One D&D Needs Simplicity

When I first got into Magic the Gathering with my brother, I bought a starter set, and the one thing I learned is rulebooks - the size of a playing card - that are hundreds of pages long - for a card game - in 6-point type so small you can't read - are one of the dumbest things the company ever did. You would think that for a card game, you could figure things out with the information on the card.

But no.

And this "writing too many rules" bloat and waste have stayed with the company ever since.

Even the D&D 5 Basic set is around 180 pages of rules.

Many TSR games in the 1980s were under 64 pages for a complete game.

Stars Without Number has one page of rules summary that covers 95% of the game.

I think Wizards needs to learn how to write fewer rules, be concise, brief, and to the point, and simplify a set of rules. They write way too much, and worse, they have little self-control when making one-off rule changes and modifications because a designer wants a power or feat to work a certain way. They write too much, toss in exceptional cases whenever they feel like it, and keep piling on extra books, overpowered options, and complexity when they need to meet their monthly sales numbers.

One D&D should exist as a core set of rules in under 8 pages of text, and that is very generous since many other games can do a complete system in less. A description for a class should be under two pages per class. Everything should be pared down and simplified to the least information possible.

Old School Essentials does an incredible job of simplifying and presenting the information. What I want out of One D&D is this book, but for 5E, and just as tight and organized. No fluff, overwriting, no going on and on, and no making exceptions everywhere. And this game proves you don't need to overdo it, just do it very well, and you will become the de-facto market leader in a genre of gaming.

5E is an excellent set of rules, but it needs an OSE level of simplification and rewriting. I can only imagine how great the game would be if someone turned 5E into a "New School Essentials" book.

And I feel Wizards is incapable of creating a set of simple rules because that level of organization, self-control, and discipline is not in their company DNA. Is this part of why I like them? Yes. It is a huge problem? That can also be a yes.

And keeping backward compatibility may make writing a book like this impossible. They may run into the "Win32" problem that Microsoft and Windows suffer with, in that the company can never get rid of an outdated and insecure API. Backward compatibility with 5E may drag down the entire company and prevent them from revolutionizing the game.