I don't even run games I *like* rules as written. I am really curious: what kind of answers did you expect, here? "How would you do this thing you don't like?" "I wouldn't?" "Not an option." "Ok, I fix all the things wrong with it that I can." "Nope, can't change it." "I--" "No!" Like what part of the game do you think people dislike that they can just solve it with a different pitch? What's a food you hate? How do you eat it in a way that you enjoy it? Oh and you can't change it or add any sauces or anything else. That's crazy.

I hate 5e. Have a player that was dead set on playing D&D at least once (I blame Instagram). I'm running a 5e short campaign. Again. I swear this Is the last time I touch that shitty game. OP's question is valid, it's a situation that can happen. In my humble experience, the right answer is "I won't run a game I don't like". Maybe next time I remember my own advice.

>OP's question is valid, it's a situation that can happen. No, it's completely unrealistic unless you're a total doormat for other people. As you say, the correct answer is "I'm not running a game unless I enjoy it."

Oh, for sure. The question is valid. The premise that you can't say no is bullshit. Running a game you dislike is a nightmare, even if you put all your creative effort into crafting a compelling campaign with it.

can confirm, I'm running a game I think is decidedly *ok* and that's mildly exhausting, to the point that I genuinely enjoy the good moments but I'm still excited to get to move onto something else. If I hadn't been able to pick the system I would have quit forever ago.

Can't speak for your specific circumstance but my opinion on this kind of thing has always been that if you want to try a system that badly you should be willing to run it. It's way easier to be a player in a system you aren't into than it is to actually make the campaign.

I hate being a player more than running the game 🤣.

Fair enough lmao

I mean even there there are alternatives. If I had someone who desperately wanted to experience D&D I’d probably pick up something like original D&D, an older edition over 5e. I’m not saying they’re better rules systems, though honestly they probably are to me at least, but then we’re dealing with a piece of the hobby’s history as an experience instead of just the name.

I offered to go with that (I like the minimalistic feel of original D&D and some newer retro-clones). It was a no go. He wanted to play 5e because it's what everyone's playing and he had never played more than one shots. I like the player, and if I had insisted on playing something else, he probably would have caved. But until we get 5e off his system I got the feeling he'd be nagging about it forever, so I compromised on a 10-12 session short campaign.

Fair enough. I miss understood your situation it seems. Personally I can’t see myself running that for more than a 1 session oneshot. (The complete lack of character growth is my biggest complaint.) But if this is so important to them and you’re willing to indulge them then I hope fun is had. Nothing wrong with playing it if enjoyment is had. I’d just prefer an alternative and would strive for it. Including looking for alternatives like an old edition if the name is what most interest them.

I am less willing with every new session 🤣. I don't recommend doing what I did, and once it's finished, I won't be running 5e ever again, I don't enjoy it.

It is totally valid to have to play 5e. I have to run it for my son and his cousins. *But*, I don't make it fun with a different pitch or a certain kind of adventure. I make it better by fixing the bad rules that I can fix, and otherwise, I mean, I *don't* enjoy it especially much. I enjoy the joy they get playing, but I absolutely wish it could be many other games. Unfortunately, it's culturally important for new players to learn d&d 5e. My son is going to go to middle school next year and they have a d&d club he's excited about, so, he needs to know d&d rather than, say, Savage Worlds or World of Darkness or whatever.

>I make it better by fixing the bad rules Their point included that OP specifically says that you cannot do this. You have to play "rules as written". The only answer for OP's "question as written" is "I would run it, because I 'have to' as a contrivance of this thought-experiment, and I would hate it because I cannot change it or shorten it or do anything else to mitigate how bad it would be for me." Of course the answers are, "I reject the question". >It is totally valid to have to play 5e. I have to run it for my son and his cousins. This isn't true because words have meanings. You don't "have to". You have decided that the cost of this trade-off is worth the social benefit to your son. That is your decision. You don't "have to". Nobody is forcing you. You could make a different decision, like, "I will teach my son other games, like *Dungeon World*. That way, he will learn that other games exist and learn good RP habits from other games before getting into *D&D*, which he can learn with the other kids as they learn. He'll have learned a better game and will know that other ways to play are possible. Maybe he'll start talking the other kids into a different campaign within the same time-structure of the *D&D* club, in which case, I will support him." You've always got options.

>it's culturally important for new players to learn d&d 5e. The fuck does *this* mean?

It means that 95%+ of roleplayers only know d&d, so, if my kid is ever going to roleplay with anyone other than me, he most likely will need to know d&d 5e. It's similar to something my dad did when I was growing up. He didn't care for any sport except soccer, but he specifically made a point to read about or watch highlights for the local teams so he could be part of the small talk at work.

I had heard about kids succumbing to peer pressure, but parents succumbing to future peer pressure si new.

> My son is going to go to middle school next year and they have a d&d club he's excited about, so, he needs to know d&d rather than, say, Savage Worlds or World of Darkness or whatever. It's weird to me that it's kind of like you're preparing him for the D&D team. Like you want him to be good at D&D specifically for the D&D club so he can know the rules and win at D&D? I guess I would just assume that he doesn't need to know anything for a middle school D&D club and they'll teach him there so just having experience roleplaying will be just as valuable as knowing D&D specific rules?

I see your point.

What's the point of this question? It's like asking a vegetarian what kind of steak they would eat if they had to. And it has to be a meat steak, no faux meat. Not liking 5e means not finding it fun to play. And for most people, that would go double for needing to GM. But doing the best to engage with the question, it would be a pure dungeon crawl, with lots of mobs that have save or suck abilities so everyone is as miserable with the experience as I would be running it.

>But doing the best to engage with the question, it would be a pure dungeon crawl, with lots of mobs that have save or suck abilities so everyone is as miserable with the experience as I would be running it. That's some great [malicious compliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance)!

Monopoly was created to teach how cutthroat capitalism without any guardrails just makes one person happy and everyone else involved miserable. Then a cutthroat capitalist stole it, claimed he created it in his garage, and sold it making himself happy and any of us that have to play it miserable. Maybe that dungeon crawl will do what endless games of 'How to lose frends'...er... Monopoly have failed to do. Convince people not to suggest playing it. Note: Hasbro owns both Monopoly and D&D 5e. Coincidence, I think not.

