I love the fact that it is considered the definitive edition that resists the need to change rules every few years, prioritises the fanbase and brings together communities!!!!
:)
On the one hand, all very good thing sounding things, and actually yea, bringing together communities and prioritizing the fanbase are great things (though I disagree that wotc, or at least hasbro, prioritize the fans). However, having a definitive edition, is not actually as great as it sounds. That is kinda like having the definition genre of movie which resists change and pushes all other genres of film to sidelines so all you see is slight variations of the same film with new characters. That said, being the definitive edition certainly makes finding players easier.
[Redacted]
Comparing D&D (a system) to a film genera (a category of storytelling) is nonsensical. You are effectively comparing apples to a machine that makes orange juice. If D&D had a rule that said “you can only use heroic fantasy” that would be comparable to “what if there was only one definitive film genera” - but that category to category comparison would be utterly ridiculous and is not going to happen.
Now, there is a system to system comparison you can make - D&D’s rule system to the near-universally accepted system of 24 frames per second camera, film, and projection. And you know what that has done to stifle creativity within that system? Nothing. We’ve seen countless movies with countless plots telling countless stories… all within that same system. The same is true of 5e - folks are perfectly capable of using 5e in a manner that addresses every single problem you have raised.
I like 5e because it is fun to play with rules that are easy for newcomers to grasp. It is a wonderful way to introduce people to TTRPGs and that certainly was my experience.
The mechanics were intended to be reflective of the world, an inextricable connection, the sort of thing where if you changed a mechanic, it was to better reflect the narrative milieu. Hence arguments over the weight of daggers.
Well, now, that can't be true. You've noted, several times, that the rules could just be ignored. That would include those rules. So, that means those rules do not, in fact reflect the world, or the narrative mechanic.
If they were rules that could not be ignored, then that might be true -- but that, of course, would make the game less popular, and more rule bound than 5e, making it less effective at meeting the needs of its intended audience.
Then you get a push to make all classes get their subclasses at level three. Why? It has nothing to do with the narrative milieu.
How do you now that? I can think of at least a dozen reasons, narratively, within the milieu, for the classes to all start at level 3. And that's just the published worlds.
because the interpretation depends a lot on the real world knowledge and experience that informs one's decisions and opinions on the matter.
That's deeply, deeply flawed on multiple levels, the first of which is the fundamental assumption that people want their fantasy to match the real world. If nothing else, 1e, 2e, and 5e (as well as B/X/BECMI) have proven that people for the most part do not want that. They want to be able to shout in outer space and be heard. And yes, in D&D. Just as they have for over 30 years. Realism is not what the Community wants, and they do not want simulations. If they did, combat in D&D would be a lot different.
The only way to prevent the issue of mechanics being so widely interpretable is to eliminate everything outside the mechanics from influencing the mechanics.
You do realize this is a Fantasy game that people are playing, correct? I ask, because you sound a lot like ole N. Robin Cross did right there. I love Harn, sure, but, um, nah.
Also, you just really irked the hell out of me. Personal problem, but the purpose of the mechanics is to enable the fantasy, and that means they depend on the lore , and the lore should be specific to the particular setting, and I get all of that from my roots in the game -- roots that created the very game itself.
But, now we have a good identification on your play style and your design theory.
I mean sure we can all agree the sky is blue, but even then you have the people who mention that the sky isn't always blue.
Oh, you really don't want to hear about the cultures that have no concept of blue. Real cultures. On earth, Right now, present day.
3.x was designed to be guidelines, it was not designed for "crystal clear interpretation" because playing the game means that crystal clear interpretation is basically impossible.
Hmmm. I feel like this contradicts something else I read recently.
The mechanics were intended to be reflective of the world, an inextricable connection, the sort of thing where if you changed a mechanic, it was to better reflect the narrative milieu.
So, Not Rules but still Rules. Just, you know, rules like real stuff. Not fantasy. not imaginary and pretend and make believe, but real, realism, realistic.
And people wonder why I loathe 3.x so much.
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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 use colored pencils pretty frequently, and paints never, so I understand the metaphor a little more exactly, perhaps, but the assertion is still that there is more color, more capability in 3.5 than there is 5e, and that the reason it is there is because it have a rule for everything.
It is an argument that the "one true way" is 3.5, with its paints (the true medium of art), and that those pencils are just child's play -- dismissive and rude. It's elitist, as ewell, but that's a separate issue.
The catch, though is that there is nothing you can do in 3.5 that you cannot do in 5e -- and if you are creative in the "wrong" way, then the effort to do it is the same: you still have to make up all the rules for it. All of which comes back to the point raised earlier: 5e is popular because it doesn't have a ton of rules.
My games are routinely cross genre -- as I said, I came from 2e, where genere crossing was common and ordinary, so we brought that with us when we hit 5e. My current setting is an entire solar system. Space colonies, space stations, asteroid outposts, ships that sail the solar winds -- all of that's there. The main planet, well, you get a vehicle up high enough (including a flying carpet for a broom) and if you can dress warm enough, you can head to space.
There's one rule set for that whole shift. Same rules that apply on the ground apply in space. That matters because there's a plan for that -- and I didn't need to invent new rules to make that happen -- just use the rules already present.
Those rules are the same rules used for all the travel in environments.
Now, if you want to say "believability" or "immersion" or "realism", well, go right ahead. truly. Because this is a Fantasy Setting. It is not a "heroic", or "Low" or "sword and sandal" or "urban" or " modern" or "ancient" version of that genre -- it is just a Fantasy setting. Like Greyhawk. Like Eberron. Like Forgotten Realms. Like most worlds.
I place a dividing line between Realism and Realistic -- and you can toss the first one our the door. There's even a bunch of science that goes into my description of the above (actual science), but it is there to serve to the fantasy, not to be a "realism simulation" and trust me, most current D&D players do not want a simulation.
I already had my go around there, lol. Pretty sure OSR was there, too.
it is true that one can throw out all the rules that one isn't going to use. I would throw out pretty much all of the ones that 3.5 has that don't match 5e -- and if you look hard, you'll see that's all still very much there under the hood. Because I don't like those rules. They are, to me, as an individual, poorly done and error filled.
So, yay, now I am playing 3.5 using the rules you seem to want to be used, and...
It would still be 5e to anyone who looked at it, because I don't use book classes or species, and so the only thing they would recognize is the core mechanics -- which are simplified, because if you tear a bunch of 3.5 rules out, you have to fix all the bleeding holes in them since they were all very interconnected and interdependent in the name of the great myth of b-a-l-a-n-c-e.
But that wouldn't work for your argument, because that would mean that 5e is just a simpler version of 3.5 -- and it is that.
The issue is that you do not appear to want that simplicity. You seem to want more crunch, more complexity, which, again, is not something that works to the benefit of the game as a whole. And Hasbro is not going to add more complexity to a game that is succeeding because it lacks it -- that's unwise, and bad for business.
that's an argument you won't win, and even if you had a bunch of supporters (and you do -- a whole company of them, run by someone who worked for Wizards once upon a time -- as well as an entire company of dedicated folks who just, wait, let me look...
... created a simplified version of their 3.5 rules.).
So now I have to wonder what the goal here is. Perhaps it is getting enough folks interested in an old version of the game to play it. Except, as I will pointedly remind you, the website you are on does not support any old versions of the game. And the new players -- who outnumber all the players of all the older versions combined -- only want stuff that is supported here.
Hell, most of them don't know you can buy all the old editions of the game on DMs Guild. They don't care.
What they will care about is someone telling them they aren't using the right medium for their grand visions when what they have is working wonderfully.
First, I'm not saying 5e is doing it wrong. I'm saying that for some reason, most people tend to inherently not understand a particular alternative unless introduced to rpgs in a particular way, and I have not found a way around that. I have plenty of people who claim to understand the point I make, then they continue to prove otherwise. Which tells me the issue is fundamental, psychological, and profound. Yet I can introduce entirely new players and most will get it when introduced the right way. Which also means the issue is not one of intelligence or some immutable trait. Most new players who don't get it, have plenty of videogame experience, which suggests some commonality there. This alternative is something worth being widely recognized. Does not need to be everyone's favorite, or even enjoyable to everyone, but it doesn't deserve to die in obscurity either.
I'm not saying 5e is bad or horrible. 5e is not even the cause. Makes it more front and center perhaps, because it is so much the definitive version of the game as one of the others here said.
Second, I think you really need to consider what a rule is. I'm trying to break the habit of calling them rules, and use the term mechanics instead. Why? Because rules are codes of behavior intended to be followed, lines to be not-crossed. When you see mechanics as rules, that is what they become, lines to not be crossed. 3.x does not treat the mechanics as rules, regardless of the terminology. 3.x does not have a bunch of rules. Most of what is written is reference points. What are the DCs for the listen skill? Those are not "must use these DCs" mechanics, they are "here is a reference frame that you can lean on to set DCs for what you want to describe." Thus, you really don't them. But without them, you have to figure out for yourself what a good DC is that fits. Leaving that issue blank, is not freedom, it is lack of support, it is putting more work on the DM to achieve any sort of consistency in rulings, and in making the DCs reflect their world. Now some may just not care about either of those. That is fine. Those are people who should not be using 3.5.
Third, I'm not arguing that 3.5 is the one true way.In fact, the thing I'm discussing is not about 3.5. 3.5 was designed for it, which sets 3.5 apart from modern systems really. Modern systems, whether they go crunchy like Palladium, or rules light like a one page rpg or even if they storytelling instead of rpg like PbtA, they all treat mechanics like rules in a way that is unlike 3.5. Thus I use it as my main example. But it doesn't have to be 3.5. I could play in the style I talking about with other systems, even 5e, but 5e is not suited for it and the 5e mechanics constantly get in the way and they don't provide the support I desire (well that was the playtest when it came out. I haven't bothered playing since because the mechanics kept getting in the way).
Heck, the majority of people who don't play the mechanics, just don't use mechanics at all, and play freeform. You could that the style I'm discussing is like playing freeform but with mechanics.
Fourth, I am not dismissing the playstyle that 5e promotes. Monochrome sketches are still around today, and they have a place. But I feel like everyone is so strongly attached to monochrome sketches, they just never bother with paints, and then they reject paints as being more restrictive and less creative. I can perfectly well believe that they are wrong about paints without believing that sketches are bad.
Fifth "because if you tear a bunch of 3.5 rules out, you have to fix all the bleeding holes in them since they were all very interconnected and interdependent in the name of the great myth of b-a-l-a-n-c-e." 3.5 was never about balance. That is a really incorrect notion. 3.5 was meant to communicate, and meant to have encounters of such a wide variety, that if an encounter was higher or lower in difficulty than intended, no one would notice, because some encounters would be much easier or much harder anyway, and that means being a balanced encounter is a non-issue. it literally has no place because it would be unnoticeable. The whole balance thing comes from the people who play the mechanics. And they spent a ton of time complaining about the lack of balance in 3.5. Heck, many of the proponents of 4e that I know hailed 4e as "finally, a balanced edition."
And the rules are not that interconnected. They have a unified base, and that is very different. To rip out mechanics that would leave bleeding holes, you either get something very core to mechanics, like the saves, which are very few, or you get something that needs fixed one way or another anyway, like figuring out what DC to make perception checks, which is something you need in 5e too, so you don't exactly get to escape that and call it a bleeding hole because you ripped out the spot and listen DCs.
