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May 3, 2012 -- 5:59AM, Alynn wrote:

May 2, 2012 -- 10:34PM, brimfieldgames wrote:

@ authw8 1Rules are always optional in D&D if you as a DM Dont like it you don't have to use it. Or you can modify it.

2 what do you mean "everything is core philosophey"? as a dm if you didnt like a certain race exclude from your caimpaign, didnt like a certain class? exclude it too. 

3.And the only thing you specifcally listed authw8 as not being modular was the rules, thats just one thing.

You arent contractually obligated to follow every single rule in the book. In fact most editions encourage to modify the system to your own liking.

True, you could throw out whatever you wanted. What is meant by modular is this.

Take the 4e players handbook. Remove all magic items but don't replace it with inherant bonuses, without houseruling and rule changing. Remove all skills from the game. Remove all feats. In 5e feats and skills are modules, and not part of the core, so you can choose to have or not have them. You would be hard pressed to do the same in 4e without heavy houserules to fix the issues.

The core, and as I said before even the initial books will include the core,the absolute base, the bare minimum needed to play, and include several modules. Anything produced later is a module and can be included or precluded without having to houserule or change in order to make it work.

So say later on the design team comes up with a new and interesting way to do skills. Some hate it, some love it, the ones that love it buy the book, plug it in and are good to go, the others don't have to use it at all, and in the case of this their goal is you can have one at the table using it and another not and it doesn't make one more powerful than the other.

     I think I see where you are coming from, but I don't see why WOTC would want to go there. 
The idea seems to actually appeal only to a tiny percentage of the market.
     You buy a car, or most anything else.  You want it ready to use right out of the box.  You don't want to do the assembly unless you are a hobbyist who enjoys the assembly as much as the finished product, or simply too broke to do it any other way.  So we are going to have a large majority who want their D&D to come pre-assembled.  If they don't like it, they may play Pathfinder, but they will still insist on buying the whole package.  They are just not interested in buying an assembly kit.
     And we may have tremendous problems producing an assembly kit where you can just pop out system A and put in B.  You go get a replacement for an auto part, the routine first question is what type of car.  Your GM part will just not fit on a Ford.  In fact it won't fit on other GMs.  We will face much the same problems trying to make sure a THAC0 system can work with BAB.
     Then there is the problem of trying to be a better combination than each of the parts.  It's pretty common that when you try to do two things, you do both badly.  Our 1e player may look at 5e, find he is actually able to play 1e with it, but it still does not satisfy him.   [Mind you, it is doubtful there are enough 1e players left to make it worth the bother.]  So he sticks to 1e. 
     WOTC has the experts, but this idea looks to be a very dangerous one that may up appealing to nobody instead of everybody.

Then again, there's a Madden football game every single year.

Creating an edition of the game is a massive undertaking. It's a huge, huge project. (That's why Pathfinder uses the d20 system, and didn't make their own system from scratch.) Because of this, TSR/WOTC made tweaks within the edition to make changes. 1e had one, but it's not so obvious. From Unearthed Arcana on, there were a number of books that are different. Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Wilderness Survival Guide, Oriental Adventues.

2e had black covered books/Player Option books. 3e had 3.5. 4e has Essentials. (Although Essentials was more to get D&D into alernate markets such as Wal Mart or Target. Evergreen products with specific box sizes, and self contained so retailers could just restock rather than worry about the "next release" and having shelf space for it.

Every single edition flat out states that D&D is always changing and growing. That's the nature of the beast.

And because it's such a massive project, TSR didn't really take the plunge and make a 2e right off after 5 years or so. And there were all kinds of legal situations going on with TSR after 2e came out so there was a large amount of time before 3e came out.

Just because those two editions had such a space, people assume that's what the "natural" edition cycle is. Or at least hope that's what it is. That clearly is not the case. Perhaps the natural cycle is 3-5 years. TSR was too busy to make a new edition sooner, or there could be other unknown reasons why 2e wasn't released much sooner than it had been.

Folks need to let go of the idea that an edition should last a decade before a new presentation is made.