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.
Fair enough.
"I think what you're trying to do is change the way people think about 3.5e"
Not quite. How most people think about 3.5 is not the way the design expects them to think. My system is designed for a similar mindset. 3.5 serves as a good example that people will not always bring the same expectations to the table that the design is built around. Thus, I want to be able to make the design expectations clear. I really want the mindset 3.5 was built on to be more popular and recognizable, regardless of who or what system, but for my system in particular, I'd rather players walk away from it understanding what the system was trying to do than to be shoved in a trash bin because they bring the same mindset as 5e and when it fails to be any good under that mindset call it trash because they never actually saw what it was trying to be.
To use a metaphor, it's like calling a car a really bad design because it can't pull a 52' tractor trailer fully loaded, when the car is supposed to be a speedy little sports car.
3.5 was judged according to a mindset very dissimilar to the expectations of the design. This is the fate I'm trying to avoid. And to avoid that, I need to be able to present the rules that makes the expected mindset clear. And I can't even make the mindset clear after multiple pages of forum posts. Admittedly, this particular thread is more about generating discussion and understanding the more popular mindset, but still, it is not like this is my first thread.
"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."
3.5 isn't about getting appropriate DCs. It is about making sure that when the DM sets the DC, it A) communicates something about the world and task beyond simply chance of success, and B) it does not feel outlandishly low or high to the players.
For example, due to having looked up the world records on long jump, if the DM of a game set the DC for a 60' gap so low that a common farmer has a fair chance of success, then that would seem to me really messed up and far outside expectations, because I know that a 60' gap should be impossible for a normal human, even at peak athletic ability.
But not everyone has looked up the world records of long jump, so where is the line that the DC seems unreasonable will be different for different people, unless you all write something down or otherwise agree on something already written. 3.5 was that already thing everyone could see and thus have closely aligned expectations and also understand intuitively what was communicated when the DM gave a DC. For example, if the DM set the DC for a lock at 35, then everyone knew that the lock was an amazingly well crafted lock of supreme quality, thus the maker of it had to be a really talented master smith, and that the lock was very expensive and hard to acquire, etc. But that communication only works when everyone has their expectations in line with each other and particularly the DM.
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.
I don't think this is true.
One thing I've found, is that introducing players to certain other mindsets first tend to be better able to learn different mindsets later, especially if multiple games of different mindsets early on. But basically every player I've met that is introduced to the mindset 5e promotes first, has a massive load of trouble figuring out how to use mechanics with any other mindset.
I would say therefore, teach that mindset first that remains easy to discover new mindsets, rather than teach the mindset that makes it harder to discover other mindsets. This tends to be orthogonal to how easy or difficult the mechanics are to use.
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.
Sounds great. Though I'm not sure how Perception plays into it, but I also notice they didn't use any other mechanics in a creative way, and they didn't have a go to mechanic as a default action. Of course, neither trap was something to be disabled anyway, since they were just pits it doesn't make sense to "disable them," but it's nice to know that 5e doesn't have an anti-trap skill (no idea how I missed that). The weird mindset I am looking at is the ability to actually have a mechanic like Disable Device, without it preventing you from seeing solutions that wouldn't use them.
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, it was very much designed for this purpose. 3rd edition was a game designed in such a way that you could play it and never do any free-form role-play at all and you had all the rules to execute every last detail of every action you could think of. Everything you do, could be executed with a mechanic and a dice check.
I mean quite literally 3e had a very specific Anti-Trap skill, it was called Disable Device and that was the only purpose of the skill, to remove locks and disable traps. You also had Disguise, Move Silently, Forgery, Escape artist.... All PF2e did was lump those into a single skilled called Thievery to streamline the game.
Pathfinder 2e as was Pathfinder 1e is just an evolution of the exact same design as 3rd edition, the same playstyle, the same philosophy to execution of mechanics, they are practically indistinguishable. A playerstyle hyper focused on executing rules over DM Fiat and free-form role-playing and role-playing decisions. It was a game about rolling dice and very intentionally.
5e was a major pushback against this style of play. It brought the game back to an almost pre-non-weapon-proficiency era. Think about it. If you want to put on a disguise or disable a trap or forge a document... what skill would you apply in 5e? Which skill is the "anti-trap skill?"
My group played Pathfinder 2e for 2 years and the reason we gave up on the system was because it was too mechanized, we missed actual role-playing.
It is worth noting, in my way of thinking, that 5e -- the current edition, as it transitions to the 2024 rules for that edition -- in not merely the most popular version of D&D ever.
The popularity of 5th Edition is greater than that of all prior versionscombined. Not just any single edition. yes, it built on that, and yes, population growthand time and scale have all helped, but it is still essentially true at its core that it has achieved that.
