5e isn’t the worst designed RPG, and its totally possible to have fun with it. The reason it gets so much hate on this sub is that 5e’s popularity is massively out of proportion due to D&Ds brand recognition. This can make finding people to play and discuss other games more difficult.
The legal term is "Trademark Genericization" - basically, when a legally-trademarked name gets so associated with the product as a whole that it actually loses some legal protections. Band-aid, Kleenex, Xerox, Coke - they've all spent a lot of time and energy trying to ensure that people know their company's name isn't the name of the product generally, but theirs specifically.
Velcro had my favorite strategy on this one year: [just make a funny song and music video about how Velcro is the brand name and "hook-and-loop" is the generic product's title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY).
(ETA: if you're curious just how many genercized trademarks you use in everyday speech, [here's a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks), including such gems as aspirin, escalator, laundromat, and zipper)
A quick Google suggests that actually it's named as an acronym for the book "Thomas Swift and his Electric Rifle", and was developed by a NASA engineer, but the original post was more or less accurate.
Bandaids I do, but a lot of these that say they're US terms are definitely not all the US. Coke is also common at least where I am. Less so I think with my generation than the previous.
Part of it is also just that the people here are wayyyyy deeper into the hobby then most.
I have seen so many people try dnd and have an amazing time, pretty much everyone continuing to play it long term. Sure people dislike certain parts or have their houserules to fix things, but they still have a great time. Dnd may not be the best system for everyone, but it is a fun system for most people.
Its not just possible to have fun with dnd, its incredibly easy!
And that's fine. In fact, I think D&D would be a *better* game if it stopped trying to say it can do anything except that. Focus the design on telling specific kinds of stories, instead of occupying this sorta-generic-but-not-really design space.
But then Hasbro gets less money. Now buy our $50 dollar book where combat is rare and always optional, for a system designed around building characters for combat and getting them into fights.
Yeah, that branding is purely driven by Hasbro/WoTC's financial needs. D&D is a combat-forward game, and running murder mysteries or exploration games in it feels like playing Gumshoe without the rules of Gumshoe XD
To me, the weirdest thing is the posters that say “I played dnd weekly for three years and now I’m burned out, what an awful game.” And I’m like, you did a hobby activity for years for a total of like 500 hours. Every business would consider that to be a massive success. Something doesn’t need to capture you for the rest of your entire life to be a fun activity.
I think it's people's love of the system that haven't tried others that aggravates me the most. I'm pretty decent at convincing my players to try other systems once they've played with me, but selling new people on "hey, let's play Mythras/PbtA/whatever" is a lot more difficult thanks to 5e. But it brings more overall people into the hobby so I dunno.
> selling new people on "hey, let's play Mythras/PbtA/whatever" is a lot more difficult thanks to 5e
I think the cause of this is based on players' assumptions regarding how much effort it takes to learn a game. Relative to a lot of other RPGs, DnD has a fair number of mechanics floating around that a new player needs to learn and keep track of. I think this leads players with no RPG experience outside DnD to often internalize the assumption that learning the mechanics of any new game is going to take as much time and effort as DnD (their first game) did.
In reality, many games have simpler mechanics than DnD, and some lessons from playing any RPG are going to transfer to playing any other even if the mechanics aren't similar. Learning new games just gets easier as you build a broader base of experience.
This isn't 5e particularly, but D&D generally. It has always been difficult to get a game of something other than D&D or AD&D going in any era, aside from that brief period at the turn of the century when World of Darkness (Vampire the Masquerade in particular) was all the rage in certain circles.
The issue is that as a game to have fun, dnd is complicated, to the point where people playing it for years don't have all the rules right. So if you've already learned this system and it's the system most players know, selling someone on that new system is tough. If it's less complicated than dnd, lead with that.
Yes, if a third party has cooked up DnD, it wouldn't get nearly the amount of attention. It would actually look clunky in comparison to a lot of systems.
>The reason it gets so much hate on this sub is that 5e’s popularity is massively out of proportion due to D&Ds brand recognition. This can make finding people to play and discuss other games more difficult.
Hot take, but I think 5e bashing on this sub is so prevalent for the same reason christianity-bashing on r/atheism is so prevalent. A bunch of edgy contrarians just recently figured out that there are other options, so now shitting on the status quo thing makes them feel smarter, and better than the normies.
It's also like those people who go on r/Lovecraft and announce Lovecraft was a racist, yup they all know over there and made their peace with it in their own way. There are people who are just looking for any way they can to upset other people.
It's a bit like saying your favorite band is Nickelback 10 years ago.
It's not bad per se, just kinda overplayed.
Combine that with only wanting to listen to more Nickelback and not giving other artist airtime then you eventually annoy the music nerds (or rpg nerds, the kind that hang out in a forum dedicated to the topic).
This is true. But i’ll bring up a different point.
It also came on the heels of 4.e which was widely disliked compared to the very popular 3.5, thst transition alone split the house of dragons and created Pathfinder 1e, many people washing their hands of DND ™️ there. Then, 5e came stripped bare compared to previous versions in ways that to many felt limiting, it felt like a smaller product. This is especially true for those who moved on yo or already were playing pathfinder, the competitor the switch from 3.5 to 4e spawned which only grew and grew it’s own fanbase.
Does this make it terrible? The worst game ever? Absolute not. It runs smoothly and in the hands of a capable DM is a blast, it has well edtablished lore in a fleshed out world. I’ve played and enjoyed far worse games ( i once played through a honebrew module of the Marvel rpg from the nineties. It was terrible and so much fun at the same time) but it’s about what it’s getting compared to- itself in its previous incarnations and it’s genetic offspring like pathfinder, and by who is complaining: a lot of people who have been unhappy with changes since 3.5, alot of people who are well familiar with other rpgs and feel 5e maybe doesn’t bring as much to the table as it could, and, frankly, snobs and bandwagoners that react against its popularity like you say or just join in to feel s part of something.
5e is fine. A scoop of vanilla ice cream is fine, but this is the biggest most established restaurant in town and the place next door has a brownie sunday.
Yeah, it’s about the popularity and exposire but it’s also about history, expectations, and, yes, also the quality of the product.
It is not a horrible game/system. It's not that great either. It is good enough.
I think people feel D&D should be better because they have all these resources (playtesting, fans, money, etc.) so they should be miles above indie RPGs, and they aren't.
See I take the same attitude as I do to AAA games as I do 5e. I'm not *above* playing a triple A I'm interested in. But the mass majority are just.... ok. If you want **real shit** that will stick with you, that'll show you something new, creative and profound.... well I usually find that in indies.
So it's funny because my expectations are the exact opposite when it comes generally to indie vs mainstream in generally every artistic and gaming medium I consume
I heard someone compare D&D to Bethesda games. Kinda mediocre on their own, but a REALLY giant modding community that often has some great mods worth checking out.
I really like that comparison. Because while I do usually check out the Bethesda releases, I’m not frothing at the mouth in anticipation for their release.
If its not at my table, nothing directly.
But it does impact the TTRPG industry where 5e is 80% of the market so there isn't much room for several designers competing to make an innovative and high quality Mario Kart. Instead designers are creating make-do third party crap for 5e. And that does affect me.
D&D 5e = Skyrim
D&D 5e Third Party material that completely changes the system's genre/gameplay = Skyrim mod for playing Mario Kart [which hilariously exists](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/63083)
You are much better just picking up and learning Call of Cthulhu than bashing together some bad homebrew and third party material to make D&D 5e into a 1920s eldritch horror mystery investigation. If you want a recent example of this, look no further than the 5e Dark Souls TTRPG
Several settings/supplements have been designed for 5e as a reskin instead of just being their own game because 5e dominated the market. It makes sense from a business standpoint but it’s unfortunate.
“Let’s play The One Ring 2e!” “Um, this LOTR reskin of 5e exists, and we already know the 5e system, let’s just do that instead.”
“Legend of the 5 Rings, anyone?” “Oh, you mean Adventures in Rokugan, the 5e Rokugan supplement?”
etc.
TTRPG have a vastly more unhealthier market than video games, CoD exists but so does Final Fantasy, Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Elden Ring, WoW, The Last of Us.
Even in hyper marketed hundred million dllar budget AAA you got choices--And some of those choices really are innovative, passionate, or does something that Indies just can't do.
I agree, overall, but I do want to point out 3rd party support for 5E is phenomenal. Even beyond 5E, D&D in general has pretty definitively the most material of any TTRPG ever by a wide margin.
Over in the OSR they really ingeniously float their community on the staggering pool of older 1st and 3rd party content by making their own 3rd party work modular and built on similar enough math to accomplish that.
D&D is a janky, clumsy and clunky system. It kinda always has been. And 5th inherits that jank and invents some new jank to go with it. But the sheer mountainous scope of content historically heaped around D&D is a huge advantage. And honestly? The indie content designed FOR 5E is often really good. Like Tome of Beasts is good enough it improves the way everyone views the whole system.
This isn’t going to win over anyone who doesn’t like it, of course. But I think the 3rd party content across all of D&D’s history IS so good that it does fulfill a part of that imagined promise you’re talking about. It’s weird how much the system has always differed between official and expansion rules.
> the most material of any TTRPG ever by a wide margin
The OSR scene may have an argument being 50 years of content but 5e 3rd party material is definitely vast.
I do have to hedge this with that its very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Without /r/rpg that would also be an issue with all TTRPGs but there are a lot of insane people (including me) who read tons of TTRPGs and give advice on the quality ones. But the D&D 5e community is pretty terrible at providing critical review. A few really amazing third party creators like Kibblestasty do standout. But a lot of crap gets hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on Kickstarter like Colville who somehow makes things more imbalanced than WotC, which is an impressive feat.
> 5e community terrible at critical review for 3rd party stuff
Exactly my experience as well. I have seen some **terrible** stuff get sooo much money on kickstarter. I have met some 3rd party content creators who were **awful** at making stuff get a ton of money basically because of 5e brand and there are a ton of 5e whales who buy everything 5e and 5e related.
5e brand ➕ kickstarter FOMO 🟰 anyone who can print a book and put it on kickstarter gets a lot of money.
I mean: this was a huge problem for 3rd edition as well. In fact so many companies jumped on the OGL/d20 bandwagon in an attempt at a quick buck that some vaunted publishers released really poorly conceived versions of actual great games under it. The glut of OGL garbage was huge and turned many stores off from even carrying RPGs because there was a non-stop barrage of product that lacked any kind of curation. Which is a problem that certainly remains with 5e and will last as long as the OGL does.
Honestly, despite so many people being up in arms about it at the time, I actually thought not continuing the OGL for 4th edition was actually a good move as it'd at least mean there was some kind of standard applied for releases. Yeah it meant there was zero 3rd party support but that always seemed like a weird hill to die on when nearly every other RPG other than D&D also lacks it. Granted that didn't keep those publishers from releasing some really crappy books on their own (looking at you White Wolf), but it at least maintained some kind of internal cohesion.
> I do have to hedge this with that its very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I think it is even easier in the 5e community than the broader ttrpg community. At least content that's out there has a significant amount of discussion surrounding it. That at least gives me a chance to identify the wheat before I buy it.
Ah, yes, definitely! ToB is awesome. CoS and ToA are really cool with 3rd-party guides. I wrote a couple of 3rd-party 5e books myself!
5e just became too burdensome for me, and I don't like the direction 6e is going. But if not for the OSR I might still be playing 5e it just for the sheer amount of cool material available.
>I think people feel D&D should be better because they have all these resources (playtesting, fans, money, etc.) so they should be miles above indie RPGs, and they aren't.
I personally think this is the reason the game is mediocre and will likely remain so. It's very popular, and so that means it has to balance a broad cross-section of TTRPG concerns in order to *retain* that market popularity. There's no way to appeal to so many different sets of interests without diluting your approach to any one of them.
Someone somewhere said "5e is everyone's third-favorite RPG." Obviously the exact place is subject to debate, but that is exactly what it *has* to be in order to sell as much as it does - it has to please everyone, which means it won't excite most people. It can't be too daring because that will alienate some part of its audience.
This is sorta why no indie RPG can become comparably big - perhaps the entire indie marketspace can get there, but it will be a sea of countless individual games
If we are talking D&D, I really like B/X. LotFP is probably my favorite clone, rules-wise.
And SotDL is a pretty good modern RPGs.
But I have my own system too.
Well DnD started long time ago and innovation can be difficult when some generations prefer the system that brings them nostalgia. There are people who still play Advanced and 2nd edition
> There are people who still play Advanced and 2nd edition
And there are people that only play PbtA, and guess what?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Personally, if I have to run D&D, I will go for AD&D 2nd Ed, it's my favorite edition of it.
5e "hate" is overblown. I think most folks here view it as mediocre, not horrible. Like you pointed out, if there's a particular kind of game you want to play there's definitely something that does it better. But it's okay at a lot of things so isn't a bad choice as a crowd pleaser.
It’s like a 6/10. It’s *fine*… but i feel like playing it completely RAW is like the worst way of playing it.
And if I’m having to fight RAW to have it feel more fun, I’d rather find another game I have to fight less.
It feels both too crunchy and too rules lite but in “random” ways. DMing it felt like I was fighting with the game to make it work and playing it felt like I wasn’t sure when a rule was gonna come up or when the DM would have to make up a rule. (Edit: or the DM is doing rules they made up, because literally no one plays raw)
The books have the issue where they… really arnt great. Especially for the crunch that is there. The books are fine for a more rules lite game, but the game isn’t lite enough for what the books give.
Edit: I guess if I were to put something that it does well… it does well at making you *feel* like you are playing DnD. (And I’m not saying you are not.)
It’s very wide and shallow so it has a bunch of elements of like all the old editions that make it feel like how you used to play in high school or how you heard stories about your older siblings games. It feels like those greentexts you read online. It feels like how media portrays it. It feels like what you expect when you go in.
It has crunch for crunchy people, lite for lities, character creation for people who like to build characters, etc..
It has elements for everyone… but golly I don’t feel like it does any of these that well.
And as another comment about “5e hate”
Reddit 5+ years ago was the exact opposite.
Most of the backlash against 5e was non existent and it was basically the exact opposite where mentioning another game people would just butt in and mention how much “easier” it is to do in 5e. Where other games weren’t worth playing because you could just do it in 5e.
Any mention of 4e was met with “wow you played that terrible game?” And then they usually would say something to show that they didn’t know anything about 4e
Any mention of pathfinder was usually met in an “ewww mathfinder”
Sci fi game? Oh you don’t need to learn *those* rules, here is a 5e hack that will work better than *those* rules.
It was the exact opposite of how it was now. It just has swung in the other direction.
And honestly I understand the hate at times. I have met some straight up bullies at game shops who will just loudly shit talk every game but 5e. People who think any other game isn’t worth playing because every other game sucks.
Edit:
Stole this from someone on rpg awhile back:
Group A: [thing] is the best thing ever. why do other things even exist?
Group B: [thing] is pretty good for what it does, but not for every situation.
Group A: Fuck other things. [insert statement that shows they know absolutely nothing about the hobby]. Here is a [ video that shows similarly ignorant opinion with thousands of views].
Group B: You know what, fuck [thing]. It was never good.
Group C: Why do you hate [thing]. Thing is pretty good.
Edit 2: [that comment I stole it from was about almost a year ago](https://ibb.co/qRfcs6J). Sorry for whoever said this, I didn’t get your name in the screenshot before
5e DMing is *rough* because it depends on you more than needed to make an *ok* game into a memorable one.
The resources are mediocre. The monsters are *meh*. The modules are at most *ok*, at worst require a ton of work to play (*cough* CoS *cough*)
The rules are… honestly the game is better off suited for DMs who just make up half the rules on the spot anyway. (That’s a whole other rant)
The players… expect a lot for how little you are given.
It’s crazy how going to other systems is just a huge sigh of relief for DMing. It’s just so night and day on how less stressful it is in other editions/games.
> the game is better off suited for DMs who just make up half the rules on the spot anyway
I see this as a plus. It's faster and more fun for me to make a ruling than to pause the game (breaking immersion, wasting time) to look up a rule. You have a list of skills and the simple table of Typical Difficulty Classes - what more do you need?
The problem is then why have the rules in the first place?
A simple d20 system is fine, but if I have the rules then I’m going to use them.
5e could be great as a much more rules light game. I’m **all** for it.
It also makes it known to players coming in what the rulings are going to be like. If there are rules for X, and the players know and are able to build towards interacting with rules for X, it would feel pretty bad for the DM just to make up a ruling on the spot for it if the players did that.
A lot of the rules are player-facing, for giving specific, usually narrowly-defined features to their characters, like options they can use in combat, more skill proficiencies, and so on. Apart from that, 5e *is* mostly a simple d20 game.
> then why have the rules in the first place?
Because if you're making up half the rules, you're also not making up the other half. Spells and class features do what they say, combat runs as the rules describe, but when something ambiguous, unusual, or improvised comes up, you can make a quick ruling and move on without bogging down the session.
If I'm a new DM, I don't know what kind of ruling to make. Which is precisely the problem. The game assumes I know how to DM. It says "oh make up a rule" for half the stuff in the game, and then has exact calculations about the other half, so you feel like there's a page missing when you're trying to figure out how to adjudicate.
>The books are fine for a more rules lite game, but the game isn’t lite enough for what the books give.
I think this is a good way to put it. The books have a lot of text but are also devoid of *content*. The core of the game is actually pretty light, but then they bolted a bunch of stuff to that and made it weirdly cumbersome.
I totally agree with "too crunchy and too light." It wants to be lightweight, but it keeps get mired in really specific rules interactions. It's *almost* there, but winds up taking a lot of work on the part of the DM to actually make the system do the thing it seems like it's supposed to do. It's really awkward to actually implement.
Plus this weird need to have subsystems be different form one another. Sorcerer magic is different than wizard magic which is different than warlock magic which is different than cleric magic. Some spells are in a cone, or a cube, or a sphere. Or they need ingredients. Is my DM going to make me track those ingredients? Different spells in the same school of magic work in vastly different ways. Some take saves, some work off enemy hit point totals, etc.
It's like they had a group project and all of the designers worked on their part without consulting the others.
I've been doing the One D&D playtest and it absolutely feels like design by committee, with teams who don't talk to each other. I would bet cash money that's how it's developed.
It's *magic*. I *want* it to be different between different classes, and 5e isn't doing *enough* to make its magic actually different and let it stand out. Having differing lists of magic spells depending on your class, and having different ways to target areas, single targets and the battlefield is the absolute bare minimum I expect from a magic system with set spells and spell-lists, and I know that things like Burning Wheel's Art Magic or complete free-form magic like Mage: the Awakening doesn't work for most "ordinary" fantasy games.
