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Robb Minneman
United States
Tacoma
Washington
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There's been some focus over the last day or two on one element of the press surrounding the announcement of a new edition of D&D. In the Forbes article covering the annoucement, we have the following tidbit:
Quote: Of course, bringing all kinds of players under one tent isn’t easy when they want different things. To address that, Mearls says the new edition is being conceived of as a modular, flexible system, easily customized to individual preferences.
"Just like a player makes his character, the Dungeon Master can make his ruleset," says Mearls. He might say ‘I’m going to run a military campaign, it’s going to be a lot of fighting" so he’d use the combat chapter, drop in miniatures rules, and include the martial arts optional rules.
There's been some consternation that this approach will lead to a fragmented base of D&D players. One thing 4e does well is provide a standard rules base so that players can easily drop in and play Encounters, or other one-shot games.
I'd like to offer a pair of contrary points for discussion:
(1) This is good for the game system, and a big reason why we know that is...
(2) D&D already is, and always has been, a modular game.
Going back to at least Unearthed Arcana there have been large numbers of optional rules, classes, races, &c to drop into your game world. Published campaign worlds threw in alternate rules to promote the tone that the designers wanted for their world.
Second edition AD&D took the notion further, with customizable spell lists for clerics and the Complete series of books with various kits and options.
Heck, the original development of D&D was a mashup of different concepts from miniatures and other games, and Gygax and Arneson just threw in what they needed to make the game work to their satisfaction!
At the core, there's always been the basic D&D game, in whatever incarnation you're playing. Rules scaffolds are built on top of this core to support the particular setting you're playing. Some of those rules scaffolds are more rickety than others.
Arguably, fourth edition is the least customizable of the rulesets, and that's been its Achilles Heel. The current "Red Box Set" that is supposed to be an introduction to D&D and roleplaying is deficient as an introductory roleplaying game. You just can't take that much out of 4e and still have the game be recognizable as 4e.
If Wizards is serious about a customizable ruleset, then this can only work in the game's favor. This allows for everything from an introductory ruleset to a combat-light RPG, to a dungeon crawl to be captured in a single rules system. And if you need your rules system to do something else, you plug it in. I'm excited to see what they come up with, and where they take it.
What do all y'all think?
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Dave C
United States
Oceanside
California
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Actually.. D&D was basically a 3-book expansion on the "Chainmail" rules.
With 4th ed they have a quick, easy combat system... but D&D is actually less about combat than we all think.. the better they've gotten at the combat rules the farther we've drifted from playing roles.. I'm not talking about roles in combat.. I'm talking about the role of a character in a fantasy world..
Can they pull off 5th ed? .. I'm sure we'll buy it... which might be all they are really shooting for.
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Brian Leet
United States
Montpelier
Vermont
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One thing I really miss was how some combats could be the focus of your afternoon of play, and others could be over in five minutes.
I'll throw "pacing" in there with the oft-cited "balance" and "roles" as a key issue that needs to be addressed. As increased balance made all combats more uniform in duration, you end up with the pacing problems. This led to the related loss of random encounters.
Put another way, the 'simulationist' aspect of 3rd edition that allows and encourages you to build creatures and npcs to the same rules as characters tends to result in every encounter needing to be pre-planned or at least scheduled in the session. This further leads to a loss of verisimilitude on two levels. First, because the DM is never figuring out how to describe the twist the game just threw into the mix (random encounters) and also at the meta level as the players know that a "random" encounter is there because the DM thought it story appropriate, or wanted to punish them for camping too often.
I'd love to see the possibility of a quick combat because it would allow re-introducing the sense of real random danger in what you encounter in the world, not just in how you roll when dealing with it.
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Freelance Police
United States
Palo Alto
California
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robbbbbb wrote: (2) D&D already is, and always has been, a modular game.
+1. Or, as the old quote goes, "We roleplay *despite* it being D&D". 
I *know* many D&D players disliked the 3.x grid combat system, which made combat ridiculously long. And, for non-roleplaying roleplayers, 3e added Diplomacy and other negotiation skill checks which let you avoid roleplaying entirely.
It's well known that many roleplaying groups depend on the chemistry of the players, which implies that a roleplaying game *should* be modular. Indeed, the many different roleplaying game systems means that the roleplaying crowd *has* been fractured. So, if roleplaying gamers are a fractured audience already, why not capture that entire market instead of asking them to play a single specific system?
2nd Edition already had the idea of modularity, although I don't think they went very far with it. And, as Robb said, the various supplements to a roleplaying pretty much *are* modularity.
Whatever works. D&D is still *the* gateway game to roleplaying games, and the more roleplayers, the better.
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Zachary Zahringer
United States
Brooklyn
New York
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Eat2surf wrote: Can they pull off 5th ed? .. I'm sure we'll buy it... which might be all they are really shooting for.
This.
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