I'm having more fun with 5e D&D than I've had with any prior edition (I started running games in 1983).
Encounter balancing? Magic item distribution? Player investment in characters? Zero problems to report here.
Why?? I think it's a factor of what @AEDorsay is sharing. I know how to DM and have done it for... 40 years now. New DM's don't have that experience and my sincere hope is the next D&D does a far better job of helping new DM's learn the art to craft the stories their tables need. The DM should be the shining showcase and jewel of the D&D message. The influencers... the invested customers, all of it.
No DM? No D&D. Yes, video games and VTT's with automation can simulate it, but they don't scratch the surface (yet).
I just picked up Goodman Games remastering of Temple of Elemental Evil, including the mega dungeons original art. The back cover reprints original 80s art that gives a strong Avenger's/X-Men vibe. Was pretty sure one of them was Magneto.
Just saying.
As to the question asked, it certainly appears that on this forum at least DMs do in fact enjoy playing 5e.
There's also a sort of observer as participant effect going on here. Given the OP's complaints are long known complaints/critiques about 5e, and given the age of the account, I'm presuming these critiques were known to the OP rather than just dawning on them in their most recent 5e play, my guess is these complaints were often DM voiced during 5e play, then when they switched to AD&D or 2e or whatever the DM praised the features. It's not hard to fathom players who have a DM unhappy with one system and happy with the other system are going to think the game is better. Maybe if they played D&D with someone who really liked 5e and found precursor editions tedious, they'd walk away with a different feeling.
This is like cautions Reader Response Theory were aware of back in the 60s and 70s, back when the Avengers were big the first time around. There was a guy in those comics back then who wanted to be on the Avengers but was often written as not quite ready for prime time. But that character had a very important moral to his non Avenger adventuring, "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" anyone trying to get honest player feedback on a system from players while the pollster's in the DMs chair should take that to heart.
I started playing TTRPGs 5.5 years ago with my first experience being with 5e. I moved into DMing maybe about a year after I started and have been pretty much only that since except for the occasional one-shot where I get to be a player. I have to say that my experience has been very different from yours. Each one of my players have a different reason for playing, but most of them are pretty much interested in driving the story forward and/or seeing their character grow (character development, not leveling).
I do give my players magic items. In fact in my campaign, common magic items are well... common. Uncommon are also available for purchase but they are prohibitively expensive. Players buy them or earn them in the field and not all of them require attunement. I do mostly try to make sure that someone can benefit, though I also make sure to give them something they would use in other ways, such as in trade. I once borrowed a suggestion online to have some shady person ask to buy a dagger that didn't benefit anyone in the party really for a large sum of gold, no questions asked. They sold it and now that guy is off stabbing good people probably. I haven't worked him back into the story yet, but I plan to.
Leveling is never the goal either, though I do keep a pulse on how the players feel about the length of time it has been since their last level. I like the rough guide on each level takes a number of sessions equal to the new level, but I approximate it so the players aren't measuring their next level too. Sometimes it's more, sometimes less. Sometimes I give them a level right before a boss encounter so they have some neat abilities they can bring into a big fight. Never really liked getting the neat new features after the big fight myself.
I agree with Caerwyn_Glyndwr. Try to get the players to engage with other elements of the game. There are many ways you can get them to engage in things other than leveling and magical items. There is the main plot, the little nothing side quests that are just kind of fun, PC quests that dig into their backstory, NPC development as they interact with their world, NPC fatalities (mueh he he he) that can lead to a revenge arc, maybe there is a local or country-wide issue that frustrates their main quest and they need to deal with that to get back on the rails. Fill up your world with life and happenings. Nudge them to interact with it in some way. If the players feel like there is nothing but leveling and loot, then maybe your world feels a bit like Diablo, which is a loot crawler by design. There may be some nice curtains and wallpaper on it, but Diablo is a very shallow game.
So, an interesting thing happened with my group. I run games at a local hobby store, which i have been doing for about 6 years now. Recently, my group wanted to run a Dark Sun game, so I dusted off my old ADnD 2e books and ran the starting adventure for them. Then i decided to run the Audio adventure, Light in the Belfry for Ravenloft (they seriously need to bring back audio adventures), also using 2e rules.
So now I plan to return to some old Ravenloft modules and I asked my group if they wanted to use 5e characters and all 5 of them said, no. I believe the reason why is because they are truly invested in their 2e characters like they have never been in 5e and I feel a lot of satisfaction being there with them in their journey.
I don't really find this surprising at all to be honest with you, my experience has been pretty much the same. I have had many new 5e players join my game over the last few years and I say this not as a boast, it's just truth, one session in my old school D&D game and none of these players ever played in another 5e game again. In fact I had one guy who joined my game just to be disruptive and prove to me that old-school D&D is trash and now he is borrowing my books all the time, texting me questions every bloody day.
I think the reason is that being a superhero - avenger is a bit like playing in an arcade with unlimited free-credits and full access to all games ever made. It sounds great on the outside, why wouldn't games be better if they are all free-unlimited, but the issue is that the game itself loses its meaning in a way, it ceases to be a challenge, you no longer really have to care about success or worry about failure as it becomes just a matter smashing the free-credits button whenever a set back happens. That is effectively the difference between modern and classic gameplay & playstyle.
Old-school D&D is a game that has tension, there is risk, the game has earthy tones, a gritty fantasy that is often as much about survival as it is about being a hero. This style of play is built into the mechanic and there is an addictive nature to achieving success in it, because it's so easy to fail, even though it can sometimes be frustrating.
I think on the back end, old-school D&D also gives players a sense of growth and as some have pointed out, you slowly grow into superhero status and that journey is long, challenging and arduous. This aspect of the game is also very addictive because your power doesn't grow just from leveling up, but from a combination of learned player skills, magic items, wealth and influence earned through self-motivated ambitions.
I think this is why modern 5e converted players are actually some of the best players in my group, They allow themselves to have attachments to the characters they make which makes the whole experience that much more tense, the risks that much more real to them, it's all very vivid with them. It makes the challenges so much more meaningful to them.
5e is basically a huge shortcut, it's instant gratification, you start at the end and despite all the power you get players still complain that it's never enough. Modern gamers have been spoiled, but I don't think they want to be, I think they want the hardship, they desire the challenge and earned advancement. It's just hard to put a quarter in the machine and risk something when right next door everything is free. I think those who do take that step back into the old school discover how amazing D&D can actually be when you have to earn your stripes through gritted teeth.
That said, its a pretty tough argument to make to reluctant 5e players who think they already have everything they want because.. well its true, 5e players have everything and anything they want right from the start of the game. How do you convince them that they should want to earn things that they get for free through hardship, and repeated, frustrating failures? It doesn't sound fun at all so I can't really blame people for making that point.
To answer the OPS question more directly, I don't think there is much you can do with 5e in regards to "rewarding" players. The game relies on the story and role-playing experience being the reward. If it's not enough, you're screwed.
As a player I'm not having much fun. As a DM, it's the world building that brings me joy and I hate combat.
It's not just the players wanting to be gods, and truthfully they already are if you see it through the dm lens, but even with all that power they feel limited.
I watch people saying other games like CoC, and honestly, I'm a bit envious, though not for the reasons you'd think.
It's the fact that the ability system, not combat, that take center stage.
Even with all the advancements towards more to that d&d has done still pale in comparison to the combat system. The combat system that is carefully bounded between essentially 10-15 numbers based on some pluses and minuses rolled on a single d20... ranges so tight that all you can fit in are a success or failure.
As a player I like the current "super powers" but I feel that the d20system constrains it too much and they just can't function against the monsters. Too much save or suck.
And I really hate everyone who says pathfinder is the answer. I don't want crunchy mechanics, tables and charts and references and all the baggage of 3 and 3.5. I want a system that breathes and let's me be the rogue or warlock or sorcerer that I want to be.
As a player I'm not having much fun. As a DM, it's the world building that brings me joy and I hate combat.
It's not just the players wanting to be gods, and truthfully they already are if you see it through the dm lens, but even with all that power they feel limited.
I watch people saying other games like CoC, and honestly, I'm a bit envious, though not for the reasons you'd think.
It's the fact that the ability system, not combat, that take center stage.
Even with all the advancements towards more to that d&d has done still pale in comparison to the combat system. The combat system that is carefully bounded between essentially 10-15 numbers based on some pluses and minuses rolled on a single d20... ranges so tight that all you can fit in are a success or failure.
As a player I like the current "super powers" but I feel that the d20system constrains it too much and they just can't function against the monsters. Too much save or suck.
And I really hate everyone who says pathfinder is the answer. I don't want crunchy mechanics, tables and charts and references and all the baggage of 3 and 3.5. I want a system that breathes and let's me be the rogue or warlock or sorcerer that I want to be.
Pathfinder 2e is a great system so far as modern systems go if for no other reason than the fact that at every level, the game is so balanced. You feel constraints and fights are as tough and tactical at 1st level as they are at 20th level. So at the very least, the crunch is well thought out, and applied well even though there is an insane amount of it.