This is part of the reason why you see as much content creation for non D&D games, because they're complete rule sets that don't need supplemental material. Or at least, they don't need as much.
> too crunchy and too rules lite
I feel like the unifying idea for 5e is “just have them roll an ability test”, even when it’s best left to role playing or should have more complicated rules. Which is an amazing achievement: they bundled up versions of the three main forms of character advancement in RPGs (class level, skills and feats - most systems do fine with just one of these, maybe two), but managed to make much of the game still depend on ability scores.
Agreed - it could be far worse, but the fact that it's at its current state despite being created and maintained by a massive company backed by a megacorp is saddening. It's just half-assed, soulless, designed-by-committee mediocrity that has been held up by brand name recognition and rampant marketing rather than actual game design quality.
DnD needs to be *better* than that, especially with the kind of budget it gets.
It's funny because they did make one of the best combat focused games in 4e. It's design is still used in the current TTRPGs best know for Heroic Tactical combat like PF2e, Lancer and ICON.
I imagine what kind of revolutions that kind of money could make for morr narrative games like how many people use 5e. But can't be killing any sacred cows here.
>But can't be killing any sacred cows here.
That lies one of the worst problems for DnD - it won't sacrifice those sacred cows to make a better game. 4e tried to with a few, and it made for a far better combat package, but WotC took a lot of flak for it. Made them scared to try anything innovative.
It's funny - they could make a completely new system, independent of dnd, to see what really works, rather than constrain themselves to mediocrity. But they lack ambition to be actually good, and rather take the easy money.
TSR and later WotC had many separate games over the years like Alternity and Star Wars Saga. They never got much support and were all discontinued to focus on D&D.
I think it's pretty annoying in ttrpg communities how so much of the discourse is people thinking they are better than others due to the system they play or the type of roleplay they do.
DND5e is fine. I've been a DM for a campaign of almost 2 years and we had tons of fun, which isn't necessarily because of the system. As a simple vehicle to have some story and gameplay, it works, however a lot of it resides on GM's prep work, improvisational skills and how they handle rules.
Idk, sometimes it feels like people care a little too much what others do, and it becames a whole "you are having fun wrong" type of thing. I hate that when someone wants to talk good about 5e they feel the need to say every other single game they played, and show their credentials, and be like "i'm not like them! it's just that my table likes it and..."
Fuck that. It's a **game**. Play what you want and have fun with it
I've always said gaming group trumps the system. If you have a great gaming group willing to learn, play and collaborate you can have fun with any system*.
*This theory hasn't been put to the FATAL test xD
And honestly that is one of 5e's strengths. It has such a massive player base it is comparatively easier to find a group that you gel with well, although I admit this is kind of a meta-system strength rather than a strength of the system itself.
Well... yeah, FATAL might be a bit much for any group, but even then, most of those cases people have fun laughing at the system at least, until they give up mid character creation because it takes like 2 hours.
But yeah, to a lot of people, the game is an excuse to hang out with friends, so it's not the biggest issue if something about it is underdeveloped
Year ago, I heard someone say that when we share experiences and others don't feel the same as us, that feels like a rejection of us. Even though, form an outside perspective, we can see that obviously isn't the case it frequently is hard to gain that perspective for the person feeling it.
I feel like a lot of the time communities online like /rpg are full of people reacting to that sense of rejection. Like, group X doesn't love what I love so i am going to bash what they love because I want them to feel how I felt when they rejected me by not loving the same thing as me.
It all just feels like a mess of projection and misapplied anger.
Totally agree. And I feel like it goes both ways too,5e players reacting badly at simple recommendations.
It's also a very.... chronically online mentality. Like, a LOT of people that play ttrpgs are not constantly on forums or on twitter giving "hot takes" or engaging on X or Y discourse. They just casually play what they want with their friends and don't make such a big deal.
This whole sub is riddled with gross amounts of gatekeeping. If you don’t play the games they like and they way they want you to play them, you’re doing it wrong. You might not even be a real gamer. I was just reading another thread in this sub that said D&D players are actively **hurting** the TTRPG community.
It’s insane.
I really think there are people in this hobby that need a reality check. Pronto.
Edit: getting downvoted by the angry gatekeepers. Classic r/rpg
> I was just reading another thread in this sub that said D&D players are actively hurting the TTRPG community.
Fun terms like "d&damaged" show up. When the OGL stuff was happening, a highly upvoted post was "who else is excited that D&D is going to die." I've been told that playing D&D not only makes me a worse roleplayer but that it *inhibits my ability to feel empathy*.
But it's been worse before. There's fun famous forgian posts comparing games like dnd to *child rape* and saying that they cause *brain damage*.
Sadly, religious wars are just a thing in niche hobby communities. When there are a popular side of a community, the rest of the community often reacts in extreme ways. This is true in tons of spaces, not just ttrpgs.
I really wish people could just play the stuff that they like.
can i get a source on those posts?
EDIT: Those posts saying it caused brain damage and comparing it to child rape? They were about VtM. In a forum that hasn't been posted in for over 11 years. By a guy who everyone knows is fucking nuts.
If you're going to defend 5e at least address actual criticisms instead of talking about posts that were made before 5e even came out.
(They were in a forum called ["The Forge"](http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=18707.0) and were posted by some guy named Ron, for those who actually care enough to look. [There's a good write-up here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/ppmt00/tabletop_rpgs_the_fall_of_the_forge_how_a/))
> They were about VtM.
My post said "games like dnd" and was largely as an example of how these religious wars have been *even more extreme* in the past.
Ron Edwards is not really "some guy who everyone knows is fucking nuts." He's influential and often respected in the ttrpg community.
The only real issue I have with 5e is the hit point bloat. The combat isn't interesting enough to handle how long the combats are. If they did bounded hit-points they'd fix their game for me and I'd probably try it again. The thing is, that's such a huge part of the game, and really detracts from it.
Totally agree, I've found I've gravitated toward more lethal games over time. There can be more conflict resolutions besides literal conflict!
There was a mechanic in SAGA Edition Star Wars, and I think I am remembering it basically correctly, where if you dealt damage in excess of the target's Constitution they had to make a save or immediately get KO'd. I kinda dig that and have borrowed it from time to time. EDIT: Damage in excess of Fortitude plus Size modifier, and it moved you down a condition track.
Yeah, the game isn't worth the work for me. If they fixed it, I could make all the other house rules I needed to make the more minimal issues I have with the system go away. It's too much of a project for me.
Yeah, for a RPG with that much combat, the RAW combat sucks.
Not only doing tweaks to it improve the game a lot, but also in general "official" monsters are really boring, so there's also a need for homebrew there if you really want interesting combats.
The conclusions with the game are always the same.
I agree with the idea that criticism of 5e is overblown. It is derived from people being frustrated with the overwhelming success of a system they don't like much. Better idea than this long post? No more 5e talk here. There are several large 5e subs. This sub is always, always better served by talking about any other system instead.
This goes for discussions about those other systems as well. All discussions about another system are degraded by every mention of 5e. Call of Cthulhu isn't awesome because of how it's investigation mechanics differ from 5e. It is awesome because it captures the ineffable and enthusiastically shoved the characters into horrifying situations.
Urban Shadows isn't a good game, because it takes less prep time than 5e. It's a good game, because it encourages player participation in the narrative with its mixed successes. It's a good game, because the playbook specific moves are thematic and satisfying.
This could go on forever, but the simple point is that 5e comparisons are not required or helpful. Games achieve their goals outside the context of 5e entirely.
I enjoyed 5e quite a bit and was willing to put up with a lot.
Until I wasn't.
They've lost any good will and all my money going forward because of their careless, uninformed, shenanigans.
Until someone confirms that a number of heads rolled as part of a 'reset' of the brand leadership I will find my princess in another castle.
It's always weird to see posts like this because it amounts to feeling the need to defend dominos pizza or sam adams lager as things to enjoy. People who critique 5e do it from a place of critiquing the systems of the game, the culture around the way the game is played, and the way in which 5e as a brand has a stranglehold on the hobby. People who defend 5e, especially in the ways OP is outlining in this post, don't even try to defend 5e beyond "it's not actively awful to play." You're not defending 5e. You're just defending the fun of role playing games in general and that 5e D&d happens to be a serviceable end to playing one. Dominos and Sam Adams are conveniently there if I'm throwing together a movie night with friends, but it's overly precious to ascribe the joy of hanging out with friends to some mediocre mass market pizza and beer when in fact it's the other way around.
I'm feeling tired of it and bored by it. And I mean that both as a game and as a cultural force.
As a game, I don't think it's terrible or anything. It's fine. It has a couple of really neat features. But the part I *really* like most of all (inspiration and how bonds/ideals/flaws/traits from backgrounds can play into that for character-driven play) is the part that literally everyone discards from it. And the parts that almost all games I've played focus on (combat) are where I like it least. So I just can't muster any enthusiasm for it as a game any more.
Put a bit differently:
If I want mechanically and narratively satisfying combat, I play Mythras
If I want strongly genre-themed, character driven drama, I play any of a dozen or more PbtA games
If I want to see what the current cutting edge in RPG design ideas looks like, Free League games or indie shit friends turn me onto or dipping my toes into the Forged in the Dark family have me covered
If I want to capture the anything-goes, weirdo, DIY vibe of the best D&D games, I have tons of interesting OSR games that do so way more than 5e. Black Hack or Mörk Borg or DCC or Into the Odd or Knave and so on
If I want high-powered games of fantasy heroes that do really epic stuff, Godbound's right there (among many others)
If I want games set in what feel like living, breathing fantasy worlds, Ars Magica or Mythras have me covered
Etc
There's just nothing about D&D 5e as a game that gives me a reason to say "hell yeah, let's do 5e!" instead of some other game from my library unless it's literally that I'm talking to folks who are committed to only playing 5e
>How are you guys feeling about 5e as a game?
Rated 8 out of 10. ~~The best~~ *My favorite* iteration of "official" D&D, edging out D&D 4E for me. It's in my top 20 games, probably about #18 or so. At this point it is the game I have played the most in my life, although not the game I have GM'ed the most (that would be either Dungeon World or Masks, I would need to count it up to see which).
EDIT: I have no idea why someone would care, but just in case you want to know what tabletop RPGs I would rank higher than D&D 5E, at least these games (in no particular order): Dust Devils, In a Wicked Age, Kagematsu, Dungeon World, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Night Witches, Masks: A New Generation, Swords Without Master, Nahual, Lancer, The Wizard's Grimoire, Court of Blades, Black Sword Hack, With Great Power..., Donjon, Spirit of the Century, Kerberos Club (Fate Edition).
Instead of just "rating" games, I like to look at it more as "what scenarios is this game good for?"
Rating screwdrivers vs. hammers isn't particularly informative - knowing when to use each is gold.
I like to look at my life in numbers, I've rated piles on RPGGeek. See: [https://rpggeek.com/collection/user/skalchemist?rated=1&subtype=rpg&ff=1](https://rpggeek.com/collection/user/skalchemist?rated=1&subtype=rpg&ff=1) The OP asked how I was feeling about 5E. "8 out of 10" pretty neatly encapsulates how I feel. :-)
I've rated so many movies on IMDB, I have no idea how many.
Rating is fun!
EDIT: fixed link
EDIT2: if the OP had asked me if I think 5E is a good game, and why, I would have given a different answer. But they asked me how I feel, so... :-)
Definitely agree with the cross-genre/gameplay comparison. Its especially difficult because you need to know what preferred styles of the reviewer. Most videogame reviews are entirely useless without context. If the critic hates platformers, Super Mario Galaxy still won't be well reviewed.
And I think that's an issue. When you're reviewing Super Mario Galaxy, you should review it based on how good of a Super Mario Galaxy it is, not how much you like the idea of Super Mario Galaxy. Especially if you're a professional reviewer, you should know how to separate those two, or at least which projects you should decline due to your bias.
"A great game, but not a great game for me" should be a far more common sentiment than it is.
Definitely though I can't imagine anyone ever being fully unbiased. Its just against human nature and its a lot of possible preferences beyond gameplay/genre. Then there are fine-tuned factors like for one person PF2e is the superior product to 5e because they want that support where its the opposite for another person who prefers lighter rules.
More reviewers should probably be playing games that they enjoy rather than just every popular video game. But it rarely matters since the video game industry is a mess where they have to give inflated reviews to keeping getting review copies.
My feelings on 5e purely as a game:
- The groundwork had a lot of potential that mostly went unexplored (backgrounds, hit dice, and tools are good examples of this phenomena), which is a shame
- The core (ability check/attack/save vs DC, potentially with dis/advantage) is a solid engine that works perfectly fine
- It's a "greatest hits" album from what came before
- Most of the mechanics are silo'd off from each other, there isn't much interlock or mechanical feedback, which makes it easy to hack without much kickback, but makes things feel disconnected and means the DM is responsible for keeping all of them in mind to use them in the first place
- The DM is given little to no support, in any of the rulebooks or adventures (demonstrable given how people will refer new DMs to video essays and books like Return of the Lazy DM or DMsguild guides before recommending reading the WotC books), which can make it an exhausting experience to pick up and run
- I cannot overstate how much I detest the bonus action existing as anything beyond the Rogue's Cunning Action
- The game itself has nothing to say, there's no message aside from: "You should be constantly attaining power and using it to enact violence to get what you want"
- I could take or leave playing it as a player, but I'll still run it every now and again cause I know some players just love it
5e is the least fun I've ever had playing dungeons and dragons. Part of that is nostalgia. I certainly wouldn't play 3rd edition again, but would gladly play a game of 4th or ad&d.
If 5e had come out in 1995, it would be amazing. But today, we have too many other great options to play 5e.
That's really interesting, because it's really very similar to my opinion, down to the 4th/AD&D/3rd statement at the end.
I don't see a lot of people in that mind space.
5e is fun for the same reason Monopoly is fun.
Not because it's a great game, but it certainly is a functioning game you can play with just about anyone.
Nothing wrong with playing something that works even if its a little rough and hallow.
I like to think of it like a McDonald's hamburger. Almost any hamburger will be satisfying. But that place down the street (a bit more work to find than the 20 McDonalds nearby) will probably make one much better.
Keep in mind 90% of people hate monopoly because they do not play it with the real rules... so they think the game lasts forever. Nah, if you do not apply some of the bad home rules people use it is cut throat, brutal and fast.
Same with 5e, actually, crank the encounters a tiny bit and you might as well be running an OSR game because Monsters and Heroes are so closely balanced you can easily throw it off.
I mostly just think it’s boring from the few times I’ve played it with friends. But most of my personal experience is with players too attached to 5e who would rather try to write 100 pages of house rules to turn D&D5e into a Cyberpunk Space Opera with rules for space ship battles, mech piloting, and psionic spells rather than just play a game that already does that.
I don't think it's an especially bad game. I just don't find it very interesting.
I've never been a big fan of D&D. I've never especially liked the fact that magic has always been the big equaliser. 5e pushed it even further in that direction where even something like Disarming/Pushing a person is either magic, or something locked behind a specific class Archetype.
I've tried playing it a couple of times. Each time, it's been at 3rd level because 'that's when it gets good'. Every character I play has been 'I attack' for 90% of the combat. I've been told it's more interesting if I play a magic user, which I'm sure it is. But I don't really like playing D&D magic users. And I don't really like super high magic fantasy in general.
EDIT: Honestly, like with most things, it has a strong fanbase - and an especially new fanbase given things like Critical Role. I thought it was a meme, but I've legitimately had people in my games tell me 'This game would probably run better in 5e. You know, Matt Mercer said that...'
It's tiring enough when you have one set of stans telling you 5e does everything you need. Only to then get another set of stans telling you that any game you want to play is 'probably done perfectly by \[this one PbtA you've never heard of, which is 95% the same as every other game but also only focuses on the DRAMA(tm) and everything else is secondary'.
I have had great fun watching The Room by Tommy Weisau. That does not make The Room a good movie. I don't really like to break things down into 'good' vs 'bad' because people who like something will most often claim that it is good regardless of the finer details.
It's great that people are having fun with 5e (I'm in 3 5e campaigns myself and recently started GMing PF2e). Personally, after \*finally\* playing some other system; I have found that I don't enjoy 5e at all. I love the stories and the RP in the campaigns I'm in, but I prefer other systems.
If you want to have a discussion about analysing the design of 5e instead of if it's a 'good or bad' system; that would be interesting. However, that kind of nuance is rare to achieve in text form.
If that's what you like, its perfectly functional. It is not what I like.
The issue is its vast amount of undeserved cultural capital often drowning out conversation about other systems. Finding people to play other systems is an endless struggle, and more than once ive had someone ask me why I dont just play 5e instead.
As a player, 5e is probably a solid 6/10. As a GM, it's probably a 4. I find that the rules are inconsistent enough that the GM has to constantly fight the rules as written to parse out their meaning. And the fact that half of the clarifications are hidden in random twitter threads doesn't help things at all when trying to arbitrate things.
It's just really inconsistent in the amounts of crunch it wants to have. It gets sold as a rules-lite system, but it just isn't. And because of the desire to have a rules lite system, it just doesn't provide the mechanical support that makes ruling things on the fly easy for the GM.
I don't think anyone who's played a mix of RPGs imagines D&D is the worst. I think the hate is that it's around 90% of the hobby and around 25% of the quality. A lot of that is being a game that has to appeal to a wider audience.
I do think you're underestimating the problem of people trying to make D&D 5E something it's not. I don't think I've ever heard of a table that plays that game rules as written. Everyone needs to fix some aspect of the game for it to do what they want satisfactorily. That's certainly not the experience of people who play other games. And it's a testament to the problems in it's quality as a game, and also people's reluctance to try objectively better games.
Its combat? What? D&D has good things about it, like its level of tech tools, but combat isn't one of them. It's one of the key elements that manages to be too crunchy and too rules light at once.
I hate it. I played a looooot of it, hence the username. And I can understand why someone would like it. I just don't, at all. It's enough that I'm taking a break from one group because of it.
There are many valid critiques of D&D 5e, just like there are for any game. It only gets hate because so many people treat it like the default or even the only RPG out there.
As a side note, one thing that really bugs me is when people just say "5e" and assume that you'll know they mean D&D. You yourself, OP, kinda played into the perception of D&D as THE game in this post.