Sixth "But that wouldn't work for your argument, because that would mean that 5e is just a simpler version of 3.5 -- and it is that." 5e is absolutely a simpler version of 3.5, but a lot of what 5e did change, were related to 3.5 not supporting "playing the mechanics." Thus 5e is a simplified 3.5, if 3.5 were designed for playing the mechanics. Other aspects changed too, such as the scale. A separate aspect I enjoyed about 3.5 was how it could smoothly scale from a common person up to literal gods at the same time and work well for both and all in between. 5e doesn't do that, it starts higher and ends lower while becoming so vague and detached from the world that you can't even really try to fix it either.
Seventh, "You seem to want more crunch, more complexity, " NO! I do not want more complexity. I find it useful, but I'd take something simpler than 5e if it supported the mindset I am discussing. Heck, I am considering just taking it on to pare 3.5 down to the nibs, while keeping the important aspects I'm discussing, just to point out that complexity vs simplicity is not the issue at all.
Eighth "So now I have to wonder what the goal here is. Perhaps it is getting enough folks interested in an old version of the game to play it. Except, as I will pointedly remind you, the website you are on does not support any old versions of the game. And the new players -- who outnumber all the players of all the older versions combined -- only want stuff that is supported here."
My goal is to try and better understand the mindset. As I said before, most people if introduced to RPGs by people playing in my style, will understand my style just fine. But those who are not introduced to RPGs by playing my style, very quickly become practically incapable of learning it, and either play the mechanics or play freeform. I want to know why. I want to be able to teach people who already play RPGs how to play my style. No I don't expect all or even most to prefer my style. But the fact that I can find new players of my style only by finding people who have never played RPGs or videogames is a massive problem that will only ever get worse, as you may have noticed, fewer and fewer people out there are new to videogames and RPGs. Eventually, RPGs will be like music, everyone will be familiar with them. Where will my style of play be then if only newbies can learn my style? It would be something that literally could only be passed down parent-like figure to child.
Now I'm sure it won't quite reach that extreme, but it doesn't need to in order for me to never again meet another player that can play like me. It's already been over a decade since I last played in my preferred style because I haven't had anyone to play that way with, haven't seen anyone playing that way in nearly as long.
Ninth, "What they will care about is someone telling them they aren't using the right medium for their grand visions when what they have is working wonderfully." I'm glad the system works well for you and others, but I'm alone out here with no one to play the way I enjoy most, and I can't turn to veterans because I can't them to understand my way of playing even if they were open to trying something new. And the players I do find and try to communicate with all tell me they know what I'm talking about, then go right on proving otherwise.
I'm not telling you that you aren't using the right medium for your grand vision. I'm telling you that there are other visions out there just as grand as yours that can't be seen with your mindset. And I'm telling you, that it often feels as though the big companies are building to support their one true wayism. Whether they are or not, it still feels that way. It still feels lonely to have had the greatest experiences of my life, and to feel like I will never experience it again because no one can understand how to get there, everyone I try to share it with claim to understand but then go right on trampling off in the wrong direction obviously having no clue.
most people tend to inherently not understand a particular alternative unless introduced to rpgs in a particular way, and I have not found a way around that.
There is a term for that. You won't find a way around it. It is a function of human cognition.
I'm trying to break the habit of calling them rules, and use the term mechanics instead. Why? Because rules are codes of behavior intended to be followed, lines to be not-crossed.
be aware that there is a real difference between Rules and Mechanics in game design. They are, ultimately, two different things that form an interconnected uint. For example, it is a Rule that you use a 20 sided die for a d 20 Test, but the Test itself is a Mechanic.
However, most people do not know that -- to them, a Rule and a Mechanic are the same thing(I am currently having an argument on another site with someone young over the concept of reflavoring -- and they do not understand what a mechanic is).
So that effort on your part, while wonderful for you, is only going to make your life more difficult in a general forum.
Leaving that issue blank, is not freedom, it is lack of support, it is putting more work on the DM to achieve any sort of consistency in rulings, and in making the DCs reflect their world.
Underlined a problem: to folks like me and most other players, it is freedom. You would do better to say that you don't see it as freedom, instead of making a generalization and applying it to others.
I could play in the style I talking about with other systems, even 5e, but 5e is not suited for it and the 5e mechanics constantly get in the way and they don't provide the support I desire (well that was the playtest when it came out. I haven't bothered playing since because the mechanics kept getting in the way).
This is how you should have phrased the prior -- here you are talking about your personal experience and frustration, not everyone else's.
I feel like everyone is so strongly attached to monochrome sketches, they just never bother with paints, and then they reject paints as being more restrictive and less creative.
Also better -- however, you followed this up with e same underlying sense of grandiose elitism that still implies that paints are better. It asserts your opinion as being superior to others. It is not. It is also not worse than others -- it is merely different. And this is an unavoidable problem because of the specific metaphor you used -- n the world of drawing and painting, broadly, painting is seen as better. I (poorly) hinted about the bad metaphor.
I want to know why. I want to be able to teach people who already play RPGs how to play my style. No I don't expect all or even most to prefer my style. But the fact that I can find new players of my style only by finding people who have never played RPGs or videogames is a massive problem that will only ever get worse,
So, in order for me to really address this fairly, I would have to provide a long post that I would likely get dinged for since the last time I did so in order to be nice I got dinged and informed that it wasn't a place for that conversation. There is a function of human cognition and learning that (at present, and always subject to change as we learn more about it) is determinant. It is why it is so difficult for people to learn a second language, or to change the way that they approach a mathematics problem. Theoretically, it is linked to some forms of neuroatypical function (but, honestly, everyone links stuff to that these days).
That is the way. Or, at least, appears to be the why. I learned D&D in 1979, playing AD&D. I have played about 250 games, personally, and dealt with another couple hundred in some way. I have never come across a system in those 45 years that I did not grasp the systems of -- and it reached a point where I stopped being entertained because they are all variations on a theme to me now -- but I can also say that I am somewhat rare in that, based on my small sample size.
It is a thing you might research more -- and I apologize for not recalling the specific word. been a few years since I last had cause to use it.
I'm glad the system works well for you and others, but I'm alone out here with no one to play the way I enjoy most, and I can't turn to veterans because I can't them to understand my way of playing even if they were open to trying something new.
this is a good reason not to use metaphors, then. Figure out how to speak directly at the issue. But, also, hey, I'm lucky as hell that I have friends from my high school days who I still play with even though all of us have gray hair and grandkids. Well, those of us with hair, at least. I don't think that any of the folks here would really enjoy my setting -- and I am a worldbuilder at heart -- been making worlds since I was a wee chile, 52 years worth of imaginary places.100's of distinct worlds, each one getting more and more involved and more and more complex. My D&D games are involved stories of the player characters, where they grow and develop and challenge themselves and seek to become something greater and then make a change in the world around them -- and this is player driven, sandboxy type shit that is only about 25% combat -- and most folks today think of D&D as a game about Combat.
I don't. Never have. My style of game? Been playing it for 30 years. Took me 15 years to learn to do it. I see the "WotC Pillars of Play" as
Role Play
Character Growth
Exploration
Discovery
Combat
And that changes damn near everything. My current world has a basis that is so different folks blink twice if they pause to think about it. Mostly they don't.
However, one thing does divide us -- even though we both see our respective ability to play our games the way we like vanish -- and it isn't age, I don't think: it is the enjoyability of our games.
Are your games enjoyable? Do you have an easy time holding onto players? An enjoyable game is something that everyone wants to keep doing. Everyone, not just the DM. From what you describe, you seem to have a good group right now -- but growing it, while a laudable goal, should be secondary to making sue you give your current group the most enjoyable experience.
My group grew very, very organically until this year. It was friends, spouses, friends of friends, children, friends of children, spouses of children, children of children, friends of children's children, etc. But we have been playing together for 45 years. Making it a priority because we enjoy it -- and when we didn't enjoy it, things did not work well. Then, kids and grandkids brought new people in this year -- we're still adapting, still adjusting. It hasn't always been smooth sailing either -- rough patches for years, people leaving and then coming back later.
Like I said, I am lucky. But I am also someone who says we make our own luck -- and that's what we did, and I'd say do that. Your players ar the ones who can bring in other folks -- if they feel like it is good, that others will enjoy it.
But you cannot control how other people play. You can only present something that you hope they will enjoy, and if they don't, well, then try again -- and if no one ever enjoys it, then change the way you do things.
I'm telling you that there are other visions out there just as grand as yours that can't be seen with your mindset.
I have no doubt that there are. Some of them are inimical to me, personally.
I'm telling you, that it often feels as though the big companies are building to support their one true wayism.
As I pointed out, that's sort of the natural progression of the current schema on the business end of ttrpgs, with the rise of VTT's and digital tools that are pointedly narrowed to the specific rules (which all of it becomes in a programmatic environment).
Bluntly, all of them are doing it because that's the direction the player base is wanting to go in. ANd while there will always be outliers like us out there, we will always be exactly that -- outliers. In the schema of adoption of Innovation, we will be equivalent to the ones that never got a telephone installed in their homes.
That's just freaking life in the modern age.
It still feels lonely to have had the greatest experiences of my life, and to feel like I will never experience it again because no one can understand how to get there, everyone I try to share it with claim to understand but then go right on trampling off in the wrong direction obviously having no clue.
To share it with others, they have to be willing, and you can never force them to do so. It isn't a wrong direction, either -- it is just their direction, and it is different from yours. That's one I experience every single day -- just not around games.
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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
Yeah I tend to agree. There is a difference between the rules of the game and what you do as a story component within the confines of those rules. I do think and I do agree that in classic D&D the rules themselves got the same treatment as the story, meaning every DM had their own custom "this is my game" rules and that definitely is one way old school gaming differs but even old school gaming had a foundation on which the game was built and in the OSR that foundation is important. In fact, you will rarely find a more stringent group of gamers than OSR gamers on how the rules "should" be interpreted and what RAW actually is. Go on the Dragonfoot forums and you will find people arguing about the realistic weight of Daggers and stuff like that. The assumption that old school gamers were "hand wavers" of rules is one of the oldest myth there ever was... the debates are more about the intention and interpretation of the rules, but everyone is trying to figure out what RAW actually is in games like 1st edition AD&D for example.
Its also important to note that the reason the rules were so commonly altered and customized, especially in 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition is that they were often either unclear, or interpretable. No one in the history of gaming has ever played 1st edition AD&D RAW because Gygaxian is so unclear and so interpretable that its effectively like trying to decipher fact or fiction from reading of the bible.
In any case, the point I think is that there is a clear distinction between rules and story. Story writing, the idea of authoring and DMing a game is quite different from being a designer of rules. In 5e the rules are crystal clear 99% of the time, their is no interpretation, rules work as written and their is a clear assignment to every activity a player could do toa rule on how that is handled, so players are super clear about how the "world works" and there really is very little GM fiat in the governance of rules. Story .... well that is an entirely different thing.. every DM is different and that is as true running 1e as it is running 5e.