I personally don't think the game is sustainable, it's just way too many rules, too many considerations when creating adventures. It's also extremely combat-focused which results in a crazy long combat. On average even a small combat takes about 2 hours with 5 players.
I don't think it's the answer for 5e players, it's more like an answer for 3rd edition players who actually liked the whole feat-driven D&D. I mean in PF2e you get 2-3 feats every level for most classes.
CoC is a great system and great game, but it only works for that specific genre.
Castles and Crusades is probably the game you're looking for if you want the game to be focused on the ability system. At its core, Castles and Crusade is how D&D would have developed if TSR made the 3rd edition of D&D.
As a player I'm not having much fun. As a DM, it's the world building that brings me joy and I hate combat.
It's not just the players wanting to be gods, and truthfully they already are if you see it through the dm lens, but even with all that power they feel limited.
I watch people saying other games like CoC, and honestly, I'm a bit envious, though not for the reasons you'd think.
It's the fact that the ability system, not combat, that take center stage.
Even with all the advancements towards more to that d&d has done still pale in comparison to the combat system. The combat system that is carefully bounded between essentially 10-15 numbers based on some pluses and minuses rolled on a single d20... ranges so tight that all you can fit in are a success or failure.
As a player I like the current "super powers" but I feel that the d20system constrains it too much and they just can't function against the monsters. Too much save or suck.
And I really hate everyone who says pathfinder is the answer. I don't want crunchy mechanics, tables and charts and references and all the baggage of 3 and 3.5. I want a system that breathes and let's me be the rogue or warlock or sorcerer that I want to be.
Pathfinder 2e is a great system so far as modern systems go if for no other reason than the fact that at every level, the game is so balanced. You feel constraints and fights are as tough and tactical at 1st level as they are at 20th level. So at the very least, the crunch is well thought out, and applied well even though there is an insane amount of it.
I personally don't think the game is sustainable, it's just way too many rules, too many considerations when creating adventures. It's also extremely combat-focused which results in a crazy long combat. On average even a small combat takes about 2 hours with 5 players.
I don't think it's the answer for 5e players, it's more like an answer for 3rd edition players who actually liked the whole feat-driven D&D. I mean in PF2e you get 2-3 feats every level for most classes.
CoC is a great system and great game, but it only works for that specific genre.
Castles and Crusades is probably the game you're looking for if you want the game to be focused on the ability system. At its core, Castles and Crusade is how D&D would have developed if TSR made the 3rd edition of D&D.
I'm not looking for feats.
I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for outside of rules lite and RP abilities taking center stage.
CoC does only really work within it's own game....but it IS elegant.
I'm not going to deny a nostalgia for red box BECMI basic.
I want 5e to incorporate more of that version than trying to pull from 3.5, which is the exact opposite of the simplicity and bounded accuracy of 5e. I feel the more they crib notes, the quicker it's just going to explode from internal pressure.
They could donate slowed level progression as well, or take the underpowered level 14-ish abilities in many cases and swap them with the nearly broken 6th level features people get. And stop the ASI's.
I know I just said I want to do cool sh** but does this make sense as well?
So, I like 5e because it is “rules lite”, but I can never get away from the problems i see with class dev. There is a middle ground there (and I hope my current project has found it — we’ll see in December) between the “VAST INCREDIBLE POWER” and the need for some kind of struggle, the desire for more magical items, and the “real stakes” aspect of mechanics design.
One of the nice things about the rules lite approach is that you can, if you are watchful, skip 3/3.5/4 entirely and go back to 1e and 2e for solutions that often just need a little brushing off and adjusting slightly to fit the structure of 5e.
There is a lot of talk about bounded accuracy, but as I have noted before, that hasn’t been the case for several years, because the designers sorta broke it, lol. Then the players broke it more, lol. There is a fix (shift the basis), but it means basically going into every table and adjusting them slightly and let me tell you, it is a pain to do.
the big concern a lot of players have is that while a lot of them do want that more “old-style” of play, they don’t want to give up the ability to be as flexible with character design as the current system allows. THe current system which has essentially blended the hell out of the core archetypes so that to us longer players feels like they stripped them of their distinctive qualities, and now it is just a numbers game.
Their approach has been to just give out more subclasses and then add in feats, but what if there were no subclasses? Just classes, and a big ole honkin list of feats that folks can pick from (with requirements and all that, yes) at different times — and that list doesn’t have any of the base core abilities for each class on it. It becomes a way to personally develop your character over time, gives the ability to more effectively balance those feats/special abilities against each other, and gives your minmaxers a whole new paradigm to figure out.
We don’t have to go to a new system: 5e is flexible enough to do all of that. No, it isn’t “official”, but most of the folks I know who have played for decades think of “official” as “a really strong suggestion”.
Now, it is important to note something about 3/3.5 and later…
WotC was started by a bunch of D&D Players who wanted to bring some of the card game stuff they liked into the D&D game and ended up creating Magic the Gathering to fulfill their player fantasies. So when they bought TSR, and made those version, it was absolutely done by a bunch of players who were used to that — that is the corporate culture, really, at some level.
I never liked 3.5. I liked nothing about it. I wasn’t fond of the entire thing, nor was I fond of the 2e chapbooks that preceded it. I didn't like 4 at all — it read like something a player who did a lot of Diablo would write. D&D is not a video game. I also understand it was an effort to break free of past stuff, but damn, it was bad with few good ideas. PF and PF2 are nightmares that I Agee will crack under the weight of their own rules, but those are the hard school super crunchy sorts, and if I think D&D folks can be rigid, you can likely guess my overall take on a lot of them. Plus, it is a fork of my least favorite version.
My player group felt much the same way. When we tried 5e, it was a “well, it can’t be as bad as X, right? Right?” Kind of trepidation, and we all really liked it except we missed (and still miss) some of our old crunch. Not the icky stuff like encumbrance, lol, but the fun stuff like building a stronghold or wilderness adventures or other stuff like that.
So, slowly, we have been adding them back in. Mostly me, because that seems to be my role, my thing, and something they think I am at least “okay” at doing. But I am also a game mechanics nerd, so…
Old School role playing is closer to what we do, but we still work very much within the 5e realm of stuff, and it is a big ting to say that over the last decade we all went from playing maybe on D&D game every other month with several other games being played, to just playing D&D again. TO me, that says a LOT when you are talking about people who have been playing since the early 80’s, whose kids all play now and whose grandkids (in some cases) are playing, and whose friends play, even though we are scattered all over the western US.
That’s the opposite of the OP — we shifted from mostly 2e to 5e, but we are bringing what we loved from 2e with us — and what we get is a game very much like what we like, as long as we don’t use the default classes, lol. (Spoiler, we do about half the time).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm just going to point out that the "the encounter system is flawed and delivers underpowered encounters" bit seems to be partially missing the actual intent behind the CR system. CR is not scaled to provide a truly challenging encounter for an appropriate level party, it's scaled to provide an encounter that an appropriately leveled party can reliably overcome about 6-8 times within a typical adventuring day.
Well aside from the many examples where CR doesn't accurately reflect the challenge of the monster (I'll throw out the famous polymorphing pixie as an example), I'd argue that the 6-8 encounter day is a vital part of the CR system (if a system is dependent on context, that context is not really separate from the system), and perhaps one of its biggest flaws.
What we really need is a more comprehensive system that says "this is what a level X party can handle in a day" and then have ways to break that down into anywhere from 1 to 8 or more encounters. At the very least they need to address the single encounter day which we could then extrapolate a bit for 2 or 3.
I don't use Milesstones because it robs me, the DM of a valuable reward system. In addition to combat, I award bonus experience for avoiding combat, good role-play, solving a puzzle, coming up with a clever solution, and completing side quests. I will sometimes even dock experience for failing quests. If they go murder hobo, they get no experience, or very little. This keeps my players invested in the story. If i need to level them, i will give larger chunks of experience. My games are very dynamic, often with 5 to 6 quests lines going on at once. Its important to keep my players engaged. Its more fun for them, and especially more fun for me, and I get better players.
Milestones are fine for big 1-12 level modules where the players need to reach objectives, but not in a normal game. I did milestones for Dragon Queen and my players where far less interested in the side quests, and the main quests, which would grant levels.
So, I like 5e because it is “rules lite”, but I can never get away from the problems i see with class dev. There is a middle ground there (and I hope my current project has found it — we’ll see in December) between the “VAST INCREDIBLE POWER” and the need for some kind of struggle, the desire for more magical items, and the “real stakes” aspect of mechanics design.
One of the nice things about the rules lite approach is that you can, if you are watchful, skip 3/3.5/4 entirely and go back to 1e and 2e for solutions that often just need a little brushing off and adjusting slightly to fit the structure of 5e.