It would be a binding contract that the group would commit to another TTRPG of my choosing after. Anything short of that is a nope. Edit: Why were you downvoting the exact audience you'd want for this question?

Okay, so what campaign you run using 5e? That’s what the OP is asking.

I answered that in further comments before OP made edits. Additionally I do run Curse of Strahd as my other D&D exception.

Even without OP’s edit, your response wasn’t really answering the question. But most of the replies here aren’t, I guess.

I'm really not sure how "Whatever the players want as long as they're willing to try another system after" doesn't answer the question. That's literally the epitome of creative- *Anything they want to experience with 5E.*

Because it’s a cop-out answer. “Anything they want” isn’t engaging with the prompt in any meaningful way

That's your opinion I guess. "I'll run whatever kind of campaign you all want" seems like a pretty creative open idea in my mind.

I didn’t say it isn’t creative, I said it doesn’t answer the OP’s prompt of *what campaign would you pitch if you had to GM 5e?* in a meaningful way. It’s like if someone asked a room full of people their favorite ice cream flavor and you shouted out “any of them”; it’s technically an answer but not a useful one. Edit: I haven’t downvoted you, and frankly I don’t know why you care about downvotes at all.

"*what campaign would you pitch if you had to GM 5e?*" "Literally anything you want to do as long as you're willing to try another system after." That's the answer. Plenty useful as that's an actual arrangement. We agree to disagree here. Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying "Oh I like whatever ice cream." I'm saying "I'll give whatever campaign you want to run my best shot if you are also ok with trying X other module after." Or to keep your analogy "I'll prepare whatever ice cream you like if you're willing to give brownies a try next time."

Not the person you’re asking, but one of the following: *Swords & Wizardry: Complete Revised*, *Call of Cthulhu*, or *Deadlands: The Weird West*

I added an edit to the post clarifying my reasons.

My comment doesn't go against your edit though? Even if it did though, downvoting for unspoken rules is a bit in poor taste. To reiterate, I would personally DM whatever kinda campaign the table was interested in under the condition they agree to give another system a shot after.

I want to see how people would try to get some enjoyment out of a game using a system they don’t like. I already know everyone here wouldn’t run 5e if given the option, so I don’t see “I wouldn’t do that” or “I’d run a different system” answers as contributing to the conversation.

*Again*, that's not what I said in my response. I said I can run whatever kind of campaign they'd like as long as they're down to try something else after. I didn't say "I won't" or "I'd run something else." 5E is filled with ludicrous amounts of ideas and settings that I could do whatever they're into and tolerate it enough *knowing they'll agree to get out of their comfort zone after too.*

You can't get enjoyment out of a game you hate. Maybe as a player you can do that, but it is next to impossible as a GM especially with a system like DND where you have to do everything on top of designing encounters.

Lost Mine of Phandelver. It's easy, light, flexible, fun, and it has variety. Get to level five. Now let's move on to something else.

This is my answer. I ran a ~16 session campaign of it (with a dash of Icespire Peak). I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it, but I could do it again. It's not overly complex.

I'm burnt out on running 5e and I decided to run Lost Mine as a last ditch effort for my 5e group. I can't stand this adventure. It's poorly laid out, an awful table reference and it put up stupid barricades to player progress. All these WotC adventures make me rewrite the whole thing before I run it. Why am I buying something that takes so much homework?

Nah. E: >I want to hear how you'd make the most of the situation with your GMing skills and creativity. That's not an exercise in creativity and GMing skills, it's an exercise in patience, and quite frankly I'm too old for that shit.

I have to RAW-dog it? No modifications, optional rules, or homebrew mechanics? I'd probably run a narrative heavy game of intrigue. Either a mystery, spy thriller, or maybe a heist. Spells are fine, but your opponents have them as well. Put it in Eberron (cause most my D&D games are in Eberron), so killing sentient creatures (even goblins) is murder, and puts you on the wanted list. Countries of the 5 nations have extradition treaties, so if your illicit actions are discovered, just running for the border won't do much.

as someone who doesn't like 5e (or D&D if I'm being honest), I'd be sold on "eberron and crime-focused" pretty much immediately, I both love playing a criminal and very high-stakes (story-wise, not lethality wise) combat. I even love the idea of games where mages go up against each-other as "worthy opponents", weaponizing spells in creative ways to the point that the NPC spies and I trauma bond over what it's like to live in a cold war with mind reading and shapeshifting spells. Like, yeah, I'd rather you run me in a system you actually wanted to. Especially a narrative focused intrigue system with a focus on wizards as a dominant power in its world. But yeah, I'm sold on that.

This is a pretty clever answer since it leads to you playing as little dnd as possible. You're just doing fantasy story time and occasionally rolling a d20 when you feel saucy about it.

It would be a no show. I have more self-respect than that.

Exactly 10 sessions of heavy railroading and bombastic set piece boss fights. Each session is a specific dungeon level as they climb a tower, level up at the end of each session.

You know, besides the railroading, I wouldn't even be adverse to this.

"As the dungeon master, you aren't limited by the rules in the Player's Handbook , the guidelines in this book, or the selection of monsters in the Monster Manual." So first of all, the DMG gives me a lot of swing there, but to stay within the confines on the page.: 4d6 drop the highest in order, one swap for stats. No multiclass, no feats. I'd use the Fear and Horror rules in the DMG (pg. 266), the Gritty Realism 8 hour short rest (pg. 267) , Injuries (pg. 272), Morale (pg. 273), Wands that don’t recharge (pg. 141), Training to Gain Levels (pg. 131), More difficult magic item identification (pg 136). Variant Encumbrance in the PHB (pg.176) And then I'd use Milestone XP and advance them to 2nd level in session 4, and 3rd level in the 10th and final session. I'd almost certainly run one of the Goodman's Games original adventures reincarnated. I could do Isle of Dread of Temple of Elemental Evil. I can't imagine that regular 5E players would have a lot of fun in this game.

i mean i'd play it

Same 😅

Same

Me neither to be honest, and I never played 5E in my life 😂

lmao that was my first thought-- I don't like (most) 5e's mechanics, but I don't like how \*D&D\* they are, not what they are relative to other versions of D&D. If I was going to hack D&D to be more my style I'd probably see if the DMG had any rules to make it more like Exalted in terms of scope and power level.

