I may have gotten in over my head but I have agreed to help a bunch of brand new D&D players play their first characters as their DM. The problem is I haven't played in 30 years and I'm wondering what has changed in the general gameplay over the years. I've been told 5E is a lot like the original AD&D of my youth but not sure I believe it.
Are there any old timers, who remember the way it used to be, that can give me a quick idea of how things have changed? Combat seems to of become more structured. Races and classes have certainly gotten much more involved than I remember. Also, what happened to the Forgotten Realms? it used to come as a box set with maps and books to help you set up your campaign.
Any help/advice older players can share would be appreciated.
Since this is still going on, I'll add my two cents.
Conceptually, it's still the same game. The "big ideas": race, class, levels, the ability scores, hit points, spells, alignment, etc. are still there, and still much the same as they were.
Mechanically, it's changed a lot, and that's good. Old-time D&D was a bunch of different mechanical systems that had no coherence. Sometimes you wanted to roll high. Sometimes you wanted low. Thief skills (the only skills in town) were percentage rolls for reasons. Strength had the weird percentage add-on. That's all gone now. There's a single resolution mechanic (roll a d20, add bonuses, and compare to a target number). That alone makes it so much easier to learn. Also, many more questions are answered in the rules already. (While the rules are still kind of sloppily written, it's sloppy from a much higher level of rigor.)
In terms of how it plays:
It's more streamlined; things move along faster. It's much easier for players to mount long expeditions without having to retreat to rest and heal up. (You can totally still run out of resources, but they restore faster. A good night's sleep gets you up and running again, instead of interminable healing time.)
Many of the pain points of low-level play are reduced. The wizard with 1 HP and only one spell per day isn't a thing any more. The cleric isn't forced to basically prepare healing spells and only healing spells. Your spellcasters can be useful in fights even after running out of spells. You can play the class you want, as opposed to some of them being locked out behind absurd stat requirements.
There's more flexibility, both in individual sessions (more combat options, more flexibility in spell preparation), and in character development (there's more than one version of every single class. Also more classes, and more choices to make when leveling up)
Many of the arbitrary restrictions are gone. Every race can be every class. Nobody's level advancement is limited by race. Every class's level advancement is on the same basic track. Women can be just as strong as men.
The game provides more explicit support for varied styles of game. It's still built to be combat-centric, but it's generally better at handling whatever bits you have outside the combat.
As for the Forgotten Realms, it's technically the default setting for 5e, but they really haven't done much with it this time round. (Though I believe most of the canned adventures they publish are set there.)
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Everything has changed except race and class names.
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Since this is still going on, I'll add my two cents.
Conceptually, it's still the same game. The "big ideas": race, class, levels, the ability scores, hit points, spells, alignment, etc. are still there, and still much the same as they were.
Mechanically, it's changed a lot, and that's good. Old-time D&D was a bunch of different mechanical systems that had no coherence. Sometimes you wanted to roll high. Sometimes you wanted low. Thief skills (the only skills in town) were percentage rolls for reasons. Strength had the weird percentage add-on. That's all gone now. There's a single resolution mechanic (roll a d20, add bonuses, and compare to a target number). That alone makes it so much easier to learn. Also, many more questions are answered in the rules already. (While the rules are still kind of sloppily written, it's sloppy from a much higher level of rigor.)
In terms of how it plays:
As for the Forgotten Realms, it's technically the default setting for 5e, but they really haven't done much with it this time round. (Though I believe most of the canned adventures they publish are set there.)