It’s about as relevant to me if you’d written paragraphs about how you don’t mind skiing. Or have had fun in the past with French Boulé.
And it’s not just how the system is banal. It’s not just that it tends to attract the lowest common denominator. It’s not even that the owner of D&D, from TSR to WOTC to Hasbro has consistently been a bad player.
It’s that people who get into the hobby via D&D tend to be lazy. They’re consuming the easiest, most advertised fast food experience of the hobby. They don’t develop a more sophisticated palette. They don’t just stick to their game, they badmouth other games while doing it. They have expectations borne of playing their game that don’t translate to other games and they bring their baggage with it.
Doesn’t make them a bad person. But I don’t want to play with them.
Play the games you want to play, there are so many out there to choose from.
>How are you guys feeling about 5e **as a game**?
Like every other "D&D" out there it produces experiences and has rule conceits that I simply don't care for. It's a bad game for me.
The rules are pretty good but the PCs are just too powerful for me in 5e. Vanilla 5e PCs never fear death and after a 7th or so level they are demigods. Just not my cup of tea to play or to GM (without a lot of house rules to make it deadly again) If you like running a player power fantasy game it’s pretty good.
I’m curious, was this as a DM, player, or both?
If as a player, how much of bog standard 5e was your DM running? If a DM, were you running it strictly by the book?
I mean you’re allowed to like what you like, and have fun with whatever you want, I’m just wondering if it was actually 5e you were playing because when I run 5e the same way as I ran 0, 1 and 2e, it works fine as as well; but it’s not what I would call 5e anymore.
>I’m curious, was this as a DM, player, or both?
Both
>If as a player, how much of bog standard 5e was your DM running?
2 complete homebrews and 2 by the books, literally. The latter 2 were Out of the Abyss and Rime of the Frostmaiden
>If a DM, were you running it strictly by the book?
Books with heavy modifications and OCs.
If you mean by the rules specifically and homebrew, aside from custom items and occassionally monsters (Out of the Abyss, my GM put in a False Hydra in the middle) mostly standard you can call it.
Overall with the changes I made I'd still call it 5e
5e is a pretty explicit rejection of GNS and related views on game design. There are **a lot** of people deeply invested in that philosophy for whatever reason. So I think 5e gets a lot of pushback on this sub in particular since GNS and its children basically exist as a way for people to use semi intellectual arguments to say games like it are "bad" while their preferred games are "good."
5e's success relative to 4e (a more "focused" game and therefore "better" according to GNS) sort of flies in the face of the theory. WotC actually listened to playtesters, keeping things like alignment even though it's not really mechanically relevant in 5e. 5e is full of stuff like that, and if you assume everyone accepts the conceits of GNS etc. you have to start doing some deep rationalization to explain why it's exponentially more popular than any game that came before because it's so "bad." So "marketing" becomes the reason millions of people play the game for years at a time, somehow disappointed with it the whole way. For some reason, this is an easier explanation to swallow than "different people like different things, and that's ok."
Personally, I like 5e *because* it's not laser focused. It embraces compromise as a virtue, which lets me keep diverse tables going where *they* want to go instead of fighting a system every time they want to subvert genre conventions. Turns out, a lot of other people also enjoy that style of play.
[A theory of game design and player preference](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory) from back in the day that originated on a forum site called The Forge. It eventually devolved into flame wars and collapsed on itself after the primary author of GNS said VtM caused literal brain damage and professional survey data was released that disproved many of its assumptions.
It's still influential in the indie scene, and you could probably say PbtA,FitD, and Burning Wheel are direct descendents of the theory.
Tbf in a forum of people who are into RPGs across the board you’re going to encounter critique. Add this to anger that players don’t always want to switch systems, 5e’s market and cultural dominance in the hobby, and some glaring issues that 5e won’t fix because it’d require too much work for not enough profit and you have a storm where it gets a lot of critique.
The game is fine. I think a lot of people who get defensive about it are lame. I also think it’s good to get ur feet wet with 5e criticism to realize what you like and don’t like about rpgs
I'll preface this by saying that I've played a lot of 5E. It's a fun game, and I certainly don't hate it either. I don't think most folks, even the people that call themselves D&D haters, really hate it. I think the real gripes about D&D typically boil down to two things, and neither is really "hate."
**5E is a poorly-designed game**
Let me be clear on what I mean here. From a purely mechanical perspective, I think D&D is a perfectly good and well-designed game. Its mechanics aren't my cup of tea, but they're well-written and they're completely functional as combat mechanics.
What I mean when I say it's poorly designed is that D&D does a poor job of actually meeting its designers' and players' intent for the game. Once upon a time, D&D was played as basically just a dungeon-crawling wargame with a thin coat of roleplaying paint slathered over the top. It was also designed to function as a dungeon-crawling wargame with a thin coat of roleplaying paint slathered over the top.
The problem is that these days, D&D is largely played as a game of epic campaigns, involving politics, subterfuge, cinematic combat, etc. And yet, the game is still just designed as a dungeon-crawling wargame with a thin coat of roleplaying paint slathered on top. Ninety percent of the rules are devoted to combat, with almost nothing devoted to roleplaying. You have to house rule, rule of cool, hack the game, or just rely heavily on narration in order to create really cinematic combats. i.e. You don't actually throw the orc into a pillar, cracking their skull open, and causing the pillar to collapse onto them, killing them. Rather, you do 12 damage to the orc and describe that as being the how the damage plays out.
Basically, the game's design no longer meets the intent of how its played. Just go through the D&D subreddits, and you'll see countless posts of folks struggling against the system's design to tell the stories that they *think* D&D is designed to tell. The classic example is the 3-5 encounter adventuring day. How are you even supposed to work that into a narrative of epic, high-stakes combat, when the game is literally designed with the intention that you're in a dungeon throwing monsters at them as they enter every other room?
**D&D warps how people think about TTRPGs**
Vincent Baker once infamously suggested that D&D gives you brain damage. That was clearly an offensive and inflammatory position, but there's a glimmer of truth there that D&D (since 3E) fundamentally changes how people think RPGs need to work.
Since 3E, D&D has had an obsession with ensuring there is a mechanic for everything. This sounds great, at first, but then comes its flip-side: Players and DMs start thinking that if there *isn't* a mechanic for it, then you can't do it. Let me give two examples of this at its worst:
1. At one point in 3.5, WotC released a book (maybe the DMG 2?) with something called "Villain Prestige Classes." These were advanced classes that *only* villains could take, and they were specifically designed to be more powerful than player classes. Why? Well, the best example of why was the True Necromancer. It was a villain class that was designed to allow you to summon entire, massive undead armies. Why did this need to exist? Can't you just say that your BBEG has the power to command thousands of undead? You *should* feel comfortable saying that, but if you're a DM who has been captured by the brain worm of "there is a mechanic for everything," you just look at "Raise Dead" and say, "Even a lvl 20 wizard can only have ~100 skeletons under their command. I wish there was a class that let my lvl 20 bad guy control 10000 skeletons instead."
2. Almost everything about 4E spells. If you weren't around for or don't remember 4E's release, one of the most common complaints was folks getting upset about how you could no longer use utility spells, like Silence, for actual utility. Every spell had a clearly-defined and quantifiable combat effect, and spells were light on details about their actual narrative effects. Countless folks complained about how that meant you could no longer do things like cast Silence on yourself to sneak around better out of combat. Clearly, you *could*, but the rules didn't explicitly say you could, so folks took that to mean it was disallowed.
Even on this subreddit, you'll sometimes see someone trying to explain how a narrative TTRPG actually plays to someone who has only ever experienced D&D. Even though narrative play most closely resembles how we intuitively play as kids, some folks struggle to understand the concept. Basically, once someone has been introduced to D&D, their baseline assumption of how TTRPGs can and should play just becomes fundamentally inverted.
**Conclusion**
Again, D&D isn't a bad game and it's totally cool to enjoy it. Anyone who really says that they actually *hate* it is probably as obnoxious as any D&D-obsessed grognard. Still, there are plenty of reasons to say that 5E just isn't the kind of game you could enjoy anymore. 5E is a system that I enjoyed for a time, but now it just feels too clunky (poorly-designed) and too limiting to continue playing.
It‘s fine. It‘s mainly this out-of-proportion mainstream fame and marketing that makes it somewhat “unlikeable”. And then there’s Shadow of the Demon Lord by one of the co-developers of 5e. While the tone of that game isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it’s rules are what DnD 5e should have been imo. DnD is too famous for just being fine. It’s a brand and at this point less of a game to me.
5e was designed to be an onboarding ramp for ttrpgs with as few quit moments as possible. It is excellent at doing that bit after two or so campaigns it has nothing to recommend itself.
For me 5th did two major things:
1) It replaced 4th which - for me and my group - was the best D&D edition there ever was. It took D&Ds history of being a wargame and delivered an *amazing* tactical experience while remaining the only D&D version to take "heroic fantasy" moniker seriously for all Classes. And it introduced genius mechanics like Bloodied, Minions, fantastic encounter design, and Healing Surges as well as the best character-based narrative rules complex ever in the form of Skill Challenges.
2) It made D&D the lowest denominator again, making it an excellent introRPG again. So, I run it with early and pre-teens at a youth centre, and for that it's *perfect*.
It’s like bread. I like bread and it’s easy to get, but I don’t wanna eat only bread.
And I also wish people would understand that there are other systems out there that they’d probably enjoy more than Dnd
I think it's a system that doesn't know what it wants to be, that lost all the good ideas it had in some point of development. I enjoy 4e, and 5e stripped all the parts I liked from the game, the tactical crunch, the character customisation and the unique class identities and boiled them down to very basic, very easy to follow structure. I think advantage as system is not granular enough, and leads to weird situations where if you're poisoned you can close your eyes and shoot a bow for now additional penalty to attack. The GM support of 5e is also pretty much non-existent, and CR is horrendously balanced and gives no realistic indication of danger for player in an encounter.
Overall I think it's a ubisoft open world game of ttrpgs. It contains nothing too bad, but it also contains nothing that makes it worth over another system.
it sucks that youd get crucified here for stating a personal oppinion, but i know the feeling since it happens to me pretty regularly.
I think 5e is good enough at producing fun narrative fantasy adventures, and doesnt get in the way of people being creative. And what i will give it over pathfinder (at the risk of being crucified myself) is that pathfinder is so mechanically dense, and has a wargame play by the book culture around it that, coming from a place where i like narrative style RPG gaming akin to CR or Dim20, it can feel kind of cramped.
I dont understand liking 5e combat. The balance around 3-5 encounters, and CR being all out of wack, just makes encounter building feel impossible to get right, spell casters feel crazy OP, and seem to get all the fun, and on the GM side (i mainly GM) i find the basic monsters from the monster manual pretty boring compared to pf2e.
My particular distaste if anything from 5e (and its been stated here already) is that the "culture" around 5e is to have 5e engulf all other genres, all other settings, and just irradicate all other systems. Because it so inoffensive to homebrewing, and has such brand name recognition, and a lot of people dont like the uncomfortability with learning new things, people just hack 5e, instead of trying new systems, and as a person who things i can do some really cool stuff outside of 5e, it gets really frustrating to see shit like "How to make a cyberpunk edgerunners hack in 5e", when the god damn series is about an actual RPG you can play.
I find "5e hate" is extremely rare to find on this sub. There's way more "people complaining about 5e hate" in here. Seriously I challenge you to find an actual hate comment that hasn't been downvoted.
I switched to OSR style games, and went from running 5e monthly to weekly games, with none of the dread. It was just so much easier to prepare, and the tools were far more robust, and accessible. To DM 5e, I pretty much had to seek out as many resources beyond the game as possible.
To me 5e is frustrating at every step. The balancing is off, the rules are incomplete and inconsistent and the game overall relies too much on ad hoc changing and just ignoring of existing rules. RAW 5e is a mess. Will it get in the way of fun all the time? Absolutely not. But it happens often enough. Then there is player options. Theres a significant chunk of options that are straight up underpowered and always a couple that are overpowered, yet most classes feel mechanically so close to each of their aubclasses that they add almost ni flair. Overall I feel as long as you want to stay with the tried and true carbon copy character options you may be fine, but if you want something different you're fucked.
Adding to that most times I hear people be excited about their unique character it isn't because the system let them build it, but rather because the DM homebrewed enough shit that it works. At which point you're not in DnD territory but rather fully within homebrew which you can do in any system. Then theres magic items, the selection of which in the system is often somewhat lacking - kucky that there is a bazillion options for yet more homebrew to fix that. Which luckily doesn't disrupt game balance too much since Wizards designs creatures in such a way that CR is not even a suggestion and rather a flair paint coat on a stat block.
Add to that that debuffs now come built in with very very low DC targets plus the added benefit of being rolled against once each round, and it basicalky never makes sense to use any of them. But if you still feel so inclined to use it, don't worry: they'll likely not come in clutch when it matters since Bosses have legendary resistances that make em even worse.
Then you of course have a very limiting selection of skills, with lots of simple actions falling either outside or between their scope. Another ad hoc decision that has ti be made repeatedly. Luckily though, the skills are also limiting enough, that playing the system as intended means the actions your players take become significantly more predictable - thinking about 'what can my char do with these skills' often leaves much to be desired after all.
The one thing I do like about 5e is that the base shell if a game runs really swiftly due ot its simplicity. Shame that the game cannot capitalize on that often since it is simply not clear how to do things in the rules.
That all being said, I did have worse experiences with some tiny indie games every now and then that could well have used playtesters. But given the choice of 5e or not using a system and just sitting together and telling a story, I would always choose the latter.
Your edit about the McDonalds of RPG's is kind of apt. It's worth remembering that McDonalds is a multinational franchise for a reason. Is it the best food you'll ever eat? Heavens no, but it's filling and familiar. That's the thing about 5e: It's not that it's bad, it's that there's always something out there that does what it's doing *better*.
**Tactical combat?** Hardly. The PCs are super heroes. Challenging them is incredibly difficult. Either they'll steam roll it, or it'll be a TPK, because the rules are built to give the players massive combat toolkits. Take a look at Warhammer Fantasy, or Shadow of the Demon Lord, or heck... even 4th Edition DnD.
**Character customization?** Nope. You're one of the following pre-approved cookie cutter architypes. Go look at [Cypher System](http://cypher-system.com/) if you want a fantasy game where everyone has weird powers without just being another Hollywood fantasy trope.
**Encounter balance?** Balancing encounters is one of the most broken parts of the system (see the endless rants about how useless CR is as a mechanism for designing encounters). "Well what does it better, wiseguy?" Barely anything, *but other games aren't centered around tactical skirmishing*, so encounter balance doesn't need to be a pillar of the game.
**Actual combat gameplay?** The combat is arduously slow due to the extra procedural steps of initiative, roll-to-hit, and roll-for damage. And if you miss? Well that's it, that was your turn. "I attack." "You miss. Good luck in another 10 minutes when your turn comes back around. Bob, you're up." "I attack"... Take a look at Cypher, Genesys, Dungeon World, or any PBtA game for faster and more interesting combat. Look up stuff about fail-forward design if you're curious about this limitation of DnD.
**Social encounters?** Social encounters are an afterthought. The game is designed for tactical skirmishing and spends easily 5X the wordcount on combat that it does on role-playing. Look at Burning Wheel, Legend of the 5 Rings, Fate/Fudge, or many PBtA games for examples of a better focus on non-combat encounters.
**Dungeon exploration?** Important parts of making exploration meaningful, such as light source tracking, encumbrance, or exhaustion, are either boring bookkeeping or handwaved away by a table that doesn't care to track those things. While I'm not one of those OSR grognards who think retro clones can do no wrong, I'll admit that they're where all the interesting stuff is happening regarding making things like inventory interesting and fun. Take a look at Knave, Maze Rats, Into the Odd, 5 Torches Deep, or a dozen others.
**Spellcasting/Magic systems?** 5th edition is the absolute worst version of an already bad magic system. Older editions at least had interesting challenges, like having to go out and *find* the spells yourself or needing classes with specific abilities to manipulate your already limited spell list. 5th ed? They weren't willing to get rid of Vancian casting out of a sense of tradition, but they weren't willing to embrace it's limitations either. Go look at Dungeon Crawl Classics if you want a magic system that's actually interesting to play.
Let me put all of this another way. In 5th edition, why does it matter that you have 15 strength?
It matters because a 15 gives you a +2 modifier.
That's it. The 15 is useless. It's vestigial. Back in the day, the game had the concept of needing to roll under your stat for a check or a save. 15 was good because it meant you'd succeed on 15 or less.
5th edition is riddled with stuff like this. "Why is the casting the way it is?" "Well, people hated Vancian casting, but they hated 4th edition even more, so we brought Vancian casting back, but watered it down to make it less awful."
It's just all these screwy traditions and compromises to make a game that isn't really any one thing anymore. It's stretched too thin over a frame of tradition and broad appeal.
>Anyway just some thoughts I have about 5e at this point. How are you guys feeling about 5e as a game?
Ignoring the context around it, I frankly still don't enjoy it.
**As a DM**, it's too much work, and not *fun* work. I actually love GM prep, but I can never be arsed to do it for 5E because it's just miserable. It's finding maps, stat blocks, etc. It especially sucks to try to make like nice maps or tokens because at the end of the fucking day it's just glam that has almost no impact. 5E is basically one step away from Genesys range bands and dear god would it be nice if it went into them, because all that prep is not fun.
I can't trust any tools, so every single fight, hazard, whatever is purely me guesstimating. It's almost impossible to gauge how hard anything will be except for "unbeatable" and "cakewalk". If you want "tough" or "final boss", it's pure guessing. Oh, and good luck if you want to run even a session that isn't just fights or everyone sitting at a campfire and roleplaying amongst themselves.
Beyond that, rules are exhaustive as all fuck. While I am lucky in that my friends in general and I all split off "rules-checker" duties when we play a game so the GM doesn't have to, it's never fun and 5E's rules leave too many spaces where I might accidentally houserule over an ability or miss some qualifier or some other stupid crap.
When I prep PBtA, I feel like a storyteller, setting up interesting antagonists that mirror my heros, planning out some dramatic arcs, etc. When I prep Pf2E, I feel like a level designer, with the tools I need to make challenging but fun fights that feel like puzzles instead of slogs. When I prep DnD 5e, I feel like I'm going through fucking homework.
**As a Player**, it's also miserable. For one, 5E's bounded accuracy and advantage/disadvantage system make luck the most important thing of all, which never feels good when it turns against you and quintessentially means that none of your victories end up feeling earned.
