I would keep the title, dungeons & dragons, but replace the rules with D6 system and make ravenloft the core setting.

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 31, 2021, 01:13:10 AM
Who are you?  Where do you come from?  What have you done before?  What are you doing now?  You all meet in a tavern, or in a dungeon, or on a ship, or at the town square, or at a public execution, etc.  Suddenly, "x" happens.  Everyone roll your perception / roll your initiative, etc.  A game is underway, and I don't care about your feat tree.  What do you do?

And some people don't engage with other peoples arguments, and talk past them while make self aggrandizing statements about how wanting to know what your character is good at means roleplaying is like a lost skill.

Also why do you have a 13th age book for your avatar pic? Is it to profess ironic hate? Because its based on 4e and in terms of character building is one if the most elaborate and tactical focused. It also has feats.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 31, 2021, 07:20:34 AM

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 31, 2021, 01:13:10 AM
Who are you?  Where do you come from?  What have you done before?  What are you doing now?  You all meet in a tavern, or in a dungeon, or on a ship, or at the town square, or at a public execution, etc.  Suddenly, "x" happens.  Everyone roll your perception / roll your initiative, etc.  A game is underway, and I don't care about your feat tree.  What do you do?

And some people don't engage with other peoples arguments, and talk past them while make self aggrandizing statements about how wanting to know what your character is good at means roleplaying is like a lost skill.

Also why do you have a 13th age book for your avatar pic? Is it to profess ironic hate? Because its based on 4e and in terms of character building is one if the most elaborate and tactical focused. It also has feats.

Role playing has been a lost skill.  Perhaps it is making a comeback?  I suppose some of the more popular gaming episodes with professional voice actors, are encouraging better role play?

You mentioned my avatar: 
It's a yin / yang kind of thing.  (I'm sure the creators of 13th Age really love that hat.)  I believe 13th age contains some good ideas.  Enough so, that I purchased the core rulebook and the bestiary.  I like the concepts of having Icons, One Unique Thing about each player character, having Only 10 Character Levels, Adding your full Character Level to Die Rolls, having a really nice Setting Map inside the Front and Back covers of the core rulebook, and many nice pieces of artwork throughout.  The 13th Age art style is unique.  It seems to me that 13th Age may be an obvious improvement, of D&D 4th Edition.  13th Age is cool and unique, and Dungeon Crawl Classics is cool and unique.  I own both games, for inspirational purposes.  I prefer to play either OD&D, or simplified D&D 5E.

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 31, 2021, 02:17:55 PMRole playing has been a lost skill.

What a bunch of self agrandizement. 'My game of make-believe is way more legit then your game of make-believe'.

I agree with some sentiment in terms of character complexity, but you phrase it in such a wanky way. And I disagree very much about your points on 13th age. I cannot comprehend how you can whine about feat trees, and a focus on munchkiny tactical combat, when thats 90% of what 13th age is (its core resolution mechanics being massively in service towards tactical combat) and the latter 10% being storygame stuff.

Edit: As for simplifed 5e, have you checked out Worlds Without Number? 10 level advancement, simple character classes and feats but no feat trees?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 31, 2021, 02:48:22 PM

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 31, 2021, 02:17:55 PMRole playing has been a lost skill.

What a bunch of self agrandizement. 'My game of make-believe is way more legit then your game of make-believe'.

I agree with some sentiment in terms of character complexity, but you phrase it in such a wanky way. And I disagree very much about your points on 13th age. I cannot comprehend how you can whine about feat trees, and a focus on munchkiny tactical combat, when thats 90% of what 13th age is (its core resolution mechanics being massively in service towards tactical combat) and the latter 10% being storygame stuff.

Edit: As for simplifed 5e, have you checked out Worlds Without Number? 10 level advancement, simple character classes and feats but no feat trees?

I don't play 13th Age.  I borrow from it.  Same thing with Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Quote from: FF_Ninja on December 29, 2021, 02:49:05 PM
D&D 5e: What's wrong with it...

There's nothing that makes me want to play it (instead of older editions), and plenty that makes me want to *not* play it. So I'll play my older editions of choice and ignore 5e and go along my blissful way. That pretty much sums it up.

I think it's done a good job as a compromising edition and its core rules are great. Most of my changes would be adding back the stakes and tension that got removed and undoing the homogenization.

The idea was one to strive for: a compromise version to try and unify the TTRPG community.

Problem is that community stopped existing a long time ago.

As far as the rules? They work fine there are a few interesting ideas but that is about it. YMMV.