You could argue that there are too many rules, or the rules are not balanced or even that the rules are insufficient, but you can't argue they are not clear. I have never seen a rulebook as crystal clear as the 2024 PHB. In old school games, in 90% of the games, its actually entirely unclear what the rules actually are and there are huge, albeit intentional gaps, in the rules, with the specific instruction that simply say "do what you want". That is not particularly helpful when you are trying to play a game, it assumes a lot of responsibility and experience on the part of the DM. Perfectly fine for guys like me who have been running RPG's since 85 for a group of players that have been playing since 85... not great for new players or DM's trying to understand how to play taking their first steps into the larger world of RPGs.
And frankly even as an experienced long time DM, its tiresome to constantly have to defend your "personal rule system" that you devised based on some relic mechanic that you have interpreted. Its much easier to just play a game that everyone can read, learn and execute with crystal clear rules. It makes storytelling a lot easier on the DM.
I love my old school games, but I really don't like playing them with anyone except old school gamers used to the traditions and practices of old school gaming. With modern gamers, its a nightmare because they are accustomed to playing a game with clear rules and you just don't have that with old school games.
Do you not see the difference in an argument over the weight of a dagger, vs whether subclasses should only be at level 3? The argument over the weight of a dagger is not a mechanics argument, it is a milieu argument, an argument over something tangible to the characters that also happens to be tangible to real world people, even if they are using mechanics as a tool to argue their point. The subclass issue is purely mechanical, that is not a tangible thing. Can you identify when you got a subclass in the real world? Of course not.
And yea, as a game there will always some elements that are purely meta, but 3.x minimized that. The mechanics were intended to be reflective of the world, an inextricable connection, the sort of thing where if you changed a mechanic, it was to better reflect the narrative milieu. Hence arguments over the weight of daggers.
Then you get a push to make all classes get their subclasses at level three. Why? It has nothing to do with the narrative milieu. It is a pure meta issue, a thing about making the rules more rule-like, driven by considerations of mechanical balance, mechanical cleanliness, no narrative world arguments at all. Do you not see how that is clearly a "play the mechanics" mindset that would even care about when subclasses are gained?
This is why old school rules are so interpretable, because the interpretation depends a lot on the real world knowledge and experience that informs one's decisions and opinions on the matter. For example, many people think swords were heavy and that 4 pounds for a longsword is too light, but they think that because they lack actual knowledge on the subject and derive their opinion from what unrelated things they do know which misleads them greatly.
The only way to prevent the issue of mechanics being so widely interpretable is to eliminate everything outside the mechanics from influencing the mechanics. Which in terms of how old school play goes, requires eliminating every fundamental purpose of the mechanics.
3.x was designed to be guidelines, it was not designed for "crystal clear interpretation" because playing the game means that crystal clear interpretation is basically impossible. I mean sure we can all agree the sky is blue, but even then you have the people who mention that the sky isn't always blue. In that style of play, you are not supposed to rely on the mechanics in any kind of way that requires crystal clear interpretation. It was unnecessary, pointlessly limiting, and actively working against the design to try and make rules that every DM would always interpret the same way.
Well said and well-argued, and please know that I do understand, for a long time I argued this exact thing and on this exact forum (ask anyone around here).... but understand that like a philosophy student in their 3rd year at the university, you are going through one of several "phases" of being a RPG player/GM. Many people who enter this hobby will go through some variation of phases for example a "storyteller" phase, they will go through a "realism is critical" phase and maybe a "tactical combat is vital" phase and as a result either start changing the rules or complaining about them. These sort of poignant philosophies about what the game is and isn't or how it should or shouldn't be are just natural arguments people make as they sort of explore the hobby and bump against certain things. For many, especially in the OSR, these philosophies become "the way we play" and as such become their own sub-culture and this is why there are so many different types of RPG's and alternative takes on D&D. People who found one of these arguments and made it "there version".
The thing is that 99% of the people are not philosophy students. They are not trying to understand the deeper meaning and purpose of D&D. The overwhelming majority of people don't care about any of that. What most people want is a easy, fun game to play that entertains them on the weekend and they want that experience to be as simple to get into and as approachable as humanly possible.
This is why 5th edition D&D is so bloody popular and exactly why the OSR will always remain this tiny, irrelevant sub-section of the community.
3.X ain't ever coming back, and neither is 1e.. these are dead games and they will remain dead games because they are designs forever trapped in a mid-stage of the evolution of the game. They will always have their fans, but if your argument is that 5e should be more like Xe, pick your favorite, your barking up the wrong tree and wasting your time, its never gonna happen. 5e isn't just the most popular version of D&D, its the single most successful RPG in the entire history of RPG's and by a margin so wide, it doesn't matter who is in second place. What D&D "should be" was definitively and forever decided when 5th edition D&D was released. This is what D&D is now and its likely what its going to be 50 years from now. There are no more evolutionary stages left to take and the game ain't going back to anything.
The point is that 5e is no longer a "rules system" or "edition of the game". It is what D&D is as a culture. In the same way there are mobile phones but then there are Iphones. Iphones haven't changed in any significant way in over 20 years and they won't change over the next 20 and everyone is fine with that.. just throw on better cameras and move on. Its what D&D has become for better or for worse, 5e is the Iphone of RPG's.
I love the fact that it is considered the definitive edition that resists the need to change rules every few years, prioritises the fanbase and brings together communities!!!!
:)
On the one hand, all very good thing sounding things, and actually yea, bringing together communities and prioritizing the fanbase are great things (though I disagree that wotc, or at least hasbro, prioritize the fans). However, having a definitive edition, is not actually as great as it sounds. That is kinda like having the definition genre of movie which resists change and pushes all other genres of film to sidelines so all you see is slight variations of the same film with new characters. That said, being the definitive edition certainly makes finding players easier.
Stepping in here a bit to try and course correct before this becomes too much of an edition war.
You can disagree with each other, have differing opinions and correct misconceptions without falling into the trap of insulting general player preferences or intelligence. Also if you find yourself quoting large chains of another reply, then it has become more about that specific user interaction instead of the general conversation, and it may be time to step back (it is also advisable to in general avoid large quote chains. You're all contributing to the same topic you do not need to repost the last few messages to do so.)
There are plenty of things to discuss about what works in each edition and why, including 5e, which is the original topic- Why do you like 5e?
First, I'm not saying 5e is doing it wrong. I'm saying that for some reason, most people tend to inherently not understand a particular alternative unless introduced to rpgs in a particular way, and I have not found a way around that.
This has been a frequent topic of conversation in introducing new RPGs to people and wondering why other games like Blades in the Dark or Vampire the Masquerade or Cyberpunk or Eclipse Phase or Shadowrun. I'm dissapointed endlessly that Shadows of Estern is not a bigger game.
This is going to be hard for any game, but is extra hard when the alternative is basically the same thing. You're not really playing a different game if it's just an older version.
Second, I think you really need to consider what a rule is. I'm trying to break the habit of calling them rules, and use the term mechanics instead. Why? Because rules are codes of behavior intended to be followed, lines to be not-crossed. When you see mechanics as rules, that is what they become, lines to not be crossed. 3.x does not treat the mechanics as rules, regardless of the terminology. 3.x does not have a bunch of rules. Most of what is written is reference points.
I think a game with a lot of "mechancics" but few rules would be Magic the Gathering. Where each card is a mechanic but the base rules are small. Many miniature combat games are the same where there's simple base rules but each piece has unique mechanics.
As someone who played a LOT of 3.0 and 3.5e back in the the day, it has both. Every new feat and Prestige Class and Alternate Class brings new mechanics. But there are also a LOT of rules. The information is skills is not suggestion, it is rules. The information in the combat and adventuring chapters is not guide points. It is rules.
Things like knowing when you cast grease the character is considered balancing as per the Balance skill and if they don't have 5 ranks in Balance they are flat-footed, granting a bonus to attack them (and triggering Sneak Attack) AND that if you are hit by an attack while balancing you have to repeat the save or fall prone. That is 100% RULES, which 3.5e is full of. If you're not using all those rules and ignoring them then you are invoking house rules. But just because you house rule a bunch of rules away does not mean those rules don't exist.
Third, I'm not arguing that 3.5 is the one true way.In fact, the thing I'm discussing is not about 3.5. 3.5 was designed for it, which sets 3.5 apart from modern systems really. Modern systems, whether they go crunchy like Palladium, or rules light like a one page rpg or even if they storytelling instead of rpg like PbtA, they all treat mechanics like rules in a way that is unlike 3.5.
It's honestly hilarious that you used "Palladium" in the same sentance as "modern systems."
I could play in the style I talking about with other systems, even 5e, but 5e is not suited for it and the 5e mechanics constantly get in the way and they don't provide the support I desire (well that was the playtest when it came out. I haven't bothered playing since because the mechanics kept getting in the way).
If the mechanics of 5e get in the way of your play style but 3e doesn't that might have more to do with experience and comfort with 5e than the actual mechanics of the game. 5e can handle most styles of gameplay that 3e can manage. You can tell simmilar stories in both.
What 5e doesn't do is proscribe DCs for the most part. Where the DM can just present a world and calculate all the numbers as the players naviagte. No DM fiat. A sandbox turned up to 11 where the DM is just the refere and rules arbiter. That would be harder with 5e but not impossible as the DCs tend to be a static 10-15.
Heck, the majority of people who don't play the mechanics, just don't use mechanics at all, and play freeform. You could that the style I'm discussing is like playing freeform but with mechanics.
Fourth, I am not dismissing the playstyle that 5e promotes. Monochrome sketches are still around today, and they have a place. But I feel like everyone is so strongly attached to monochrome sketches, they just never bother with paints, and then they reject paints as being more restrictive and less creative. I can perfectly well believe that they are wrong about paints without believing that sketches are bad.
And what playstyle does 5e promote? Since we have a horror campaign AND a whimsical faerie tale where you can skip combat in every encounter. We have dungeon crawls AND heists. There are investigative mysteries AND jungle hexcrawls. It's hard to reduce official 5e to just one thing.
And that's without considering all the 3rd Party stuff, like the one where every PC is a humanoid birds species.
Fifth "because if you tear a bunch of 3.5 rules out, you have to fix all the bleeding holes in them since they were all very interconnected and interdependent in the name of the great myth of b-a-l-a-n-c-e." 3.5 was never about balance. That is a really incorrect notion. 3.5 was meant to communicate, and meant to have encounters of such a wide variety, that if an encounter was higher or lower in difficulty than intended, no one would notice, because some encounters would be much easier or much harder anyway, and that means being a balanced encounter is a non-issue.
3e was very much about balance. It failed at being fully balanced, but that WAS very much a goal. It was designed to give every mechanic a common core (roll a d20 and add a modifier, higher is better) rather than the myriad unconnected systems of 2e and earlier. But game balance was very much a thing. The game was designed around having four encounters at the appropriate level that each exhausted 25% of your resources. That was the baseline. But you could shift that to five easier fights or three harder fights. With expected treasure granting a set wealth by level that would balance fighters with spellcasters via magic items. Calculating Encounter Level was a big part of the game, and each official adventure clearly said what the EL of each encounter was.
And the rules are not that interconnected. They have a unified base, and that is very different. To rip out mechanics that would leave bleeding holes, you either get something very core to mechanics, like the saves, which are very few, or you get something that needs fixed one way or another anyway, like figuring out what DC to make perception checks, which is something you need in 5e too, so you don't exactly get to escape that and call it a bleeding hole because you ripped out the spot and listen DCs.
