Let's Make a D&D

Partially out of frustration, partially out of curiosity, and partly because I geek like that, I'm going to write a D&D, and talk about how and why here.

Let's establish that I want to make a D&D.  I'm aware that term is intellectual property that belongs to someone else, so it won't make the box cover, don't worry.  What I mean is that I don't want to make a "retro-clone" or something that gets tagged #OSR.  I want to make a D&D.

By which I mean, there is no other game even close in terms of identity.  Nearly everyone involved in RPGs knows what D&D is "about".  And most of them have a decent clue about the mechanics.  So what I want to do is take that concept in their heads--what D&D "is"--and make a game that tries to do those things.

So when I say "Let's Make a D&D", what I mean is, "Let's Build a Set of Rules That Does What People Think of as D&D".

To which you're ready to respond, "Wtf?  That's every fantasy game."  Right.  But almost all of them do what D&D does in the same way.  Pathfinder (obviously), the OSR stuff (obviously), etc.  The one exception I know that's gotten traction is Dungeon World.

And I think that's a good model.  What DW does is take many of the D&D-specific "tropes" and make them work mechanically differently, almost always in service of creating drama and narrative momentum.  That's the new part.  There are classes and levels, but they're handled in more of a "feat" fashion.  You still roll to-hit, and I think you even add an Ability modifier.  But the results are different--they're not just "you may roll your damage dice" or not.

For what it's worth, I think Dungeon World is a great game--it generates more smiles per time unit than anything else I'm aware of.  But I don't enjoy it at all.  It rewards the part of RPGs I find the least interesting--the RP.  So I give it a 10/10, but I also gave away my hardcopy.

The point is I think Dungeon World does what I want to do--it's a legitimately new way to do an old thing.  So I want to make a Dungeon World.  Except what I want to make is an anti-Dungeon World.

(Somehow I managed to omit this paragraph from the post:

And what I mean by that is I want to focus on mechanics.  Types of random distributions and to what they are best applied.  Class (as in C/F/M-U/T) as a way of granting more specificity to a character instead of just restricting him.  Blah blah blah.  Follow-up posts will be roughly organized by mechanical topic.)

Sorry and thanks for reading all that.  Here's the point: I'm going to write a game that is basically going to be a "remix" rather than a "reskin".  I'm going to take as many things that make D&D "what it is" as I can and try to make them work better.  We have almost 40 years with this stuff.  It can be done.