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 31, 2021, 02:17:55 PM

Role playing has been a lost skill.  Perhaps it is making a comeback?  I suppose some of the more popular gaming episodes with professional voice actors, are encouraging better role play?

LOL.

Wanna be amateur actors pretending to be elves talking in funny voices is a lost skill. As if it ever was a skill.

There is nothing more annoying than people "role playing" their characters. It's a game, talk in a normal voice and play like a normal person.

You may want to add "At my table" to those comments.

Quote from: Willmark on January 02, 2022, 09:19:13 AM
The idea was one to strive for: a compromise version to try and unify the TTRPG community.
...

IMHO that "compromise vision" will end up biting WotC in the ass...

4e for all its faults at least had a clear direction for what it wanted D&D to be: "4e is played like This...".

5e has taken the approach of: "We don't want to take a firm stand on anything."

And now with the 'lore corrections' leading to the "blandification" of D&D, 5e has gotten rather lukewarm.

5e is riding high on a big wave, which will go on for a while yet.

But even McDonalds has to put out the occasional menu item that actually tastes like something to keep the people coming back...

Quote from: FF_Ninja on December 29, 2021, 02:49:05 PM
...
You are granted the ability to make any alterations, additions, corrections, or retractions in the effort to return D&D to glory - or perhaps make it even better than before.

What changes do you make, and why?

Taking this at face value - if the powers that be at WotC utterly lost their minds...

I would then be in the D&D selling business. Which would mean the game would have to have the Six ability scores, HP, AC, and Saves.

Any one who picks up a character sheet should immediately recognize the game as D&D, at first glance.

This is how I would "re-write" D&D:

Roll d6's for a 3-18 range to get the modifier at character creation. Use only the modifier for the rest of the game.

I like systems where the players have to make relevant choices for their characters. This is something I'd like to see D&D fully embrace. And I believe that it can be done while still being easier for newbies to learn than current 5e.

Actions:
Remove bonus action, everything uses an Action, Free Action or Reaction. You can't use more than one free action per round. Dual wielding – use your Reaction. Lots of stuff that were bonus action dependent they can now just do with 'activating' or if it is a physical extra action – they now need to spend their reaction for it. Get rid of the idea of 'use all your movement'. eliminate all the little tricks PC's can now do to yo-yo in front of opponents during combat. Players ruminating how to maximize every 5' they have slows the game down.

Race as class makes a comeback. I'd do it in ACKS style: Each race would have 2-3 special classes available only to that race. This limits the available PC races in the 3 core books due to the page count requirements. And would serve as a default limiter on how prolific monster races get in the game. Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, only in Core. This is good.

I'd also have the default setting be far more human-centric.

The Monk character class is gone. Because fuck Daniel Kwan.

I'd replace it with an alchemist class. And classes like the Bard, Paladin, Ranger would not be casters. Like Ever.

I like the idea of universal ranges:
All weapon and spell distances to roughly 5 (melee), 10 (reach), 30 (move, throw), 60 Missile, etc...

Monsters more like 4e stat blocks - no having to look up spells or abilities, it's all in the stat block.

Ditch inspiration. Roll it into Hit Dice. Now the PC's have to make risk / reward choices to get advantage on a roll now vs. having HD to heal later. One meta mechanic only please...

Ditch skills. Go with Barbarians of Lemuria style Backgrounds/Careers as Skills. 4-5 per PC.

Proficiency is now a type of skill specialization that give adv/disadv.  It is now separate from Trained Abilities like: Weapon, Armor, and Language training. BAB for Melee and Missile attacks makes a comeback.

An encumbrance system that matters – A simple, straightforward, slot-based system that has the PC's make Hard choices on what they can actually carry. Bulk and weight of an item are factored into the Enc value now.

These are reflected on the character sheets.

Saying "track encumbrance" and the player askes: "Ok, what is the best way to do that?" The response: "Here is a blank sheet of paper, you sort it..." Is the reason why enc is complete handwavium for most D&D players. Treat them as the subsystems they are, and have the rule referenced on a player facing character sheet that lets them easily engage with the systems of the game.

Spell level and Character level are now synced. Ditch cantrips known – they are now extra spell slots. And a spell slot is a spell slot – no "level" spell slots. You spend spell slots to cast your spells: lvl 1 spell = 1 spell slot to cast. Lvl 3 spell = 3 spell slots to cast, etc...  Yes. The entire spell lists would need to be reorganized and rethought from the ground up. But it would be far more straightforward for newbies.

Distinct types of spell lists like PF. Mage (Trad Blast and cast), Drudic (Nature stuff), Sorcery (Summoning things), Miracles (Cleric powers). The classes primarily learn and focus on the spells of their class, but make an in-game way to learn a few spells from others. No healing at range, no pogo stick PC's during combat.