As I demonstrated earlier, this is emperically false. There are lots of connective strands through the rules, such as the Balance skill in the grease spell, and if you removed that skill or folded its effects into an Acrobat's skill you'd also need to re-write grease. I spent a LOT of time writing homebrew for 3e and Pathfinder, and there were many subtle interactions.
Sixth "But that wouldn't work for your argument, because that would mean that 5e is just a simpler version of 3.5 -- and it is that." 5e is absolutely a simpler version of 3.5, but a lot of what 5e did change, were related to 3.5 not supporting "playing the mechanics." Thus 5e is a simplified 3.5, if 3.5 were designed for playing the mechanics. Other aspects changed too, such as the scale. A separate aspect I enjoyed about 3.5 was how it could smoothly scale from a common person up to literal gods at the same time and work well for both and all in between. 5e doesn't do that, it starts higher and ends lower while becoming so vague and detached from the world that you can't even really try to fix it either.
Yeah, in 5e there is a slight increase in power at 1st level. Mostly with spellcasters and cantrips. But a human fighter in 3e and a human fighter in 5e will be fairly comparable in terms of attack numbers and damage and hit points and AC. The difference is much smaller than you might think.
My goal is to try and better understand the mindset. As I said before, most people if introduced to RPGs by people playing in my style, will understand my style just fine. But those who are not introduced to RPGs by playing my style, very quickly become practically incapable of learning it, and either play the mechanics or play freeform. I want to know why. I want to be able to teach people who already play RPGs how to play my style. No I don't expect all or even most to prefer my style. But the fact that I can find new players of my style only by finding people who have never played RPGs or videogames is a massive problem that will only ever get worse, as you may have noticed, fewer and fewer people out there are new to videogames and RPGs. Eventually, RPGs will be like music, everyone will be familiar with them. Where will my style of play be then if only newbies can learn my style? It would be something that literally could only be passed down parent-like figure to child.
Now I'm sure it won't quite reach that extreme, but it doesn't need to in order for me to never again meet another player that can play like me. It's already been over a decade since I last played in my preferred style because I haven't had anyone to play that way with, haven't seen anyone playing that way in nearly as long.
If you really want to understand, I would suggest playing in a 5e game. See what they're actually doing. See how it compares to your style.
More examples of your playstyle might help. An example of an adventure you told and how an average session might unfold.
Ninth, "What they will care about is someone telling them they aren't using the right medium for their grand visions when what they have is working wonderfully." I'm glad the system works well for you and others, but I'm alone out here with no one to play the way I enjoy most, and I can't turn to veterans because I can't them to understand my way of playing even if they were open to trying something new. And the players I do find and try to communicate with all tell me they know what I'm talking about, then go right on proving otherwise.
Online games are your friend. Start a campaign on Roll20 and look for like minded souls and then keep building a community that plays like you. Pull from players across the globe.
it often feels as though the big companies are building to support their one true wayism. Whether they are or not, it still feels that way
Wizards of the Coast cannot TELL people how to play their game. If they could, 4e wouldn't have failed.
It's the opposite. People told WotC what game they wanted through public playtests and feedback. And so they made that game. Which is a big reason why 5e is so popular: it turns out if you make what people want they will give you money for it.
It still feels lonely to have had the greatest experiences of my life, and to feel like I will never experience it again because no one can understand how to get there, everyone I try to share it with claim to understand but then go right on trampling off in the wrong direction obviously having no clue.
That's life. Things move on and change. I had great experiences in college but I'll never experience them again. I have to just move forward and find different experiences. New experiences that are completely different but no less good.
Just because the experience you can get now isn't the same as the experience you want or the experience you had, doesn't mean it can't be a lot of fun.
I could play in the style I talking about with other systems, even 5e, but 5e is not suited for it and the 5e mechanics constantly get in the way and they don't provide the support I desire (well that was the playtest when it came out. I haven't bothered playing since because the mechanics kept getting in the way).
If the mechanics of 5e get in the way of your play style but 3e doesn't that might have more to do with experience and comfort with 5e than the actual mechanics of the game. 5e can handle most styles of gameplay that 3e can manage. You can tell simmilar stories in both.
What 5e doesn't do is proscribe DCs for the most part. Where the DM can just present a world and calculate all the numbers as the players naviagte. No DM fiat. A sandbox turned up to 11 where the DM is just the refere and rules arbiter. That would be harder with 5e but not impossible as the DCs tend to be a static 10-15.
This is an interesting, multifaceted conversation but in the context of the original question, "why do you like 5e", I think most people's answers who know the system, know the rules and play it regularly would be that its easy to play and its easy to run. 5e also has very good playstyle coverage.
Perhaps more importantly though is that 5e covers the playstyles the vast majority (the wider audience) of Fantasy Adventure roleplayers like. There are limits to the system, I tend to agree that for example with 3.x it was possible to run big dungeon crawls and dungeon survival games, it was a playstyle very much supported by 3.x and it really isn't a playstyle that is supported in 5e. You can do it, but it's a bit like trying to make steak out of Tofu. In that context though when someone took 5e and adapted it to be a Dungeon Crawling game (Shadowdark) the audience was pretty limited. There just isn't that much interest in it and that can be hard to accept for guys like me who love that playstyle living in a time when very few people share that interest.
3.x I do think was very flexible and a very modular system that had wider coverage but the thing is and again, we go back to the core philosophy is that modern gamers don't want heavy rule systems. This is a key thing to understand about modern games and modern design. People want options, but not complexity. It's why 5e has linear progression.
3.x and really most fo the system that came before it with perhaps the exception of B/X were pretty complex games. For certain some of them had better coverage, but you have to ask the question, for who? I mean if Dungeon Crawling or Dungeon Survival were a big part of what 5e players wanted, they would be insisting that WotC support that playstyle, but really there is very little interest in it from this community. This is true about a lot of the different styles of play.
5e kind of developed its own playstyle, its a thing to play 5th edition D&D, and it is the playstyle the vast majority of modern gamers want and to answer the OP's question, why do you like 5e, I think its fair to say that this is the consensus. People like the 5e playstyle, that's what they like about it.
The counter-argument is, why not 3.x, to which the answer is, because it's not 5e.
My goal is to try and better understand the mindset. As I said before, most people if introduced to RPGs by people playing in my style, will understand my style just fine. But those who are not introduced to RPGs by playing my style, very quickly become practically incapable of learning it, and either play the mechanics or play freeform. I want to know why. I want to be able to teach people who already play RPGs how to play my style. No I don't expect all or even most to prefer my style. But the fact that I can find new players of my style only by finding people who have never played RPGs or videogames is a massive problem that will only ever get worse, as you may have noticed, fewer and fewer people out there are new to videogames and RPGs. Eventually, RPGs will be like music, everyone will be familiar with them. Where will my style of play be then if only newbies can learn my style?
It would be something that literally could only be passed down parent-like figure to child.Now I'm sure it won't quite reach that extreme, but it doesn't need to in order for me to never again meet another player that can play like me. It's already been over a decade since I last played in my preferred style because I haven't had anyone to play that way with, haven't seen anyone playing that way in nearly as long.
People still do play 3.x and Pathfinder 1.0 and really if you want to look into the evolution of the playstyle you're describing, you're really talking about Pathfinder 2nd edition for the most part.
That said, you are right that many of these playstyles are going extinct, but a lot of these classic methods are being preserved by the OSR. Like LP's or retro consoles, there is a place in the market for this sort of thing and it is supported, but it is a niche thing. 5e is a mainstream game, it has a huge audience.
it's just a really well-supported game. You have DnD Beyond and the entire digitalization of the game, you have DM Guild where 3rd party publishing is wide open with almost no licensing restrictions of any kind, you have a huge company that financially backs it and now there is going to be a VTT dedicated to it. Competitively speaking, D&D 5th edition is going to likely have an almost Monopoly level of the market share and frankly, I can kind of understand why. Not only is it well-supported, but its actually a really fun game to play. Take out all of the politics and WotC corporate overlord and just play the game and you actually start to see why its so popular. I almost feel bad for all of these new games coming into the market because had games like Draw Steel or Tales of the Valliant or DC20 come out 10 years ago, you might have been able to compete, but at this point, those games are going to struggle because while they might produce good systems, you won't see the level of support 5e gets with any other game anytime soon.
I meant what I said earlier about this being the rare time "a rising tide lifts all boats" is true. D&D's success overflows to the rest of the tabletop medium. D&D is a gateway to trying other things. I see it every year at PAX Unplugged. Folks who already play D&D 5E (and even folks who are just trying for the first time) try and pick up other systems. Look at all the systems features on Demiplane. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites are super effective TTRPG incubators at this point. D&D 5E gets a lot of attention, sure, but we're not in any danger of D&D 5E smothering the medium.
Sadly the perpetual problem of finding a group of people to play with regularly is still there no matter the franchise or system.
I meant what I said earlier about this being the rare time "a rising tide lifts all boats" is true. D&D's success overflows to the rest of the tabletop medium. D&D is a gateway to trying other things. I see it every year at PAX Unplugged. Folks who already play D&D 5E (and even folks who are just trying for the first time) try and pick up other systems. Look at all the systems features on Demiplane. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites are super effective TTRPG incubators at this point. D&D 5E gets a lot of attention, sure, but we're not in any danger of D&D 5E smothering the medium.
Sadly the perpetual problem of finding a group of people to play with regularly is still there no matter the franchise or system.
We'll have to see how successful the digitalization of D&D becomes long-term, right now most results are at best indicators of hype and short-term gains, but playing online has been growing over the last 10. The question is, what does 2024 5th edition look like in the market 5 years from now?
The one thing that may happen is that having a custom-built 3d tool for your specific game and DnDBeyond like support tools may very well become the new standard of what is expected for a TTRP release. On the other hand, people might just get bored with 5th edition rules, not because they are bad but because they have been around for a decade already and people might shift to other games just to try new ways to play RPG's.
Right now there is no indication of the the latter. D&D 5e has been consistently the most played game on roll20 for example for nearly a decade, sitting pretty at 50% of all games played and the number of people playing has been steadily growing, roll20 10 years ago had 3 million users, today they have 20 million. Most other platforms have similar player bases and similar stats.
If all those people shift to a "For D&D only" VTT, that will set a standard for the bulk of the RPG community of what playing online should look like. That standard is pretty damn high if what we know about the coming tool is true.
So D&D might not quite have smothered out its competition yet, but if businesses like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and others lose 50% of their consumers to a for D&D only VTT and that VTT becomes the new standard for what online RPG play should look like.. we may very well be looking at a major shift in the RPG hobby.
This is of course all speculation, but right now 5e is not just winning, they are crushing it and 2 years from now when all of this has come to past, if they successfully execute on their current strategy, D&D is not just going to be a leader in the business, but an example of how a successful TTRPG must be to have any hope to compete.
We'll have to see how successful the digitalization of D&D becomes long-term, right now most results are at best indicators of hype and short-term gains, but playing online has been growing over the last 10. The question is, what does 2024 5th edition look like in the market 5 years from now?