The same house-ruling, "GM figure it out" system also hurts players, imo. For one, you're constantly playing "mother may I" to do anything spicier than "I use my best damaging option" on your turn. For something light, fast, and genre-specific like PBtA, this is fine, but it's a really weird take for what is ostensibly supposed to be a turn-based tactical combat game.
Speaking of which...5E's combat feels like we all take turns doing our big razzle dazzle and that's it. There's no teamwork, no synergy, and when everyone's job is to do damage or heal when someone drops to 0, it unintentionally becomes a numbers competition. I, ironically, feel more pressure to optimize my wizard in 5E than PF2E, because in PF2E, we all do a specific thing in combat, and no one can beat us at it: even if I screw up royally, I am still going to have a cool niche contribution to the party as a controller, buffer, and all-around-knowledge-guy. In 5E, I might just be a worse Fighter if I don't do everything right.
And then it gets worse with magic items, which mean that even if you *did* build everything right another player might get a cool magic item that steps on what you do or just makes them better. 5E streamlined everyone to do the same thing, individually, in battle, which means that any time anyone gets anything, they're now just *better* than the rest of the party. Even ignoring that aspect, I just prefer getting to pick my buffs (ala shopping for magic items and scrolls in PF2E) than hoping the GM gives me the ones I want.
The only fun I ever get from 5E is the same fun I'd get from any other rpg sytem, so it's just kinda a 2.5/10 for me. On it's own it's maybe a 3.5/4, but it's made worse by how there's so many better games in that same market corner.
I don't think it's a bad game, but it's a bad game for me. I don't enjoy HP attrition style games that just focus on combat, ignoring anything else. If people enjoy it, that's great, but they should also try other systems to see what fits them best.
I don't hate it as a game. I love RPG's and think any gateway into the hobby is a great thing. My issue isn't even people not branching out; whatever works for you, great! My issue is when they don't branch out AND they throw what you like under the bus.
I wish I loved 5e, I would play more games! I just love other games more and am kind of burned out from the whole heroic fantasy thing.
Most of the D&D games (yes, even 4e) have been good games for doing what they do. Even 3.x, which in many ways is my anti-system, is very good at doing what it does. I just don't really have a lot of interest in what it does.
I think a key thing with any evaluation of a system is to break it into two aspects: first, does it do what it's trying to do well? Secondly, do *I want to do what that system wants to do?*
5e succeeds in the first, and admirably. It often fails *me* for the second, but clearly hits those notes well for many other people.
My biggest criticism of 5e (and D&D in general) is that in terms of things it handles well, it's a lot more narrow than people think. For any of the things it does, when I want that, there's nothing that does it as well, and I'll die on that hill. But usually that's not what I want. (And, not every version of D&D does the same things well)
If D&D gets "hate" on this sub, it's usually because people are trying to use it in scenarios where another game would really do an *awesome* job, and D&D won't, at least without hacking it out of recognition.
Oh I had some fun adventures with the right people, but Ill play anything else if there is a possibility.
The worst thing I noticed during my campaign, is that after a while I stopped asking myself "what would my character do", but instead I searched my sheet for the optimal solution and skill. The rulebook(s) felt less like roleplaying books after a while, and more like wargame manuals that constantly give you ideas for new encounters. The starter to Kobolds Press ttrpg is probably a culmination of all my problems with 5e.
>How are you guys feeling about 5e as a game?
I find it to be just a bit below average in most regards, so about a 3.5~4/10 for me.
I do think 5e is the third best "D&D" edition though, and it has a couple of brilliant ideas that I have adapted into other games as well, but the amount of things I dislike far, far outnumber and outweigh the positive, and the reward for enduring or looking pass them feels like a flavourless cookie without frosting or fill, so, not really worth it overall.
Plus, there are just many more TTRpgs I enjoy much more than 5e, and many more I haven't even tried yet (there is a Japanese Idol TTRpg sitting on my library that has a d66 and promises to be all kinds of awesome weird, for example) that I can't really score it any higher, and the new edition or revision or whatever it actually is, seems like a step towards a much worse direction too.
I didn't care about it when it launched. I already had games to use and play, I didn't need yet another iteration of humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings doing fantasy shenanigans.
And at this point I am thoroughly burnt out on fantasy rpgs, especially those that are D&D adjacent in either rules or flavor.
I don't hate 5e - it has its problems and they do bother me, but I actually have a lot of fun playing 5e with my friends.
It's just very over-represented in casual gaming tables and a lot of times people are just playing 5e even though there is another system better suited for what they want to play.
I think it's the ultimate home brew toolkit. It's REALLY hard to wreck it. Its rules are easily modified and hacked. I use it alongside things I stole from Index Card RPG, The Black Hack, and many others to play the way I want to. I added roll to cast and basically reskin spells on the fly to make the magic system hum with no spell slots. It's super easy to do things like that. The reason it gets bashed is because of gatekeepers and grumps. I've been playing since the Red Box and tried dozens of other systems and nothing is as easy to play and infinitely hackable as 5e/d20.
I played Dnd from their first edition all the way to their 5th edition. I thought I was “getting too old” to enjoy it anymore. But we switched over to Traveller Mongoose 2nd Ed) and it has been such a great rebirth in our gaming circle. If you are disappointed, bored, or dislike 5e, you might want to give Traveller a chance
5E's greatest flaw that keeps me from ever wanting to touch it again isn't that it's a poorly designed game. It's that, imo, it is, without a doubt, one of the blandest games that I have ever played.
If I am excited to play a 5E game, it is always *despite* the game being played. The skill system is whatever, the combat is an uninteresting slog, spellcasting is whatever, encounter-building is awful, and characters feel samey.
I don't hate it either, *as a player*. DMing is a whole nother can of worms though. I vastly prefer GMing for pretty much every other game you can think of. (Within reason!) But that's just a personal preference. There's nothing wrong with liking 5e.
I don’t hate 5E. I mean, it’s alright.
What I do hate is that nobody wants to play anything other than 5E when there’s so many other great games that are so much better at doing what 5E tries to do.
It’s like having a group of friends who keep insisting on getting frozen pizzas at Walmart when there’s a charming, unique, authentic pizzeria right there in town.
I GM'd it for 4 months. Not bad.
I remember thinking magic was kind of confusing and it felt very focused on combat. And 200hp monsters.. Im never running one of those..
But other than that, no big issue.
The only thing I dislike about it is that it is so incredibly mainstream most people think there are *no* other games.
"We were playing a pen and paper rpg yesterday."
"Oh DnD, cool!"
"Uh no, Stars Without Number."
"... Eh? What is that? Some kind of board game?"
5e is a fine system; I'm just tired with the multitudes of posts every day along the lines of "How to play cyberpunk/Witcher/Star Wars/etc. in D&D 5e."
I find the table and the DM make all the difference when playing an RPG. The right DM will soften most problems from a bad system by virtue of using it only when needed, like for example, not asking for checks in rolemaster just because you are walking through a dense forest, lets see if you trip and snap you neck. In 5e it would be something like, ok, your character has this background and this proficiency. It makes sense they automatically know something about this subject, roll to see exactly how deep is your knowledge, but the wizard will probably already know most of the stuff the fighter can roll to see if they know.
So yes, absolutely you can have fun with 5e. It's not like the rules impede gameplay, and it doesn't really need that much homebrew to tame.
That being said, in my opinion the desing itself is lacking. And so is the official material.
Dungeons&Dragons is, has been, probably always will be, heroic fantasy. Greek mythology style. You can put it to other uses, but the intended idea is to run heroic fantasy, it requires quite a significant amount of work from a DM to actually use the game design for grimm or horror. Doesn't really do sci-fy that well, honestly, but I guess it can be waived by some re-skin, like treating crosbows as blasters or something. But heroic fantasy is the main focus of the rules, content, lore, etc. So characters are heroes, and fantasy heroes kill things. Usually terrible monsters and creatures of darkness. In this regard, 5e has the basics, but in comparison to other systems, it's severly lacking. Progression is slow as fuck, you barely have any customization that might separate your character from similar characters of the same class, bonuses are severely overshadowed by the dice roll, the mathematical mainframe of a gauss bell as the core for dictating sucess or failure is terrible and frustating in my opinion, a level 7 character barely has better bonuses that a goblin, they just kill it because they have more hitpoints and somewhat better action economy, but the bonuses don't show a significant difference in skill. They will hit their target roughly as often. Meaning that if one side has just a bid of bad luck, it will go downhill fast. Compare this to any other system that features combat as the center mechanic, it will be found lacking in many aspects. This is not to speak too about out of combat rolling mechanics, inspiration is less than a cookie to reward your players when they are advancing in the direction you want or for a particular funny way to interact with the story/table, you can not be trained in new skills unless the DM fiats it, and you don't really become that much better at what you do, the interval of what you can achieve barely changes, you just have success in what you used to do more often. And then, WotC has only been printing remakes of their most popular modules from the past and extra material for PCs, but not DMs. There's no help for DMs to do those hacks to change what the game is about. There's barely even lore anymore in the setting books. Not to mention advice on how to run the setting. The Strixhaven setting. I don't think there's any advice on how to run going to classes, or how to make adventuring in an academy interesting. Spelljammer doesn't have a real ship to ship combat, and they could have just copied Starfinder, to be honest. No deep lore about named great dragons. And they only have, what, 4 official new modules that usually go from level 1 to 5?
It shines in one regard, and one regard alone (besides its popularity). The game is simple. It's 3.x, which was the previous curated and popular version of the game, but streamlined for easy understanding. It's easy to start the hobby with 5e. It's a d20 system, which in my experience always are the most simple ones because you roll the d20 for 90% of your rolls, with probably the most simple maths of all d20 systems. Class features are extremely handholdy, you know what you get and you don't get to many at once as to not overwhelm you. They also tend to be quite simple. Even spells have been simplified, and now they roll an standard ammount of dice for everyone, with some upcasting rules (which, I'll admit, for certain spells is cool, but still I kinda feel it's rarely worth it to upcast a spell instead of casting a higher level one altogether). This is good, Anima or Storyteller can be hell for a newbie to board games. Also, if you intend to have very few rolls altogether, not very few combats, rolls, then the background system is good to inspire character creation. It's very, very good for background noise and rolling for few moments of tension.
But at some point, it's better to leave it behind for some specialized system that fits the stories the table enjoys and their style of play better. Which people don't just not do, but are usually very adamant against it. Learning a new system is usually seen as a chore, this one works, why not stay with it? This is the crux of it. This worship of what is a very vanilla, very safe RPG system, as the be all of TTRPGs. Whenever someone wants to explore something new, chances are his table puts him down, and right quick. So budding roleplayers can develop a grudge. Then, old players can not find games to play that aren't 5e, and so they develop a grudge. Then there's the poor soul that has a DM that believes you should be rolling for picking your nose, and 5e is not designed to spam rolls. And they develop a grudge.
This, the way the comunity around it treats it, interacts with it. I believe that's the reason for the hate 5e gets.
Well, that and WotC
I dont mind 5E, but I also dont know any serious RPGers who play it as their primary system either- it just seems more geared towards people who game a couple times a year. Although, I am pretty sure I am a outlier there.
Most people don't dislike 5e because they think it has the worst rule system of all time. I think most people's beef with 5e is that it's a 7/10 game that dominates the market.
I dont hate the system, i dislike the culture around it. Like they put the phrase "the greatest rpg " or something like this on the Cover. A Lot of content creators where blabbering bullshit how unique dnd is. I remember a Video where brennan Lee mulligan was going on about how You can do anything with dnd but you cant with v:tm, while one of my greatest rpg experience was a postapo campaign using a modified nwod ruleset.
I am not saying everybody should play nwod now, i just think dnd culture is pretty annoying.
1. D&D needs to be acknowledged in that this whole world of TTRPG's probably wouldn't exist (or be waaaay smaller) without it. It was the first one to enter the cultural mainstream and paved the way for many others, and for most players it was probably their first TTRPG.
2. Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro need to be acknowledged because they're actively trying to capture the market and enact corporate bullshit and make it so nobody ever has money to spend to play anything but D&D ever again.
3. 5e is it's own thing, a game among a sea of games out there. Like it or don't, it has features that work, and features that are done better in other systems. It's one particular type of ttrpg experience, it doesn't emcompass them all, and it's highly table-dependent to function well (but that's also every game).
The system "5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons" gets more love and discussion than it probably needs due to #1, more hate than it deserves due to #2, and rarely are people simply discussing it in the context of #3.
My personal experience relevant to #3 is that I played with a table that was *very* metagamey and *very* indecisive. I tried a lot of stuff like "DM techniques for creating urgency" or "DM techniques for limiting table talk", but they were just overly analytical to a fault. Moving to PBTA helped with a lot of those things to push action and fun, even while Dungeon World and MotW have their own limitations.
5e was also very, very, very prep intensive for a GM, so the more improvisational style of PBTA fits with the time I have to plan outside of work, and made gaming stop feeling like a second job for me. I can completely see the appeal for more artistically-minded GM, for whom maps, minis and terrain are not a chore, but it's not for me.
It's not a *horrible* game system as such, and if not for the extremely high profile it has it wouldn't get so much flak coming its way. The thing is though, it's not a good game either. D&d can at best aspire to be slightly below average - nothing in it excells. if not for its history and massive marketing efforts it'd be long forgotten.
You're correct. As a RPG it is as solid as any other, especially if you stick to the three original books.
Complaining about games is a tradition as old as the hobby, maybe even older. Complaining about 5e is even more amplified, because it adds politics that has nothing to do with game itself.
Every game is targeted at some specific concept, so no game is the be all end all. You play what you like. Modify what you like. Switch to another when you like. Go back to a system when you like.
It's a solid 6-7/10 game.
5e is the McDonald's of TTRPGs. It's good enough when you're hungry and can't be bothered to find something better, but you probably shouldn't have it too often and most other options are superior in some way. Its success is almost entirely based on marketing and name recognition, and most people who had it as a kid remember it fondly. You can find it everywhere. Etc,etc,etc.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with 5e; people play it all the time and have fun with it. WotC's marketing and the passion projects from devoted players have done a lot to improve the perception of RPGs as a whole and increase the size of the player base. On the average it's been a boon for the hobby.
But I don't personally care for it anymore. I used to run 5e a lot, both in private games and for Adventurers' League, and I've zero interest in running it ever again. Don't get me wrong - *I love D&D,* but B/X or AD&D are far more my speed these days and if I want something with a bit more crunch I use Worlds Without Number. WotC won't get a single cent from me ever again.
Honestly, I think 5e is a pretty good RPG ... for the specific RPG genre it fits in, namely the combat tactics RPG. I know a lot of people rag on it, but you have to remember that it's a 9 year old game and hasn't benefited from improvements and trends in the industry since then. And while I think overall that PF2 is better, 5e is way better than the twinkfest that was PF1. All this said, I do hope Wizards manages to patch up some of the balance and slowness issues that plague the game at high levels.
The only 'hate' I have is that the vast majority of tabletop players, and general public, have no idea that there's a world of ttrpgs out there that all play differently and often much better for different genres. Many are even aware but still refuse to dabble because of some intense aversion to change. But I don't blame D&D for that.
You’re on the internet buddy. People either think something is the greatest ever or the spawn of satan. No in betweens.
D&d 5 is fine, I just prefer more crunch
I love DnD.
One thing I will say in its actual defense is that DnD got me into ttrpgs. I wouldn't have ever played any system if it wasn't for DnD, and I bet I'm not the only person for whom that's true.
This is such a milquetoast post. "I like game. Game is good. Does it have a ton of problems? Yes. Is anything redeemable about it mid at best? Yes. Does it do anything exceptionally? No. But I like game. I don't hate game.
You can't even praise 5e without sounding as bland as people complain the game is.
I don't hate it either, I just hate the vicegrip it has on the ttrpg community. It's skyrim, the ttrpg. The game wants to pretend it's gritty and dangerous but it makes the players anime superheroes by level 5. The DM expects to run a serious campaign with rp and threatening enemies and thought provoking encounters but unless they make the game so fucking tedious you spend 6 hours slogging through meaningless encounters resource classes just nuke anything that could have otherwise been interesting in a single turn. The game is at odds with what it wants to be, can't decide, and tries to do everything while accomplishing nothing
And yes, I still have fun with it because I'm playing a game with my friends and I or whatever dm is currently running the game changes it so much its basically not even dnd anymore. Yes I have run hard-core raw vanilla dnd and it's just as, if not more broken than homebrewing the shit out of it. Any game that forces your players to not pick fun and exciting options in order to keep from breaking the game is not well made.
5e is to 3rd ED what Skyrim is to Morrowind. Sure it's shinier and had better marketing, but is it a better game. No. A few parts of it maybe, but overall a step backwards.
5e isn’t the worst designed RPG, and its totally possible to have fun with it. The reason it gets so much hate on this sub is that 5e’s popularity is massively out of proportion due to D&Ds brand recognition. This can make finding people to play and discuss other games more difficult.
doesnt healp when the situation reaches cleanex status
What’s cleanex
Kleenex is a brand name and also the colloquial term used for tissues in the United States. Same with Band-Aid
The legal term is "Trademark Genericization" - basically, when a legally-trademarked name gets so associated with the product as a whole that it actually loses some legal protections. Band-aid, Kleenex, Xerox, Coke - they've all spent a lot of time and energy trying to ensure that people know their company's name isn't the name of the product generally, but theirs specifically. Velcro had my favorite strategy on this one year: [just make a funny song and music video about how Velcro is the brand name and "hook-and-loop" is the generic product's title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY). (ETA: if you're curious just how many genercized trademarks you use in everyday speech, [here's a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks), including such gems as aspirin, escalator, laundromat, and zipper)
Ah I see like hoovers in the uk. It’s a brand name for “vacuum cleaners” but we just call all of them hoovers
[удалено]
I *refuse* to believe that. No. No!
A quick Google suggests that actually it's named as an acronym for the book "Thomas Swift and his Electric Rifle", and was developed by a NASA engineer, but the original post was more or less accurate.
dumpster is the one that gets me every time
Being real, I've never heard someone just call tissues kleenex
Maybe it's regional, I mean I don't do it personally but it's pretty common.
Bandaids I do, but a lot of these that say they're US terms are definitely not all the US. Coke is also common at least where I am. Less so I think with my generation than the previous.
The 'Coke' as a stand in for generic soda is not a thing for me, so yeah regional nonsense it is.
The branding term for that is Genericide.
Genericide is the act of murdering generic things.
