric mentality at least a little by collapsing Wizard and Cleric into the same role. Wizards will be able heal and Clerics would be either more wizard-like, or a totally different variant, as different as psionics or incarnum. Healing being strictly in the realm of the divine just doesn't make sense to me, especially in settings like Eberron, and it is overly limiting. Also, I have some great ideas on how to change clerics, but that is a different thread. Finally, it would free up that fourth archetypical slot for more flexibility in parties.

Monsters and races would be my next target. If I had my way, Aberrations would be gone and there would be 140% more Fey, Giants, Magical Beasts, and Monsterous Humanoids based on mythological creatures. Iron Heroes-style Vilain Classes would be the norm. There would be tips on making an encounter based on a monster for each monster entry. The Monster type categories (Giant, Humanoid, dragon, etc) would be either heavily modified, or done away with.

I would get rid of the current format of dragons based on scale-color entirely. Instead of Red, White, Bronze, and Silver Dragons there would be Fire, Ocean, Sand, Sky, etc Dragons. These dragons would be flexible in coloration, alignment, and disposition. They would be balanced for use as PCs or PC mounts. They would not have any innate magical powers, and might instead use the Maneuver/Stance structure from The Book of Nine Swords to organize their special attacks and flight patterns (Breath Weapons or Snatch would become maneuvers and Hover would a Stance, for example).

The rules for mounts would be simplified a great deal, and I would remove the ride skill and replace it with Mount Proficiencies. No seperation between Rider and Mount actions or Turn order.

I would remove some races, remove all subraces, make Orcs into a standard PC race, and add several more races built on non-Tolkien patterns of thought.

I think that is enough for now...

 

[Nightfall]

So...you don't want to make D&D into the Scarred Lands for me then?

 

[GreatLemur]

Monsters and races would be my next target. If I had my way, Aberrations would be gone and there would be 140% more Fey, Giants, Magical Beasts, and Monsterous Humanoids based on mythological creatures.

You've got my support on all of your ideas, except for this one. Unless my setting is mythic earth, I haven't got any use for heavily folklore-flavored monsters. Aberrations, on the other hand, are consistently (in my opinion) the most interesting creatures in the game, and much more fitting, tone-wise, with the kind of campaign I want to play or run.

But, yeah, ending the whole color-coded dragon absurdity, mitigating or removing the arcane-divine distinction, building flexible antagonists out of villain classes, orcs as a PC race, all the rest of that is cool.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

OK, you wake up, and you're in charge of the D&D brand - not the rules, mind you, just the content (chromatic / metallic dragons, Hieroneous, Pelor, Vecna, etc).

You've been told to take it wherever you like, nothing is sacred, but you need to work with existing elements (changing, remaking, etc. rather than introducing totally new things).

What do you do with this awesome power?

Quit. Or at least change my job description by fiat. Nobody should be TOLD what the content of the D&D game in general IS - only what it could be. If I'm in charge of changing and remaking... the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Planescape, etc. then I don't have much issue with it. It is the job of campaign settings to change and remake, sometimes extensively, the content of D&D as otherwise presented in the RAW and that is where I would exercise my awesome power.

If I DID make "content" changes to D&D in general it would be to REMOVE some of the specificity that was pointlessly imposed by "defaulting to Greyhawk". Dieties would be an example, as would named spellcasters of certain spells. No more Bigby, Mordenkainen, Pelor, St. Cuthbert, or Vecna. Those belong in specific settings, not as part of core rules. The various "-Hand" spells would be genericized, with perhaps a reference in the description to being part of a series of spells created by a famous - but unnamed - NPC. Pelor becomes a "Sun Deity". Vecna... well Vecna might remain referenced in the DMG under artifact descriptions as EXAMPLES, and carefully noted that Vecna is an NPC in the Greyhawk setting and just what THAT means for the DM who might want to import him to another setting, add/delete information about him, etc.

Every spell in the PH, every monster in the MM, every magic item in the DMG is subject to change or removal by the DM, and DM's would be repeatedly reminded and carefully instructed how not to abuse that privilege. That's where my visions of such power takes me.