Do you remember? When we moved in September

 Today's post is gonna be short and sweet. We're moving and I need a minute to do something besides pack and binge podcasts.

Today I'm thinking about product accessibility in the ttrpg space. I'm musing about accessibility in textual editing, in conceptual explanations. How digestible is it?

It's on my mind because we've arrived at the last class for Broken Oaths: the wizard. So naturally I'm putting that off til I've moved because I can't be bothered to be creative when I've still got to dump a barrel of bad compost and a 26ft. truck is occupying my drive.

Instead I'm rereading the 5e PHB and comparing it with the One D&D playtest release and my own brain. Here's what I'm noticing:

• It's like 5e's PHB was slapped onto 25-40% too much paper. There's a lot of "dead space," where you could be using metatextual references or combining rules in logical groups. Not white space, dead space. Conceptually thin space.
• One D&D is drifting ever closer to AD&D and 4e. Remember kits, Complete Fighter? What about the primal, arcane, divine categories from 4e? Organizing classes by roles? Any of this sound familiar? But the conceptual density is good, it just isn't super organized. It's a playtest pdf, it gets a pass.
• They stole my ideas after I stole from 4e. Dicks.
• There's a lot of odd design choices that were made and then recontextualized via Jeremy Crawford's tweets. I don't love errata by social media, but I do think you should have a living document. What's the best way to do that for physical printings? 
• I think the best way is to sell a pdf with every physical purchase, with a serial number attached, where you can download free, errata'd copies of the book as they come out.
• Like unarmed strikes and melee weapon attacks? What a headache.
• Why do we talk about ability scores in Chapter One and then wait til CHAPTER SEVEN to tell players what they are? I absolutely hate flipping through the book. It makes understanding the book a chore, especially for the first go (and tbf, the ninth go, the twenty-fifth go...).
• Pro tip: Tell your players how to generate their ability scores in the same place you tell them what their ability scores are and do. Maybe with the character creation rules?
• I still don't like skills. I wish the list were different, but the way I'd change it requires combining Intelligence and Wisdom, and Constitution and Strength. 
• Also! The variant rule for using different ability scores with your skill proficiencies should be standard, not a variant.
• Physique, Intellect, Charisma, and Dexterity. That's all you need. 
• I think the Alexandrian has the right idea here. Tools should be skills. I like a juicier skill list than Justin, though. He recommends a 10-skill list; I like 15, with 10 profession skills.
• I don't love just one "persuasion" skill, because being a great at intimidation doesn't necessarily make you a good liar. I think it works, however, in a system/ group that emphasizes how you make your case and awards bonuses/penalties according to the situation. 5e doesn't do that, it makes everything chancy and random and oowoOOwowOOWWoo d20s!
• Sorry.
• Is it possible to organize class features by Class Type (i.e. Warriors, Spellcasters, Experts) and then have a 5-in-1 (I'm calling 5e/One D&D 5-in-1) game where players can select their abilities from the buffet as they level up? Might be neat.

Mostly musings. Mostly frustrations. The last thing I'll say is that I think the 5e PHB was never meant to be read. I would love to read it. I simply find it frustrating that I'm told to go here and turn to this chapter by page 3. Wouldn't it be great if, for the first 15 pages, I had everything I needed right there? You can restate rules later! You can even tell us when you're restating a rule. Have ability score descriptions in CHAPTER SEVEN(!) and drop a little note that you can also find those descriptions on pages 4-8. It's not hard. 

Put the money shot in the thumbnail.