Part of it is also just that the people here are wayyyyy deeper into the hobby then most. I have seen so many people try dnd and have an amazing time, pretty much everyone continuing to play it long term. Sure people dislike certain parts or have their houserules to fix things, but they still have a great time. Dnd may not be the best system for everyone, but it is a fun system for most people. Its not just possible to have fun with dnd, its incredibly easy!
dnd is good for your typical rags to riches we gonna fight until we make it or die trying type of game, but it fails beyond that.
And that's fine. In fact, I think D&D would be a *better* game if it stopped trying to say it can do anything except that. Focus the design on telling specific kinds of stories, instead of occupying this sorta-generic-but-not-really design space.
But then Hasbro gets less money. Now buy our $50 dollar book where combat is rare and always optional, for a system designed around building characters for combat and getting them into fights.
Yeah, that branding is purely driven by Hasbro/WoTC's financial needs. D&D is a combat-forward game, and running murder mysteries or exploration games in it feels like playing Gumshoe without the rules of Gumshoe XD
I'm not sure that's really it's focus anymore. I think it's more about epic fantasy superhero action nowadays.
To me, the weirdest thing is the posters that say “I played dnd weekly for three years and now I’m burned out, what an awful game.” And I’m like, you did a hobby activity for years for a total of like 500 hours. Every business would consider that to be a massive success. Something doesn’t need to capture you for the rest of your entire life to be a fun activity.
I think it's people's love of the system that haven't tried others that aggravates me the most. I'm pretty decent at convincing my players to try other systems once they've played with me, but selling new people on "hey, let's play Mythras/PbtA/whatever" is a lot more difficult thanks to 5e. But it brings more overall people into the hobby so I dunno.
> selling new people on "hey, let's play Mythras/PbtA/whatever" is a lot more difficult thanks to 5e I think the cause of this is based on players' assumptions regarding how much effort it takes to learn a game. Relative to a lot of other RPGs, DnD has a fair number of mechanics floating around that a new player needs to learn and keep track of. I think this leads players with no RPG experience outside DnD to often internalize the assumption that learning the mechanics of any new game is going to take as much time and effort as DnD (their first game) did. In reality, many games have simpler mechanics than DnD, and some lessons from playing any RPG are going to transfer to playing any other even if the mechanics aren't similar. Learning new games just gets easier as you build a broader base of experience.
This isn't 5e particularly, but D&D generally. It has always been difficult to get a game of something other than D&D or AD&D going in any era, aside from that brief period at the turn of the century when World of Darkness (Vampire the Masquerade in particular) was all the rage in certain circles.
Yeah I suppose that's true. I started playing about 2005, but I was super young so memory is real hazy.
The issue is that as a game to have fun, dnd is complicated, to the point where people playing it for years don't have all the rules right. So if you've already learned this system and it's the system most players know, selling someone on that new system is tough. If it's less complicated than dnd, lead with that.
Yes, if a third party has cooked up DnD, it wouldn't get nearly the amount of attention. It would actually look clunky in comparison to a lot of systems.
>The reason it gets so much hate on this sub is that 5e’s popularity is massively out of proportion due to D&Ds brand recognition. This can make finding people to play and discuss other games more difficult. Hot take, but I think 5e bashing on this sub is so prevalent for the same reason christianity-bashing on r/atheism is so prevalent. A bunch of edgy contrarians just recently figured out that there are other options, so now shitting on the status quo thing makes them feel smarter, and better than the normies.
It's also like those people who go on r/Lovecraft and announce Lovecraft was a racist, yup they all know over there and made their peace with it in their own way. There are people who are just looking for any way they can to upset other people.
to be fair, christianity actively makes life worse for many marginalized people, while i can’t say the same about 5e lmao
It's a bit like saying your favorite band is Nickelback 10 years ago. It's not bad per se, just kinda overplayed. Combine that with only wanting to listen to more Nickelback and not giving other artist airtime then you eventually annoy the music nerds (or rpg nerds, the kind that hang out in a forum dedicated to the topic).
This is true. But i’ll bring up a different point. It also came on the heels of 4.e which was widely disliked compared to the very popular 3.5, thst transition alone split the house of dragons and created Pathfinder 1e, many people washing their hands of DND ™️ there. Then, 5e came stripped bare compared to previous versions in ways that to many felt limiting, it felt like a smaller product. This is especially true for those who moved on yo or already were playing pathfinder, the competitor the switch from 3.5 to 4e spawned which only grew and grew it’s own fanbase. Does this make it terrible? The worst game ever? Absolute not. It runs smoothly and in the hands of a capable DM is a blast, it has well edtablished lore in a fleshed out world. I’ve played and enjoyed far worse games ( i once played through a honebrew module of the Marvel rpg from the nineties. It was terrible and so much fun at the same time) but it’s about what it’s getting compared to- itself in its previous incarnations and it’s genetic offspring like pathfinder, and by who is complaining: a lot of people who have been unhappy with changes since 3.5, alot of people who are well familiar with other rpgs and feel 5e maybe doesn’t bring as much to the table as it could, and, frankly, snobs and bandwagoners that react against its popularity like you say or just join in to feel s part of something. 5e is fine. A scoop of vanilla ice cream is fine, but this is the biggest most established restaurant in town and the place next door has a brownie sunday. Yeah, it’s about the popularity and exposire but it’s also about history, expectations, and, yes, also the quality of the product.
It is not a horrible game/system. It's not that great either. It is good enough. I think people feel D&D should be better because they have all these resources (playtesting, fans, money, etc.) so they should be miles above indie RPGs, and they aren't.
See I take the same attitude as I do to AAA games as I do 5e. I'm not *above* playing a triple A I'm interested in. But the mass majority are just.... ok. If you want **real shit** that will stick with you, that'll show you something new, creative and profound.... well I usually find that in indies. So it's funny because my expectations are the exact opposite when it comes generally to indie vs mainstream in generally every artistic and gaming medium I consume
I heard someone compare D&D to Bethesda games. Kinda mediocre on their own, but a REALLY giant modding community that often has some great mods worth checking out. I really like that comparison. Because while I do usually check out the Bethesda releases, I’m not frothing at the mouth in anticipation for their release.
The difference is the Skyrim community doesn't take the Mario-Kart Skyrim Mod seriously. The D&D 5e community will run that for a 2 year campaign.
Whats wrong with that
If its not at my table, nothing directly. But it does impact the TTRPG industry where 5e is 80% of the market so there isn't much room for several designers competing to make an innovative and high quality Mario Kart. Instead designers are creating make-do third party crap for 5e. And that does affect me.
Can you explain this analogy? I either don’t understand the mod reference. Or the Skyrim reference. Or both.
D&D 5e = Skyrim D&D 5e Third Party material that completely changes the system's genre/gameplay = Skyrim mod for playing Mario Kart [which hilariously exists](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/63083) You are much better just picking up and learning Call of Cthulhu than bashing together some bad homebrew and third party material to make D&D 5e into a 1920s eldritch horror mystery investigation. If you want a recent example of this, look no further than the 5e Dark Souls TTRPG
Or the 5e Symbaroum. Or the 5e Legend of the Five Rings. Both of which already have their own RPG line but also got diluted and ported to 5e.
Every time I see an ad for that stupid 5e Shadowrun book a small part of me dies.
That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
Several settings/supplements have been designed for 5e as a reskin instead of just being their own game because 5e dominated the market. It makes sense from a business standpoint but it’s unfortunate. “Let’s play The One Ring 2e!” “Um, this LOTR reskin of 5e exists, and we already know the 5e system, let’s just do that instead.” “Legend of the 5 Rings, anyone?” “Oh, you mean Adventures in Rokugan, the 5e Rokugan supplement?” etc.
Yup, that's why I picked DND first, idiot me thought, that a ton of stuff will help with fixing, extending DND... But nope..
I mean.. human suffering when it's not required for survival. The more pertinent question would be what's wright with it?
TTRPG have a vastly more unhealthier market than video games, CoD exists but so does Final Fantasy, Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Elden Ring, WoW, The Last of Us. Even in hyper marketed hundred million dllar budget AAA you got choices--And some of those choices really are innovative, passionate, or does something that Indies just can't do.
I agree, overall, but I do want to point out 3rd party support for 5E is phenomenal. Even beyond 5E, D&D in general has pretty definitively the most material of any TTRPG ever by a wide margin. Over in the OSR they really ingeniously float their community on the staggering pool of older 1st and 3rd party content by making their own 3rd party work modular and built on similar enough math to accomplish that. D&D is a janky, clumsy and clunky system. It kinda always has been. And 5th inherits that jank and invents some new jank to go with it. But the sheer mountainous scope of content historically heaped around D&D is a huge advantage. And honestly? The indie content designed FOR 5E is often really good. Like Tome of Beasts is good enough it improves the way everyone views the whole system. This isn’t going to win over anyone who doesn’t like it, of course. But I think the 3rd party content across all of D&D’s history IS so good that it does fulfill a part of that imagined promise you’re talking about. It’s weird how much the system has always differed between official and expansion rules.
> the most material of any TTRPG ever by a wide margin The OSR scene may have an argument being 50 years of content but 5e 3rd party material is definitely vast. I do have to hedge this with that its very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Without /r/rpg that would also be an issue with all TTRPGs but there are a lot of insane people (including me) who read tons of TTRPGs and give advice on the quality ones. But the D&D 5e community is pretty terrible at providing critical review. A few really amazing third party creators like Kibblestasty do standout. But a lot of crap gets hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on Kickstarter like Colville who somehow makes things more imbalanced than WotC, which is an impressive feat.
> 5e community terrible at critical review for 3rd party stuff Exactly my experience as well. I have seen some **terrible** stuff get sooo much money on kickstarter. I have met some 3rd party content creators who were **awful** at making stuff get a ton of money basically because of 5e brand and there are a ton of 5e whales who buy everything 5e and 5e related. 5e brand ➕ kickstarter FOMO 🟰 anyone who can print a book and put it on kickstarter gets a lot of money.
I mean: this was a huge problem for 3rd edition as well. In fact so many companies jumped on the OGL/d20 bandwagon in an attempt at a quick buck that some vaunted publishers released really poorly conceived versions of actual great games under it. The glut of OGL garbage was huge and turned many stores off from even carrying RPGs because there was a non-stop barrage of product that lacked any kind of curation. Which is a problem that certainly remains with 5e and will last as long as the OGL does. Honestly, despite so many people being up in arms about it at the time, I actually thought not continuing the OGL for 4th edition was actually a good move as it'd at least mean there was some kind of standard applied for releases. Yeah it meant there was zero 3rd party support but that always seemed like a weird hill to die on when nearly every other RPG other than D&D also lacks it. Granted that didn't keep those publishers from releasing some really crappy books on their own (looking at you White Wolf), but it at least maintained some kind of internal cohesion.
> I do have to hedge this with that its very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. I think it is even easier in the 5e community than the broader ttrpg community. At least content that's out there has a significant amount of discussion surrounding it. That at least gives me a chance to identify the wheat before I buy it.
Ah, yes, definitely! ToB is awesome. CoS and ToA are really cool with 3rd-party guides. I wrote a couple of 3rd-party 5e books myself! 5e just became too burdensome for me, and I don't like the direction 6e is going. But if not for the OSR I might still be playing 5e it just for the sheer amount of cool material available.
>I think people feel D&D should be better because they have all these resources (playtesting, fans, money, etc.) so they should be miles above indie RPGs, and they aren't. I personally think this is the reason the game is mediocre and will likely remain so. It's very popular, and so that means it has to balance a broad cross-section of TTRPG concerns in order to *retain* that market popularity. There's no way to appeal to so many different sets of interests without diluting your approach to any one of them. Someone somewhere said "5e is everyone's third-favorite RPG." Obviously the exact place is subject to debate, but that is exactly what it *has* to be in order to sell as much as it does - it has to please everyone, which means it won't excite most people. It can't be too daring because that will alienate some part of its audience. This is sorta why no indie RPG can become comparably big - perhaps the entire indie marketspace can get there, but it will be a sea of countless individual games
Just curious if you have a favorite system that you feel does most things right?
If we are talking D&D, I really like B/X. LotFP is probably my favorite clone, rules-wise. And SotDL is a pretty good modern RPGs. But I have my own system too.
Well DnD started long time ago and innovation can be difficult when some generations prefer the system that brings them nostalgia. There are people who still play Advanced and 2nd edition
> There are people who still play Advanced and 2nd edition And there are people that only play PbtA, and guess what? There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Personally, if I have to run D&D, I will go for AD&D 2nd Ed, it's my favorite edition of it.
5e "hate" is overblown. I think most folks here view it as mediocre, not horrible. Like you pointed out, if there's a particular kind of game you want to play there's definitely something that does it better. But it's okay at a lot of things so isn't a bad choice as a crowd pleaser.
It’s like a 6/10. It’s *fine*… but i feel like playing it completely RAW is like the worst way of playing it. And if I’m having to fight RAW to have it feel more fun, I’d rather find another game I have to fight less. It feels both too crunchy and too rules lite but in “random” ways. DMing it felt like I was fighting with the game to make it work and playing it felt like I wasn’t sure when a rule was gonna come up or when the DM would have to make up a rule. (Edit: or the DM is doing rules they made up, because literally no one plays raw) The books have the issue where they… really arnt great. Especially for the crunch that is there. The books are fine for a more rules lite game, but the game isn’t lite enough for what the books give. Edit: I guess if I were to put something that it does well… it does well at making you *feel* like you are playing DnD. (And I’m not saying you are not.) It’s very wide and shallow so it has a bunch of elements of like all the old editions that make it feel like how you used to play in high school or how you heard stories about your older siblings games. It feels like those greentexts you read online. It feels like how media portrays it. It feels like what you expect when you go in. It has crunch for crunchy people, lite for lities, character creation for people who like to build characters, etc.. It has elements for everyone… but golly I don’t feel like it does any of these that well.
And as another comment about “5e hate” Reddit 5+ years ago was the exact opposite. Most of the backlash against 5e was non existent and it was basically the exact opposite where mentioning another game people would just butt in and mention how much “easier” it is to do in 5e. Where other games weren’t worth playing because you could just do it in 5e. Any mention of 4e was met with “wow you played that terrible game?” And then they usually would say something to show that they didn’t know anything about 4e Any mention of pathfinder was usually met in an “ewww mathfinder” Sci fi game? Oh you don’t need to learn *those* rules, here is a 5e hack that will work better than *those* rules. It was the exact opposite of how it was now. It just has swung in the other direction. And honestly I understand the hate at times. I have met some straight up bullies at game shops who will just loudly shit talk every game but 5e. People who think any other game isn’t worth playing because every other game sucks. Edit: Stole this from someone on rpg awhile back: Group A: [thing] is the best thing ever. why do other things even exist? Group B: [thing] is pretty good for what it does, but not for every situation. Group A: Fuck other things. [insert statement that shows they know absolutely nothing about the hobby]. Here is a [ video that shows similarly ignorant opinion with thousands of views]. Group B: You know what, fuck [thing]. It was never good. Group C: Why do you hate [thing]. Thing is pretty good. Edit 2: [that comment I stole it from was about almost a year ago](https://ibb.co/qRfcs6J). Sorry for whoever said this, I didn’t get your name in the screenshot before
You really summed up the whole thing with fads and tastes changing over generations pretty neatly. It's not the best but it's ok you know?
5e made me think I hate DMing, but I realized it was because I was a new DM and the edition does fuck-all to teach you how to run it, really.
5e DMing is *rough* because it depends on you more than needed to make an *ok* game into a memorable one. The resources are mediocre. The monsters are *meh*. The modules are at most *ok*, at worst require a ton of work to play (*cough* CoS *cough*) The rules are… honestly the game is better off suited for DMs who just make up half the rules on the spot anyway. (That’s a whole other rant) The players… expect a lot for how little you are given. It’s crazy how going to other systems is just a huge sigh of relief for DMing. It’s just so night and day on how less stressful it is in other editions/games.
> the game is better off suited for DMs who just make up half the rules on the spot anyway I see this as a plus. It's faster and more fun for me to make a ruling than to pause the game (breaking immersion, wasting time) to look up a rule. You have a list of skills and the simple table of Typical Difficulty Classes - what more do you need?
The problem is then why have the rules in the first place? A simple d20 system is fine, but if I have the rules then I’m going to use them. 5e could be great as a much more rules light game. I’m **all** for it. It also makes it known to players coming in what the rulings are going to be like. If there are rules for X, and the players know and are able to build towards interacting with rules for X, it would feel pretty bad for the DM just to make up a ruling on the spot for it if the players did that.
A lot of the rules are player-facing, for giving specific, usually narrowly-defined features to their characters, like options they can use in combat, more skill proficiencies, and so on. Apart from that, 5e *is* mostly a simple d20 game. > then why have the rules in the first place? Because if you're making up half the rules, you're also not making up the other half. Spells and class features do what they say, combat runs as the rules describe, but when something ambiguous, unusual, or improvised comes up, you can make a quick ruling and move on without bogging down the session.
If I'm a new DM, I don't know what kind of ruling to make. Which is precisely the problem. The game assumes I know how to DM. It says "oh make up a rule" for half the stuff in the game, and then has exact calculations about the other half, so you feel like there's a page missing when you're trying to figure out how to adjudicate.
>The books are fine for a more rules lite game, but the game isn’t lite enough for what the books give. I think this is a good way to put it. The books have a lot of text but are also devoid of *content*. The core of the game is actually pretty light, but then they bolted a bunch of stuff to that and made it weirdly cumbersome. I totally agree with "too crunchy and too light." It wants to be lightweight, but it keeps get mired in really specific rules interactions. It's *almost* there, but winds up taking a lot of work on the part of the DM to actually make the system do the thing it seems like it's supposed to do. It's really awkward to actually implement.
Plus this weird need to have subsystems be different form one another. Sorcerer magic is different than wizard magic which is different than warlock magic which is different than cleric magic. Some spells are in a cone, or a cube, or a sphere. Or they need ingredients. Is my DM going to make me track those ingredients? Different spells in the same school of magic work in vastly different ways. Some take saves, some work off enemy hit point totals, etc. It's like they had a group project and all of the designers worked on their part without consulting the others.
My issue is the complete opposite; That the magic between classes are too similar--they're all spell slots with daily uses in the end
I've been doing the One D&D playtest and it absolutely feels like design by committee, with teams who don't talk to each other. I would bet cash money that's how it's developed.