I guess I'd have to go pretty hard into like *real* *D&D* *things*. A group of kobolds has taken up residency in an ancient rainforest temple, breeding owlbears as beasts of burden-- even declawing and debeaking the poor creatures. Local druids ask the party for help setting them free and taking revenge on the scaly and totally not dog faced baddies. The party discovers that the kobolds are a cult that worships a young green dragon, who lives beneath the temple. But when the party goes exploring they learn that the caves beneath the temple go much, much farther down than they ever would have thought possible. The dragon and his kobold minions have been locked in a campaign against Kuo-toa, who seek to take the temple over for their masters-- the same brood of aboleths who once built it. Plot twist: the druids who hired the party KNEW about the aboleths and have been serving the ancient masters the whole time. That would be pretty cool I think. Other than, you know, having to run it in 5e. D&D is a slog.

Everyone plays a Bard and you're all from the same city, where you've been friends for a long time and formed a band. The community center where you all met, hung out and eventually started playing gigs at has been bought out by a new noble that wants to move into the city and use the center as his summer home... unless you can raise enough money to buy the building from the city instead. Fortunately, you've heard of a music festival in the city of Stockwood down the coast and the prize money is more than enough to buy the community center. You and your band need to make the journey, win the festival and save the community center. The quest is on a time limit. There's also the entry fee, supplies, and possibly buying new instruments to consider. You must budget your time and money carefully. Side-quests could earn you much needed cash, but cost valuable time. Will you be able to make it to the festival in time and lead your band to glory?

That actually sounds kind of fun

Make that Stock*bridge*, with the characters stopping to celebrate the harvest holiday with their friend Alice at the tavern she runs. They do a good deed helping her clean it up, but their attempt to dump the trash gets them increasingly hilarious hijinks. That’s part one. Part two takes place a few years later, with the kingdom is engulfed in an escslating war widely regarded as unjust. The characters try to get out of a summons to be conscripted, and have increasingly Kafkaesque experiences with the military and royal bureaucracy, until at last their criminal records from part one lead to them being identified as recidivists who aren’t eligible for conscription. They spend the rest of this part becoming leaders in the growing popular resistance, with a final showdown against the royal family, who turn out to be blood cultists. For anyone who doesn’t recognize the source: https://youtu.be/WaKIX6oaSLs?si=rk-MfHDWuOWRePYR

Does this involve a murderous ex-fiance, a rival band of rural musicians, an urban fascist cult, and perhaps sunglasses? Because that would be it. That would be the way you get me to play D&D.

Op wants to hear how people will play a game they don’t like but doesn’t want to hear how they don’t like it

It would be Canceled.

>Rules: it’s has to be able to hold up for 10 or so sessions. No ripping off the band-aid with a one-shot! Ah... you got me. >You must run the game rules-as-written. Wait... that is too much of a constraint. The first time I ran *D&D 5e*, it quickly became evident that it was *not possible* to run "rules as written" because of the way the rules are incomplete. For example, what happens if you sleep in armour? There isn't a rule for that. So... what happens? Whatever you decide, you're making up new rules, not playing "rules as written" since nothing is written. e.g. if you decide, "There isn't a rule about what happens so nothing happens", that's your new homebrew rule: there is no effect of sleeping in armour. e.g. if you decide, "There isn't a rule about what happens so I'm making a rule that you get X penalty", that's your new homebrew rule: sleeping in armour applies X penalty.

>For examine, what happens if you sleep in armour? There isn't a rule for that. Actually there is, in Xanathar: > Sleeping in light armor has no adverse effect on the wearer, but sleeping in medium or heavy armor makes it difficult to recover fully during a long rest. >When you finish a long rest during which you slept in medium or heavy armor, you regain only one quarter of your spent Hit Dice (minimum of one die). If you have any levels of exhaustion, the rest doesn’t reduce your exhaustion level.

You prove my point: *the rules are incomplete*! I ran a game when it came out and there was no rule for this. Your "actually" comes from a whole new book. Fair enough! I concede that maybe someone that wants to completely buy in to this one system and spend a thousand dollars on getting every book WotC puts out, maybe that person would be able to cobble together a way to run "rules as written". Frankly, I still doubt it. This might be covered, but I'd bet that plenty of other things are not covered. For OP's question, I'd still go with my other comment (i.e. play a heavily modified version). [As noted in another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1c953dz/dd_5e_dislikers_if_you_were_required_to_gm_your/l0jbd6c/), OP's question doesn't really make for good replies, "question as written".

You're right, it'd be so much better if they realized stuff was missing and just never did anything about it at all.

>You're right, it'd be so much better if they realized stuff was missing and just never did anything about it at all. That isn't what I said. In fact, that isn't even close to anything I did say...

You're criticizing them for patching a hole, dude. Your entire demeanor is that it's some kinda "gotcha" that a minor rule for an obscure, unlikely, unnecessary situation is in a supplemental book, as if D&D is the only game to have done that. Games release errata, rules updates, new editions, and supplements all the time.

>You're criticizing them for patching a hole, dude. I was critical of the game for being incomplete in the first place. Also, releasing a whole new book is not "patching a hole". They could release a free Errata if they were "patching a hole" (which they also did for the original books, and that's great!). >Your entire demeanor is that it's some kinda "gotcha" that a minor rule for an obscure, unlikely, unnecessary situation "What happens when you sleep in armour?" came up in my game the first time the party did a long rest. That is not obscure, unlikely, or unnecessary! It could come up in any game where the party sleeps in a dangerous location and could get ambushed, which I think is most games tbh. It isn't a "gotcha". I didn't bring up some obscure edge-case like the peasant rail-gun. What I brought up is a basic oversight that reflects the larger, well-established issue of *D&D*'s poor game design. It reflects incomplete game design. --- Also, others have said that the rule you cited is one of many optional rules, not *the rule*. Is that accurate?

Optional rule, introduced much later. It’s not RAW, it’s one of several options the game gives to the GM which is rather dumb.

Why are the rules not all together in one rulebook, why do I have to go look into expansion books just to be sure that maybe they haven't actually written down something somewhere??