The one thing that may happen is that having a custom-built 3d tool for your specific game and DnDBeyond like support tools may very well become the new standard of what is expected for a TTRP release.
It seems unlikely, since nobody except WotC is likely to ever be able to afford to do it. We might see the third-party generic VTTs feeling like they have to keep up, I suppose, but there's not going to be any other game-specific VTTs. (Especially since D&D's isn't all that game-specific as I understand it.)
Will it make it harder to get people to try other games? Perhaps, but that's a small fraction to begin with, and people who are inclined to try something new strike me as the sort who are least likely to be dissuaded by the lack of fancy VTT. Heck, many non-D&D games have no use for a VTT. You need at least moderately tactical combat before it's not more trouble than it's worth. I don't think any of the non-D&D games I'm likely to play would want a VTT, unless I wanna break out the GURPS. Even DIE, which is a game that's about D&D, has no need.
So D&D might not quite have smothered out its competition yet, but if businesses like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and others lose 50% of their consumers to a for D&D only VTT and that VTT becomes the new standard for what online RPG play should look like.. we may very well be looking at a major shift in the RPG hobby.
I don't see it affecting the RPG hobby much, because D&D may be the only part of the RPG hobby that can create major shifts. Everyone else is statistical error, except Pathfinder. (probably)
This is an interesting, multifaceted conversation but in the context of the original question, "why do you like 5e", I think most people's answers who know the system, know the rules and play it regularly would be that its easy to play and its easy to run. 5e also has very good playstyle coverage.
This is absolutely the right answer, but it doesn't help understand how to describe concepts to people. Hearing people defend and describe and discuss 5e gives insight to their way of thinking. Haven't figured out a way to make certain concepts easy to understand yet, but certainly discussions like this help me understand players better.
As for "because it isn't 5e" in never a good answer, because it relies on the listener to know fully what being 5e means to the speaker, which is something that in 9 out of 10 cases would render the question answered before asked. Truthfully it is the kind of answer given by someone that doesn't know how to put the answer in words and doesn't want to figure it out, usually because it is hard (and it is a very hard thing).
People still do play 3.x and Pathfinder 1.0 and really if you want to look into the evolution of the playstyle you're describing, you're really talking about Pathfinder 2nd edition for the most part.
Um, not really. Pathfinder moved away from 3.5's design intention. Sure they kept most of the fundamental mechanics, but the changes they did make were mostly in service to an ideology that is contrary to 3.5's design. And on the axis of playstyles I speak about, PF2 and 5e are basically identical. The mechanics are slightly different, and definitely evolved, but the direction of that evolution has still been in the same direction as 5e. I am designing to evolve systems in the other direction.
Just as an example of what I mean. When was the last time you saw anyone playing dnd or pathfinder confront a trap and come up any idea other than rolling the anti-trap skill? Past 2nd edition dnd anyway. You generally have to go to osr or freeform or some storytelling system that doesn't have an anti-trap skill.
3.5 is in this weird space, where you are supposed to be in a freeform gaming like mindset yet using a set of mechanics that can get as broadly applicable as you desire. This is weird because the more broadly applicable the mechanics, the more people treat them like laws and make decisions like they are laws. You even get players who will twist the mechanics against the obvious design intent, so long as they can say it is "technically" within the laws, just like how laywers deal with legalities. This also shapes thinking to be about using the mechanics instead of the narrative environment. But 3.5 was not designed for this, and that is what makes it weird.
I disagree with this. The "a rising tide lifts all boats" was true of the OGL. Imagine if Hollywood only supported Marvel superhero films. Movies like the Green Mile or You've Got Mail or Harry Potter or LotR or Star Wars or Star Trek would not exist, or if they did, then they would be low budget off brand "b rated" films that would not attract much attention.
The same applies here, which is why WotC and Hasbro tried to end the OGL, because they do not want all boats to rise. They want a monopoly. If they succeed in truly making a monopoly, it will hurt the scope of rpgs, limiting them greatly. Sure, you continue to get the little indy dev games, but ultimately, no one but WotC would matter to the general direction of the hobby. Paizo is thankfully big enough to stand, but even then you can still get a duopoly, similar to how Marvel and DC are practically the only superhero brands. Sure other companies have done supers, such as the Megamind film, but honestly, Megamind is literally the only non-game superhero anything I can thing of that isn't Marvel or DC. We are very likely facing a similar outcome with WotC and Paizo, a situation in which most roleplayers won't be able to name a rpg company beyond those two except for a few players on the fringes of gamer society. ANd if Paizo doesn't get some good VTT options of it's own pretty quickly, there is a good chance WotC might even overshadow them.
This is an interesting, multifaceted conversation but in the context of the original question, "why do you like 5e", I think most people's answers who know the system, know the rules and play it regularly would be that its easy to play and its easy to run. 5e also has very good playstyle coverage.
This is absolutely the right answer, but it doesn't help understand how to describe concepts to people. Hearing people defend and describe and discuss 5e gives insight to their way of thinking. Haven't figured out a way to make certain concepts easy to understand yet, but certainly discussions like this help me understand players better.
As for "because it isn't 5e" in never a good answer, because it relies on the listener to know fully what being 5e means to the speaker, which is something that in 9 out of 10 cases would render the question answered before asked. Truthfully it is the kind of answer given by someone that doesn't know how to put the answer in words and doesn't want to figure it out, usually because it is hard (and it is a very hard thing).
To be fair to the person who said that, it did come after a couple pages of discussion on how the systems are different, what that person found to be better about 5e compared to 3.5e, and the revelation that 5e is orders of magnitude more popular than any other iteration of the game has been in the past. If it had been the first and only thing they had said, I'd agree with you, but it was simply a summary of the situation after all of the explanation.
I think what you're trying to do is change the way people think about 3.5e (and I may be misreading it, but you sound like you have a system you've built based off of it and would like it to be more popular). I think the best word to describe the resistance is "friction". Yes, 3.5e tables and "mechanics" can be seen as completely optional or modifiable, but it IS in the "rulebook". It takes effort to go through all of that and see what you want to keep, what you want to throw away, and what you want to modify. Knowing that it is there gives DMs the notion that they should at least know it, and players ammunition (no matter how spurious) to throw at the DM if they think it should be as it states in said rules. This can all be overcome, no doubt. But there is friction there. I'd propose that one of the main reasons 5e is so popular is because it has greatly reduced the amount of friction there is to play the game. It is a hell of a lot easier for both DMs and players to say "What the DM says is the final." when there are no specific rules for that thing in the rulebook.
I'd even go so far as to say that your average player is more interested in smooth gameplay than making sure the DC is set "appropriately" by looking it up in some obscure table.
When was the last time you saw anyone playing dnd or pathfinder confront a trap and come up any idea other than rolling the anti-trap skill? Past 2nd edition dnd anyway.
Saturday and Sunday past.
There is no "Detect Traps" skill -- there is a perception skill, however, which is meant to replace that (because they got rid of all the special abilities of Thieves). There are also Thieves tools, but they can only disarm traps, not locate them. Anyone can buy them and gain the proficiency. So the only thing 5e has that is close to an "anti-trap skill" is a set of tools. Folks are really bad about using tools in 5e -- they forget they are there.
However, yesterday and the day before, in two separate sets of ruins (one desert that heading towards a thing I was not prepared to reveal yet, the other a fairly standard forest ruin with an underground chamber) they avoided both a deadfall (forest) and a spike trap without using either of those skill sets.
They didn't even try to roll to disarm the traps -- they just said "this looks like an area she gonna trap" and so got really interesting about how they solved. And the cleric had a set of thieves tools!
The desert one used bags of sand.
The forest one used a fallen log they had spotted last session on the way to the ruin (as color, not intentional).
That was in 5e -- I may have different classes, races, and magic system, and I may have added a lot to the system, but the core basis is still 5e for everything.
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
"The point is that 5e is no longer a "rules system" or "edition of the game". It is what D&D is as a culture. In the same way there are mobile phones but then there are Iphones. Iphones haven't changed in any significant way in over 20 years and they won't change over the next 20 and everyone is fine with that.. just throw on better cameras and move on. Its what D&D has become for better or for worse, 5e is the Iphone of RPG's."
First of all, comparing to phones isn't quite a good comparison I think. Android is a truly massive competitor to Iphones, and while Apple is definitively the better in terms of hardware, their software is generally inferior outside a small selection of traits and random choices from when Jobs stepped in, like the sound used for text messages. Thus Android has a hook that Iphone simply can't compete with. I have LCARS on my android as the home screen. Iphone can't do that and probably never will. Thus current consensus is a duality, iphone and android together at the top.
A better comparison might be American animation. Most Americans view animation as being in one of two categories "for kids/family" and "adult humor" like the Simpsons. Americans in general aren't going to expect or give attention to an animated film on par with any Hollywood blockbuster if it going to be a serious film. You can see that in the one live-turned-animation film that Reaves did that flopped. I'm not sure if it even made it to theaters.
Anime from Japan proves that animation can absolutely do serious well, but society has to have a mindset accepting of it in that role in order for it to get big. Japan has that, hence the rich variety of serious and mature anime. Americans don't, hence why Pixar films are all family films. The American mindset is that animation is childish.
5e and the current rp culture has a mindset that is settling down to a, metaphorically, live action only mindset, which WotC and Paizo are promoting because it's easier for them to monetize, I'm trying to make sure that, metaphorically speaking, anime can be at least taken as seriously and be as accepted. OSR for example has some feeling of legitimacy to it, even if not as popular as 5e.
Another aspect here though, is that big backing, marketing, and investment by companies affects what "everybody does." It is a feedback loop. WotC makes a game that better fits a popular style, which makes that style more popular, and WotC makes more products that fit the style even better which makes the style even more popular, and so on. We need other games to counter WotC, not to hurt them or anything, but because we need the feedback loop to not be so uniform. If we don't it'll be a long time of a fairly uniform experience, much like how for a long time, what we know as classical music, was the only kind of big professional music there was. You had folk music, where country and western come from, but a big production was classical music. Then you had a few stand outs like the Beatles. Now we have concerts of a wide variety of styles, including rock and pop and hip-hop and rap, etc. If WotC succeeds, we will basically, like music, have an entire era of just classical on the big stage with everything else pushed to the fringes.
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Comparing D&D (a system) to a film genera (a category of storytelling) is nonsensical. You are effectively comparing apples to a machine that makes orange juice. If D&D had a rule that said “you can only use heroic fantasy” that would be comparable to “what if there was only one definitive film genera” - but that category to category comparison would be utterly ridiculous and is not going to happen.
Now, there is a system to system comparison you can make - D&D’s rule system to the near-universally accepted system of 24 frames per second camera, film, and projection. And you know what that has done to stifle creativity within that system? Nothing. We’ve seen countless movies with countless plots telling countless stories… all within that same system. The same is true of 5e - folks are perfectly capable of using 5e in a manner that addresses every single problem you have raised.
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I like 5e because it is fun to play with rules that are easy for newcomers to grasp. It is a wonderful way to introduce people to TTRPGs and that certainly was my experience.
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Well, now, that can't be true. You've noted, several times, that the rules could just be ignored. That would include those rules. So, that means those rules do not, in fact reflect the world, or the narrative mechanic.