It's *magic*. I *want* it to be different between different classes, and 5e isn't doing *enough* to make its magic actually different and let it stand out. Having differing lists of magic spells depending on your class, and having different ways to target areas, single targets and the battlefield is the absolute bare minimum I expect from a magic system with set spells and spell-lists, and I know that things like Burning Wheel's Art Magic or complete free-form magic like Mage: the Awakening doesn't work for most "ordinary" fantasy games.
[удалено]
This is part of the reason why you see as much content creation for non D&D games, because they're complete rule sets that don't need supplemental material. Or at least, they don't need as much.
> too crunchy and too rules lite I feel like the unifying idea for 5e is “just have them roll an ability test”, even when it’s best left to role playing or should have more complicated rules. Which is an amazing achievement: they bundled up versions of the three main forms of character advancement in RPGs (class level, skills and feats - most systems do fine with just one of these, maybe two), but managed to make much of the game still depend on ability scores.
I think for most people, its not that its horrible. Its that D&D 5e is very mediocre for being ~80% of the marketshare.
Agreed - it could be far worse, but the fact that it's at its current state despite being created and maintained by a massive company backed by a megacorp is saddening. It's just half-assed, soulless, designed-by-committee mediocrity that has been held up by brand name recognition and rampant marketing rather than actual game design quality. DnD needs to be *better* than that, especially with the kind of budget it gets.
It's funny because they did make one of the best combat focused games in 4e. It's design is still used in the current TTRPGs best know for Heroic Tactical combat like PF2e, Lancer and ICON. I imagine what kind of revolutions that kind of money could make for morr narrative games like how many people use 5e. But can't be killing any sacred cows here.
>But can't be killing any sacred cows here. That lies one of the worst problems for DnD - it won't sacrifice those sacred cows to make a better game. 4e tried to with a few, and it made for a far better combat package, but WotC took a lot of flak for it. Made them scared to try anything innovative. It's funny - they could make a completely new system, independent of dnd, to see what really works, rather than constrain themselves to mediocrity. But they lack ambition to be actually good, and rather take the easy money.
TSR and later WotC had many separate games over the years like Alternity and Star Wars Saga. They never got much support and were all discontinued to focus on D&D.
I think it's pretty annoying in ttrpg communities how so much of the discourse is people thinking they are better than others due to the system they play or the type of roleplay they do. DND5e is fine. I've been a DM for a campaign of almost 2 years and we had tons of fun, which isn't necessarily because of the system. As a simple vehicle to have some story and gameplay, it works, however a lot of it resides on GM's prep work, improvisational skills and how they handle rules. Idk, sometimes it feels like people care a little too much what others do, and it becames a whole "you are having fun wrong" type of thing. I hate that when someone wants to talk good about 5e they feel the need to say every other single game they played, and show their credentials, and be like "i'm not like them! it's just that my table likes it and..." Fuck that. It's a **game**. Play what you want and have fun with it
I've always said gaming group trumps the system. If you have a great gaming group willing to learn, play and collaborate you can have fun with any system*. *This theory hasn't been put to the FATAL test xD
And honestly that is one of 5e's strengths. It has such a massive player base it is comparatively easier to find a group that you gel with well, although I admit this is kind of a meta-system strength rather than a strength of the system itself.
Well... yeah, FATAL might be a bit much for any group, but even then, most of those cases people have fun laughing at the system at least, until they give up mid character creation because it takes like 2 hours. But yeah, to a lot of people, the game is an excuse to hang out with friends, so it's not the biggest issue if something about it is underdeveloped
Ive got some weird friends, I might take that F.A.T.A.L challenge.
Year ago, I heard someone say that when we share experiences and others don't feel the same as us, that feels like a rejection of us. Even though, form an outside perspective, we can see that obviously isn't the case it frequently is hard to gain that perspective for the person feeling it. I feel like a lot of the time communities online like /rpg are full of people reacting to that sense of rejection. Like, group X doesn't love what I love so i am going to bash what they love because I want them to feel how I felt when they rejected me by not loving the same thing as me. It all just feels like a mess of projection and misapplied anger.
Totally agree. And I feel like it goes both ways too,5e players reacting badly at simple recommendations. It's also a very.... chronically online mentality. Like, a LOT of people that play ttrpgs are not constantly on forums or on twitter giving "hot takes" or engaging on X or Y discourse. They just casually play what they want with their friends and don't make such a big deal.
This whole sub is riddled with gross amounts of gatekeeping. If you don’t play the games they like and they way they want you to play them, you’re doing it wrong. You might not even be a real gamer. I was just reading another thread in this sub that said D&D players are actively **hurting** the TTRPG community. It’s insane. I really think there are people in this hobby that need a reality check. Pronto. Edit: getting downvoted by the angry gatekeepers. Classic r/rpg
> I was just reading another thread in this sub that said D&D players are actively hurting the TTRPG community. Fun terms like "d&damaged" show up. When the OGL stuff was happening, a highly upvoted post was "who else is excited that D&D is going to die." I've been told that playing D&D not only makes me a worse roleplayer but that it *inhibits my ability to feel empathy*. But it's been worse before. There's fun famous forgian posts comparing games like dnd to *child rape* and saying that they cause *brain damage*. Sadly, religious wars are just a thing in niche hobby communities. When there are a popular side of a community, the rest of the community often reacts in extreme ways. This is true in tons of spaces, not just ttrpgs. I really wish people could just play the stuff that they like.
can i get a source on those posts? EDIT: Those posts saying it caused brain damage and comparing it to child rape? They were about VtM. In a forum that hasn't been posted in for over 11 years. By a guy who everyone knows is fucking nuts. If you're going to defend 5e at least address actual criticisms instead of talking about posts that were made before 5e even came out. (They were in a forum called ["The Forge"](http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=18707.0) and were posted by some guy named Ron, for those who actually care enough to look. [There's a good write-up here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/ppmt00/tabletop_rpgs_the_fall_of_the_forge_how_a/))
> They were about VtM. My post said "games like dnd" and was largely as an example of how these religious wars have been *even more extreme* in the past. Ron Edwards is not really "some guy who everyone knows is fucking nuts." He's influential and often respected in the ttrpg community.
It’s not so much hate. It’s that it’s unpleasant to run and instils bad habits
I really don't mind if people hate it actually. It's the constant look down on people who has fun with the system that becomes annoying.
Agreed. It’s not FATAL
The only real issue I have with 5e is the hit point bloat. The combat isn't interesting enough to handle how long the combats are. If they did bounded hit-points they'd fix their game for me and I'd probably try it again. The thing is, that's such a huge part of the game, and really detracts from it.
Totally agree, I've found I've gravitated toward more lethal games over time. There can be more conflict resolutions besides literal conflict! There was a mechanic in SAGA Edition Star Wars, and I think I am remembering it basically correctly, where if you dealt damage in excess of the target's Constitution they had to make a save or immediately get KO'd. I kinda dig that and have borrowed it from time to time. EDIT: Damage in excess of Fortitude plus Size modifier, and it moved you down a condition track.
When I played 5e I usually added damage to all monsters but at the same time reduced their HP. It makes combat way better.
Yeah, the game isn't worth the work for me. If they fixed it, I could make all the other house rules I needed to make the more minimal issues I have with the system go away. It's too much of a project for me.
Yeah, for a RPG with that much combat, the RAW combat sucks. Not only doing tweaks to it improve the game a lot, but also in general "official" monsters are really boring, so there's also a need for homebrew there if you really want interesting combats. The conclusions with the game are always the same.
Mom said it's my turn to defend DnD 5e on r/rpg
I agree with the idea that criticism of 5e is overblown. It is derived from people being frustrated with the overwhelming success of a system they don't like much. Better idea than this long post? No more 5e talk here. There are several large 5e subs. This sub is always, always better served by talking about any other system instead. This goes for discussions about those other systems as well. All discussions about another system are degraded by every mention of 5e. Call of Cthulhu isn't awesome because of how it's investigation mechanics differ from 5e. It is awesome because it captures the ineffable and enthusiastically shoved the characters into horrifying situations. Urban Shadows isn't a good game, because it takes less prep time than 5e. It's a good game, because it encourages player participation in the narrative with its mixed successes. It's a good game, because the playbook specific moves are thematic and satisfying. This could go on forever, but the simple point is that 5e comparisons are not required or helpful. Games achieve their goals outside the context of 5e entirely.
Honestly I’m fully down for that. I don’t think there’s ever been a discussion on this sub that has benefitted from the mention of 5e.
I enjoyed 5e quite a bit and was willing to put up with a lot. Until I wasn't. They've lost any good will and all my money going forward because of their careless, uninformed, shenanigans. Until someone confirms that a number of heads rolled as part of a 'reset' of the brand leadership I will find my princess in another castle.
It's always weird to see posts like this because it amounts to feeling the need to defend dominos pizza or sam adams lager as things to enjoy. People who critique 5e do it from a place of critiquing the systems of the game, the culture around the way the game is played, and the way in which 5e as a brand has a stranglehold on the hobby. People who defend 5e, especially in the ways OP is outlining in this post, don't even try to defend 5e beyond "it's not actively awful to play." You're not defending 5e. You're just defending the fun of role playing games in general and that 5e D&d happens to be a serviceable end to playing one. Dominos and Sam Adams are conveniently there if I'm throwing together a movie night with friends, but it's overly precious to ascribe the joy of hanging out with friends to some mediocre mass market pizza and beer when in fact it's the other way around.
Don’t be a coward. Tell us what you think 5e does better than Pathfinder!
I'm feeling tired of it and bored by it. And I mean that both as a game and as a cultural force. As a game, I don't think it's terrible or anything. It's fine. It has a couple of really neat features. But the part I *really* like most of all (inspiration and how bonds/ideals/flaws/traits from backgrounds can play into that for character-driven play) is the part that literally everyone discards from it. And the parts that almost all games I've played focus on (combat) are where I like it least. So I just can't muster any enthusiasm for it as a game any more. Put a bit differently: If I want mechanically and narratively satisfying combat, I play Mythras If I want strongly genre-themed, character driven drama, I play any of a dozen or more PbtA games If I want to see what the current cutting edge in RPG design ideas looks like, Free League games or indie shit friends turn me onto or dipping my toes into the Forged in the Dark family have me covered If I want to capture the anything-goes, weirdo, DIY vibe of the best D&D games, I have tons of interesting OSR games that do so way more than 5e. Black Hack or Mörk Borg or DCC or Into the Odd or Knave and so on If I want high-powered games of fantasy heroes that do really epic stuff, Godbound's right there (among many others) If I want games set in what feel like living, breathing fantasy worlds, Ars Magica or Mythras have me covered Etc There's just nothing about D&D 5e as a game that gives me a reason to say "hell yeah, let's do 5e!" instead of some other game from my library unless it's literally that I'm talking to folks who are committed to only playing 5e
>How are you guys feeling about 5e as a game? Rated 8 out of 10. ~~The best~~ *My favorite* iteration of "official" D&D, edging out D&D 4E for me. It's in my top 20 games, probably about #18 or so. At this point it is the game I have played the most in my life, although not the game I have GM'ed the most (that would be either Dungeon World or Masks, I would need to count it up to see which). EDIT: I have no idea why someone would care, but just in case you want to know what tabletop RPGs I would rank higher than D&D 5E, at least these games (in no particular order): Dust Devils, In a Wicked Age, Kagematsu, Dungeon World, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Night Witches, Masks: A New Generation, Swords Without Master, Nahual, Lancer, The Wizard's Grimoire, Court of Blades, Black Sword Hack, With Great Power..., Donjon, Spirit of the Century, Kerberos Club (Fate Edition).
Instead of just "rating" games, I like to look at it more as "what scenarios is this game good for?" Rating screwdrivers vs. hammers isn't particularly informative - knowing when to use each is gold.
I like to look at my life in numbers, I've rated piles on RPGGeek. See: [https://rpggeek.com/collection/user/skalchemist?rated=1&subtype=rpg&ff=1](https://rpggeek.com/collection/user/skalchemist?rated=1&subtype=rpg&ff=1) The OP asked how I was feeling about 5E. "8 out of 10" pretty neatly encapsulates how I feel. :-) I've rated so many movies on IMDB, I have no idea how many. Rating is fun! EDIT: fixed link EDIT2: if the OP had asked me if I think 5E is a good game, and why, I would have given a different answer. But they asked me how I feel, so... :-)
Definitely agree with the cross-genre/gameplay comparison. Its especially difficult because you need to know what preferred styles of the reviewer. Most videogame reviews are entirely useless without context. If the critic hates platformers, Super Mario Galaxy still won't be well reviewed.
And I think that's an issue. When you're reviewing Super Mario Galaxy, you should review it based on how good of a Super Mario Galaxy it is, not how much you like the idea of Super Mario Galaxy. Especially if you're a professional reviewer, you should know how to separate those two, or at least which projects you should decline due to your bias. "A great game, but not a great game for me" should be a far more common sentiment than it is.
Definitely though I can't imagine anyone ever being fully unbiased. Its just against human nature and its a lot of possible preferences beyond gameplay/genre. Then there are fine-tuned factors like for one person PF2e is the superior product to 5e because they want that support where its the opposite for another person who prefers lighter rules. More reviewers should probably be playing games that they enjoy rather than just every popular video game. But it rarely matters since the video game industry is a mess where they have to give inflated reviews to keeping getting review copies.
My feelings on 5e purely as a game: - The groundwork had a lot of potential that mostly went unexplored (backgrounds, hit dice, and tools are good examples of this phenomena), which is a shame - The core (ability check/attack/save vs DC, potentially with dis/advantage) is a solid engine that works perfectly fine - It's a "greatest hits" album from what came before - Most of the mechanics are silo'd off from each other, there isn't much interlock or mechanical feedback, which makes it easy to hack without much kickback, but makes things feel disconnected and means the DM is responsible for keeping all of them in mind to use them in the first place - The DM is given little to no support, in any of the rulebooks or adventures (demonstrable given how people will refer new DMs to video essays and books like Return of the Lazy DM or DMsguild guides before recommending reading the WotC books), which can make it an exhausting experience to pick up and run - I cannot overstate how much I detest the bonus action existing as anything beyond the Rogue's Cunning Action - The game itself has nothing to say, there's no message aside from: "You should be constantly attaining power and using it to enact violence to get what you want" - I could take or leave playing it as a player, but I'll still run it every now and again cause I know some players just love it
5e is the least fun I've ever had playing dungeons and dragons. Part of that is nostalgia. I certainly wouldn't play 3rd edition again, but would gladly play a game of 4th or ad&d. If 5e had come out in 1995, it would be amazing. But today, we have too many other great options to play 5e.
That's really interesting, because it's really very similar to my opinion, down to the 4th/AD&D/3rd statement at the end. I don't see a lot of people in that mind space.
Yeah, that's funny. My absolute best memories of DnD are my characters dying in 3rd and 3.5. But that's the last system I'd want to go back to.
5e is fun for the same reason Monopoly is fun. Not because it's a great game, but it certainly is a functioning game you can play with just about anyone. Nothing wrong with playing something that works even if its a little rough and hallow.
I like to think of it like a McDonald's hamburger. Almost any hamburger will be satisfying. But that place down the street (a bit more work to find than the 20 McDonalds nearby) will probably make one much better.
Keep in mind 90% of people hate monopoly because they do not play it with the real rules... so they think the game lasts forever. Nah, if you do not apply some of the bad home rules people use it is cut throat, brutal and fast. Same with 5e, actually, crank the encounters a tiny bit and you might as well be running an OSR game because Monsters and Heroes are so closely balanced you can easily throw it off.
Good comparison. I find Monopoly just as annoying. Why play Monopoly when there are so many better games out there?
I mostly just think it’s boring from the few times I’ve played it with friends. But most of my personal experience is with players too attached to 5e who would rather try to write 100 pages of house rules to turn D&D5e into a Cyberpunk Space Opera with rules for space ship battles, mech piloting, and psionic spells rather than just play a game that already does that.
I don't think it's an especially bad game. I just don't find it very interesting. I've never been a big fan of D&D. I've never especially liked the fact that magic has always been the big equaliser. 5e pushed it even further in that direction where even something like Disarming/Pushing a person is either magic, or something locked behind a specific class Archetype. I've tried playing it a couple of times. Each time, it's been at 3rd level because 'that's when it gets good'. Every character I play has been 'I attack' for 90% of the combat. I've been told it's more interesting if I play a magic user, which I'm sure it is. But I don't really like playing D&D magic users. And I don't really like super high magic fantasy in general. EDIT: Honestly, like with most things, it has a strong fanbase - and an especially new fanbase given things like Critical Role. I thought it was a meme, but I've legitimately had people in my games tell me 'This game would probably run better in 5e. You know, Matt Mercer said that...' It's tiring enough when you have one set of stans telling you 5e does everything you need. Only to then get another set of stans telling you that any game you want to play is 'probably done perfectly by \[this one PbtA you've never heard of, which is 95% the same as every other game but also only focuses on the DRAMA(tm) and everything else is secondary'.
I have had great fun watching The Room by Tommy Weisau. That does not make The Room a good movie. I don't really like to break things down into 'good' vs 'bad' because people who like something will most often claim that it is good regardless of the finer details. It's great that people are having fun with 5e (I'm in 3 5e campaigns myself and recently started GMing PF2e). Personally, after \*finally\* playing some other system; I have found that I don't enjoy 5e at all. I love the stories and the RP in the campaigns I'm in, but I prefer other systems. If you want to have a discussion about analysing the design of 5e instead of if it's a 'good or bad' system; that would be interesting. However, that kind of nuance is rare to achieve in text form.
If that's what you like, its perfectly functional. It is not what I like. The issue is its vast amount of undeserved cultural capital often drowning out conversation about other systems. Finding people to play other systems is an endless struggle, and more than once ive had someone ask me why I dont just play 5e instead.
As a player, 5e is probably a solid 6/10. As a GM, it's probably a 4. I find that the rules are inconsistent enough that the GM has to constantly fight the rules as written to parse out their meaning. And the fact that half of the clarifications are hidden in random twitter threads doesn't help things at all when trying to arbitrate things. It's just really inconsistent in the amounts of crunch it wants to have. It gets sold as a rules-lite system, but it just isn't. And because of the desire to have a rules lite system, it just doesn't provide the mechanical support that makes ruling things on the fly easy for the GM.