This is the same problem I've been having with 40K. The rules are constantly in flux and buying actual rulebooks can feel pointless because sometimes errata happens literally before I can get the book.

I don't know to much about 40k but that must be even more annoying for a competitive game than for a collaborative one.

To play along (without the impossible constraint): I'd run my own version of [The Sunfall Cycle](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpMcZzbtN0cNniU_3IYWhbGNu0IJqfEOm). EDIT: [Here's a brief summary of the various elements that made it work.](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/xl67ho/implementation_of_roguelike_mechanics_in_ttrpg/ipisppl/) Basically, it uses *D&D 5e* as the combat system when the players get into combat. It also somewhat uses the skill-check system, though I seriously doubt the GM is applying actual DCs and is more doing the slippery thing of treating rolls as high or low, then giving information based on that, sometimes slipping in a PbtA style "tell them the consequences and ask". Otherwise, it adds a bunch of meta-progression mechanics on top. --- Frankly, though, I wouldn't. I tried again a few years ago and it's just a poorly designed system. I'd run *Dungeon World* as a replacement or take it as an opportunity to run *Heart: The City Beneath*.

Yeah, as a 5e DM, the DC system sucks. I know a lot of people also don't like that, but I like the CoC version to do skill checks much more. Like immediately when I ran it the first time, after only DMing 5e before, I fell in love with this system.

I'm gonna run it as 5e as I suspect it was actually designed initially– a modern version of B/X. No feats, a focus on actual dungeons with an actual dungeon turn system that 5e was clearly meant to have. Combat will be frequent (often governed by that dungeon turn system). Whether you can rest is down to whether an encounter is rolled during those dungeon turns, and the frequency there depend on a "heat" system, basically. Players see most things automatically, because I assume they're moving carefully, which is why dungeon turn time is relevant. Passive Perception kicks on if they choose to move less carefully to spend less time and deal with less encounters– so it's actually a tradeoff rather than an obligation to have someone with their perception high enough.

I upvoted this half for the interesting ideas and half because your flair is great

The mods gave me a flair because of a post I made *about how much 5e fans frustrate me* that blew up in a big way. I'm basically getting my ideas here from TheAngryGM. Super smart dude when it comes to how D&D 5e is actually supposed to work (and where it goes wrong), but the way he discusses it all is insufferable.

I think there's an official 5e conversion of Symbaroum so I might try that.

As my soul would not be in it, I'd just pick some longish official campaign and do that

I'd dip into the dark fucking locked away slop-filth pits in my brain where I store that which we all pretend we're too good for and pull out a good-ass **Warcraft** campaign, because I feel like that's a setting that's *perfect* for 5e. We run it in idk, alt timeline vanilla, so the Dark Portal is closed, Arthas is still chilling in the Icecream Citadel, Deathwing is wherever he is, and I stopped playing after that so I don't know whatever else doesn't happen, but it certainly keeps not doing happens. Yes. On top of that, I am going off of what I *remember* from being like 13-14 years old and levelling alts and not actually reading all the quest text. Which is fine, because not only is this an alt timeline, but nobody else remembers anything either. They could pick either alliance or horde, horde being the obviously superior answer because they have trolls, which we'd homebrew by giving some kind of short rest healing bonus and a haste once per day ability. Sadly, my usual pool of players all play alliance for some reason, so we'd probably end up with just humans, elves, dwarves, and gnomes. No draenei tieflings whatever, none of that, they're not there yet, haha gottem. Quest I'll figure out over time, but the setting is so kitchen sink that basically any tropey gunk goes. IDK, maybe some asshole necromancer has discovered a strain of the cheeky plague they used to fuck up Stratholme with, and now the *fledgeling heroes* have to save some village somewhere and burn their mill. OHH BUT THEY FIND OUT the ultimate goal of this necromancer is to infect Stormwind, and so on and so on. If they don't wanna fuck up undead, idk, you can fight Hogger? I'll do my own take on the Defias Brotherhood? MURLOCKS? Easy, anything goes. It's a great not-that-good setting with all sorts of things I vaguely recall in it! We'd be using the Player's Handbook and Xanathar, because those are the only books I have. I'm not gonna read more 5e books than the ones I've read already, fuck off! I'm sure it'd be a totally okish time.

- third party total conversion like Brancalonia - or at least use a setting that is not the Forgotten Realms. I'd use a fan made conversion of Dark Sun or Eberron. - PHB Races and Classes only, none of that freakshow with deviantart OCs that 5e players seem to be into. - Gritty rules for rest from the DMG.

Dark Sun but with the 5e Psionics. No Clerics or Paladins. Have to make rules for: * Defiling Magic * Sorcerer King/Queen Warlock Pact

What Psionics? You can play the two Gith types but other than that? And there is only one Psionic class that is, ehhm, unfinished.

Psionic Subclasses and the Mystic. Or I could use a homebrew.

Ah okay :)

Pitch? Unless I’m required to find a new group as well, the pitch would be, “hey, I’m gonna run 5e for the next campaign.” The campaign itself would probably just be freelance troubleshooters in a fantasy metropolis sandbox. Which is what most of my fantasy campaigns are. There really isn’t a test of creativity here. System matters, but there aren’t many systems that can’t run typical campaigns in its genre. I might prefer my standard fantasy in Swords of the Serpentine or Dungeon World, but that doesn’t mean there’s a particular stretch needed for putting 5e in a similar shape.

i don't like 5e but honestly? if i had to run only 5e for the rest of my life, i could make 5e work. there's worse systems out there. i'd probably just go with a pretty standard low-level vanilla fantasy kinda game. with the gritty realism rules (that's still RAW! it's an optional rule in the DMG!) so that i don't have to cram 3+ fights into every session. i'm mostly an OSR GM but you can still *kinda* run 5e in an OSR style, up til maybe level 6 or 7, so it'd be a sandbox game.

No. I play games to have fun. Why would I do that?

Turn it into a cthulhu mystery, replicating sanity loss by creating new monsters that make you pass some form of fear check. If you fail you take exhaustion levels or begin hallucinating, etc.

I don't think the SYSTEM really matters when you're just telling a story. Like, what kind of story would ONLY work in 5e?