If they were rules that could not be ignored, then that might be true -- but that, of course, would make the game less popular, and more rule bound than 5e, making it less effective at meeting the needs of its intended audience.
How do you now that? I can think of at least a dozen reasons, narratively, within the milieu, for the classes to all start at level 3. And that's just the published worlds.
That's deeply, deeply flawed on multiple levels, the first of which is the fundamental assumption that people want their fantasy to match the real world. If nothing else, 1e, 2e, and 5e (as well as B/X/BECMI) have proven that people for the most part do not want that. They want to be able to shout in outer space and be heard. And yes, in D&D. Just as they have for over 30 years. Realism is not what the Community wants, and they do not want simulations. If they did, combat in D&D would be a lot different.
You do realize this is a Fantasy game that people are playing, correct? I ask, because you sound a lot like ole N. Robin Cross did right there. I love Harn, sure, but, um, nah.
Also, you just really irked the hell out of me. Personal problem, but the purpose of the mechanics is to enable the fantasy, and that means they depend on the lore , and the lore should be specific to the particular setting, and I get all of that from my roots in the game -- roots that created the very game itself.
But, now we have a good identification on your play style and your design theory.
Oh, you really don't want to hear about the cultures that have no concept of blue. Real cultures. On earth, Right now, present day.
Hmmm. I feel like this contradicts something else I read recently.
The mechanics were intended to be reflective of the world, an inextricable connection, the sort of thing where if you changed a mechanic, it was to better reflect the narrative milieu.
So, Not Rules but still Rules. Just, you know, rules like real stuff. Not fantasy. not imaginary and pretend and make believe, but real, realism, realistic.
And people wonder why I loathe 3.x so much.
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
First, I'm not saying 5e is doing it wrong. I'm saying that for some reason, most people tend to inherently not understand a particular alternative unless introduced to rpgs in a particular way, and I have not found a way around that. I have plenty of people who claim to understand the point I make, then they continue to prove otherwise. Which tells me the issue is fundamental, psychological, and profound. Yet I can introduce entirely new players and most will get it when introduced the right way. Which also means the issue is not one of intelligence or some immutable trait. Most new players who don't get it, have plenty of videogame experience, which suggests some commonality there. This alternative is something worth being widely recognized. Does not need to be everyone's favorite, or even enjoyable to everyone, but it doesn't deserve to die in obscurity either.
I'm not saying 5e is bad or horrible. 5e is not even the cause. Makes it more front and center perhaps, because it is so much the definitive version of the game as one of the others here said.
Second, I think you really need to consider what a rule is. I'm trying to break the habit of calling them rules, and use the term mechanics instead. Why? Because rules are codes of behavior intended to be followed, lines to be not-crossed. When you see mechanics as rules, that is what they become, lines to not be crossed. 3.x does not treat the mechanics as rules, regardless of the terminology. 3.x does not have a bunch of rules. Most of what is written is reference points. What are the DCs for the listen skill? Those are not "must use these DCs" mechanics, they are "here is a reference frame that you can lean on to set DCs for what you want to describe." Thus, you really don't them. But without them, you have to figure out for yourself what a good DC is that fits. Leaving that issue blank, is not freedom, it is lack of support, it is putting more work on the DM to achieve any sort of consistency in rulings, and in making the DCs reflect their world. Now some may just not care about either of those. That is fine. Those are people who should not be using 3.5.
Third, I'm not arguing that 3.5 is the one true way.In fact, the thing I'm discussing is not about 3.5. 3.5 was designed for it, which sets 3.5 apart from modern systems really. Modern systems, whether they go crunchy like Palladium, or rules light like a one page rpg or even if they storytelling instead of rpg like PbtA, they all treat mechanics like rules in a way that is unlike 3.5. Thus I use it as my main example. But it doesn't have to be 3.5. I could play in the style I talking about with other systems, even 5e, but 5e is not suited for it and the 5e mechanics constantly get in the way and they don't provide the support I desire (well that was the playtest when it came out. I haven't bothered playing since because the mechanics kept getting in the way).
Heck, the majority of people who don't play the mechanics, just don't use mechanics at all, and play freeform. You could that the style I'm discussing is like playing freeform but with mechanics.
Fourth, I am not dismissing the playstyle that 5e promotes. Monochrome sketches are still around today, and they have a place. But I feel like everyone is so strongly attached to monochrome sketches, they just never bother with paints, and then they reject paints as being more restrictive and less creative. I can perfectly well believe that they are wrong about paints without believing that sketches are bad.
Fifth "because if you tear a bunch of 3.5 rules out, you have to fix all the bleeding holes in them since they were all very interconnected and interdependent in the name of the great myth of b-a-l-a-n-c-e." 3.5 was never about balance. That is a really incorrect notion. 3.5 was meant to communicate, and meant to have encounters of such a wide variety, that if an encounter was higher or lower in difficulty than intended, no one would notice, because some encounters would be much easier or much harder anyway, and that means being a balanced encounter is a non-issue. it literally has no place because it would be unnoticeable. The whole balance thing comes from the people who play the mechanics. And they spent a ton of time complaining about the lack of balance in 3.5. Heck, many of the proponents of 4e that I know hailed 4e as "finally, a balanced edition."
And the rules are not that interconnected. They have a unified base, and that is very different. To rip out mechanics that would leave bleeding holes, you either get something very core to mechanics, like the saves, which are very few, or you get something that needs fixed one way or another anyway, like figuring out what DC to make perception checks, which is something you need in 5e too, so you don't exactly get to escape that and call it a bleeding hole because you ripped out the spot and listen DCs.
Sixth "But that wouldn't work for your argument, because that would mean that 5e is just a simpler version of 3.5 -- and it is that." 5e is absolutely a simpler version of 3.5, but a lot of what 5e did change, were related to 3.5 not supporting "playing the mechanics." Thus 5e is a simplified 3.5, if 3.5 were designed for playing the mechanics. Other aspects changed too, such as the scale. A separate aspect I enjoyed about 3.5 was how it could smoothly scale from a common person up to literal gods at the same time and work well for both and all in between. 5e doesn't do that, it starts higher and ends lower while becoming so vague and detached from the world that you can't even really try to fix it either.
Seventh, "You seem to want more crunch, more complexity, " NO! I do not want more complexity. I find it useful, but I'd take something simpler than 5e if it supported the mindset I am discussing. Heck, I am considering just taking it on to pare 3.5 down to the nibs, while keeping the important aspects I'm discussing, just to point out that complexity vs simplicity is not the issue at all.
Eighth "So now I have to wonder what the goal here is. Perhaps it is getting enough folks interested in an old version of the game to play it. Except, as I will pointedly remind you, the website you are on does not support any old versions of the game. And the new players -- who outnumber all the players of all the older versions combined -- only want stuff that is supported here."
My goal is to try and better understand the mindset. As I said before, most people if introduced to RPGs by people playing in my style, will understand my style just fine. But those who are not introduced to RPGs by playing my style, very quickly become practically incapable of learning it, and either play the mechanics or play freeform. I want to know why. I want to be able to teach people who already play RPGs how to play my style. No I don't expect all or even most to prefer my style. But the fact that I can find new players of my style only by finding people who have never played RPGs or videogames is a massive problem that will only ever get worse, as you may have noticed, fewer and fewer people out there are new to videogames and RPGs. Eventually, RPGs will be like music, everyone will be familiar with them. Where will my style of play be then if only newbies can learn my style? It would be something that literally could only be passed down parent-like figure to child.
Now I'm sure it won't quite reach that extreme, but it doesn't need to in order for me to never again meet another player that can play like me. It's already been over a decade since I last played in my preferred style because I haven't had anyone to play that way with, haven't seen anyone playing that way in nearly as long.
Ninth, "What they will care about is someone telling them they aren't using the right medium for their grand visions when what they have is working wonderfully." I'm glad the system works well for you and others, but I'm alone out here with no one to play the way I enjoy most, and I can't turn to veterans because I can't them to understand my way of playing even if they were open to trying something new. And the players I do find and try to communicate with all tell me they know what I'm talking about, then go right on proving otherwise.
I'm not telling you that you aren't using the right medium for your grand vision. I'm telling you that there are other visions out there just as grand as yours that can't be seen with your mindset. And I'm telling you, that it often feels as though the big companies are building to support their one true wayism. Whether they are or not, it still feels that way. It still feels lonely to have had the greatest experiences of my life, and to feel like I will never experience it again because no one can understand how to get there, everyone I try to share it with claim to understand but then go right on trampling off in the wrong direction obviously having no clue.
There is a term for that. You won't find a way around it. It is a function of human cognition.
be aware that there is a real difference between Rules and Mechanics in game design. They are, ultimately, two different things that form an interconnected uint. For example, it is a Rule that you use a 20 sided die for a d 20 Test, but the Test itself is a Mechanic.
However, most people do not know that -- to them, a Rule and a Mechanic are the same thing (I am currently having an argument on another site with someone young over the concept of reflavoring -- and they do not understand what a mechanic is).
So that effort on your part, while wonderful for you, is only going to make your life more difficult in a general forum.
Underlined a problem: to folks like me and most other players, it is freedom. You would do better to say that you don't see it as freedom, instead of making a generalization and applying it to others.
This is how you should have phrased the prior -- here you are talking about your personal experience and frustration, not everyone else's.
Also better -- however, you followed this up with e same underlying sense of grandiose elitism that still implies that paints are better. It asserts your opinion as being superior to others. It is not. It is also not worse than others -- it is merely different. And this is an unavoidable problem because of the specific metaphor you used -- n the world of drawing and painting, broadly, painting is seen as better. I (poorly) hinted about the bad metaphor.
So, in order for me to really address this fairly, I would have to provide a long post that I would likely get dinged for since the last time I did so in order to be nice I got dinged and informed that it wasn't a place for that conversation. There is a function of human cognition and learning that (at present, and always subject to change as we learn more about it) is determinant. It is why it is so difficult for people to learn a second language, or to change the way that they approach a mathematics problem. Theoretically, it is linked to some forms of neuroatypical function (but, honestly, everyone links stuff to that these days).
That is the way. Or, at least, appears to be the why. I learned D&D in 1979, playing AD&D. I have played about 250 games, personally, and dealt with another couple hundred in some way. I have never come across a system in those 45 years that I did not grasp the systems of -- and it reached a point where I stopped being entertained because they are all variations on a theme to me now -- but I can also say that I am somewhat rare in that, based on my small sample size.
It is a thing you might research more -- and I apologize for not recalling the specific word. been a few years since I last had cause to use it.
this is a good reason not to use metaphors, then. Figure out how to speak directly at the issue. But, also, hey, I'm lucky as hell that I have friends from my high school days who I still play with even though all of us have gray hair and grandkids. Well, those of us with hair, at least. I don't think that any of the folks here would really enjoy my setting -- and I am a worldbuilder at heart -- been making worlds since I was a wee chile, 52 years worth of imaginary places.100's of distinct worlds, each one getting more and more involved and more and more complex. My D&D games are involved stories of the player characters, where they grow and develop and challenge themselves and seek to become something greater and then make a change in the world around them -- and this is player driven, sandboxy type shit that is only about 25% combat -- and most folks today think of D&D as a game about Combat.
