Every player of d&d is somewhere on the spectrum between a roleplay enjoyer and a number crunching enjoyer. For me, I am very much on the roleplayer end, to the point that often when playing I am left useless since I picked all my character’s trait based on its story and didn’t give a single thought to synergies and strategies. As a result, playing sucks ass as there’s a huge gap between what the game expects the average player to be able to do and what I can. A monk that misses all their punches. A sorcerer that fails to cast any spell. It’s not very fun to play this way.
Of course, there are other TTRPG systems that are more well suited to players like me. But often people see d&d as synonymous with TTRPG and don’t really want to learn about all the other systems out there. They can’t be bothered to find out what the hell a Cthulhu is and why it is calling, they just want to enjoy their Saturday afternoon and play something they’re familiar with.
And so, this project isn’t really made to be a whole new system, but a simplified version of d&d, for those who want to get into the action and don’t really care about the intricacies of movement underwater as opposed to on the ground. Those like me, that can deal with a simple advantage/disadvantage system that can be applied to a vast array of situations rather than have a different rule for each edge case, and those who are happy to live their fate to the die to a greater extent, and want to be able to play without dealing with any of the nitty gritty details.
I also want to keep this as compatible with the original as possible so feel free to mix and match.
The most important part for me to get right as a DM. My philosophy as stated above is that I can handle most situations with a simple question: “Is it gonna be difficult or trivial to accomplish this?” And I want the rules for the DM to be as liberal and free and minimal as possible. However, I do have to give the players something concrete to grab onto when creating their characters. Also this is the part new players really struggle with as it can sometimes take a whole day of reading laborious rules before you can even start interacting with your friends. I cannot tell you the amounts of characters thrown in the garbage after we tried starting a game but gave up because all the new players got dejected after trying to create their characters and being forced to do math for a day than wait another 2 weeks or so until session 1 can start for real. And so, this is the Simplified Character Sheet, stripped down to the bare essentials.