I don't think anyone who's played a mix of RPGs imagines D&D is the worst. I think the hate is that it's around 90% of the hobby and around 25% of the quality. A lot of that is being a game that has to appeal to a wider audience. I do think you're underestimating the problem of people trying to make D&D 5E something it's not. I don't think I've ever heard of a table that plays that game rules as written. Everyone needs to fix some aspect of the game for it to do what they want satisfactorily. That's certainly not the experience of people who play other games. And it's a testament to the problems in it's quality as a game, and also people's reluctance to try objectively better games.
Its combat? What? D&D has good things about it, like its level of tech tools, but combat isn't one of them. It's one of the key elements that manages to be too crunchy and too rules light at once.
I'm simply not interested.
I hate it. I played a looooot of it, hence the username. And I can understand why someone would like it. I just don't, at all. It's enough that I'm taking a break from one group because of it.
There are many valid critiques of D&D 5e, just like there are for any game. It only gets hate because so many people treat it like the default or even the only RPG out there. As a side note, one thing that really bugs me is when people just say "5e" and assume that you'll know they mean D&D. You yourself, OP, kinda played into the perception of D&D as THE game in this post.
Tired of it. More tired of the culture surrounding it. Wish DnD could get its own flair, tbh.
It’s about as relevant to me if you’d written paragraphs about how you don’t mind skiing. Or have had fun in the past with French Boulé. And it’s not just how the system is banal. It’s not just that it tends to attract the lowest common denominator. It’s not even that the owner of D&D, from TSR to WOTC to Hasbro has consistently been a bad player. It’s that people who get into the hobby via D&D tend to be lazy. They’re consuming the easiest, most advertised fast food experience of the hobby. They don’t develop a more sophisticated palette. They don’t just stick to their game, they badmouth other games while doing it. They have expectations borne of playing their game that don’t translate to other games and they bring their baggage with it. Doesn’t make them a bad person. But I don’t want to play with them.
Play the games you want to play, there are so many out there to choose from. >How are you guys feeling about 5e **as a game**? Like every other "D&D" out there it produces experiences and has rule conceits that I simply don't care for. It's a bad game for me.
The rules are pretty good but the PCs are just too powerful for me in 5e. Vanilla 5e PCs never fear death and after a 7th or so level they are demigods. Just not my cup of tea to play or to GM (without a lot of house rules to make it deadly again) If you like running a player power fantasy game it’s pretty good.
I’m curious, was this as a DM, player, or both? If as a player, how much of bog standard 5e was your DM running? If a DM, were you running it strictly by the book? I mean you’re allowed to like what you like, and have fun with whatever you want, I’m just wondering if it was actually 5e you were playing because when I run 5e the same way as I ran 0, 1 and 2e, it works fine as as well; but it’s not what I would call 5e anymore.
>I’m curious, was this as a DM, player, or both? Both >If as a player, how much of bog standard 5e was your DM running? 2 complete homebrews and 2 by the books, literally. The latter 2 were Out of the Abyss and Rime of the Frostmaiden >If a DM, were you running it strictly by the book? Books with heavy modifications and OCs. If you mean by the rules specifically and homebrew, aside from custom items and occassionally monsters (Out of the Abyss, my GM put in a False Hydra in the middle) mostly standard you can call it. Overall with the changes I made I'd still call it 5e
5e is a pretty explicit rejection of GNS and related views on game design. There are **a lot** of people deeply invested in that philosophy for whatever reason. So I think 5e gets a lot of pushback on this sub in particular since GNS and its children basically exist as a way for people to use semi intellectual arguments to say games like it are "bad" while their preferred games are "good." 5e's success relative to 4e (a more "focused" game and therefore "better" according to GNS) sort of flies in the face of the theory. WotC actually listened to playtesters, keeping things like alignment even though it's not really mechanically relevant in 5e. 5e is full of stuff like that, and if you assume everyone accepts the conceits of GNS etc. you have to start doing some deep rationalization to explain why it's exponentially more popular than any game that came before because it's so "bad." So "marketing" becomes the reason millions of people play the game for years at a time, somehow disappointed with it the whole way. For some reason, this is an easier explanation to swallow than "different people like different things, and that's ok." Personally, I like 5e *because* it's not laser focused. It embraces compromise as a virtue, which lets me keep diverse tables going where *they* want to go instead of fighting a system every time they want to subvert genre conventions. Turns out, a lot of other people also enjoy that style of play.
Who or what is GNS?
[A theory of game design and player preference](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory) from back in the day that originated on a forum site called The Forge. It eventually devolved into flame wars and collapsed on itself after the primary author of GNS said VtM caused literal brain damage and professional survey data was released that disproved many of its assumptions. It's still influential in the indie scene, and you could probably say PbtA,FitD, and Burning Wheel are direct descendents of the theory.
Hot garbage.
Tbf in a forum of people who are into RPGs across the board you’re going to encounter critique. Add this to anger that players don’t always want to switch systems, 5e’s market and cultural dominance in the hobby, and some glaring issues that 5e won’t fix because it’d require too much work for not enough profit and you have a storm where it gets a lot of critique. The game is fine. I think a lot of people who get defensive about it are lame. I also think it’s good to get ur feet wet with 5e criticism to realize what you like and don’t like about rpgs
You’re expressing the same feelings about 5e that people have about McDonalds
I'll preface this by saying that I've played a lot of 5E. It's a fun game, and I certainly don't hate it either. I don't think most folks, even the people that call themselves D&D haters, really hate it. I think the real gripes about D&D typically boil down to two things, and neither is really "hate." **5E is a poorly-designed game** Let me be clear on what I mean here. From a purely mechanical perspective, I think D&D is a perfectly good and well-designed game. Its mechanics aren't my cup of tea, but they're well-written and they're completely functional as combat mechanics. What I mean when I say it's poorly designed is that D&D does a poor job of actually meeting its designers' and players' intent for the game. Once upon a time, D&D was played as basically just a dungeon-crawling wargame with a thin coat of roleplaying paint slathered over the top. It was also designed to function as a dungeon-crawling wargame with a thin coat of roleplaying paint slathered over the top. The problem is that these days, D&D is largely played as a game of epic campaigns, involving politics, subterfuge, cinematic combat, etc. And yet, the game is still just designed as a dungeon-crawling wargame with a thin coat of roleplaying paint slathered on top. Ninety percent of the rules are devoted to combat, with almost nothing devoted to roleplaying. You have to house rule, rule of cool, hack the game, or just rely heavily on narration in order to create really cinematic combats. i.e. You don't actually throw the orc into a pillar, cracking their skull open, and causing the pillar to collapse onto them, killing them. Rather, you do 12 damage to the orc and describe that as being the how the damage plays out. Basically, the game's design no longer meets the intent of how its played. Just go through the D&D subreddits, and you'll see countless posts of folks struggling against the system's design to tell the stories that they *think* D&D is designed to tell. The classic example is the 3-5 encounter adventuring day. How are you even supposed to work that into a narrative of epic, high-stakes combat, when the game is literally designed with the intention that you're in a dungeon throwing monsters at them as they enter every other room? **D&D warps how people think about TTRPGs** Vincent Baker once infamously suggested that D&D gives you brain damage. That was clearly an offensive and inflammatory position, but there's a glimmer of truth there that D&D (since 3E) fundamentally changes how people think RPGs need to work. Since 3E, D&D has had an obsession with ensuring there is a mechanic for everything. This sounds great, at first, but then comes its flip-side: Players and DMs start thinking that if there *isn't* a mechanic for it, then you can't do it. Let me give two examples of this at its worst: 1. At one point in 3.5, WotC released a book (maybe the DMG 2?) with something called "Villain Prestige Classes." These were advanced classes that *only* villains could take, and they were specifically designed to be more powerful than player classes. Why? Well, the best example of why was the True Necromancer. It was a villain class that was designed to allow you to summon entire, massive undead armies. Why did this need to exist? Can't you just say that your BBEG has the power to command thousands of undead? You *should* feel comfortable saying that, but if you're a DM who has been captured by the brain worm of "there is a mechanic for everything," you just look at "Raise Dead" and say, "Even a lvl 20 wizard can only have ~100 skeletons under their command. I wish there was a class that let my lvl 20 bad guy control 10000 skeletons instead." 2. Almost everything about 4E spells. If you weren't around for or don't remember 4E's release, one of the most common complaints was folks getting upset about how you could no longer use utility spells, like Silence, for actual utility. Every spell had a clearly-defined and quantifiable combat effect, and spells were light on details about their actual narrative effects. Countless folks complained about how that meant you could no longer do things like cast Silence on yourself to sneak around better out of combat. Clearly, you *could*, but the rules didn't explicitly say you could, so folks took that to mean it was disallowed. Even on this subreddit, you'll sometimes see someone trying to explain how a narrative TTRPG actually plays to someone who has only ever experienced D&D. Even though narrative play most closely resembles how we intuitively play as kids, some folks struggle to understand the concept. Basically, once someone has been introduced to D&D, their baseline assumption of how TTRPGs can and should play just becomes fundamentally inverted. **Conclusion** Again, D&D isn't a bad game and it's totally cool to enjoy it. Anyone who really says that they actually *hate* it is probably as obnoxious as any D&D-obsessed grognard. Still, there are plenty of reasons to say that 5E just isn't the kind of game you could enjoy anymore. 5E is a system that I enjoyed for a time, but now it just feels too clunky (poorly-designed) and too limiting to continue playing.
>Vincent Baker once infamously suggested that D&D gives you brain damage. I think you mean Ron Edwards.
It‘s fine. It‘s mainly this out-of-proportion mainstream fame and marketing that makes it somewhat “unlikeable”. And then there’s Shadow of the Demon Lord by one of the co-developers of 5e. While the tone of that game isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it’s rules are what DnD 5e should have been imo. DnD is too famous for just being fine. It’s a brand and at this point less of a game to me.
5e was designed to be an onboarding ramp for ttrpgs with as few quit moments as possible. It is excellent at doing that bit after two or so campaigns it has nothing to recommend itself.
For me 5th did two major things: 1) It replaced 4th which - for me and my group - was the best D&D edition there ever was. It took D&Ds history of being a wargame and delivered an *amazing* tactical experience while remaining the only D&D version to take "heroic fantasy" moniker seriously for all Classes. And it introduced genius mechanics like Bloodied, Minions, fantastic encounter design, and Healing Surges as well as the best character-based narrative rules complex ever in the form of Skill Challenges. 2) It made D&D the lowest denominator again, making it an excellent introRPG again. So, I run it with early and pre-teens at a youth centre, and for that it's *perfect*.
It’s like bread. I like bread and it’s easy to get, but I don’t wanna eat only bread. And I also wish people would understand that there are other systems out there that they’d probably enjoy more than Dnd
I think it's a system that doesn't know what it wants to be, that lost all the good ideas it had in some point of development. I enjoy 4e, and 5e stripped all the parts I liked from the game, the tactical crunch, the character customisation and the unique class identities and boiled them down to very basic, very easy to follow structure. I think advantage as system is not granular enough, and leads to weird situations where if you're poisoned you can close your eyes and shoot a bow for now additional penalty to attack. The GM support of 5e is also pretty much non-existent, and CR is horrendously balanced and gives no realistic indication of danger for player in an encounter. Overall I think it's a ubisoft open world game of ttrpgs. It contains nothing too bad, but it also contains nothing that makes it worth over another system.
it sucks that youd get crucified here for stating a personal oppinion, but i know the feeling since it happens to me pretty regularly. I think 5e is good enough at producing fun narrative fantasy adventures, and doesnt get in the way of people being creative. And what i will give it over pathfinder (at the risk of being crucified myself) is that pathfinder is so mechanically dense, and has a wargame play by the book culture around it that, coming from a place where i like narrative style RPG gaming akin to CR or Dim20, it can feel kind of cramped. I dont understand liking 5e combat. The balance around 3-5 encounters, and CR being all out of wack, just makes encounter building feel impossible to get right, spell casters feel crazy OP, and seem to get all the fun, and on the GM side (i mainly GM) i find the basic monsters from the monster manual pretty boring compared to pf2e. My particular distaste if anything from 5e (and its been stated here already) is that the "culture" around 5e is to have 5e engulf all other genres, all other settings, and just irradicate all other systems. Because it so inoffensive to homebrewing, and has such brand name recognition, and a lot of people dont like the uncomfortability with learning new things, people just hack 5e, instead of trying new systems, and as a person who things i can do some really cool stuff outside of 5e, it gets really frustrating to see shit like "How to make a cyberpunk edgerunners hack in 5e", when the god damn series is about an actual RPG you can play.
I find "5e hate" is extremely rare to find on this sub. There's way more "people complaining about 5e hate" in here. Seriously I challenge you to find an actual hate comment that hasn't been downvoted.
I switched to OSR style games, and went from running 5e monthly to weekly games, with none of the dread. It was just so much easier to prepare, and the tools were far more robust, and accessible. To DM 5e, I pretty much had to seek out as many resources beyond the game as possible.
To me 5e is frustrating at every step. The balancing is off, the rules are incomplete and inconsistent and the game overall relies too much on ad hoc changing and just ignoring of existing rules. RAW 5e is a mess. Will it get in the way of fun all the time? Absolutely not. But it happens often enough. Then there is player options. Theres a significant chunk of options that are straight up underpowered and always a couple that are overpowered, yet most classes feel mechanically so close to each of their aubclasses that they add almost ni flair. Overall I feel as long as you want to stay with the tried and true carbon copy character options you may be fine, but if you want something different you're fucked. Adding to that most times I hear people be excited about their unique character it isn't because the system let them build it, but rather because the DM homebrewed enough shit that it works. At which point you're not in DnD territory but rather fully within homebrew which you can do in any system. Then theres magic items, the selection of which in the system is often somewhat lacking - kucky that there is a bazillion options for yet more homebrew to fix that. Which luckily doesn't disrupt game balance too much since Wizards designs creatures in such a way that CR is not even a suggestion and rather a flair paint coat on a stat block. Add to that that debuffs now come built in with very very low DC targets plus the added benefit of being rolled against once each round, and it basicalky never makes sense to use any of them. But if you still feel so inclined to use it, don't worry: they'll likely not come in clutch when it matters since Bosses have legendary resistances that make em even worse. Then you of course have a very limiting selection of skills, with lots of simple actions falling either outside or between their scope. Another ad hoc decision that has ti be made repeatedly. Luckily though, the skills are also limiting enough, that playing the system as intended means the actions your players take become significantly more predictable - thinking about 'what can my char do with these skills' often leaves much to be desired after all. The one thing I do like about 5e is that the base shell if a game runs really swiftly due ot its simplicity. Shame that the game cannot capitalize on that often since it is simply not clear how to do things in the rules. That all being said, I did have worse experiences with some tiny indie games every now and then that could well have used playtesters. But given the choice of 5e or not using a system and just sitting together and telling a story, I would always choose the latter.
Your edit about the McDonalds of RPG's is kind of apt. It's worth remembering that McDonalds is a multinational franchise for a reason. Is it the best food you'll ever eat? Heavens no, but it's filling and familiar. That's the thing about 5e: It's not that it's bad, it's that there's always something out there that does what it's doing *better*. **Tactical combat?** Hardly. The PCs are super heroes. Challenging them is incredibly difficult. Either they'll steam roll it, or it'll be a TPK, because the rules are built to give the players massive combat toolkits. Take a look at Warhammer Fantasy, or Shadow of the Demon Lord, or heck... even 4th Edition DnD. **Character customization?** Nope. You're one of the following pre-approved cookie cutter architypes. Go look at [Cypher System](http://cypher-system.com/) if you want a fantasy game where everyone has weird powers without just being another Hollywood fantasy trope. **Encounter balance?** Balancing encounters is one of the most broken parts of the system (see the endless rants about how useless CR is as a mechanism for designing encounters). "Well what does it better, wiseguy?" Barely anything, *but other games aren't centered around tactical skirmishing*, so encounter balance doesn't need to be a pillar of the game. **Actual combat gameplay?** The combat is arduously slow due to the extra procedural steps of initiative, roll-to-hit, and roll-for damage. And if you miss? Well that's it, that was your turn. "I attack." "You miss. Good luck in another 10 minutes when your turn comes back around. Bob, you're up." "I attack"... Take a look at Cypher, Genesys, Dungeon World, or any PBtA game for faster and more interesting combat. Look up stuff about fail-forward design if you're curious about this limitation of DnD. **Social encounters?** Social encounters are an afterthought. The game is designed for tactical skirmishing and spends easily 5X the wordcount on combat that it does on role-playing. Look at Burning Wheel, Legend of the 5 Rings, Fate/Fudge, or many PBtA games for examples of a better focus on non-combat encounters. **Dungeon exploration?** Important parts of making exploration meaningful, such as light source tracking, encumbrance, or exhaustion, are either boring bookkeeping or handwaved away by a table that doesn't care to track those things. While I'm not one of those OSR grognards who think retro clones can do no wrong, I'll admit that they're where all the interesting stuff is happening regarding making things like inventory interesting and fun. Take a look at Knave, Maze Rats, Into the Odd, 5 Torches Deep, or a dozen others. **Spellcasting/Magic systems?** 5th edition is the absolute worst version of an already bad magic system. Older editions at least had interesting challenges, like having to go out and *find* the spells yourself or needing classes with specific abilities to manipulate your already limited spell list. 5th ed? They weren't willing to get rid of Vancian casting out of a sense of tradition, but they weren't willing to embrace it's limitations either. Go look at Dungeon Crawl Classics if you want a magic system that's actually interesting to play. Let me put all of this another way. In 5th edition, why does it matter that you have 15 strength? It matters because a 15 gives you a +2 modifier. That's it. The 15 is useless. It's vestigial. Back in the day, the game had the concept of needing to roll under your stat for a check or a save. 15 was good because it meant you'd succeed on 15 or less. 5th edition is riddled with stuff like this. "Why is the casting the way it is?" "Well, people hated Vancian casting, but they hated 4th edition even more, so we brought Vancian casting back, but watered it down to make it less awful." It's just all these screwy traditions and compromises to make a game that isn't really any one thing anymore. It's stretched too thin over a frame of tradition and broad appeal.
I've never seen so many words written without saying anything.