I don't. Never have. My style of game? Been playing it for 30 years. Took me 15 years to learn to do it. I see the "WotC Pillars of Play" as
And that changes damn near everything. My current world has a basis that is so different folks blink twice if they pause to think about it. Mostly they don't.
However, one thing does divide us -- even though we both see our respective ability to play our games the way we like vanish -- and it isn't age, I don't think: it is the enjoyability of our games.
Are your games enjoyable? Do you have an easy time holding onto players? An enjoyable game is something that everyone wants to keep doing. Everyone, not just the DM. From what you describe, you seem to have a good group right now -- but growing it, while a laudable goal, should be secondary to making sue you give your current group the most enjoyable experience.
My group grew very, very organically until this year. It was friends, spouses, friends of friends, children, friends of children, spouses of children, children of children, friends of children's children, etc. But we have been playing together for 45 years. Making it a priority because we enjoy it -- and when we didn't enjoy it, things did not work well. Then, kids and grandkids brought new people in this year -- we're still adapting, still adjusting. It hasn't always been smooth sailing either -- rough patches for years, people leaving and then coming back later.
Like I said, I am lucky. But I am also someone who says we make our own luck -- and that's what we did, and I'd say do that. Your players ar the ones who can bring in other folks -- if they feel like it is good, that others will enjoy it.
But you cannot control how other people play. You can only present something that you hope they will enjoy, and if they don't, well, then try again -- and if no one ever enjoys it, then change the way you do things.
I have no doubt that there are. Some of them are inimical to me, personally.
As I pointed out, that's sort of the natural progression of the current schema on the business end of ttrpgs, with the rise of VTT's and digital tools that are pointedly narrowed to the specific rules (which all of it becomes in a programmatic environment).
Bluntly, all of them are doing it because that's the direction the player base is wanting to go in. ANd while there will always be outliers like us out there, we will always be exactly that -- outliers. In the schema of adoption of Innovation, we will be equivalent to the ones that never got a telephone installed in their homes.
That's just freaking life in the modern age.
To share it with others, they have to be willing, and you can never force them to do so. It isn't a wrong direction, either -- it is just their direction, and it is different from yours. That's one I experience every single day -- just not around games.
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
Well said and well-argued, and please know that I do understand, for a long time I argued this exact thing and on this exact forum (ask anyone around here).... but understand that like a philosophy student in their 3rd year at the university, you are going through one of several "phases" of being a RPG player/GM. Many people who enter this hobby will go through some variation of phases for example a "storyteller" phase, they will go through a "realism is critical" phase and maybe a "tactical combat is vital" phase and as a result either start changing the rules or complaining about them. These sort of poignant philosophies about what the game is and isn't or how it should or shouldn't be are just natural arguments people make as they sort of explore the hobby and bump against certain things. For many, especially in the OSR, these philosophies become "the way we play" and as such become their own sub-culture and this is why there are so many different types of RPG's and alternative takes on D&D. People who found one of these arguments and made it "there version".
The thing is that 99% of the people are not philosophy students. They are not trying to understand the deeper meaning and purpose of D&D. The overwhelming majority of people don't care about any of that. What most people want is a easy, fun game to play that entertains them on the weekend and they want that experience to be as simple to get into and as approachable as humanly possible.
This is why 5th edition D&D is so bloody popular and exactly why the OSR will always remain this tiny, irrelevant sub-section of the community.
3.X ain't ever coming back, and neither is 1e.. these are dead games and they will remain dead games because they are designs forever trapped in a mid-stage of the evolution of the game. They will always have their fans, but if your argument is that 5e should be more like Xe, pick your favorite, your barking up the wrong tree and wasting your time, its never gonna happen. 5e isn't just the most popular version of D&D, its the single most successful RPG in the entire history of RPG's and by a margin so wide, it doesn't matter who is in second place. What D&D "should be" was definitively and forever decided when 5th edition D&D was released. This is what D&D is now and its likely what its going to be 50 years from now. There are no more evolutionary stages left to take and the game ain't going back to anything.
The point is that 5e is no longer a "rules system" or "edition of the game". It is what D&D is as a culture. In the same way there are mobile phones but then there are Iphones. Iphones haven't changed in any significant way in over 20 years and they won't change over the next 20 and everyone is fine with that.. just throw on better cameras and move on. Its what D&D has become for better or for worse, 5e is the Iphone of RPG's.
Please do take note of the smiley emoji! :D
Stepping in here a bit to try and course correct before this becomes too much of an edition war.
You can disagree with each other, have differing opinions and correct misconceptions without falling into the trap of insulting general player preferences or intelligence. Also if you find yourself quoting large chains of another reply, then it has become more about that specific user interaction instead of the general conversation, and it may be time to step back (it is also advisable to in general avoid large quote chains. You're all contributing to the same topic you do not need to repost the last few messages to do so.)
There are plenty of things to discuss about what works in each edition and why, including 5e, which is the original topic- Why do you like 5e?
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This has been a frequent topic of conversation in introducing new RPGs to people and wondering why other games like Blades in the Dark or Vampire the Masquerade or Cyberpunk or Eclipse Phase or Shadowrun. I'm dissapointed endlessly that Shadows of Estern is not a bigger game.
This is going to be hard for any game, but is extra hard when the alternative is basically the same thing. You're not really playing a different game if it's just an older version.
I think a game with a lot of "mechancics" but few rules would be Magic the Gathering. Where each card is a mechanic but the base rules are small. Many miniature combat games are the same where there's simple base rules but each piece has unique mechanics.
As someone who played a LOT of 3.0 and 3.5e back in the the day, it has both. Every new feat and Prestige Class and Alternate Class brings new mechanics. But there are also a LOT of rules. The information is skills is not suggestion, it is rules. The information in the combat and adventuring chapters is not guide points. It is rules.
Things like knowing when you cast grease the character is considered balancing as per the Balance skill and if they don't have 5 ranks in Balance they are flat-footed, granting a bonus to attack them (and triggering Sneak Attack) AND that if you are hit by an attack while balancing you have to repeat the save or fall prone. That is 100% RULES, which 3.5e is full of.
If you're not using all those rules and ignoring them then you are invoking house rules. But just because you house rule a bunch of rules away does not mean those rules don't exist.
It's honestly hilarious that you used "Palladium" in the same sentance as "modern systems."
If the mechanics of 5e get in the way of your play style but 3e doesn't that might have more to do with experience and comfort with 5e than the actual mechanics of the game. 5e can handle most styles of gameplay that 3e can manage. You can tell simmilar stories in both.
What 5e doesn't do is proscribe DCs for the most part. Where the DM can just present a world and calculate all the numbers as the players naviagte. No DM fiat. A sandbox turned up to 11 where the DM is just the refere and rules arbiter. That would be harder with 5e but not impossible as the DCs tend to be a static 10-15.
I'm really not sure what you mean by this.
And what playstyle does 5e promote? Since we have a horror campaign AND a whimsical faerie tale where you can skip combat in every encounter. We have dungeon crawls AND heists. There are investigative mysteries AND jungle hexcrawls. It's hard to reduce official 5e to just one thing.
And that's without considering all the 3rd Party stuff, like the one where every PC is a humanoid birds species.
3e was very much about balance. It failed at being fully balanced, but that WAS very much a goal. It was designed to give every mechanic a common core (roll a d20 and add a modifier, higher is better) rather than the myriad unconnected systems of 2e and earlier. But game balance was very much a thing.
The game was designed around having four encounters at the appropriate level that each exhausted 25% of your resources. That was the baseline. But you could shift that to five easier fights or three harder fights. With expected treasure granting a set wealth by level that would balance fighters with spellcasters via magic items.
Calculating Encounter Level was a big part of the game, and each official adventure clearly said what the EL of each encounter was.
As I demonstrated earlier, this is emperically false. There are lots of connective strands through the rules, such as the Balance skill in the grease spell, and if you removed that skill or folded its effects into an Acrobat's skill you'd also need to re-write grease. I spent a LOT of time writing homebrew for 3e and Pathfinder, and there were many subtle interactions.
Yeah, in 5e there is a slight increase in power at 1st level. Mostly with spellcasters and cantrips.
But a human fighter in 3e and a human fighter in 5e will be fairly comparable in terms of attack numbers and damage and hit points and AC. The difference is much smaller than you might think.
If you really want to understand, I would suggest playing in a 5e game. See what they're actually doing. See how it compares to your style.
More examples of your playstyle might help. An example of an adventure you told and how an average session might unfold.
Online games are your friend. Start a campaign on Roll20 and look for like minded souls and then keep building a community that plays like you. Pull from players across the globe.
Wizards of the Coast cannot TELL people how to play their game. If they could, 4e wouldn't have failed.
It's the opposite. People told WotC what game they wanted through public playtests and feedback. And so they made that game. Which is a big reason why 5e is so popular: it turns out if you make what people want they will give you money for it.
That's life. Things move on and change. I had great experiences in college but I'll never experience them again. I have to just move forward and find different experiences. New experiences that are completely different but no less good.
Just because the experience you can get now isn't the same as the experience you want or the experience you had, doesn't mean it can't be a lot of fun.
This is an interesting, multifaceted conversation but in the context of the original question, "why do you like 5e", I think most people's answers who know the system, know the rules and play it regularly would be that its easy to play and its easy to run. 5e also has very good playstyle coverage.
Perhaps more importantly though is that 5e covers the playstyles the vast majority (the wider audience) of Fantasy Adventure roleplayers like. There are limits to the system, I tend to agree that for example with 3.x it was possible to run big dungeon crawls and dungeon survival games, it was a playstyle very much supported by 3.x and it really isn't a playstyle that is supported in 5e. You can do it, but it's a bit like trying to make steak out of Tofu. In that context though when someone took 5e and adapted it to be a Dungeon Crawling game (Shadowdark) the audience was pretty limited. There just isn't that much interest in it and that can be hard to accept for guys like me who love that playstyle living in a time when very few people share that interest.
3.x I do think was very flexible and a very modular system that had wider coverage but the thing is and again, we go back to the core philosophy is that modern gamers don't want heavy rule systems. This is a key thing to understand about modern games and modern design. People want options, but not complexity. It's why 5e has linear progression.
3.x and really most fo the system that came before it with perhaps the exception of B/X were pretty complex games. For certain some of them had better coverage, but you have to ask the question, for who? I mean if Dungeon Crawling or Dungeon Survival were a big part of what 5e players wanted, they would be insisting that WotC support that playstyle, but really there is very little interest in it from this community. This is true about a lot of the different styles of play.
5e kind of developed its own playstyle, its a thing to play 5th edition D&D, and it is the playstyle the vast majority of modern gamers want and to answer the OP's question, why do you like 5e, I think its fair to say that this is the consensus. People like the 5e playstyle, that's what they like about it.
The counter-argument is, why not 3.x, to which the answer is, because it's not 5e.
People still do play 3.x and Pathfinder 1.0 and really if you want to look into the evolution of the playstyle you're describing, you're really talking about Pathfinder 2nd edition for the most part.
