Can you Ship of Theseus a D&D edition into a new game?

ETortoise · Post by **ETortoise** » Sun Mar 08, 2020 2:51 pm

I was wondering if it would be possible to patch an RPG sufficiently to make it a new game. I mean, Tome D&D is almost a different game, even though they were not made with an overarching plan.

If it is possible (or even if it’s not, since otherwise there’s not much to talk about,) how would you go about it? Are there any parts of the game that would be impossible to change?

In my thought experiment, I’d like to start with Basic Fantasy or one of the other open-source, OSR rulesets with ascending AC. This is for a couple reasons: My gaming group has played OSR games, but not 3e. The rules are pretty light, so there’s not much I’d have to contradict. And the OSR scene is pretty amenable to people writing whole new subsystems and putting in vague merchandise like saying a monster’s AC is “as chainmail.”
I think it’s be best to begin with a Book of Doods that presents replacement character classes and coincidentally unifies their XP requirements. The problem is that PC options would need to include classes and spells and maybe backgrounds/skills/proficiencies that would also necessitate work on the subsystems for interacting with the environment. Could those be broken out into their own book?

Another option would be to do things BECMI-style and write a book with low-level options, low level monsters, and just the rules for dicking around in a dungeon. The next book adds a few more levels and the rules for traveling the wilderness and dicking around in town. Then you write a big or’ monster manual, repackage the first two books into a unified system, and get to work on your domain rules.

Really, a big impetus for this idea is that I like the aesthetic of slim paperbacks that lie flat when you open them. Like a fantasy heartbreaker zine series. Also, this section of the board has gotten kinda dead while we all argue about the democratic primary.

Niles · Post by **Niles** » Sun Mar 08, 2020 3:04 pm

Not only is it possible, a substantial number of published games are.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Mar 08, 2020 3:55 pm

Pathfinder made quite a bit of money doing this.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Sun Mar 08, 2020 5:40 pm

If you build the ship of theseus in your head, but write down a shiny new ship based on your patchwork one, you can make a shorter, less incoherent, and less obviously plagiaristic game... if that's something you care about.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 08, 2020 8:37 pm

An RPG typically has a lot of moving parts, and you swap any of those out for different ones. Ideally as upgrades, but you do you. You can keep doing this until you've replaced every single part of the original.

Now a problem you can run into is backward compatibility. The moment you tip over the edge of having your new material no longer connect with material from the original game system, you've created a piece of writing debt. Material that you need to rewrite to be compatible with the stuff you've already rewritten.

For D&D specifically, the elephant in the room is the Monster writeups. As soon as you do something that makes the monster listings no longer usable as-is, you've made yourself literally hundreds of pages of work.

-Username17

ETortoise · Post by **ETortoise** » Sun Mar 08, 2020 11:18 pm

Well, eventually you’re going to want to rewrite the Monster Manual. But that’s a daunting task and putting out options for an extant system (really just it’s MM and other perils) can plug you into their community and help you build interest and goodwill for your project.

Till then, you’d want a monster manual that can absorb a lot of changes to the game before giving a divide by zero error. I think that’s one of the bonuses of using something like B/X D&D, since there’s not much there. Monsters are just hit dice,morale, movement, ac, damage and exception-based abilities. If they’re equipment-using monsters, it’s just hit dice and abilities (abilities that they might not even have.) A B/X hobgoblin’s statistics are really just its move, morale and hit dice, so even going as far as changing the base attributes of the system wouldn’t have an effect on the monster manual.

Now, deciding you’re going to give the monsters attributes like they did in 3e would require you to both rewrite the monster manual and rebalance all your character options to fit the new monster paradigm. But, once you’ve committed to rewriting the MM you’re basically ready to bundle your previous patches and release Ship of Theseus 2e: You’ve Been Tricked Into Playing a Different Game.

K · Post by K » Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:36 am

I think Pathfinder is the test of whether you can grandfather's ax a popular RPG into another one.

The problem is that you can't ever attack core assumptions of the game. You can't do diceless with DnD. You can't go class-less, or level-less, or remove the six base stats, because if you do any of those things it stops feeling like DnD and this is no longer your grandfather's ax.

Also, riding the coattails of something popular rarely works. Pathfinder just has fewer players than 3e DnD.

It's better to try someone new and at least have a chance of being more successful.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Mar 09, 2020 7:56 am

Look at what people meme about D&D

- Alignment
- 6 Stats
- Critical hits
- d20 'rolled a 1 lawl'
- potions perhaps

Those seem to be the 'brand identity' things because people who don't play D&D watch youtube videos and repeat the jokes.

But as we know, My Little Pony is a more valuable IP so you can just do whatever you want with tabletop RPG's if you want popularity. Vampire and RIFTS once did that

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Thu Mar 12, 2020 2:59 am

That's how the hobby beyond dnd was born, pretty much.