There is a lot of talk about bounded accuracy, but as I have noted before, that hasn’t been the case for several years, because the designers sorta broke it, lol. Then the players broke it more, lol. There is a fix (shift the basis), but it means basically going into every table and adjusting them slightly and let me tell you, it is a pain to do.
the big concern a lot of players have is that while a lot of them do want that more “old-style” of play, they don’t want to give up the ability to be as flexible with character design as the current system allows. THe current system which has essentially blended the hell out of the core archetypes so that to us longer players feels like they stripped them of their distinctive qualities, and now it is just a numbers game.
Their approach has been to just give out more subclasses and then add in feats, but what if there were no subclasses? Just classes, and a big ole honkin list of feats that folks can pick from (with requirements and all that, yes) at different times — and that list doesn’t have any of the base core abilities for each class on it. It becomes a way to personally develop your character over time, gives the ability to more effectively balance those feats/special abilities against each other, and gives your minmaxers a whole new paradigm to figure out
Now, it is important to note something about 3/3.5 and later…
I never liked 3.5. I liked nothing about it. I wasn’t fond of the entire thing, nor was I fond of the 2e chapbooks that preceded it. I didn't like 4 at all — it read like something a player who did a lot of Diablo would write. D&D is not a video game. I also understand it was an effort to break free of past stuff, but damn, it was bad with few good ideas. PF and PF2 are nightmares that I Agee will crack under the weight of their own rules, but those are the hard school super crunchy sorts, and if I think D&D folks can be rigid, you can likely guess my overall take on a lot of them. Plus, it is a fork of my least favorite version.
^^^^^^^^^^
This is everything for me.
Including giving them a list of (sorry, here I differ) class specific traits to choose from and the hate for it to become more and more of a numbers game.
I want each class's combat mechanics to function radically differently so you don't feel like a sorcerer is a wizard is a bard is a cleric, or a fighter is a monk is a barbarian is a ranger is a paladin is a rogue.
And I don't want a thousand rules, I just want flexible ones.
I'm just going to point out that the "the encounter system is flawed and delivers underpowered encounters" bit seems to be partially missing the actual intent behind the CR system. CR is not scaled to provide a truly challenging encounter for an appropriate level party, it's scaled to provide an encounter that an appropriately leveled party can reliably overcome about 6-8 times within a typical adventuring day.
Well aside from the many examples where CR doesn't accurately reflect the challenge of the monster (I'll throw out the famous polymorphing pixie as an example), I'd argue that the 6-8 encounter day is a vital part of the CR system (if a system is dependent on context, that context is not really separate from the system), and perhaps one of its biggest flaws.
What we really need is a more comprehensive system that says "this is what a level X party can handle in a day" and then have ways to break that down into anywhere from 1 to 8 or more encounters. At the very least they need to address the single encounter day which we could then extrapolate a bit for 2 or 3.
I don't use Milesstones because it robs me, the DM of a valuable reward system. In addition to combat, I award bonus experience for avoiding combat, good role-play, solving a puzzle, coming up with a clever solution, and completing side quests. I will sometimes even dock experience for failing quests. If they go murder hobo, they get no experience, or very little. This keeps my players invested in the story. If i need to level them, i will give larger chunks of experience. My games are very dynamic, often with 5 to 6 quests lines going on at once. Its important to keep my players engaged. Its more fun for them, and especially more fun for me, and I get better players.
Milestones are fine for big 1-12 level modules where the players need to reach objectives, but not in a normal game. I did milestones for Dragon Queen and my players where far less interested in the side quests, and the main quests, which would grant levels.
Once again, you are confusing a DM problem for a system problem. You can use “Complete a Side Quest” as grounds for a milestone— it does not need to be a main story milestone. Sure, that means you might need to up level your main story encounters, but you can run into that same problem if you give XP rewards and they grind side quests.
That is not to say XP levelling is wrong or that you are doing something wrong. But the trend in this thread is you posting things which strongly indicate you push players to care about the grind—and then for you to be confused as to why your players care about the grind alone. Something to be cognisant of if you want them to change their habits.
Therein lies the problem. Should i not give magic items to players then? Should a level 5 character only have 1 magic item? That re-enforces the idea that leveling is the only progression. If progression is limited to leveling, what is left to build past level 1? Its no wonder my players don't feel attached. They have little to no magic items, and they didn't go on any epic quest to earn them, and if they have one, its likely very low effect, and pales compared to a class ability, so they really don't lose anything by dying or switching characters.
If its just the completion of the quest that motivates them, then it doesn't matter which character they use. It all comes out the same anyway. Even my game doesn't matter in that case. I just build a railroad adventure, throw in a couple of combats, talk in a funny voice, they hit the milestone and they level. Players are super happy they leveled and get a new superpower, and my adventure is forgotten because the most important part of it, is they hit the milestone and leveled.
There are plenty of items which do not require attunement. You can give them "fun" items that might be mediocre, but mesh with their playstyle, so they'll consider attuning even if they are worse. You could give them low-level items and slowly upgrade them over time. You could give them any number of the items which level up with the character, so they have to gain the item's favor to unlock greater power. You can hand them out feats or boons as rewards for milestones.
And, if you will allow me to be frank, you need to do some deep soul searching and ask yourself--"Am I the problem here?" I see two DM red flags in your posting. The first is complaining about "superpowered" PCs--more often than not, I see this as a complaint from DMs who do not know how to balance encounters against their parties. They make the challenge too low, which makes the PCs just tear through enemies. Monsters have lots of useful tools to mitigate PC power--legendary saves, legendary actions, using tactics, sending more of them at the PCs, etc. If your PCs feel overpowered... it probably is because you are underpowering your encounters.
But that is not the biggest red flag--the biggest red flag I see in your posts is your repeated comments that your players are driven by levels or items. That means one of two things--and often both. First, it could mean you as the DM put too much focus on advancement as the only metric of rewarding players, rather than non-leveling rewards (like gaining new allies or such). Second, it very likely means your story is not resonating with the players--if they care more about advancing their RPG elements than they care about advancing the story for the story's sake, that could be a sign your story just is not working.
5e is fine--it has plenty of flaws (frankly, the lack of character options, rather than too many is its biggest problem)--but a lot of the perceived flaws come from human error in utilizing the system rather than from the system itself.
I have been DMing for 35 years, and have run about every major system and a several lesser known ones. Balancing encounters is something i am extremely good at, and I still say 5e is superpowered characters. In the earlier levels its fine, but by level 8, its not too difficult to have a single character doing 60-100 points of damage a round, with no magical gear. I had a Curse of Strahd game where I would not allow the players to take a Long Rest inside the castle. The complained and whined about it, but I promised them it would be a better game. By the time they got to Strahd, they had to be very clever about it, and two of the players even got thrown out of 3 story window, before they defeated him. It was pretty epic and the players felt very rewarded by it (I learned from a prior mistake the year before, where the paladin smited him with a crit).
Then to prove my point, i had them face off against all the boss battles they missed in an all out brawl. They fought, Baba Lysaga, the 3 hags, the reverent, the Jade Golem, and the Lich from the Amber Temple, all at once. It was a tough battle, but they still won, with less effort than they had against Strahd with their resources depleted. I
As to your second criticism, I run very involved games. I will often run 3-5 quest lines at once. I will pit them against opposing factions, and all their actions will have repercussions. In the same Curse of Strahd game above, I had my players making side deals with a disguised Strahd who was posing as their benefactor. I have a simple rule when it comes to crafting a game.
"Roleplay doesn't happen between combats, it happens during combat and out of combat. It happens during dungeon crawls, it happens between sessions. Whenever the players say, I want to do this, that's role-play. Role-playing is not talking in a funny voice. Role-play is talking, and dictating your characters actions, and reactions at all times."
The biggest obstacle I had with running ADnD2e was stopping the players from just walking through every door, or busting up every chest. Like I said, 5e characters are super heroes, there is absolutely nothing that will instant kill them. They are afraid of nothing. In previous editions, you always checked for traps, and listened at doors, and a poison dart meant death.
I'm just going to point out that the "the encounter system is flawed and delivers underpowered encounters" bit seems to be partially missing the actual intent behind the CR system. CR is not scaled to provide a truly challenging encounter for an appropriate level party, it's scaled to provide an encounter that an appropriately leveled party can reliably overcome about 6-8 times within a typical adventuring day.
Well aside from the many examples where CR doesn't accurately reflect the challenge of the monster (I'll throw out the famous polymorphing pixie as an example), I'd argue that the 6-8 encounter day is a vital part of the CR system (if a system is dependent on context, that context is not really separate from the system), and perhaps one of its biggest flaws.
What we really need is a more comprehensive system that says "this is what a level X party can handle in a day" and then have ways to break that down into anywhere from 1 to 8 or more encounters. At the very least they need to address the single encounter day which we could then extrapolate a bit for 2 or 3.
I don't use Milesstones because it robs me, the DM of a valuable reward system. In addition to combat, I award bonus experience for avoiding combat, good role-play, solving a puzzle, coming up with a clever solution, and completing side quests. I will sometimes even dock experience for failing quests. If they go murder hobo, they get no experience, or very little. This keeps my players invested in the story. If i need to level them, i will give larger chunks of experience. My games are very dynamic, often with 5 to 6 quests lines going on at once. Its important to keep my players engaged. Its more fun for them, and especially more fun for me, and I get better players.