That said, you are right that many of these playstyles are going extinct, but a lot of these classic methods are being preserved by the OSR. Like LP's or retro consoles, there is a place in the market for this sort of thing and it is supported, but it is a niche thing. 5e is a mainstream game, it has a huge audience.
it's just a really well-supported game. You have DnD Beyond and the entire digitalization of the game, you have DM Guild where 3rd party publishing is wide open with almost no licensing restrictions of any kind, you have a huge company that financially backs it and now there is going to be a VTT dedicated to it. Competitively speaking, D&D 5th edition is going to likely have an almost Monopoly level of the market share and frankly, I can kind of understand why. Not only is it well-supported, but its actually a really fun game to play. Take out all of the politics and WotC corporate overlord and just play the game and you actually start to see why its so popular. I almost feel bad for all of these new games coming into the market because had games like Draw Steel or Tales of the Valliant or DC20 come out 10 years ago, you might have been able to compete, but at this point, those games are going to struggle because while they might produce good systems, you won't see the level of support 5e gets with any other game anytime soon.
I meant what I said earlier about this being the rare time "a rising tide lifts all boats" is true. D&D's success overflows to the rest of the tabletop medium. D&D is a gateway to trying other things. I see it every year at PAX Unplugged. Folks who already play D&D 5E (and even folks who are just trying for the first time) try and pick up other systems. Look at all the systems features on Demiplane. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites are super effective TTRPG incubators at this point. D&D 5E gets a lot of attention, sure, but we're not in any danger of D&D 5E smothering the medium.
Sadly the perpetual problem of finding a group of people to play with regularly is still there no matter the franchise or system.
We'll have to see how successful the digitalization of D&D becomes long-term, right now most results are at best indicators of hype and short-term gains, but playing online has been growing over the last 10. The question is, what does 2024 5th edition look like in the market 5 years from now?
The one thing that may happen is that having a custom-built 3d tool for your specific game and DnDBeyond like support tools may very well become the new standard of what is expected for a TTRP release. On the other hand, people might just get bored with 5th edition rules, not because they are bad but because they have been around for a decade already and people might shift to other games just to try new ways to play RPG's.
Right now there is no indication of the the latter. D&D 5e has been consistently the most played game on roll20 for example for nearly a decade, sitting pretty at 50% of all games played and the number of people playing has been steadily growing, roll20 10 years ago had 3 million users, today they have 20 million. Most other platforms have similar player bases and similar stats.
If all those people shift to a "For D&D only" VTT, that will set a standard for the bulk of the RPG community of what playing online should look like. That standard is pretty damn high if what we know about the coming tool is true.
So D&D might not quite have smothered out its competition yet, but if businesses like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and others lose 50% of their consumers to a for D&D only VTT and that VTT becomes the new standard for what online RPG play should look like.. we may very well be looking at a major shift in the RPG hobby.
This is of course all speculation, but right now 5e is not just winning, they are crushing it and 2 years from now when all of this has come to past, if they successfully execute on their current strategy, D&D is not just going to be a leader in the business, but an example of how a successful TTRPG must be to have any hope to compete.
It seems unlikely, since nobody except WotC is likely to ever be able to afford to do it. We might see the third-party generic VTTs feeling like they have to keep up, I suppose, but there's not going to be any other game-specific VTTs. (Especially since D&D's isn't all that game-specific as I understand it.)
Will it make it harder to get people to try other games? Perhaps, but that's a small fraction to begin with, and people who are inclined to try something new strike me as the sort who are least likely to be dissuaded by the lack of fancy VTT. Heck, many non-D&D games have no use for a VTT. You need at least moderately tactical combat before it's not more trouble than it's worth. I don't think any of the non-D&D games I'm likely to play would want a VTT, unless I wanna break out the GURPS. Even DIE, which is a game that's about D&D, has no need.
I don't see it affecting the RPG hobby much, because D&D may be the only part of the RPG hobby that can create major shifts. Everyone else is statistical error, except Pathfinder. (probably)
This is absolutely the right answer, but it doesn't help understand how to describe concepts to people. Hearing people defend and describe and discuss 5e gives insight to their way of thinking. Haven't figured out a way to make certain concepts easy to understand yet, but certainly discussions like this help me understand players better.
As for "because it isn't 5e" in never a good answer, because it relies on the listener to know fully what being 5e means to the speaker, which is something that in 9 out of 10 cases would render the question answered before asked. Truthfully it is the kind of answer given by someone that doesn't know how to put the answer in words and doesn't want to figure it out, usually because it is hard (and it is a very hard thing).
Um, not really. Pathfinder moved away from 3.5's design intention. Sure they kept most of the fundamental mechanics, but the changes they did make were mostly in service to an ideology that is contrary to 3.5's design. And on the axis of playstyles I speak about, PF2 and 5e are basically identical. The mechanics are slightly different, and definitely evolved, but the direction of that evolution has still been in the same direction as 5e. I am designing to evolve systems in the other direction.
Just as an example of what I mean. When was the last time you saw anyone playing dnd or pathfinder confront a trap and come up any idea other than rolling the anti-trap skill? Past 2nd edition dnd anyway. You generally have to go to osr or freeform or some storytelling system that doesn't have an anti-trap skill.
3.5 is in this weird space, where you are supposed to be in a freeform gaming like mindset yet using a set of mechanics that can get as broadly applicable as you desire. This is weird because the more broadly applicable the mechanics, the more people treat them like laws and make decisions like they are laws. You even get players who will twist the mechanics against the obvious design intent, so long as they can say it is "technically" within the laws, just like how laywers deal with legalities. This also shapes thinking to be about using the mechanics instead of the narrative environment. But 3.5 was not designed for this, and that is what makes it weird.
I disagree with this. The "a rising tide lifts all boats" was true of the OGL. Imagine if Hollywood only supported Marvel superhero films. Movies like the Green Mile or You've Got Mail or Harry Potter or LotR or Star Wars or Star Trek would not exist, or if they did, then they would be low budget off brand "b rated" films that would not attract much attention.
The same applies here, which is why WotC and Hasbro tried to end the OGL, because they do not want all boats to rise. They want a monopoly. If they succeed in truly making a monopoly, it will hurt the scope of rpgs, limiting them greatly. Sure, you continue to get the little indy dev games, but ultimately, no one but WotC would matter to the general direction of the hobby. Paizo is thankfully big enough to stand, but even then you can still get a duopoly, similar to how Marvel and DC are practically the only superhero brands. Sure other companies have done supers, such as the Megamind film, but honestly, Megamind is literally the only non-game superhero anything I can thing of that isn't Marvel or DC. We are very likely facing a similar outcome with WotC and Paizo, a situation in which most roleplayers won't be able to name a rpg company beyond those two except for a few players on the fringes of gamer society. ANd if Paizo doesn't get some good VTT options of it's own pretty quickly, there is a good chance WotC might even overshadow them.
To be fair to the person who said that, it did come after a couple pages of discussion on how the systems are different, what that person found to be better about 5e compared to 3.5e, and the revelation that 5e is orders of magnitude more popular than any other iteration of the game has been in the past. If it had been the first and only thing they had said, I'd agree with you, but it was simply a summary of the situation after all of the explanation.
I think what you're trying to do is change the way people think about 3.5e (and I may be misreading it, but you sound like you have a system you've built based off of it and would like it to be more popular). I think the best word to describe the resistance is "friction". Yes, 3.5e tables and "mechanics" can be seen as completely optional or modifiable, but it IS in the "rulebook". It takes effort to go through all of that and see what you want to keep, what you want to throw away, and what you want to modify. Knowing that it is there gives DMs the notion that they should at least know it, and players ammunition (no matter how spurious) to throw at the DM if they think it should be as it states in said rules. This can all be overcome, no doubt. But there is friction there. I'd propose that one of the main reasons 5e is so popular is because it has greatly reduced the amount of friction there is to play the game. It is a hell of a lot easier for both DMs and players to say "What the DM says is the final." when there are no specific rules for that thing in the rulebook.
I'd even go so far as to say that your average player is more interested in smooth gameplay than making sure the DC is set "appropriately" by looking it up in some obscure table.
Saturday and Sunday past.
There is no "Detect Traps" skill -- there is a perception skill, however, which is meant to replace that (because they got rid of all the special abilities of Thieves). There are also Thieves tools, but they can only disarm traps, not locate them. Anyone can buy them and gain the proficiency. So the only thing 5e has that is close to an "anti-trap skill" is a set of tools. Folks are really bad about using tools in 5e -- they forget they are there.
However, yesterday and the day before, in two separate sets of ruins (one desert that heading towards a thing I was not prepared to reveal yet, the other a fairly standard forest ruin with an underground chamber) they avoided both a deadfall (forest) and a spike trap without using either of those skill sets.
They didn't even try to roll to disarm the traps -- they just said "this looks like an area she gonna trap" and so got really interesting about how they solved. And the cleric had a set of thieves tools!
That was in 5e -- I may have different classes, races, and magic system, and I may have added a lot to the system, but the core basis is still 5e for everything.
Side note: Which of these 7 is closest to you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rewQzOpatZg
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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"The point is that 5e is no longer a "rules system" or "edition of the game". It is what D&D is as a culture. In the same way there are mobile phones but then there are Iphones. Iphones haven't changed in any significant way in over 20 years and they won't change over the next 20 and everyone is fine with that.. just throw on better cameras and move on. Its what D&D has become for better or for worse, 5e is the Iphone of RPG's."
First of all, comparing to phones isn't quite a good comparison I think. Android is a truly massive competitor to Iphones, and while Apple is definitively the better in terms of hardware, their software is generally inferior outside a small selection of traits and random choices from when Jobs stepped in, like the sound used for text messages. Thus Android has a hook that Iphone simply can't compete with. I have LCARS on my android as the home screen. Iphone can't do that and probably never will. Thus current consensus is a duality, iphone and android together at the top.
A better comparison might be American animation. Most Americans view animation as being in one of two categories "for kids/family" and "adult humor" like the Simpsons. Americans in general aren't going to expect or give attention to an animated film on par with any Hollywood blockbuster if it going to be a serious film. You can see that in the one live-turned-animation film that Reaves did that flopped. I'm not sure if it even made it to theaters.
Anime from Japan proves that animation can absolutely do serious well, but society has to have a mindset accepting of it in that role in order for it to get big. Japan has that, hence the rich variety of serious and mature anime. Americans don't, hence why Pixar films are all family films. The American mindset is that animation is childish.
5e and the current rp culture has a mindset that is settling down to a, metaphorically, live action only mindset, which WotC and Paizo are promoting because it's easier for them to monetize, I'm trying to make sure that, metaphorically speaking, anime can be at least taken as seriously and be as accepted. OSR for example has some feeling of legitimacy to it, even if not as popular as 5e.
Another aspect here though, is that big backing, marketing, and investment by companies affects what "everybody does." It is a feedback loop. WotC makes a game that better fits a popular style, which makes that style more popular, and WotC makes more products that fit the style even better which makes the style even more popular, and so on. We need other games to counter WotC, not to hurt them or anything, but because we need the feedback loop to not be so uniform. If we don't it'll be a long time of a fairly uniform experience, much like how for a long time, what we know as classical music, was the only kind of big professional music there was. You had folk music, where country and western come from, but a big production was classical music. Then you had a few stand outs like the Beatles. Now we have concerts of a wide variety of styles, including rock and pop and hip-hop and rap, etc. If WotC succeeds, we will basically, like music, have an entire era of just classical on the big stage with everything else pushed to the fringes.