Knights & Knaves Alehouse

I'm with all of you about U.A, but give the guy a break, moreover, sadly, he's right, Gary penned it, even if it sucks, though it has a great cover...

- Jeez, I'm exploring, with the help of Foster and few others, whether 2d6 is a better platform than d20, all that's about the spirit of the game, which is bigger than Gygax himself, btb just isn't always the end of the conversation about this game, and it's easy to confuse the two.

The question isn't whether or not UA is an official "BtB" source. It is. Achijusan's question seemed to be whether you have to be using UA to be considered "BtB," and at least for purposes of this board the answer to that is No. Because when we talk about "BtB" we're not concerned with what's official (if we were, we'd presumably all be playing 4E Essentials now) or with establishing an single, objective, dogmatic canon with a single, universally agreed-upon interpretation (which will never happen) but rather something much simpler and more straightforward, which is: in a "BtB" thread, answers to questions and discussion of rules should be based on what's actually in the books (with acknowledgment that different books might say different things, and that there are often multiple ways to interpret exactly what the books say) rather than how you've added to or modified what's in the books for your own game. Which isn't to say that it's forbidden to mention house rules in a BtB thread (especially if the "BtB answer" to a question is that there is no BtB answer because the books don't address it) but it shouldn't be the main focus (note: you can feel free to start a parallel thread on the house rules board), and you shouldn't ever tell someone that they're wrong for using the BtB rules instead of your house rules (or rules you adapted from some other game or later edition).

Thats why many of us go the extra length to say "pre-UA". Though, it should probably be assumed when discussing rules its assumed pre-UA.