Milestones are fine for big 1-12 level modules where the players need to reach objectives, but not in a normal game. I did milestones for Dragon Queen and my players where far less interested in the side quests, and the main quests, which would grant levels.
I use a modified milestone system (right now, 270 total milestone points to reach 20th level) and while you get a milestone when you are here and play, you get more for achieving certain objectives.
For all the stuff you mentioned that you give experience points for, I give hero points for. Also a modified system, but only in that you aren’t limited to set number. Has nothing to do with any story, and hero points can be exchanged for milestones (10 to 1).
Both can also be used to modify dice rolls, as pretty much normal for the hero points or inspiration (which I also use).
I run an “open world” with a lot of hooks and story elements as well as a fairly standard, complex story that has multiple layers and involves the character stories in it (including romance, if desired).
Very dynamic, entirely player driven with the exception of one event that they may or may not ever encounter, lol. I also track time, and have background events happen, regardless of their traipsing into my web of adventure or not, lol. Some plots start halfway through, others only show up in the highest tier, and all that. I enjoy it, and my outline is ginormous at 227 pages for all 21 main adventures (then you add the 115 for side quests and other stuff).
So, It isn’t so much the milestones as how you use them.
The funny part? I always still list the XP requirements. Hard to break that habit from 1e, lol. Right now, to make 20th level it takes 375,000 XP, but we do it so that you have to earn and spend them to get a level, so the total that way is 2,234,500 XP.
Even if they never do a single bit of my adventures, they need 270 sessions to make 20th level, and that would generally equal out to about the same amount of experience (which is how we figured out those numbers, lol — a decade of 5e gives us a lot of data to work with).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
So, an interesting thing happened with my group. I run games at a local hobby store, which i have been doing for about 6 years now. Recently, my group wanted to run a Dark Sun game, so I dusted off my old ADnD 2e books and ran the starting adventure for them. Then i decided to run the Audio adventure, Light in the Belfry for Ravenloft (they seriously need to bring back audio adventures), also using 2e rules.
So now I plan to return to some old Ravenloft modules and I asked my group if they wanted to use 5e characters and all 5 of them said, no. I believe the reason why is because they are truly invested in their 2e characters like they have never been in 5e and I feel a lot of satisfaction being there with them in their journey.
I don't really find this surprising at all to be honest with you, my experience has been pretty much the same. I have had many new 5e players join my game over the last few years and I say this not as a boast, it's just truth, one session in my old school D&D game and none of these players ever played in another 5e game again. In fact I had one guy who joined my game just to be disruptive and prove to me that old-school D&D is trash and now he is borrowing my books all the time, texting me questions every bloody day.
Thanks for backing me up on this. I was extremely surprised when my 5e players stayed with 2e when I offered. I have my issues with 2e, but I miss the challenge. As a DM, it really feels good to see my player stressing an encounter, only to pull it off by the skin of their teeth. These are the best moments for me as a DM that keeps me running games. I have players holding onto magic items that are less powerful, only because they earned it from a truly intense encounter. This is great, because I know it's my game, they will be talking about long after its over and when they are at someone else's table.
So, I like 5e because it is “rules lite”, but I can never get away from the problems i see with class dev. There is a middle ground there (and I hope my current project has found it — we’ll see in December) between the “VAST INCREDIBLE POWER” and the need for some kind of struggle, the desire for more magical items, and the “real stakes” aspect of mechanics design.
One of the nice things about the rules lite approach is that you can, if you are watchful, skip 3/3.5/4 entirely and go back to 1e and 2e for solutions that often just need a little brushing off and adjusting slightly to fit the structure of 5e.
I am with you here. I like 5e a lot. It solves many of the issues I had with 1e and 2e. I honestly do think 5e is the better system, even with its flaws. However, I miss the days when players could die at any time. When being poisoned was a serious problem, and not a short rest to recovery. When a trapped door, or chest meant death or near death. I miss when players listened at doors, or had to sneak by mobs to escape attention. I miss players stacking utility spells for some truly awesome problems solving. Now, all the utility spells are concentration, so no one casts them during combat because they will get interrupted with the first damage they take. When's the last time a cleric casted Bless or Aide? They don't because there are better spells to risk concentration on.
This is why I have went back to 2e, and why I think my players are enjoying it more. Not because it's a better system, but because it really gives them some problems solving options and a real challenge. They are rewarded for being cautious, and clever, and using their skills and abilities to solve problems. They can still get powers and abilities like 5e, but you went on epic quests to get them, which is a memorable adventure I would get to craft. You didn't just get them by going up in level. As a DM, this was super fun for me, and my games are always at their best when I am having fun.
This is why I would like to see some advanced rules in the new DMG. I know Crawford promised a special, unrevealed chapter in the new Dungeon Master's Guide. I truly hope its advanced rules that ups the stakes.
but nearly everything you described is part of what we did for the baseline of Wyrlde.
Poison is still a serious problem in some cases, and illness is not something to mess with because we use a modified fatigue system (10 point basis).
Traps can be perceived, but you still have to disarm them.
We decided we would go to a spell point system, and the 5e rule sucked so we kitbashed a bunch and dredged up everything we hated about all the editions. What we ended up with is a spell point system that has verbal and somatic components for all spells, and all spells have a casting time, and for the most part we ignore concentration. Of course, we also simplified damage, expanded the elemental spells, now you do have to take the time to cast a spell and you can get interrupted easily. They cast Bless and other spells a lot, lol.
We also localized the classes — all of them. Wyrlde has no base classes from 5e. People still get something new at every level, but rather than subclasses, they have the ability to pick and choose different capabilities. They can have, as one of my players was so excited the other week about, a Paladin with blood knight powers, lol. It took a year of playtesting to get the design down for them, though. Not quite as superhero, but still pretty impressive.
I am oversimplifying a lot of stuff — but I am working on crafting and vehicles right now, bouncing back to those special abilities later, and working out new combat stuff. This next world is an open world, meaning that really, everything is up to the players. Where they go, what they do, story or no story, they are the decision makers. Which means the world has to have a lot of underlying development while still not having things like town maps or city maps or that kind of thing. And the mechanics need to be able to support that kind of play.
like D&D this is a world that arose out of a thousand player suggestions — my job was to take what they gave me and make it a cohesive whole. and I am nearly finished after 5 years, lol — my deadline is November 30th.
once it is done, I will release the entire set of everything (World, PC generation, Aspects, Magic, House Rules) for free on the website. Not a new game. Still D&D.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm just going to point out that the "the encounter system is flawed and delivers underpowered encounters" bit seems to be partially missing the actual intent behind the CR system. CR is not scaled to provide a truly challenging encounter for an appropriate level party, it's scaled to provide an encounter that an appropriately leveled party can reliably overcome about 6-8 times within a typical adventuring day.
Well aside from the many examples where CR doesn't accurately reflect the challenge of the monster (I'll throw out the famous polymorphing pixie as an example), I'd argue that the 6-8 encounter day is a vital part of the CR system (if a system is dependent on context, that context is not really separate from the system), and perhaps one of its biggest flaws.
What we really need is a more comprehensive system that says "this is what a level X party can handle in a day" and then have ways to break that down into anywhere from 1 to 8 or more encounters. At the very least they need to address the single encounter day which we could then extrapolate a bit for 2 or 3.
I don't use Milesstones because it robs me, the DM of a valuable reward system. In addition to combat, I award bonus experience for avoiding combat, good role-play, solving a puzzle, coming up with a clever solution, and completing side quests. I will sometimes even dock experience for failing quests. If they go murder hobo, they get no experience, or very little. This keeps my players invested in the story. If i need to level them, i will give larger chunks of experience. My games are very dynamic, often with 5 to 6 quests lines going on at once. Its important to keep my players engaged. Its more fun for them, and especially more fun for me, and I get better players.
Milestones are fine for big 1-12 level modules where the players need to reach objectives, but not in a normal game. I did milestones for Dragon Queen and my players where far less interested in the side quests, and the main quests, which would grant levels.
Once again, you are confusing a DM problem for a system problem. You can use “Complete a Side Quest” as grounds for a milestone— it does not need to be a main story milestone. Sure, that means you might need to up level your main story encounters, but you can run into that same problem if you give XP rewards and they grind side quests.
That is not to say XP levelling is wrong or that you are doing something wrong. But the trend in this thread is you posting things which strongly indicate you push players to care about the grind—and then for you to be confused as to why your players care about the grind alone. Something to be cognisant of if you want them to change their habits.
Have you ever heard of Pavlov's dog? Basically it was an experiment conducted in 1897 where they fed a dog food every time a bell rang. Eventually, the dog would get more excited about the bell, than when the food was just given to him. This is called classic conditioning in psychology and people do it too.
Let's say I tell you DnD Dice are $5. You'd probably shrug. Now what if I told you that DnD Dice are on sale for $5. Now, you'd get excited because you are conditioned to look for deals, and the word, "sale" gets your attention, even though they are both the same price. This is how advertisers get you to buy stuff with "For Sale" signs, even though they are retail priced.