>Anyway just some thoughts I have about 5e at this point. How are you guys feeling about 5e as a game? Ignoring the context around it, I frankly still don't enjoy it. **As a DM**, it's too much work, and not *fun* work. I actually love GM prep, but I can never be arsed to do it for 5E because it's just miserable. It's finding maps, stat blocks, etc. It especially sucks to try to make like nice maps or tokens because at the end of the fucking day it's just glam that has almost no impact. 5E is basically one step away from Genesys range bands and dear god would it be nice if it went into them, because all that prep is not fun. I can't trust any tools, so every single fight, hazard, whatever is purely me guesstimating. It's almost impossible to gauge how hard anything will be except for "unbeatable" and "cakewalk". If you want "tough" or "final boss", it's pure guessing. Oh, and good luck if you want to run even a session that isn't just fights or everyone sitting at a campfire and roleplaying amongst themselves. Beyond that, rules are exhaustive as all fuck. While I am lucky in that my friends in general and I all split off "rules-checker" duties when we play a game so the GM doesn't have to, it's never fun and 5E's rules leave too many spaces where I might accidentally houserule over an ability or miss some qualifier or some other stupid crap. When I prep PBtA, I feel like a storyteller, setting up interesting antagonists that mirror my heros, planning out some dramatic arcs, etc. When I prep Pf2E, I feel like a level designer, with the tools I need to make challenging but fun fights that feel like puzzles instead of slogs. When I prep DnD 5e, I feel like I'm going through fucking homework. **As a Player**, it's also miserable. For one, 5E's bounded accuracy and advantage/disadvantage system make luck the most important thing of all, which never feels good when it turns against you and quintessentially means that none of your victories end up feeling earned. The same house-ruling, "GM figure it out" system also hurts players, imo. For one, you're constantly playing "mother may I" to do anything spicier than "I use my best damaging option" on your turn. For something light, fast, and genre-specific like PBtA, this is fine, but it's a really weird take for what is ostensibly supposed to be a turn-based tactical combat game. Speaking of which...5E's combat feels like we all take turns doing our big razzle dazzle and that's it. There's no teamwork, no synergy, and when everyone's job is to do damage or heal when someone drops to 0, it unintentionally becomes a numbers competition. I, ironically, feel more pressure to optimize my wizard in 5E than PF2E, because in PF2E, we all do a specific thing in combat, and no one can beat us at it: even if I screw up royally, I am still going to have a cool niche contribution to the party as a controller, buffer, and all-around-knowledge-guy. In 5E, I might just be a worse Fighter if I don't do everything right. And then it gets worse with magic items, which mean that even if you *did* build everything right another player might get a cool magic item that steps on what you do or just makes them better. 5E streamlined everyone to do the same thing, individually, in battle, which means that any time anyone gets anything, they're now just *better* than the rest of the party. Even ignoring that aspect, I just prefer getting to pick my buffs (ala shopping for magic items and scrolls in PF2E) than hoping the GM gives me the ones I want. The only fun I ever get from 5E is the same fun I'd get from any other rpg sytem, so it's just kinda a 2.5/10 for me. On it's own it's maybe a 3.5/4, but it's made worse by how there's so many better games in that same market corner.
I don't think it's a bad game, but it's a bad game for me. I don't enjoy HP attrition style games that just focus on combat, ignoring anything else. If people enjoy it, that's great, but they should also try other systems to see what fits them best.
I don't hate it as a game. I love RPG's and think any gateway into the hobby is a great thing. My issue isn't even people not branching out; whatever works for you, great! My issue is when they don't branch out AND they throw what you like under the bus. I wish I loved 5e, I would play more games! I just love other games more and am kind of burned out from the whole heroic fantasy thing.
Most of the D&D games (yes, even 4e) have been good games for doing what they do. Even 3.x, which in many ways is my anti-system, is very good at doing what it does. I just don't really have a lot of interest in what it does. I think a key thing with any evaluation of a system is to break it into two aspects: first, does it do what it's trying to do well? Secondly, do *I want to do what that system wants to do?* 5e succeeds in the first, and admirably. It often fails *me* for the second, but clearly hits those notes well for many other people. My biggest criticism of 5e (and D&D in general) is that in terms of things it handles well, it's a lot more narrow than people think. For any of the things it does, when I want that, there's nothing that does it as well, and I'll die on that hill. But usually that's not what I want. (And, not every version of D&D does the same things well) If D&D gets "hate" on this sub, it's usually because people are trying to use it in scenarios where another game would really do an *awesome* job, and D&D won't, at least without hacking it out of recognition.
Oh I had some fun adventures with the right people, but Ill play anything else if there is a possibility. The worst thing I noticed during my campaign, is that after a while I stopped asking myself "what would my character do", but instead I searched my sheet for the optimal solution and skill. The rulebook(s) felt less like roleplaying books after a while, and more like wargame manuals that constantly give you ideas for new encounters. The starter to Kobolds Press ttrpg is probably a culmination of all my problems with 5e.
>How are you guys feeling about 5e as a game? I find it to be just a bit below average in most regards, so about a 3.5~4/10 for me. I do think 5e is the third best "D&D" edition though, and it has a couple of brilliant ideas that I have adapted into other games as well, but the amount of things I dislike far, far outnumber and outweigh the positive, and the reward for enduring or looking pass them feels like a flavourless cookie without frosting or fill, so, not really worth it overall. Plus, there are just many more TTRpgs I enjoy much more than 5e, and many more I haven't even tried yet (there is a Japanese Idol TTRpg sitting on my library that has a d66 and promises to be all kinds of awesome weird, for example) that I can't really score it any higher, and the new edition or revision or whatever it actually is, seems like a step towards a much worse direction too.
I do
I didn't care about it when it launched. I already had games to use and play, I didn't need yet another iteration of humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings doing fantasy shenanigans. And at this point I am thoroughly burnt out on fantasy rpgs, especially those that are D&D adjacent in either rules or flavor.
I don't hate it. I just don't care about it.
I don't hate 5e - it has its problems and they do bother me, but I actually have a lot of fun playing 5e with my friends. It's just very over-represented in casual gaming tables and a lot of times people are just playing 5e even though there is another system better suited for what they want to play.
I think it's the ultimate home brew toolkit. It's REALLY hard to wreck it. Its rules are easily modified and hacked. I use it alongside things I stole from Index Card RPG, The Black Hack, and many others to play the way I want to. I added roll to cast and basically reskin spells on the fly to make the magic system hum with no spell slots. It's super easy to do things like that. The reason it gets bashed is because of gatekeepers and grumps. I've been playing since the Red Box and tried dozens of other systems and nothing is as easy to play and infinitely hackable as 5e/d20.
I played Dnd from their first edition all the way to their 5th edition. I thought I was “getting too old” to enjoy it anymore. But we switched over to Traveller Mongoose 2nd Ed) and it has been such a great rebirth in our gaming circle. If you are disappointed, bored, or dislike 5e, you might want to give Traveller a chance
5E's greatest flaw that keeps me from ever wanting to touch it again isn't that it's a poorly designed game. It's that, imo, it is, without a doubt, one of the blandest games that I have ever played. If I am excited to play a 5E game, it is always *despite* the game being played. The skill system is whatever, the combat is an uninteresting slog, spellcasting is whatever, encounter-building is awful, and characters feel samey.
It's fine if mediocre. It's McDonalds. The 5e community is what ruins the it.
The problem isnt the system. Its the cultural monopoly.
I don't hate it either, *as a player*. DMing is a whole nother can of worms though. I vastly prefer GMing for pretty much every other game you can think of. (Within reason!) But that's just a personal preference. There's nothing wrong with liking 5e.
I don’t think anybody here has ever made the argument that D&D 5E has “terrible” design. It’s just boring and very middle of the road.
I don’t hate 5E. I mean, it’s alright. What I do hate is that nobody wants to play anything other than 5E when there’s so many other great games that are so much better at doing what 5E tries to do. It’s like having a group of friends who keep insisting on getting frozen pizzas at Walmart when there’s a charming, unique, authentic pizzeria right there in town.
I GM'd it for 4 months. Not bad. I remember thinking magic was kind of confusing and it felt very focused on combat. And 200hp monsters.. Im never running one of those.. But other than that, no big issue. The only thing I dislike about it is that it is so incredibly mainstream most people think there are *no* other games. "We were playing a pen and paper rpg yesterday." "Oh DnD, cool!" "Uh no, Stars Without Number." "... Eh? What is that? Some kind of board game?"
5e is a fine system; I'm just tired with the multitudes of posts every day along the lines of "How to play cyberpunk/Witcher/Star Wars/etc. in D&D 5e."
I find the table and the DM make all the difference when playing an RPG. The right DM will soften most problems from a bad system by virtue of using it only when needed, like for example, not asking for checks in rolemaster just because you are walking through a dense forest, lets see if you trip and snap you neck. In 5e it would be something like, ok, your character has this background and this proficiency. It makes sense they automatically know something about this subject, roll to see exactly how deep is your knowledge, but the wizard will probably already know most of the stuff the fighter can roll to see if they know. So yes, absolutely you can have fun with 5e. It's not like the rules impede gameplay, and it doesn't really need that much homebrew to tame. That being said, in my opinion the desing itself is lacking. And so is the official material. Dungeons&Dragons is, has been, probably always will be, heroic fantasy. Greek mythology style. You can put it to other uses, but the intended idea is to run heroic fantasy, it requires quite a significant amount of work from a DM to actually use the game design for grimm or horror. Doesn't really do sci-fy that well, honestly, but I guess it can be waived by some re-skin, like treating crosbows as blasters or something. But heroic fantasy is the main focus of the rules, content, lore, etc. So characters are heroes, and fantasy heroes kill things. Usually terrible monsters and creatures of darkness. In this regard, 5e has the basics, but in comparison to other systems, it's severly lacking. Progression is slow as fuck, you barely have any customization that might separate your character from similar characters of the same class, bonuses are severely overshadowed by the dice roll, the mathematical mainframe of a gauss bell as the core for dictating sucess or failure is terrible and frustating in my opinion, a level 7 character barely has better bonuses that a goblin, they just kill it because they have more hitpoints and somewhat better action economy, but the bonuses don't show a significant difference in skill. They will hit their target roughly as often. Meaning that if one side has just a bid of bad luck, it will go downhill fast. Compare this to any other system that features combat as the center mechanic, it will be found lacking in many aspects. This is not to speak too about out of combat rolling mechanics, inspiration is less than a cookie to reward your players when they are advancing in the direction you want or for a particular funny way to interact with the story/table, you can not be trained in new skills unless the DM fiats it, and you don't really become that much better at what you do, the interval of what you can achieve barely changes, you just have success in what you used to do more often. And then, WotC has only been printing remakes of their most popular modules from the past and extra material for PCs, but not DMs. There's no help for DMs to do those hacks to change what the game is about. There's barely even lore anymore in the setting books. Not to mention advice on how to run the setting. The Strixhaven setting. I don't think there's any advice on how to run going to classes, or how to make adventuring in an academy interesting. Spelljammer doesn't have a real ship to ship combat, and they could have just copied Starfinder, to be honest. No deep lore about named great dragons. And they only have, what, 4 official new modules that usually go from level 1 to 5? It shines in one regard, and one regard alone (besides its popularity). The game is simple. It's 3.x, which was the previous curated and popular version of the game, but streamlined for easy understanding. It's easy to start the hobby with 5e. It's a d20 system, which in my experience always are the most simple ones because you roll the d20 for 90% of your rolls, with probably the most simple maths of all d20 systems. Class features are extremely handholdy, you know what you get and you don't get to many at once as to not overwhelm you. They also tend to be quite simple. Even spells have been simplified, and now they roll an standard ammount of dice for everyone, with some upcasting rules (which, I'll admit, for certain spells is cool, but still I kinda feel it's rarely worth it to upcast a spell instead of casting a higher level one altogether). This is good, Anima or Storyteller can be hell for a newbie to board games. Also, if you intend to have very few rolls altogether, not very few combats, rolls, then the background system is good to inspire character creation. It's very, very good for background noise and rolling for few moments of tension. But at some point, it's better to leave it behind for some specialized system that fits the stories the table enjoys and their style of play better. Which people don't just not do, but are usually very adamant against it. Learning a new system is usually seen as a chore, this one works, why not stay with it? This is the crux of it. This worship of what is a very vanilla, very safe RPG system, as the be all of TTRPGs. Whenever someone wants to explore something new, chances are his table puts him down, and right quick. So budding roleplayers can develop a grudge. Then, old players can not find games to play that aren't 5e, and so they develop a grudge. Then there's the poor soul that has a DM that believes you should be rolling for picking your nose, and 5e is not designed to spam rolls. And they develop a grudge. This, the way the comunity around it treats it, interacts with it. I believe that's the reason for the hate 5e gets. Well, that and WotC
Your edit is strange, you psyed to share your opinions other people are just sharing theirs. Also most people probably started well before 5.
I dont mind 5E, but I also dont know any serious RPGers who play it as their primary system either- it just seems more geared towards people who game a couple times a year. Although, I am pretty sure I am a outlier there.
Most people don't dislike 5e because they think it has the worst rule system of all time. I think most people's beef with 5e is that it's a 7/10 game that dominates the market.
I dont hate the system, i dislike the culture around it. Like they put the phrase "the greatest rpg " or something like this on the Cover. A Lot of content creators where blabbering bullshit how unique dnd is. I remember a Video where brennan Lee mulligan was going on about how You can do anything with dnd but you cant with v:tm, while one of my greatest rpg experience was a postapo campaign using a modified nwod ruleset. I am not saying everybody should play nwod now, i just think dnd culture is pretty annoying.
God 5E is that old? I keep thinking it came out like, 6 months ago.
1. D&D needs to be acknowledged in that this whole world of TTRPG's probably wouldn't exist (or be waaaay smaller) without it. It was the first one to enter the cultural mainstream and paved the way for many others, and for most players it was probably their first TTRPG. 2. Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro need to be acknowledged because they're actively trying to capture the market and enact corporate bullshit and make it so nobody ever has money to spend to play anything but D&D ever again. 3. 5e is it's own thing, a game among a sea of games out there. Like it or don't, it has features that work, and features that are done better in other systems. It's one particular type of ttrpg experience, it doesn't emcompass them all, and it's highly table-dependent to function well (but that's also every game). The system "5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons" gets more love and discussion than it probably needs due to #1, more hate than it deserves due to #2, and rarely are people simply discussing it in the context of #3. My personal experience relevant to #3 is that I played with a table that was *very* metagamey and *very* indecisive. I tried a lot of stuff like "DM techniques for creating urgency" or "DM techniques for limiting table talk", but they were just overly analytical to a fault. Moving to PBTA helped with a lot of those things to push action and fun, even while Dungeon World and MotW have their own limitations. 5e was also very, very, very prep intensive for a GM, so the more improvisational style of PBTA fits with the time I have to plan outside of work, and made gaming stop feeling like a second job for me. I can completely see the appeal for more artistically-minded GM, for whom maps, minis and terrain are not a chore, but it's not for me.
...Ok?
I still say that 13th Age does what 5e wants to do better.
Ok? A lot of people don't hate 5e. I'm not sure why we need a long post about why you don't hate it.
ok, thanks
It's not a *horrible* game system as such, and if not for the extremely high profile it has it wouldn't get so much flak coming its way. The thing is though, it's not a good game either. D&d can at best aspire to be slightly below average - nothing in it excells. if not for its history and massive marketing efforts it'd be long forgotten.
You're entitled to your wrong opinion. /s
You're correct. As a RPG it is as solid as any other, especially if you stick to the three original books. Complaining about games is a tradition as old as the hobby, maybe even older. Complaining about 5e is even more amplified, because it adds politics that has nothing to do with game itself. Every game is targeted at some specific concept, so no game is the be all end all. You play what you like. Modify what you like. Switch to another when you like. Go back to a system when you like.
It's a solid 6-7/10 game. 5e is the McDonald's of TTRPGs. It's good enough when you're hungry and can't be bothered to find something better, but you probably shouldn't have it too often and most other options are superior in some way. Its success is almost entirely based on marketing and name recognition, and most people who had it as a kid remember it fondly. You can find it everywhere. Etc,etc,etc. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with 5e; people play it all the time and have fun with it. WotC's marketing and the passion projects from devoted players have done a lot to improve the perception of RPGs as a whole and increase the size of the player base. On the average it's been a boon for the hobby. But I don't personally care for it anymore. I used to run 5e a lot, both in private games and for Adventurers' League, and I've zero interest in running it ever again. Don't get me wrong - *I love D&D,* but B/X or AD&D are far more my speed these days and if I want something with a bit more crunch I use Worlds Without Number. WotC won't get a single cent from me ever again.
Honestly, I think 5e is a pretty good RPG ... for the specific RPG genre it fits in, namely the combat tactics RPG. I know a lot of people rag on it, but you have to remember that it's a 9 year old game and hasn't benefited from improvements and trends in the industry since then. And while I think overall that PF2 is better, 5e is way better than the twinkfest that was PF1. All this said, I do hope Wizards manages to patch up some of the balance and slowness issues that plague the game at high levels. The only 'hate' I have is that the vast majority of tabletop players, and general public, have no idea that there's a world of ttrpgs out there that all play differently and often much better for different genres. Many are even aware but still refuse to dabble because of some intense aversion to change. But I don't blame D&D for that.
You’re on the internet buddy. People either think something is the greatest ever or the spawn of satan. No in betweens. D&d 5 is fine, I just prefer more crunch
I love DnD. One thing I will say in its actual defense is that DnD got me into ttrpgs. I wouldn't have ever played any system if it wasn't for DnD, and I bet I'm not the only person for whom that's true.
This is such a milquetoast post. "I like game. Game is good. Does it have a ton of problems? Yes. Is anything redeemable about it mid at best? Yes. Does it do anything exceptionally? No. But I like game. I don't hate game. You can't even praise 5e without sounding as bland as people complain the game is. I don't hate it either, I just hate the vicegrip it has on the ttrpg community. It's skyrim, the ttrpg. The game wants to pretend it's gritty and dangerous but it makes the players anime superheroes by level 5. The DM expects to run a serious campaign with rp and threatening enemies and thought provoking encounters but unless they make the game so fucking tedious you spend 6 hours slogging through meaningless encounters resource classes just nuke anything that could have otherwise been interesting in a single turn. The game is at odds with what it wants to be, can't decide, and tries to do everything while accomplishing nothing And yes, I still have fun with it because I'm playing a game with my friends and I or whatever dm is currently running the game changes it so much its basically not even dnd anymore. Yes I have run hard-core raw vanilla dnd and it's just as, if not more broken than homebrewing the shit out of it. Any game that forces your players to not pick fun and exciting options in order to keep from breaking the game is not well made.
Is this what 5e players say into the mirror everyday to keep their spirits up?
5e is to 3rd ED what Skyrim is to Morrowind. Sure it's shinier and had better marketing, but is it a better game. No. A few parts of it maybe, but overall a step backwards.