Thanks! Hopefully, it cuts down on prep time.



I am, kind of. Things the DM determines should not be done untrained *might* be "unlocked", at the DM's discretion, through drama points. A short cut that you be functional for most situations.



It isn't. You're right.

Language, language, language. I have to keep on paying attention to that sort of stuff. Excellent suggestion, man!



I keep going back and forth. Keep in mind, a main goal is to have a somewhat more elegant and flexible "old school, classic D&D". Part of that is keeping things simple so that you can easily pick it up, learn it and add stuff. In classic D&D, skills were kind of an afterthought.

The part of me that played GURPS, Hero and many other complex systems for years wants to have more skill rules. The part of me that wants a classic D&D says I'm already giving more than enough options. As written, it looks like characters have to buy or decide on specialties. And I am undecided whether you can buy additional skills. I'm tempted to have that option but it will be very, very few.

These are broad skill categories anyway. Each one makes for a considerable body of knowledge.

I think optimization and uniqueness will come primarily from alignment and "feats".

I'm starting to attack classes today. It's proving more challenging than I thought.

I know I'm like, 8 months late to this party, but allow me to do a little thread necromancy and ask: are you still working on this? If so, I'd love to see how it's progressed. I like your mission statement at the beginning.

The approach to skills seems relatively simplified and I like the notion of making combat into another skill. That's one thing that I always thought would be cool to put into d20.

I worked on it for a little while on a blog. And it wasn't bad at all if I may say so myself

Unfortunately, there were two roadblocks. I was struggling a bit with retaining recognizable D&D elements for enough people to make it worth it. Most people have a pretty good idea of what makes D&D the game it is but few people can agree on the particular elements required.

With enough work, I could have come up with something that would satisfy an audience. But my second problem was the major drawback: the state of the licenses and WotC. I sensed that the timing for that type of project was horrendous and the OGL/d20 was in limbo.

So I scrapped the project.

I've been thinking about designing an original game that will not be burdened by extrenal influences from licenses and other companies. I have two projects dear to my heart and I soon may have the time required to kickstart one of 'em.




Thanks. There was a bit more on skills on the blog and in my French notes that weren't translated yet. Yes, it was streamlining things, which was always the major goal both in prep and play. There was still some work to do, though.

Looking back, an "inspired by D&D" game using a totally different system would probably be a lot less difficult to build, though. The major drawback is that new players must learn it again as they don't have the d20 familiarity helping them.

Thank you for your interest.