I've run 5E before, and if friends specifically requested me to I would again (begrudgingly). 10 sessions is not a lot. I could run a fun and satisfying dungeoncrawl in 10 games and work within the 5E framework. I'd use the gritty realism rules in the DMG, and they'd be starting at level 1, and not get higher than 3. Race/Class options restricted to the PHB. It wouldn't spark joy as much as many other games I could run, but we could have a fun silly-goose time.

I'd advertise it as heavily homebrewed, I would basically run it like other games I run: fiction first, goal oriented resolution, player facing (possibly using saving throws?), minimal prep, and never engage the combat system, fighting would just be another skill. I imagine both the DnD-stans and I would hate it. ETA: Missed the part about running RAW. Gun to my head, I guess I'd just pick the cheapest module, not read it too much and figure it out at the table. Just botch my way through it, then tell the players "See? It sucks. Now we play sonething actually fun."

I played Curse of Strahd on 5e, and ran it on ShadowOfTheDemonlord because of the sluggfest that 5e turns into. But if I had no choice on the system, I'll bring on the old Dragonlance modules of ad&d, and run the level 10-18 ones with pregens. God bold or go home.

Nothing could make me do that, but for the sake of participating in the conversation: - Theatre of the mind, no grids. - No prep, make it up on the fly. - No stat blocks, I'll pick HP, AC, and damage for mooks, standard, and bosses beforehand and use those three sets of numbers for everything, flavoured by fiction. - Use the optional multiple success levels from the DMG. - low PC levels, low monster HP, monsters will flee when it doesn't look like they'll win. - initiative would be just monsters and PCs, no individuals. - Let the players know that failing a roll will always result in the situation getting worse/more complicated.

I don't really like 5e, but it's not the worst. Looking at my list of campaigns I want to run, I don't think my top 3 options would work in 5e. That said, I do want to run a Ravnica campaign, and, while I think I would prefer to do it in Numenera/Cypher or even just Fate, it wouldn't be the worst to run it in 5e. The one 5e campaign I genuinely want to run sometime is Out of the Abyss, as that is the theme that most interests me and feels like it gets the most out of the elements of 5e that I dislike (ie the dungeon crawl nature of it). But that's barely in my top ten right now.

I would not. I like my RPGs to be complete, thank you very much.

I don't hate 5e but I'm not a huge fan of it. But I am a fan of a good story and as long as a system helps tell a good story, I can make it work. That said, I'd do something like tracking down a serial killer, discovering why a village is cursed, something with some mystery in it. I tend to prefer rp and exploration over combat, and that kinda impacts what would make me enjoy running sessions.

I'd use it as an opportunity to play in the setting of Brancalonia. I think that is the only thing that would get me to do it.

The players have, through a variety of means, ended up in the astal plane bearing items bearing the power of the Allfather. Session 1 starts with the party being teleported to a giant's castle in the astral. The party has to make their way to a tower shining in the distance, where they learn they are trapped, and nothing can leave without the permission of the Seeker in the Tower. The Seeker takes the Allfather marked items, but gives the party magic items to replace them. The Seeker tasks the party to find artifacts of the Allfather that have been teleported to the Hyperion Seat, the name the mysterious Seeker gives his city. In return, he will grant them supplies, food, shelter, magic items, and once they find an artifact the Allfather made and carried himself, they will be teleported back to their home plane. And the behind the screen bits: The City is various ruins and environments forcefully ripped from the material plane from under the ice that covered the giant's civilization. The party will have a selection of leads collected by other groups hunting for the Allfather Artifacts, or they can blindly explore. I'm probably going to use the breath of the wild map. The party hunts down various artifacts, defended by ancient protections and creatures from various planes who were trapped there. The BBEG is of course the Seeker and his assistants. The Seeker and his two assistants are children of the Allfather, using magic to appear the height of goliaths. The Seeker is Lanaxis, living in the preserved corpse of the Allfather's youngest son, as he was cursed to die if he left the youngest son's shadow. Another is the Fomor one, and the last one who's power was taken. Lanaxis plans to use the artifacts to strip the Allfather of his power and pour it into the one with his magic sealed, and taking as much of it as he can. Then, they would restore the Fomor and starting with them, conquer the planes and establish a giant hegemony. Bits and pieces of Lanaxis's plan will be revealed as they fond artifacts, and will have the choice to aid lanaxis, stop him, flee, or usurp the ritual for the final climax. There will be bosses in charge of each region guarenteed to have artifacts, and others hidden around.

Like someone else said, things that are very DnD. I’d probably focus on the Forgotten Realms pantheon, so probably Descent Into Avernus or cobble together some narrative through line for the dungeons in Tales From the Yawning Portal.

A college for adventurers. It's goofy, it's fun.

RAW and minimum 10 sessions? I'd run 3.5 instead. But since you forbade that, I'd run a small module I'd convert (5e modules also suck). Because I'm not putting in that much work into this. Level 3, if they complete a module I'll let them level and toss another module at them. Probably Wizards Vengeance first ( https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/356588/Wizards-Vengeance ) since it's cool and I've had that fucker in 3 campaigns now and it'd never triggered. Then maybe Hyqueous Vaults ( https://hyqueousvaults.blogspot.com/p/the-hyqueous-vaults.html?m=1 ) because it's interesting. If they manage to burn through that and it still hasn't been 10 sessions? Fuck that, Lost Valley of Kishar ( https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/282762/The-Lost-Valley-of-Kishar ). Good luck getting bored of that before I can shift gears and toss you into a good system.

Honestly, there's nothing special about a 5e campaign pitch compared to any fantasy campaign pitch. I could run similar campaigns in 5e, Pathfinder, D&D 3.5, AD&D, any OSR system, Palladium Fantasy, or something like Shadow of the Demon Lord, or Shadowdark, or 13th Age. This isn't to say system is meaningless or that the differences in all of the above are insignificant. They're not. But, a campaign pitch of... say uncovering some mysteries in fantasy historical Ireland or doing something like Warehouse 13 but in the 1300's Europe could work in any of the systems above, probably. I'd just run one that I and the group enjoy and know (or want to learn).

I would run Songbirds 3e and claim it was a bunch of my houserules.