Miracles would work similarly to how they do in Lion and Dragon, and make a D&Dized version of the demon summoning rules that anyone can do. Because I believe in handling PC's all the rope they want.

And casters don't just get every spell of a given level when they level up - they must be found or learned in game. Scrolls are now more of a thing, wands and staves become sought after items.

A robust and straightforward downtime mechanic, with an easy reference sheet, i.e. blades n the dark. "Wasting time" healing up goes away. There are things like trained abilities, Crafting, and learning new spells that can only be done through downtime. Make engaging in down time actions very desirable for players to reference in play. No more handwavium.

Bring back the dungeon and wilderness exploration timings from B/X. Import a form of the journey rules from AiME for standard A to B non-exploration travel. Any class ability or spell that gives PC's a "skip" button on these things is excommunicated from the rules! Did I mention straightforward reference sheets for the PC's and GM's?

"Optional" Feats are gone. Subclasses are gone. Multiclass gone.

Class abilities: IMHO one of the more iffy parts of the game. It adds complexity but you actually make no meaningful choices for character progression after 3rd level. Added complexity with less PC choices is not good design IMHO.

I think that this can be smoothed out without going to the total featapalooza direction that PF has gone in. 

As you advance you choose class abilities from three tiers: At level 1 you choose one option from 3-5 choices, Lvl 2-5 you choose from 5-7 options. From Lvl 6 on - open ended from 15-20 options. Per class. You do not get to select from a previous tier of options when you move past it in level. This makes for characters of the same class all having options without being duplicates of each other in the same party. Especially since you do not get a new ability with every level. There would be points for attributes, careers, extra proficiencies to select from, etc.

Most PCs will end up with only 6-8 class abilities on a 1-20 level spread. With this system a player's choices are expanded gradually without overwhelming them with all the options available on the early levels. And yes, character abilities will need to be re-made from the ground up for each class.

Traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, and backgrounds would quietly disappear form the character sheet...

In the moaning, wailing, and gnashing of teeth category:

Now we are to the one adjustment I'd make that many D&D fans would have serious issues with...

Now that I have made HD the game meta mechanic – we can ease up on the built-in meta mechanic that is HP bloat.

The 'sweet spot' for most D&D games seems to be lvls 4-10. I'd simply tune for that sweet spot for 20 levels of play.

Stop all HP and spell progression at lvl 5 or 6. All other level increases occur as normal. So the characters get more powerful, yet still retain a certain vulnerability to threats.

I'd have to figure out a way to ritualize some of the iconic high level spells - while subtly nerfing them at the same time.

This flattens the math making it things far more streamlined as the designers no longer have to deal with the scaling issues that HP inflation has always brought to the game.

And of course, I would have some rules for the PC's to create traps for the bigger and tougher monsters in the MM.


The E6 mode of play may not survive the playtest - but even then I think I could get way with capping HP around Lvl 10 AD&D style.

All together, I don't think there is much people could point at and say "That's not D&D!!!"  Because in many ways I'm trying to bring the game back to a B/X D&D Keep on the Borderlands style of play.

I'd hope.

Most likely I'd go down as the guy that single handedly killed D&D.

The streamlining of a lot of the system works quite well especially with the usage of the proficiency bonus.

Skills, however, are bad. Bad and bare-bones. They seem to have been barely worked on. It has far too little crunch and makes it so things have to be judged almost arbitrarily. It also makes more simulation-skewed skill usage all-but impossible requiring solid homebrewing to make-up for it.

The Death Rules are terrible. They feel like someone made them up 10 minutes before shipping the product. "Oh crap we forgot to include death rules...uhhh...three strikes and you're out! Phew! Done!" Awful.

Skills and Death & Dying are the two things I always house-rule when running 5E

Quote from: Wiseblood on January 04, 2022, 09:33:51 PM
You may want to add "At my table" to those comments.

That is assumed. No point in stating the obvious.

Quote from: Jaeger on January 04, 2022, 11:37:20 PM

I'd replace it with an alchemist class. And classes like the Bard, Paladin, Ranger would not be casters. Like Ever.

Do you have a specific alchemist class write up you favor? I've seen a lot of alright ones, but none I ever thought really nailed it.

Also, I'm with you on Paladins and Rangers not getting spells. Some spell-like abilities, such as Paladin lay-on-hands maybe, but actual spells just ruins the flavor.

I don't mind spells for Bards so much, would just like them to be more closely tied to their theme.