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

[Laman Stahros]

** Find out who currently owns the Battletech license to do as both action-figure minitures and a d20 Future accessory.

Wizkids owns the IP, makes the Mechwarrior clicky tech crap, and licenses Fanpro to produce the Classic Battletech line.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd recommend checking out Ars Magica for an alternate idea for magic - it feels more esoteric somehow. Also, if you're willing to trade off easy-to-adjudicate for mysterious, an old game called Everway might be able to accomodate (although it's too far afield for my tastes).

Yeah, the magic in Ars Magica/Mage: The Ascension is great for mysterious magical feel, but it's telling that the entire game has to be built around it for it to fit in well.

 

[Nightfall]

Whiz,

Right I mean if people want "magic" try reading Crowley now and again. Me I'll stick with shadow magic.

Fru,

Darn you! Stop reading my mind!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I'd just use Eberron, but Keith Baker says it's too wonky to make core, and I'll defer to him on this.

I completely agree with Keith.

The key with a standard setting is not that many people love it, but that many people don't hate it. Eberron has its fans, sure, but there's a lot of people who hate it like poison. The same goes for the FR.

Both are great settings I'm sure (I know it for FR, and can only guess it for Eberron, but there seem to be lots of people liking it, so it can't be bad), but they have too many haters who would quit D&D if they would become standard.

No, the standard setting needs to be Essence of Vanilla. GH may be bland, but that makes it so perfectly suited for the role of standard campaign. And after all, you can always make campaign settings for the other worlds.

And it's not going to cover any major new conceptual ground; the major point of the new setting will be that, unlike Greyhawk (or the Realms, for that matter), but like Eberron, the new setting will be designed from the ground up to work with 3.5 mechanics.

I'd say that I'd wait for 4e für this (since it would take some time to design it, anyway) and design it for 4e.

Like I said, business sense would probably stop me from killing FR. I hate drow enough that I might not be able to resist.

Then you're really not suited to run D&D. It's a business endeavour, and as such it must give the customer what he wants. You can't Kevin Siembieda it or you'll lose money.

At the least, drow would be removed from the MM1 for 4E and relegated to either FR source or MM2 so they were available but not core. They would also not make it to the next version of the SRD (actually, I'm not sure if they're currently in there).

Of course they're in there. And they belong in there.

I mean, I don't like dwarves, and personally, I'd shaft the heck out of them, but only in my own campaign, not for official D&D.

I think Moon-Lancer's talking about the sense of mystery, which admittedly is sometimes lacking in D&D. Then again, if it was mysterious what magic did it wouldn't be D&D, per se.

You've got it right there: D&D's here quite a long time. That's never too good for mysteries. Eventually, things will come to light, because if they don't, people will lose interest.

And if you change D&D sufficiently to make it mysterious again, you run the rist of driving away too many fans.

i feel alot of d&d suffers and feels a bit bland

I'd say that no matter what else D&D's magic system is, bland it isn't. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it manages to step away from those bland systems that are yet another variation of the theme "mana".

I produce a true beginners game book with everything you need, including dice and a gridmap. I sell it for $10.00.

Could work: You'd probably make a loss, but it might draw enough people into D&D

If WotC could, they would, but they can't, so they don't.

And the fans of niche settings can be as viciferous as they want, it just doesn't make economic sense for WotC to publish it.

Remember: It's widely believed that their overabundance for campaign settings proved to be TSR's undoing.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I had another idea: I'd be in charge of D&D content, yes? Don't have to answer to no one?

Good! I'd make Magic: The Gathering d20! (Separate game, not Campaign Setting, though I'd keep it completely compatible to D&D).

If any Magic guy from Wizards would come to whine about "diluting the brands" or something, I'd give him 50 cents and tell him to go tell it to a parking meter.

I'm quite sure that there's lots of latent roleplaying potential in Magic players, and a Magic RPG might just be the thing to pique their curiosity for roleplaying without changing brands and starting to get D&D stuff.

Later, of course, they might be interested in buying those other books that are out there to increase their options in their games - the Complete... series, for example. Detailed web articles (which I might even put in print and send to gaming stores as freebies) on how to incorporate the new classes and options into their Magic game would ensure that they could start scouting and swashbucklering without a hassle.


Oh, and I'd hire a certain creator of a certain Dusk campaign setting to write the book, or at least the magic/spell part...

 

[Mercule]

Then you're really not suited to run D&D. It's a business endeavour, and as such it must give the customer what he wants. You can't Kevin Siembieda it or you'll lose money.

True. I doubt most people posting are really cut out to run it, though. I took the thread to be a carte blanche (other than system stuff) "what would you change about D&D?"

In all absolute honesty, if I was really in charge, I'd look at the market data and go from there. The big differences would be in the "too close to call" category. Since I'm not privy to WotC's market research, I can't actually make any claims from a business aware stand.

So, I'm going with culling the stuff that annoys me. Drow and FR top the list. Odds are good that 75% of the aberration type, especially beholders, would go.

Which takes me to, let's cut all the garbage about the dream realm and the Lovecraftian horrors. *yawn* It's okay in Call of Cthulhu and various stories, but I don't care for it as core D&D. Focus more on demon, devils, Faustian pacts, evil warlocks who bind infernal entities, etc. Those are much cooler, IMO.

Also, establish that a creature can only have the undead type if there is some connection to a soul. De-emphasize the negative energy bit and re-emphasize the "that was a living being" aspect.

 

[drothgery]

That's a lot along the lines of what I'd be thinking. But how much would the NewSetting and Greyhawk have in common?

About as much as Greyhawk and FR do. Same polytheistic but otherwise quasi-Europe trappings, but it'd be it's own thing.

NewSetting products would be about promoting and expanding the core rules; Greyhawk products would be about nostalgia and '1st edition feel' -- any tie-ins to classic modules would be set there, no dwarf wizard NPCs would appear, etc.

 

[Nightfall]

Kae'yoss,

You're one of the few people that doesn't have a problem with the system. Me, eh. I'm fine so long as there's a divide between arcane and divine magics. But then look what setting I support.

 

[Erik Mona]

What do you do with this awesome power?

Um, force my designers to read it?

--Erik

 

[Nightfall]

LOL! Erik man, you are so cool. This is why you should be in charge of WotC.