Dungeonosophy
Legend
Design Parameters:
Inspirational Quotes from D&D designers:
@41:44
@48:53
"That's not in the rules!" The players will often surprise the DM by doing the unexpected. [...] One quick way for a DM to decide whether a solution will work is by imagining the situation, and then choosing percentage chances for different possibilities." --page B60
"There's always a chance." The DM may want to base a character's chance of doing something on his or her ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and so forth). To perform a difficult task (such as climbing up a rope or thinking of a forgotten clue), the player should roll the ability score or less on ld20. The DM may give a bonus or penalty to the roll, depending on the difficulty of the action (-4 for a simple task to + 4 for a difficult one). A roll of 1 should always succeed, and a roll of 20 should always fail." --page B60
Official Precedents for Simply D&D:
Other Inspirations: (though any borrowed features are fully re-clothed in D&D aesthetic and terminology)
- SD&D is a mechanically minimalist way of playing through any and all D&D adventures, within the vast D&D Multiverse, with all character options (races, classes, feats, spells, etc.) available as lore (fluff).
- Battle (combat) is streamlined to one roll per encounter, or perhaps a series of rolls (like 4E skill challenges).
- SD&D is vastly simplified mechanically, but not lore-wise. All character options are are still there...as lore (fluff). Though the core presentation of SD&D may stick to the core races and classes from xD&D, there would be some sort of SD&D "complete character option compendium" which converts not only the entirety of official 5E character options into SD&D, but also all character options from all previous editions (races and racial traits, classes and class features, subclasses, backgrounds, kits, prestige classes, proficiencies, skills, feats, spells)...as lore. This is doable because the mechanics are almost entirely stripped out. Abstracting the mechanics enables these features to co-exist in a single "edition" (SD&D). In this regard, SD&D may be more rich and nuanced than D&D 5E.
- Mechanics are either completely mathless (e.g. Advantage/Disadvantage instead of adding modifiers), or very math-lite (like the Monster Slayers kid's D&D published by WotC).
- All "bean-counting" is done away with: XP, GP, encumbrance, etc.
- The SD&D character sheet has a box to draw in a sketch or symbol of each character feature or piece of equipment. A visual sigil helps with quickly remembering and seeing what the character can do.
- SD&D leans into the leading progressive edge of D&D, such as the trend toward freely mixing and matching racial traits. Which is also the way it was in Tom Moldvay and Lawrence Schick's Original Known World (OKW) campaign of 1976-1979: "A note about the races in OKW: they’re much less hard-edged and distinct than in Middle-earth or World of Greyhawk. It’s better to think of them as tribes or ethnicities. All the breeds of humanoid mortals in OKW are inter-fertile, so wherever they’re adjacent there’s a fair amount of intermixing. If you self-identify as an elf, you’re an elf."
- SD&D is explicitly set in the D&D Multiverse. The setting is not simplified. In fact, the presentation of the D&D Multiverse may be even more nuanced and complete than we've seen in 5E so far. For example, SD&D lore-books will explicitly refer to all worlds and planes from previous editions. Encyclopedic sources such as the 2E Spell Compendiums, 2E Encyclopedia Magica (magic item compendium series), and Echohawk's research into official monster lore from previous editions, are valued resources in SD&D...for lore (rather than for mechanics).
- SD&D is adventure-centered, rather than rulebook-centered. There must be a straightfoward way of converting any and all existing D&D adventures into SD&D. SD&D conversion documents might also provide bullet-pointed encounter summaries and story summaries for helping a DM prepare the adventure.
- Though each officially published D&D world exists in the SD&D Multiverse, the default world is a sandbox, hex-crawler homebrew world of the SD&D DM's creation. Based on the 2E World Builder's Guide and the 2E Spelljammer planet-creation book: Practical Planetology. World building is part of the game from the start. Just like rolling up a character. The world is "rolled up" too.
- SD&D must aesthetically look like D&D. SD&D sticks closely to official D&D terminology, though it may draw from terminology from previous editions. But SD&D doesn't draw from, say, Pathfinder terminology.
- To fulfill the hankering of each generational flavor of D&D nostalgia, the final SD&D PDF will be available in different "edition themes" which mimic the fonts and graphic design of each edition of D&D: OD&D manila, Basic Holmes/Sutherland, B/X Otus, BECMI Elmore, 1E orange-spine Easley, 2E Easley, Rules Cyclopedia Easley, 2.5E Skills & Powers black framed Easley, 3E Henry Higgenbotham gears and gems, 4E Wayne Reynolds, and 5E. But the text is the same. Only the graphic design differs.
Inspirational Quotes from D&D designers:
- Mike Mearls and "A Streamlined Combat System":
"Would you be interested in a streamlined combat system that allowed you to resolve fights quickly? Is the concept appealing?" --Mike Mearls, Sept. 2017
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- Matt Mercer and "Ability Modifier Only" D&D:
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- Tom Moldvay's "d100 D&D" mini-game from the 1981 BASIC D&D Rulebook:
"That's not in the rules!" The players will often surprise the DM by doing the unexpected. [...] One quick way for a DM to decide whether a solution will work is by imagining the situation, and then choosing percentage chances for different possibilities." --page B60
- Tom Moldvay's "Ability Check D&D" mini-game from the 1981 BASIC D&D Rulebook:
"There's always a chance." The DM may want to base a character's chance of doing something on his or her ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and so forth). To perform a difficult task (such as climbing up a rope or thinking of a forgotten clue), the player should roll the ability score or less on ld20. The DM may give a bonus or penalty to the roll, depending on the difficulty of the action (-4 for a simple task to + 4 for a difficult one). A roll of 1 should always succeed, and a roll of 20 should always fail." --page B60
Official Precedents for Simply D&D:
- Monster Slayers (4E and 5E children's version of D&D): Heroes of Hesiod (pdf) and The Champions of the Elements (pdf)
- Tom Moldvay's "d100 D&D" and "Ability Check D&D" subgames within B/X D&D.
- D&D 4E Skill Challenges
- Other streamlined D&D-branded expressions, such as how characters are statted in the various D&D Miniatures Games, D&D Game Books (e.g. Super Endless Quest), D&D Card Games, and D&D Board Games.
Other Inspirations: (though any borrowed features are fully re-clothed in D&D aesthetic and terminology)
- Lost in the Fantasy World by Diogo Nogueira
- Tiny Dungeon and the Tiny d6 engine
- Black Hack
- Maze Rats
- Knave
- ENWorld's Simply6
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