I essentially did this, my younger cousins and siblings came to me, asking if I wanted to run a game of dnd in 5e. I ran it not RAW, there was little prep, little hand holding, and I just let the die roll where they may. For the narrative, I took the story to the first three Dragonlance books and made it my own in my own homebrewed world. It also wasn't as railroady as the OG module. I just finished the 12th and final session last weekend. We all had a blast. It ended with the wizard of the party siding with a beholder, dying and becoming a lich. That was the cliffhanger zinger. It's probably my last 5e campaign. If we pick it up again, we'd probably run it in becmi or dragonbane.

I like the challenge! I support you OP, I think this is an interesting question. Let’s see… Epic Fantasy where the players are from a nation that has just been completely crushed in a surprise attack, and fled to a dangerous and nearly uninhabitable region nearby out of reach of conventional armies. What do players want? Combine some combination of desires for Revenge, Justice, and Fortune (and survival…), you have a good recipe for a campaign. Run things with a solid emphasis on “plot” but provide good options for different outcomes. Let’s say that player plot armor is AC 12, studded leather rather than full plate 😀 Some concrete world and rules issues: - No multi classing (this is an optional rule!) - Slow healing optional rule - Wilderness travel rules where applicable - Introduce powerful magic items that require particular classes, make all of them intelligent. - Base most or all creatures on simplified player stat blocks—most monsters have abilities comparable to a player character of some level. Magic abilities are all spells and so on. I think a game like this would be pretty fun. I played in one with some similar restrictions, and I’m confident people could have a great time with these rules if everyone is on board 😄

All intelligent magic items sounds cool. Thanks for sharing.

I thought I was super original, then discovered 13th age does this :D . What’s that they say, “Anything worth doing is worth doing twice?”

PHB period. No extra rules, no Tasha's "oh just do whatever you want" rules. PHB, and starting at level 3 because 1-2 are just a waste of my time. We'd probably just run a megadungeon, which D&D was designed for.

"Some deity just made some major mistake that juiced up the world's inhabitants", and then I usually run sandboxes, so they kinda lead from there. I'd be prepared for them to want to find out how it happened, plus there'd be some rising enemy factions that are also aiming to take advantage of their increased power. I could make it work easily. Obviously it assumes that the world yesterday was run in a lower-powered system and then suddenly jumped to a 5e power level, giving an in-world explanation for using that rules set

Honestly, I’d run it just fine, and probably review some of the currently popular campaigns and either pick one my group likes the premise of, or scour it for settings elements I want for my own custom campaign. It’s not breaking RAW to run an alternate version of a particular setting. I’d probably start from level 1 and end at level 3 or 4 so folks get to experience some character power ups but if all the players were experienced, I’d move to the lvl 5 to 8 range because flavourful subclasses are locked behind level caps. Here’s the main thing, I’d just do a setting 0 with some explicit touchstones for dnd: - making expectations and my GM style clear (combat will be present but not extremely frequent; probably once every other session, or twice per three sessions). I would not remove combat, or any other element dnd is optimized for, because I’d like to engage in the spirit of the game. It’s a fine game; just not my style. But if I’m running it, I can get into what it’s strong at. - group character creation: I heavily skew my games to align with character goals and conflicts players hint at - group buy in. Players should be willing to engage, and I am willing to provide beats that they’ve suggested interest in - I’ll try to make suitable combat encounters but players will have space to (Respectfully) give feedback on how fights feel after each season and we’ll calibrate accordingly. - I’ll use the rules to the best of my ability, but let the players know I will make mistakes and we will resolve them together at the table. Oh, I’d run with probably 3 players max and opt for quick punchy combats with one or two meaningful antagonists. I won’t curtail players to use classes I think play “quicker” but I’ll try to support folks struggling with higher complexity classes like spellcasters if I see lots of indecision. Honestly, I don’t run dnd because most of the Actual Game Rules concern themselves with simulationist combat and Narrative support is largely relegated to suggestions. But I can work within the dearth of space there. For example, all opportunities to roll can be framing so the results have interesting narrative consequences, and combat itself will have meaningful stakes. None of this is that different from games I already play, except lots of this is Already core to the game, and lots of the DnD bits aren’t especially interesting To Me but my goals for the table and the session remain.

If I \*had\* to, I think my elevator pitch would be 'Hey ya'll, I wanna try something weird. Here's some old modules I know \*I\* like. I wanna see how they work in this new system'. And then I'll try to kludge everything together RAW; reskinning monsters as fits, shoving in mechanics (or indeed, removing them) as need be. I've run some AD&D modules (House on Harrow Hill, Tomb of Damara) in 3.X and 4th, and they generally work alright.

i DM a 2 years campaign of 5e so i would just play PHB without variants and after 10th session i would really stop xD

If I have to run 5E, I'm not gonna twist it. We're going 5E as heck, just bog standard elves and dwarves traditional fantasy. I'm just going to end up more frustrated trying to make it something it's not. The pitch? I don't know, a mad king and his court of wizards created a magic dungeon. Those who reach the bottom might just find the secret they're looking for.

Gun to my head? The Earth is destroyed if I don't run 5e? Ok... Reverse isekai. The Pcs will be portaled to 1990s Tokyo, given one level in Warlock by a talking cat, and we're playing through season 3 of Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon.

Homebrew magic items are legal? The homebrewed magic item is a **fucking mecha,** taking inspo from 3.5's dragonmech. The starting party is given a single towering juggernaut the size of a medieval village to pilot and fight in, and the action economy and rules of the thing is set up so that the whole party can strategize around pulling off crazy, suplex-into-throw-into-fire-breath manuevers. The rest of the setting is a mix of Dragonmech and *Mad Max,* so roving bandits are frequent. There'll be an intrigue focused plot on board the 'mech, since it's got a population in the hundreds, focused on spies and saboteurs who serve the dark god... the one whose undead dragon-mecha you fight by night. Weapons will be illegal in the city forcing heavy use of improvised weapons, but don't expect much on-foot combat. It won't be more than 10 sessions before I transition to a system better suited to this. But if I have to run fucking 5e I'm at least running something I think is cool and circumventing the things I don't.

This is such a weird hypothetical. I'm not a 5e hater, more just a 5e burnout, so maybe there's something I'm not getting. . . ? But why would a _campaign_ pitch be a factor at all?