Now let's say during my game, I tell my players that when (not if) they complete 3 quests, they will level. They will go about the quests, finish it and gain their reward. Now let's say I will award experience, based on their actions during the quest and not as a condition of completing the quest. They will still level at the end of the quest, because I know, I will award them just enough to experience to level them at the end, but they don't know this. From the player's perspective, they may level sooner and all of them will fear not leveling at all.
Now they are anticipating the reward for their actions, not the just the end objective. They will start acting and behaving differently to get my approval to be awarded experience. Some of them may even start to compete to get the bigger reward. They will start paying attention more to my descriptions, and interacting with intermediate NPCs, because they are afraid to miss an award opportunity. This is because they are anticipating a reward for their actions, just like Pavlov's dog. This makes for a much more exciting and memorable game. It certainly makes it more fun for me to run when I have all my players undivided attention.
They may not remember what milestone they completed to get a level, but they will remember what they did to get enough experience to level.
Most of the complaints here about 5e don't make any sense at all, it's just a bunch of old-timers who prefer the old days (which is totally fine) bashing on the current system because they can.
Not enough challenge? Players level up too fast/too slow? Too many / not enough magic items? Players not scared of traps? Nothing can kill players? You are the DM, you LITERALLY control every single one of those things so if they are true then blame yourself don't blame the system.
Now if you're complaining that the pre-packaged modules that WotC sells nowadays are far too easy as written, then I'll totally agree with you there. But every single complaint I've read so far in this thread about the 5e system is 100% fixable by the DM just choosing to fix it if they want to
I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for outside of rules lite and RP abilities taking center stage.
CoC does only really work within it's own game....but it IS elegant.
I'm not going to deny a nostalgia for red box BECMI basic.
I want 5e to incorporate more of that version than trying to pull from 3.5, which is the exact opposite of the simplicity and bounded accuracy of 5e. I feel the more they crib notes, the quicker it's just going to explode from internal pressure.
They could donate slowed level progression as well, or take the underpowered level 14-ish abilities in many cases and swap them with the nearly broken 6th level features people get. And stop the ASI's.
I know I just said I want to do cool sh** but does this make sense as well?
I don't know if this is a saying or not but it probably should be.
"You can't get what you want if you don't know what you want".
One thing you can do is go back to the original advice of 1st edition AD&D DMG. One aspect of that game was that the point of it was not to take the game as is and play it, the point of those rules was to take them and then piece by piece, adapt, adjust, fiddle and customize until it does what you want. There was not supposed to be 1e AD&D, there is supposed to be YOUR 1e AD&D and every DM would have their own. Take this guy as inspiration if you want to know the real intention of the game Oldest D&D Game
Most of the complaints here about 5e don't make any sense at all, it's just a bunch of old-timers who prefer the old days (which is totally fine) bashing on the current system because they can.
Not enough challenge? Players level up too fast/too slow? Too many / not enough magic items? Players not scared of traps? Nothing can kill players? You are the DM, you LITERALLY control every single one of those things so if they are true then blame yourself don't blame the system.
Now if you're complaining that the pre-packaged modules that WotC sells nowadays are far too easy as written, then I'll totally agree with you there. But every single complaint I've read so far in this thread about the 5e system is 100% fixable by the DM just choosing to fix it if they want to
DrJawaPhD is right about that last part, but the issue he is ignoring as most 5e players do when it comes to complaints about the game, is that if you have enough problems with the system, at what point are there so many problems that adapting the system becomes more work than choosing a system that has done the work for you and just does what you want out of the box. I don't agree its just old timers that have issue with 5e, I have personally never met a single person anywhere who runs 5e D&D that couldn't make a list of problems with the game so long, you can't help but ask the basic question, why the hell are you running it then? Like, this forum is littered with DM's that have countless problems with the game, yet refuse to consider that perhaps adjusting it is more work, than simply finding a system that does the work for them. In the 1e days you really didn't have much choice, there wasn't much to pick from, but today you have the OSR, so you have plenty of options. This stringent idea that you MUST use 5e and just adapt it, because its Wizards of the Coast "official" D&D is a strange attitude, why use/adapt a system you have a problem with rather than buy a system that does exactly what you want?
I think 5e is a very modular system and can be adapted just like any system can but the problem I see is how much effort it takes, how many things you have to strip away and change and the work involved in doing that, just check out AEDorsay's story. 5 years later she is still trying to get what she wants. I can understand the logic of it in the 80's, I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it today, again because we have the OSR. People have been doing this work for you for the last 40 consecutive years, surely you can find something closer to what you want, rather than starting from scratch.
If you really want a D&D construction kit, 1st edition Basic/Expert is the best system for that. Mainly because it's D&D completely stripped down already. It's why most OSR games are based on it. If you are going to design your own version of D&D, this is the best base D&D system to use because there is very little that you need to strip away, you are really just adding things to it you want.
Still that said, I question the wisdom of that given what is already out there. Even with the limited information about what you are asking for I can give you some suggestions that might perhaps get you started.
Five Torches Deep: This is a very stripped-down version of 5th edition that uses an "old school" approach to balance and playstyle. I think its a really great starting point if your intention is to use 5e as a D&D construction kit. It's much easier to start here than it is to start with 5e itself, in particular, if the issue you have with the game is the fact that 5e is a Power Fantasy game and you have a nostalgic tick for old red box.
Shadow Dark: This is another 5e based game, but it steps further away from old-school B/X and more into the realm of 5e. In fact, it essentially is 5e with old school playstyle built into it. I predict this to be a front-runner in the OSR in the future, The Shadow Dark community is basically made up of almost exclusively of 5e refuges. The community is growing at an insane rate. The original kickstarter had 13k pledges, if you re-run it today, it would have 100k. The problem you will have with Shadow Dark is getting a hard copy of it is going to be nearly impossible for the next couple of years.
5e Hardcore Rules: This is a very cheap module available on drive-thru RPG that uses the 5e game but adjusts a bunch of things to make the game a lot more challenging with more earthy survival tones. If you think 5e is too easy and lacks challenges, isn't dangerous enough and suffers under the weight of its own rules, this is a great supplement that fixes many core issues I think 5e players have.
Flee Mortals: At the heart of the core problems in 5e from a design space is actually monster design. The official monster book and the way they design monsters is just awful and its a big part of why 5e has one of the most boring combats of any version of D&D in existence. Its long, slow and the monsters are just hit-point meat puppets, the whole system is designed to waste session time. Flee Mortals is an alternative monster manual for D&D that effectively fixes this problem and essentially fixes D&D combat, I can't recommend it enough.
OId School Essentials with Advanced Fantasy Genre Expansion: Most players who are nostalgic for the old red box are hesitant to pull the trigger because the old books and many of the old rules are just too silly and there are too many issues with organization, structure and adherence to certain concepts like Descending Armor Class, THAC0, the whole race as class thing and stuff like that. Old School Essentials with the Advanced Fantasy Genre Expansion fixes all that and gives you the entire Red Box in two masterfully organized books that make running 1st edition B/X a snap. It's 1st edition B/X done right.
Sometimes what you want is something more focused, a game in a box with setting, story, adventures, rules, everything built into one thing that you can just buy, pick up and run. Forbidden Lands, Dolmenwood and Hyperborea are great for that. All games that are based on D&D, but come with the added luxury of a setting and adventures built into it.
I could make a much more expansive list as the above is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think when considering D&D as a whole today, 5e while very popular with the masses, is really just one game in a sea of amazing games. Don't let its popularity, be the defining factor. McDonalds is the most popular restaurant in America, it doesn't mean its good food, in fact, even people that eat there regularly don't think its good food. 5e D&D is the McDonalds of the RPG world, if you actually like food.. you don't eat there.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm having more fun with 5e D&D than I've had with any prior edition (I started running games in 1983).
Encounter balancing? Magic item distribution? Player investment in characters? Zero problems to report here.
Why?? I think it's a factor of what @AEDorsay is sharing. I know how to DM and have done it for... 40 years now. New DM's don't have that experience and my sincere hope is the next D&D does a far better job of helping new DM's learn the art to craft the stories their tables need. The DM should be the shining showcase and jewel of the D&D message. The influencers... the invested customers, all of it.
No DM? No D&D. Yes, video games and VTT's with automation can simulate it, but they don't scratch the surface (yet).
I just picked up Goodman Games remastering of Temple of Elemental Evil, including the mega dungeons original art. The back cover reprints original 80s art that gives a strong Avenger's/X-Men vibe. Was pretty sure one of them was Magneto.
Just saying.
As to the question asked, it certainly appears that on this forum at least DMs do in fact enjoy playing 5e.