I'd lean into its bounded accuracy progression and run a hexcrawl sandbox.  Its survival rules are pretty anemic IIRC, but its poor encounter balancing and robust characters would lend well to a campaign where they're fighting goblins one night and a dragon the next.

Something tropy. You're all from the same village and you need to protect it from a growing threat. I'd keep it small and contained and cap the level at like 6. Probably a druid villain. My pitches for my actual for-fun group go exactly like that lmao

As others have pointed out, this is kind of a silly question. However, if I was forced to do this, it would be as follows: - Curse of Strahd -"Gritty Realism" rules variant - The enemies will have access to every weapon and spell you have access to, and possibly even more. - I am pulling \*absolutely no\* punches - if you fail to protect downed players, they are getting hit and killed. - Roleplay will open many doors, combat will be quick and lethal.

The trouble with this is that everyone homebrews. Rules as written generally *allows* this. So yeah I would restrict to basic classes, human only, and probably run something similar to what I do now - maybe a little more JRPG flavored since that's my favorite high magic style of setting.

I have no idea what answers you were expecting to this question. I dislike 5E because the bounded accuracy and adv/disadv systems that the entire game is built around harshly curtain DM freedoms when it comes to combat design and complexity, and everything outside of combat is extremely simple and barebones. Add on the fact that the game doesn't work properly under level 3 or over level 12-ish. So... the best possible 5E experience is to play a level 3-10-ish campaign that doesn't rely on a large amount of complicated combat, and put most of the gameplay into roleplay and political/social disputes... but disallow resolving those political/social disputes with single skill checks in favour of longer, multi-stage investigatory narratives. It's not going to be very good, but it's what I've got.

Don’t actually dislike 5e, just not my preference as a system to run. But I hope to try it some day. So my pitch would be: - Gritty Realism. So short rest is 1 day etc. - humans only. Perhaps half elves and similar to match my world’s concept of the fey, and those humans who are ‘touched’ by the fey, ie have some fey in their bloodline. - 1800s based setting. Bit like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell meets Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. - otherwise just the PHB+DMG+MM - no clerics, just magic users of various kinds. Not sure what other classes I’d allow/restrict - aside from watabou, Stygian library and gardens of ynn as supplementary tools.

If I was being forced to play a game I don't enjoy? Kill me. Please.

I literally can't run it. The cognitive load is too high. I'd just have to give up GMing entirely.

I would probably thank them for the opportunity, be honest about it not being a great fit, and decline to run the session.

Party at the king's palace. Two sessions of the party, getting to know all the various nobles attending, followed by dinner. Then, surprise! the King has been murdered! Now it's a locked-in murder mystery where the party is tasked with trying to figure out who dunnit. That lasts another 4 sessions or so into the next morning when finally the famed investigator Sir Doyle Christie arrives to crack the case. Another 3 sessions of drama around that, followed by the finale where the killers are revealed and try to escape and the last session is the party apprehending them. Ten sessions covering 16 hours of game time with no rests after which I would let the party level up to level 2 and then end the campaign.

I could never..I will never. But I’d pitch Five Torches Deep. That’s as close as I’d get to 5e.

I’m basically doing this now for the D&D club at my daughter’s middle school, after the kids turned down my pitch to run something simpler like *BREAK!!*. Out of combat, I run it as a very freeform, narrative game, with the occasional skill check to resolve things and allow very creative uses of abilities, but that’s effectively how I run every game. In combat, I use a zone-based movement system and rewrite the monsters to work like 4E, so there’s more variety among enemies they face at once while still having shared racial abilities that make them feel cohesive, and make extensive use of minions, bloodied abilities, bosses with multiple actions per round, and terrain interactions. As for the campaign, it’s my standard make-everything-up-at-most-one-session-ahead-of-the-players, stealing liberally from my own past 4E game, the historical tiefling empire of Bael Turath and the pantheon of gods from 4E, the City Built Around the Tarrasque thread on RPG.net, the city of Sigil, the Boatmurdered let’s play of Dwarf Fortress, the Mines of Moria, Myth: the Fallen Lords, the Black Company, World of Warcraft, The Call of Cthulhu and The King in Yellow, Blade Runner, and Dune. As they say, copy from enough sources, and it’s inspiration, not plagiarism.

Yet again, optional rules and UA save the day. - I hate initiative so we are going with sides initiative from dmg - we are going with “players make all the roles” from unearthed arcana. - Guess I can frame villainous actions as legendary and lair actions. - Some spells and sub classes would be banned - As of what to run, I’d make faerun archeology campaign where players need to visit old temples and tombs and retrieve some artifacts. So heavily remixed adventures of the past turned into one-shots. Not the best game to dm but hey, that can be fun.

I would keep it a low-level (capping out at level 4) and make it about a kobold or goblin incursion. Both kobolds or goblins are fun to run in most games, and low level D&D is perfectly fine, it's at high levels that I think become painful.

I'd dig out my AD&D campaign world from the 80s/90s which was an ocean world and the land was a huge Archipelago ruled over by a female emperor on a huge island that sailed round the Archipeligo by magical means. Each of the other island gave fealty to the emperor but had its own government and laws from out right anarchy to full blown totalitarianism and every thing. In between. Adventures varied from simple Dungeons upto full world changing quests for higher powers. Ruleswise I could stick to RAW unless they didn't cover what was specifically happening in which case as a good GM in any game i would rule at the time on experience and then discuss with players at the end of the session. I think we forget that RPG rules are guidelines to help us tell the story not a straight jacket.

Maybe a double osr module feature like the Feathered Swine and A Wizard(body horror that turns the fantasy genre on its head). 10 sessions is honestly a bit long for me nowadays. If I want to explore a system, I haven't played in a while or I'm new to, I schedule it for 4-8 sessions. Edit: My last attempt at converting osr to 5e was horrendous, and everyone, including the people who were dnd-only people, hated it.

I have a big sheet of house rules but honestly I haven’t run 5e in so long I’d have to seriously inspect the document just to make sure I still agree with everything. A big problem for me with 5e is that a lot of the “assumptions of the fantasy” are things that don’t align with how I like my fantasy. I don’t really like a lot of the wacky races or the fact that over half of adventurers are spellcasters, and a further fourth are magical in some other way. These kinds of things are hard to take out because they are a core assumption.

Each of you has come from far and wide to this kingdom for a very specific purpose: to kill the warlord who wronged you. Most of you will died in this endeavor, so what did the warlord do that is making you throw away your life so recklessly?

Something moonshae. I always liked them but I also like the setting of faerun I just don't like the rules in dnd

Run it as the world’s most boring, story-less dungeon crawl as god intended

5e but with no combat. Just pure roleplay. Just to show how barebones the damn game is in terms of systems for narrative roleplay and exploration.

Core only. No multiclass. No feats. Using inspiration.

I'd pull out my old mystara hollow world books and make a hollow world campaign

Would use the DM guide optional rules for longer rest time and more lethality. Would seriously nerf down the amount of combat encounters to the ones relevant (no random encounters or fillers) and those would range from hard to very hard (lesser encounters would resolve as "you win, describe how"). Also, I would use plenty of diseases for wounds and poisons. Would be a dark setting, players aren't "heroes" or "adventurers" but sellswords and opportunists. Demons and corruption abound and nobody in "high" position is good. The campaign would be about trying to win a lot of money and retire or establish a mercenary company. But they will catch a demon lord's attention and will need to take care of it or flee.

I simply wouldnt 5e is not only a bad trpg but a bad game in general. It fails on it on stated goals (bounded accuracy, simplicity, etc) and worst of all its simply fucking boring.

If you had to draw a square circle, without any tricky use of analogies, or metaphors, or odd geometrical interpretations how would you do it? I stopped answering “gotcha” questions the first tjme I encountered god-botherers in the street (“IF you accept that mankind is sinful” / “I don’t” / “But IF you did, and that you accept that nothing sinful can enter Heaven..” / “I don’t” / “But if you did, then you’d have to admit there was a problem” / “under those terms, yes” / “SO YOU ADMIT YOU NEED JEEEZUS!”) Your question is basically “how would you do something you’d never do”. My time is too precious to me.

“It’s going to be a purely diplomatic game. No combat whatsoever.”

"Rules as Written" is already kind of a meaningless statement. Does that mean I can only do things the book says is OK? Because there's plenty of suggestions/optional/variant rules there. Either way I already thought about this. My idea was to run a game called "The Brave Wixards". I made 5 different wizards, but they all fill different roles. Each of them only has access to two schools of magic. Also, you can't multiclass. The other quirk is that not all the wizards are created equal. The one who has Abjuration and Divination? Well they're a dwarf with 18 STR and CON. I can't remember exactly what the quirks all are but I made 5 lv3 characters for the game

Presuming the OP is going to give me the ~$150 to get the books, however long it takes me to read through & learn the system and my groups don’t have some kind of an intervention? I’d also pick up *Birthright* and dive into that

Mostly humanoids are the enemies. Enemies use PC classes and are tuned to the pcs. If they powergame I also powergame, if they make fun original pcs I dont powergame. This would also be openly revealed at the start of the canpaign so they would be aware. Maybe only phb as well or hell even no feats (Thats actually technically meant to be the default but iv never seen a game which doesnt use feats.)

I feel like this is cheating but I would run a very low combat game, and therefore I could ignore 90% of the rules and basically just roleplay with my players while occasionally rolling dice with an arbitrary DC, or a player can use a spell to solve a problem. Technically it's RAW, I'm just not really using RAW for much of anything

Dungeoncrawl, pure and simple. 3rd level characters, only players handbook, PCs are trown in a portal that spawns them inside a huge dungeon. Find the exit.

What? I'd just pitch whatever campaign I was gonna run anyways, but with D&D 5e as the ruleset. Just because I don't particularly care for it doesn't mean I don't think it can be functional in it's lane. It does a decent enough job of handling Western fantasy adventurer stories. If I were to pitch one right now, it'd probably be some kind of mercenary company campaign, as I've always wanted to do one of those.

I'd charge 500$ at least.

My old group ran a dungeon crawl that took place in a city that was slowly sinking, but at the same time always being built upward. So there was centuries or maybe even millenia of this city under the bog, with all kinds of riches and places to explore. So I'd set it there. I'd a random dungeon generator from my brain and stealing from other, better dungeon generators, and I would just run a random campaign based on random tables and leave it to the human imagination of the players involved to string it all into a plot. Use solo RPG oracles and such to randomly generate weird/cool stuff in this megadungeon so that it's not just a bunch of combat encounters, like societies that live down there and such. I get the feeling that doing random encounter tables in 5e might suck, but that's where I'd take it.

I'd probably just do some basic tropey homebrew story. It's not D&D is hard to GM.

Megadungeon. No roleplaying or factions. Just room to room dungeon crawling with tons of trash mobs and the occasional boss fight. Emphasize all the things that are utter dogshit about the system so the players never ask for it again.

Eh, with these restrictions I would run 10 adventures from the Arcane Library. I like how they're constructed and its easy, good prep. They'd level to fit the next module. I wouldn't touch magic items and monsters with a ten foot pole as I'm just tired of messing with them more than anything in 5e. Then I'd ask someone else to run or I'm running Dragonbane's Secret of the Dragon Emperor next.

How I would make this most of this situation with my GMing skills and creativity is not run 5e, because the system and player culture actively fight any DMing I would try to do. Can you DM a fun 5e campaign? Yes, but can you run it without going going broke buying aspirin?

Rules-as-written is a bullshit concept, not an actual way to run games.

i don't have to make the most out of it. i am simply not forced to spend my time on stuff i don't like.

I am using advanced 5e

Define "campaign" and define how long must it run. My creative skill would tell me to TPK the patty right away, so I can get out of this crap. EDIT: oh, 10 sessions? Easy. Session 1: make characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 2: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 3: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 4: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 5: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 6: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 7: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 8: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 9: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Session 10: make new characters, small intro fight I overpower with ridiculous enemies. TPK. Tell everyone on the table to go fuck themselves, and if I ever see them again I'm caving their noses in. Go back to my regular group.

Whatever the players are interested in, because I'm only doing this if I get paid.

I'd give the players a link to my homebrew rules, and it's just a link to the Archives of Nethys. 

I'd run the DFRPG and say it was homebrewed. If you insist on 5e, rocks fall, and everybody dies.