There's also a sort of observer as participant effect going on here. Given the OP's complaints are long known complaints/critiques about 5e, and given the age of the account, I'm presuming these critiques were known to the OP rather than just dawning on them in their most recent 5e play, my guess is these complaints were often DM voiced during 5e play, then when they switched to AD&D or 2e or whatever the DM praised the features. It's not hard to fathom players who have a DM unhappy with one system and happy with the other system are going to think the game is better. Maybe if they played D&D with someone who really liked 5e and found precursor editions tedious, they'd walk away with a different feeling.
This is like cautions Reader Response Theory were aware of back in the 60s and 70s, back when the Avengers were big the first time around. There was a guy in those comics back then who wanted to be on the Avengers but was often written as not quite ready for prime time. But that character had a very important moral to his non Avenger adventuring, "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" anyone trying to get honest player feedback on a system from players while the pollster's in the DMs chair should take that to heart.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I started playing TTRPGs 5.5 years ago with my first experience being with 5e. I moved into DMing maybe about a year after I started and have been pretty much only that since except for the occasional one-shot where I get to be a player. I have to say that my experience has been very different from yours. Each one of my players have a different reason for playing, but most of them are pretty much interested in driving the story forward and/or seeing their character grow (character development, not leveling).
I do give my players magic items. In fact in my campaign, common magic items are well... common. Uncommon are also available for purchase but they are prohibitively expensive. Players buy them or earn them in the field and not all of them require attunement. I do mostly try to make sure that someone can benefit, though I also make sure to give them something they would use in other ways, such as in trade. I once borrowed a suggestion online to have some shady person ask to buy a dagger that didn't benefit anyone in the party really for a large sum of gold, no questions asked. They sold it and now that guy is off stabbing good people probably. I haven't worked him back into the story yet, but I plan to.
Leveling is never the goal either, though I do keep a pulse on how the players feel about the length of time it has been since their last level. I like the rough guide on each level takes a number of sessions equal to the new level, but I approximate it so the players aren't measuring their next level too. Sometimes it's more, sometimes less. Sometimes I give them a level right before a boss encounter so they have some neat abilities they can bring into a big fight. Never really liked getting the neat new features after the big fight myself.
I agree with Caerwyn_Glyndwr. Try to get the players to engage with other elements of the game. There are many ways you can get them to engage in things other than leveling and magical items. There is the main plot, the little nothing side quests that are just kind of fun, PC quests that dig into their backstory, NPC development as they interact with their world, NPC fatalities (mueh he he he) that can lead to a revenge arc, maybe there is a local or country-wide issue that frustrates their main quest and they need to deal with that to get back on the rails. Fill up your world with life and happenings. Nudge them to interact with it in some way. If the players feel like there is nothing but leveling and loot, then maybe your world feels a bit like Diablo, which is a loot crawler by design. There may be some nice curtains and wallpaper on it, but Diablo is a very shallow game.
DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form | He/Him/They/Them
EXTENDED SIGNATURE!
Doctor/Published Scholar/Science and Healthcare Advocate/Critter/Trekkie/Gandalf with a Glock
Try DDB free: Free Rules (2024), premade PCs, adventures, one shots, encounters, SC, homebrew, more
Answers: physical books, purchases, and subbing.
Check out my life-changing
I don't really find this surprising at all to be honest with you, my experience has been pretty much the same. I have had many new 5e players join my game over the last few years and I say this not as a boast, it's just truth, one session in my old school D&D game and none of these players ever played in another 5e game again. In fact I had one guy who joined my game just to be disruptive and prove to me that old-school D&D is trash and now he is borrowing my books all the time, texting me questions every bloody day.
I think the reason is that being a superhero - avenger is a bit like playing in an arcade with unlimited free-credits and full access to all games ever made. It sounds great on the outside, why wouldn't games be better if they are all free-unlimited, but the issue is that the game itself loses its meaning in a way, it ceases to be a challenge, you no longer really have to care about success or worry about failure as it becomes just a matter smashing the free-credits button whenever a set back happens. That is effectively the difference between modern and classic gameplay & playstyle.
Old-school D&D is a game that has tension, there is risk, the game has earthy tones, a gritty fantasy that is often as much about survival as it is about being a hero. This style of play is built into the mechanic and there is an addictive nature to achieving success in it, because it's so easy to fail, even though it can sometimes be frustrating.
I think on the back end, old-school D&D also gives players a sense of growth and as some have pointed out, you slowly grow into superhero status and that journey is long, challenging and arduous. This aspect of the game is also very addictive because your power doesn't grow just from leveling up, but from a combination of learned player skills, magic items, wealth and influence earned through self-motivated ambitions.
I think this is why modern 5e converted players are actually some of the best players in my group, They allow themselves to have attachments to the characters they make which makes the whole experience that much more tense, the risks that much more real to them, it's all very vivid with them. It makes the challenges so much more meaningful to them.
5e is basically a huge shortcut, it's instant gratification, you start at the end and despite all the power you get players still complain that it's never enough. Modern gamers have been spoiled, but I don't think they want to be, I think they want the hardship, they desire the challenge and earned advancement. It's just hard to put a quarter in the machine and risk something when right next door everything is free. I think those who do take that step back into the old school discover how amazing D&D can actually be when you have to earn your stripes through gritted teeth.
That said, its a pretty tough argument to make to reluctant 5e players who think they already have everything they want because.. well its true, 5e players have everything and anything they want right from the start of the game. How do you convince them that they should want to earn things that they get for free through hardship, and repeated, frustrating failures? It doesn't sound fun at all so I can't really blame people for making that point.
To answer the OPS question more directly, I don't think there is much you can do with 5e in regards to "rewarding" players. The game relies on the story and role-playing experience being the reward. If it's not enough, you're screwed.
As a player I'm not having much fun. As a DM, it's the world building that brings me joy and I hate combat.
It's not just the players wanting to be gods, and truthfully they already are if you see it through the dm lens, but even with all that power they feel limited.
I watch people saying other games like CoC, and honestly, I'm a bit envious, though not for the reasons you'd think.
It's the fact that the ability system, not combat, that take center stage.
Even with all the advancements towards more to that d&d has done still pale in comparison to the combat system. The combat system that is carefully bounded between essentially 10-15 numbers based on some pluses and minuses rolled on a single d20... ranges so tight that all you can fit in are a success or failure.
As a player I like the current "super powers" but I feel that the d20system constrains it too much and they just can't function against the monsters. Too much save or suck.
And I really hate everyone who says pathfinder is the answer. I don't want crunchy mechanics, tables and charts and references and all the baggage of 3 and 3.5. I want a system that breathes and let's me be the rogue or warlock or sorcerer that I want to be.
Pathfinder 2e is a great system so far as modern systems go if for no other reason than the fact that at every level, the game is so balanced. You feel constraints and fights are as tough and tactical at 1st level as they are at 20th level. So at the very least, the crunch is well thought out, and applied well even though there is an insane amount of it.
I personally don't think the game is sustainable, it's just way too many rules, too many considerations when creating adventures. It's also extremely combat-focused which results in a crazy long combat. On average even a small combat takes about 2 hours with 5 players.
I don't think it's the answer for 5e players, it's more like an answer for 3rd edition players who actually liked the whole feat-driven D&D. I mean in PF2e you get 2-3 feats every level for most classes.
CoC is a great system and great game, but it only works for that specific genre.
Castles and Crusades is probably the game you're looking for if you want the game to be focused on the ability system. At its core, Castles and Crusade is how D&D would have developed if TSR made the 3rd edition of D&D.
I'm not looking for feats.
I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for outside of rules lite and RP abilities taking center stage.
CoC does only really work within it's own game....but it IS elegant.
I'm not going to deny a nostalgia for red box BECMI basic.
I want 5e to incorporate more of that version than trying to pull from 3.5, which is the exact opposite of the simplicity and bounded accuracy of 5e. I feel the more they crib notes, the quicker it's just going to explode from internal pressure.
They could donate slowed level progression as well, or take the underpowered level 14-ish abilities in many cases and swap them with the nearly broken 6th level features people get. And stop the ASI's.
I know I just said I want to do cool sh** but does this make sense as well?
Heh.
So, I like 5e because it is “rules lite”, but I can never get away from the problems i see with class dev. There is a middle ground there (and I hope my current project has found it — we’ll see in December) between the “VAST INCREDIBLE POWER” and the need for some kind of struggle, the desire for more magical items, and the “real stakes” aspect of mechanics design.
One of the nice things about the rules lite approach is that you can, if you are watchful, skip 3/3.5/4 entirely and go back to 1e and 2e for solutions that often just need a little brushing off and adjusting slightly to fit the structure of 5e.
There is a lot of talk about bounded accuracy, but as I have noted before, that hasn’t been the case for several years, because the designers sorta broke it, lol. Then the players broke it more, lol. There is a fix (shift the basis), but it means basically going into every table and adjusting them slightly and let me tell you, it is a pain to do.
the big concern a lot of players have is that while a lot of them do want that more “old-style” of play, they don’t want to give up the ability to be as flexible with character design as the current system allows. THe current system which has essentially blended the hell out of the core archetypes so that to us longer players feels like they stripped them of their distinctive qualities, and now it is just a numbers game.
Their approach has been to just give out more subclasses and then add in feats, but what if there were no subclasses? Just classes, and a big ole honkin list of feats that folks can pick from (with requirements and all that, yes) at different times — and that list doesn’t have any of the base core abilities for each class on it. It becomes a way to personally develop your character over time, gives the ability to more effectively balance those feats/special abilities against each other, and gives your minmaxers a whole new paradigm to figure out.
We don’t have to go to a new system: 5e is flexible enough to do all of that. No, it isn’t “official”, but most of the folks I know who have played for decades think of “official” as “a really strong suggestion”.
Now, it is important to note something about 3/3.5 and later…
WotC was started by a bunch of D&D Players who wanted to bring some of the card game stuff they liked into the D&D game and ended up creating Magic the Gathering to fulfill their player fantasies. So when they bought TSR, and made those version, it was absolutely done by a bunch of players who were used to that — that is the corporate culture, really, at some level.
I never liked 3.5. I liked nothing about it. I wasn’t fond of the entire thing, nor was I fond of the 2e chapbooks that preceded it. I didn't like 4 at all — it read like something a player who did a lot of Diablo would write. D&D is not a video game. I also understand it was an effort to break free of past stuff, but damn, it was bad with few good ideas. PF and PF2 are nightmares that I Agee will crack under the weight of their own rules, but those are the hard school super crunchy sorts, and if I think D&D folks can be rigid, you can likely guess my overall take on a lot of them. Plus, it is a fork of my least favorite version.
My player group felt much the same way. When we tried 5e, it was a “well, it can’t be as bad as X, right? Right?” Kind of trepidation, and we all really liked it except we missed (and still miss) some of our old crunch. Not the icky stuff like encumbrance, lol, but the fun stuff like building a stronghold or wilderness adventures or other stuff like that.
So, slowly, we have been adding them back in. Mostly me, because that seems to be my role, my thing, and something they think I am at least “okay” at doing. But I am also a game mechanics nerd, so…
Old School role playing is closer to what we do, but we still work very much within the 5e realm of stuff, and it is a big ting to say that over the last decade we all went from playing maybe on D&D game every other month with several other games being played, to just playing D&D again. TO me, that says a LOT when you are talking about people who have been playing since the early 80’s, whose kids all play now and whose grandkids (in some cases) are playing, and whose friends play, even though we are scattered all over the western US.
That’s the opposite of the OP — we shifted from mostly 2e to 5e, but we are bringing what we loved from 2e with us — and what we get is a game very much like what we like, as long as we don’t use the default classes, lol.
(Spoiler, we do about half the time).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I don't use Milesstones because it robs me, the DM of a valuable reward system. In addition to combat, I award bonus experience for avoiding combat, good role-play, solving a puzzle, coming up with a clever solution, and completing side quests. I will sometimes even dock experience for failing quests. If they go murder hobo, they get no experience, or very little. This keeps my players invested in the story. If i need to level them, i will give larger chunks of experience. My games are very dynamic, often with 5 to 6 quests lines going on at once. Its important to keep my players engaged. Its more fun for them, and especially more fun for me, and I get better players.
Milestones are fine for big 1-12 level modules where the players need to reach objectives, but not in a normal game. I did milestones for Dragon Queen and my players where far less interested in the side quests, and the main quests, which would grant levels.
^^^^^^^^^^
This is everything for me.
Including giving them a list of (sorry, here I differ) class specific traits to choose from and the hate for it to become more and more of a numbers game.
I want each class's combat mechanics to function radically differently so you don't feel like a sorcerer is a wizard is a bard is a cleric, or a fighter is a monk is a barbarian is a ranger is a paladin is a rogue.
And I don't want a thousand rules, I just want flexible ones.
Once again, you are confusing a DM problem for a system problem. You can use “Complete a Side Quest” as grounds for a milestone— it does not need to be a main story milestone. Sure, that means you might need to up level your main story encounters, but you can run into that same problem if you give XP rewards and they grind side quests.
That is not to say XP levelling is wrong or that you are doing something wrong. But the trend in this thread is you posting things which strongly indicate you push players to care about the grind—and then for you to be confused as to why your players care about the grind alone. Something to be cognisant of if you want them to change their habits.
I have been DMing for 35 years, and have run about every major system and a several lesser known ones. Balancing encounters is something i am extremely good at, and I still say 5e is superpowered characters. In the earlier levels its fine, but by level 8, its not too difficult to have a single character doing 60-100 points of damage a round, with no magical gear. I had a Curse of Strahd game where I would not allow the players to take a Long Rest inside the castle. The complained and whined about it, but I promised them it would be a better game. By the time they got to Strahd, they had to be very clever about it, and two of the players even got thrown out of 3 story window, before they defeated him. It was pretty epic and the players felt very rewarded by it (I learned from a prior mistake the year before, where the paladin smited him with a crit).
Then to prove my point, i had them face off against all the boss battles they missed in an all out brawl. They fought, Baba Lysaga, the 3 hags, the reverent, the Jade Golem, and the Lich from the Amber Temple, all at once. It was a tough battle, but they still won, with less effort than they had against Strahd with their resources depleted. I
As to your second criticism, I run very involved games. I will often run 3-5 quest lines at once. I will pit them against opposing factions, and all their actions will have repercussions. In the same Curse of Strahd game above, I had my players making side deals with a disguised Strahd who was posing as their benefactor. I have a simple rule when it comes to crafting a game.
"Roleplay doesn't happen between combats, it happens during combat and out of combat. It happens during dungeon crawls, it happens between sessions. Whenever the players say, I want to do this, that's role-play. Role-playing is not talking in a funny voice. Role-play is talking, and dictating your characters actions, and reactions at all times."
The biggest obstacle I had with running ADnD2e was stopping the players from just walking through every door, or busting up every chest. Like I said, 5e characters are super heroes, there is absolutely nothing that will instant kill them. They are afraid of nothing. In previous editions, you always checked for traps, and listened at doors, and a poison dart meant death.
I use a modified milestone system (right now, 270 total milestone points to reach 20th level) and while you get a milestone when you are here and play, you get more for achieving certain objectives.
For all the stuff you mentioned that you give experience points for, I give hero points for. Also a modified system, but only in that you aren’t limited to set number. Has nothing to do with any story, and hero points can be exchanged for milestones (10 to 1).
Both can also be used to modify dice rolls, as pretty much normal for the hero points or inspiration (which I also use).
I run an “open world” with a lot of hooks and story elements as well as a fairly standard, complex story that has multiple layers and involves the character stories in it (including romance, if desired).
Very dynamic, entirely player driven with the exception of one event that they may or may not ever encounter, lol. I also track time, and have background events happen, regardless of their traipsing into my web of adventure or not, lol. Some plots start halfway through, others only show up in the highest tier, and all that. I enjoy it, and my outline is ginormous at 227 pages for all 21 main adventures (then you add the 115 for side quests and other stuff).
So, It isn’t so much the milestones as how you use them.
The funny part? I always still list the XP requirements. Hard to break that habit from 1e, lol. Right now, to make 20th level it takes 375,000 XP, but we do it so that you have to earn and spend them to get a level, so the total that way is 2,234,500 XP.
Even if they never do a single bit of my adventures, they need 270 sessions to make 20th level, and that would generally equal out to about the same amount of experience (which is how we figured out those numbers, lol — a decade of 5e gives us a lot of data to work with).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Thanks for backing me up on this. I was extremely surprised when my 5e players stayed with 2e when I offered. I have my issues with 2e, but I miss the challenge. As a DM, it really feels good to see my player stressing an encounter, only to pull it off by the skin of their teeth. These are the best moments for me as a DM that keeps me running games. I have players holding onto magic items that are less powerful, only because they earned it from a truly intense encounter. This is great, because I know it's my game, they will be talking about long after its over and when they are at someone else's table.
Quote from AEDorsay>>
I am with you here. I like 5e a lot. It solves many of the issues I had with 1e and 2e. I honestly do think 5e is the better system, even with its flaws. However, I miss the days when players could die at any time. When being poisoned was a serious problem, and not a short rest to recovery. When a trapped door, or chest meant death or near death. I miss when players listened at doors, or had to sneak by mobs to escape attention. I miss players stacking utility spells for some truly awesome problems solving. Now, all the utility spells are concentration, so no one casts them during combat because they will get interrupted with the first damage they take. When's the last time a cleric casted Bless or Aide? They don't because there are better spells to risk concentration on.
This is why I have went back to 2e, and why I think my players are enjoying it more. Not because it's a better system, but because it really gives them some problems solving options and a real challenge. They are rewarded for being cautious, and clever, and using their skills and abilities to solve problems. They can still get powers and abilities like 5e, but you went on epic quests to get them, which is a memorable adventure I would get to craft. You didn't just get them by going up in level. As a DM, this was super fun for me, and my games are always at their best when I am having fun.
This is why I would like to see some advanced rules in the new DMG. I know Crawford promised a special, unrevealed chapter in the new Dungeon Master's Guide. I truly hope its advanced rules that ups the stakes.
2e was way better if you were being a rogue, lol.
but nearly everything you described is part of what we did for the baseline of Wyrlde.
Poison is still a serious problem in some cases, and illness is not something to mess with because we use a modified fatigue system (10 point basis).
Traps can be perceived, but you still have to disarm them.
We decided we would go to a spell point system, and the 5e rule sucked so we kitbashed a bunch and dredged up everything we hated about all the editions. What we ended up with is a spell point system that has verbal and somatic components for all spells, and all spells have a casting time, and for the most part we ignore concentration. Of course, we also simplified damage, expanded the elemental spells, now you do have to take the time to cast a spell and you can get interrupted easily. They cast Bless and other spells a lot, lol.
We also localized the classes — all of them. Wyrlde has no base classes from 5e. People still get something new at every level, but rather than subclasses, they have the ability to pick and choose different capabilities. They can have, as one of my players was so excited the other week about, a Paladin with blood knight powers, lol. It took a year of playtesting to get the design down for them, though. Not quite as superhero, but still pretty impressive.
I am oversimplifying a lot of stuff — but I am working on crafting and vehicles right now, bouncing back to those special abilities later, and working out new combat stuff. This next world is an open world, meaning that really, everything is up to the players. Where they go, what they do, story or no story, they are the decision makers. Which means the world has to have a lot of underlying development while still not having things like town maps or city maps or that kind of thing. And the mechanics need to be able to support that kind of play.
like D&D this is a world that arose out of a thousand player suggestions — my job was to take what they gave me and make it a cohesive whole. and I am nearly finished after 5 years, lol — my deadline is November 30th.
once it is done, I will release the entire set of everything (World, PC generation, Aspects, Magic, House Rules) for free on the website. Not a new game. Still D&D.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Have you ever heard of Pavlov's dog? Basically it was an experiment conducted in 1897 where they fed a dog food every time a bell rang. Eventually, the dog would get more excited about the bell, than when the food was just given to him. This is called classic conditioning in psychology and people do it too.
Let's say I tell you DnD Dice are $5. You'd probably shrug. Now what if I told you that DnD Dice are on sale for $5. Now, you'd get excited because you are conditioned to look for deals, and the word, "sale" gets your attention, even though they are both the same price. This is how advertisers get you to buy stuff with "For Sale" signs, even though they are retail priced.
Now let's say during my game, I tell my players that when (not if) they complete 3 quests, they will level. They will go about the quests, finish it and gain their reward. Now let's say I will award experience, based on their actions during the quest and not as a condition of completing the quest. They will still level at the end of the quest, because I know, I will award them just enough to experience to level them at the end, but they don't know this. From the player's perspective, they may level sooner and all of them will fear not leveling at all.
Now they are anticipating the reward for their actions, not the just the end objective. They will start acting and behaving differently to get my approval to be awarded experience. Some of them may even start to compete to get the bigger reward. They will start paying attention more to my descriptions, and interacting with intermediate NPCs, because they are afraid to miss an award opportunity. This is because they are anticipating a reward for their actions, just like Pavlov's dog. This makes for a much more exciting and memorable game. It certainly makes it more fun for me to run when I have all my players undivided attention.
They may not remember what milestone they completed to get a level, but they will remember what they did to get enough experience to level.
This is why I grant XP and not milestones.
Most of the complaints here about 5e don't make any sense at all, it's just a bunch of old-timers who prefer the old days (which is totally fine) bashing on the current system because they can.
Not enough challenge? Players level up too fast/too slow? Too many / not enough magic items? Players not scared of traps? Nothing can kill players? You are the DM, you LITERALLY control every single one of those things so if they are true then blame yourself don't blame the system.
Now if you're complaining that the pre-packaged modules that WotC sells nowadays are far too easy as written, then I'll totally agree with you there. But every single complaint I've read so far in this thread about the 5e system is 100% fixable by the DM just choosing to fix it if they want to
I don't know if this is a saying or not but it probably should be.
"You can't get what you want if you don't know what you want".
One thing you can do is go back to the original advice of 1st edition AD&D DMG. One aspect of that game was that the point of it was not to take the game as is and play it, the point of those rules was to take them and then piece by piece, adapt, adjust, fiddle and customize until it does what you want. There was not supposed to be 1e AD&D, there is supposed to be YOUR 1e AD&D and every DM would have their own. Take this guy as inspiration if you want to know the real intention of the game Oldest D&D Game
DrJawaPhD is right about that last part, but the issue he is ignoring as most 5e players do when it comes to complaints about the game, is that if you have enough problems with the system, at what point are there so many problems that adapting the system becomes more work than choosing a system that has done the work for you and just does what you want out of the box. I don't agree its just old timers that have issue with 5e, I have personally never met a single person anywhere who runs 5e D&D that couldn't make a list of problems with the game so long, you can't help but ask the basic question, why the hell are you running it then? Like, this forum is littered with DM's that have countless problems with the game, yet refuse to consider that perhaps adjusting it is more work, than simply finding a system that does the work for them. In the 1e days you really didn't have much choice, there wasn't much to pick from, but today you have the OSR, so you have plenty of options. This stringent idea that you MUST use 5e and just adapt it, because its Wizards of the Coast "official" D&D is a strange attitude, why use/adapt a system you have a problem with rather than buy a system that does exactly what you want?
I think 5e is a very modular system and can be adapted just like any system can but the problem I see is how much effort it takes, how many things you have to strip away and change and the work involved in doing that, just check out AEDorsay's story. 5 years later she is still trying to get what she wants. I can understand the logic of it in the 80's, I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it today, again because we have the OSR. People have been doing this work for you for the last 40 consecutive years, surely you can find something closer to what you want, rather than starting from scratch.
If you really want a D&D construction kit, 1st edition Basic/Expert is the best system for that. Mainly because it's D&D completely stripped down already. It's why most OSR games are based on it. If you are going to design your own version of D&D, this is the best base D&D system to use because there is very little that you need to strip away, you are really just adding things to it you want.
Still that said, I question the wisdom of that given what is already out there. Even with the limited information about what you are asking for I can give you some suggestions that might perhaps get you started.
Five Torches Deep: This is a very stripped-down version of 5th edition that uses an "old school" approach to balance and playstyle. I think its a really great starting point if your intention is to use 5e as a D&D construction kit. It's much easier to start here than it is to start with 5e itself, in particular, if the issue you have with the game is the fact that 5e is a Power Fantasy game and you have a nostalgic tick for old red box.
Shadow Dark: This is another 5e based game, but it steps further away from old-school B/X and more into the realm of 5e. In fact, it essentially is 5e with old school playstyle built into it. I predict this to be a front-runner in the OSR in the future, The Shadow Dark community is basically made up of almost exclusively of 5e refuges. The community is growing at an insane rate. The original kickstarter had 13k pledges, if you re-run it today, it would have 100k. The problem you will have with Shadow Dark is getting a hard copy of it is going to be nearly impossible for the next couple of years.
5e Hardcore Rules: This is a very cheap module available on drive-thru RPG that uses the 5e game but adjusts a bunch of things to make the game a lot more challenging with more earthy survival tones. If you think 5e is too easy and lacks challenges, isn't dangerous enough and suffers under the weight of its own rules, this is a great supplement that fixes many core issues I think 5e players have.
Flee Mortals: At the heart of the core problems in 5e from a design space is actually monster design. The official monster book and the way they design monsters is just awful and its a big part of why 5e has one of the most boring combats of any version of D&D in existence. Its long, slow and the monsters are just hit-point meat puppets, the whole system is designed to waste session time. Flee Mortals is an alternative monster manual for D&D that effectively fixes this problem and essentially fixes D&D combat, I can't recommend it enough.
OId School Essentials with Advanced Fantasy Genre Expansion: Most players who are nostalgic for the old red box are hesitant to pull the trigger because the old books and many of the old rules are just too silly and there are too many issues with organization, structure and adherence to certain concepts like Descending Armor Class, THAC0, the whole race as class thing and stuff like that. Old School Essentials with the Advanced Fantasy Genre Expansion fixes all that and gives you the entire Red Box in two masterfully organized books that make running 1st edition B/X a snap. It's 1st edition B/X done right.
Sometimes what you want is something more focused, a game in a box with setting, story, adventures, rules, everything built into one thing that you can just buy, pick up and run. Forbidden Lands, Dolmenwood and Hyperborea are great for that. All games that are based on D&D, but come with the added luxury of a setting and adventures built into it.
I could make a much more expansive list as the above is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think when considering D&D as a whole today, 5e while very popular with the masses, is really just one game in a sea of amazing games. Don't let its popularity, be the defining factor. McDonalds is the most popular restaurant in America, it doesn't mean its good food, in fact, even people that eat there regularly don't think its good food. 5e D&D is the McDonalds of the RPG world, if you actually like food.. you don't eat there.
*she.
AEDorsay is ….
Antonia Elle “Toni” D’orsay, PhD, MS, MA
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Apologies and corrected