Talk of the game's popularity is about as valuable to any discussion about the value of the game as is talk of some band's popularity since they became vapid, overproduced tripe is to one about whether or not that band remain any good. The popularity of something has never been a measure of how good something is. From film to literature. To just about anything. The most popular of movies of any given year rank among the absolute worst in the medium.
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.
I don't disagree with you, I do think people should be open to trying alternative styles of play, different RPG's and even go back to old editions of the game with an open mind and try to understand "why" these old styles of play where once THE way we played the game.
That said, most DM's, myself included, rather live in the now, in the current method and participate in the current culture, than simply sit around not playing at all and being angry that "our way" is no longer popular.
5th edition D&D as a ruleset and as a culture is a fun experience, its actually really fun and Im not at all surprised or have any confusion about why. Its a good rule set, its easy to use, very approachable. There is lots of reasons to like it.
On the flip side, as much as I love for example 1st edition B/X and AD&D, I do get why people see its flaws and might not be as interested in its playstyle or its philosophy both as a culture and game design... It in a lot of ways is directly opposed to the things people like about 5e.
Now you could claim that modern D&D players are closed minded and I sometimes feel that way and its frustrating, but I think the truth is that people are just having fun, they enjoy their way of doing it and if you like something that much, why change? Why seek out things that are different, especially things that see less support, smaller player basis and just generally have more barriers.
All I'm saying is I get it. I do think people are missing out on a lot of stuff in the modern era. A good, meaty 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Survival game is ... amazing. Its truly a unique experience, it has a tension and challenge that far exceeds anything you will ever get out of 5e.. but, I've kind of given up trying to convince people who are already very happy with the game they are playing to try something else.
So I do get your views and I do get what your saying, I'm just kind of illustrating the reality. Some styles of play are just destined to go extinct, at best maybe surviving as a nich throwback, but as I said before, I don't see things like 3rd editions style of play coming back anytime soon. Maybe some day it will be cool again when its sufficiently retro. Right now the best your going to do is like PF2e where you can find the evolutionary string within the system to those old school games. Then again, you can find a lot of the old school strings in modern 5e as well.
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.
What 5E does it does well. But it is one of the worst game systems with which to introduce newcomers to the hobby. The core mechanic is rather simple. Roll d20. Roll high. But it's playing at make believe to pretend that 5E is as simple as this. Even at just 1st level characters start with so many things and with so many choices to be made the game can be overwhelming for anyone who hasn't spent a whole weekend reading the Player's Handbook. Never used to be that way. I typically run games for newcomers. I use a version of D&D in which characters can be rolled up in mere minutes. Those to me will always be the superior iterations of the game.
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.
What 5E does it does well. But it is one of the worst game systems with which to introduce newcomers to the hobby. The core mechanic is rather simple. Roll d20. Roll high. But it's playing at make believe to pretend that 5E is as simple as this. Even at just 1st level characters start with so many things and with so many choices to be made the game can be overwhelming for anyone who hasn't spent a whole weekend reading the Player's Handbook. Never used to be that way. I typically run games for newcomers. I use a version of D&D in which characters can be rolled up in mere minutes. Those to me will always be the superior iterations of the game.
RPG's have definitely become a lot more involved compared to the old 1e B/X days when you rolled 3d6 down the chain and just from that act you were reduced to a single decision.. what class to play and your character was ready.
The thing is and this is the important part of the story, that wasn't enough for players back then either. I mean even the Basic D&D set eventually shipped with the Expert set as well and by the time B/X was 10 years old you had the BECMI system and the D&D Cyclopedia and already that was waaay more complex of a system than what 5e is today.
The growth of complexity is a natural evolution of the game, but its worth noting that the 2024 PHB is not for novice players, its not a starting point for new D&D players. 5e has starter sets for that and they come with pre-generated characters and easy to follow adventures just like the B/X 1e set did. Things really haven't changed, we just have a different perspective.
What made systems like 1e B/X for example not that great for beginners despite the ease of rules was that the game was very hard to be successful at. You were never more than 1 small error in judgement from a character death, the game was incredibly unforgiving. It also was driven by gaming philosophies that are quite advanced, I think even expert modern role-players struggle to understand how you can run D&D without a skill system for example or how do you balance encounters without a CR system to help you.
Running B/X 1e well, I would argue requires you to be a borderline master DM, it is incredibly tricky with tons of nuance to create a good experience for players. I love it mind you, it still is to this day my absolute favorite system to run, but yeah, I sort of don't agree that it was "simple". The rules were simple, but to run it and play it... that took a lot of experience and skill to do well.
I might even argue that once you have run 5e long enough, you might be sufficiently skilled to take on a real challenge and run a 1e B/X game. That in my opinion, is a real test of DM skills.
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.
What 5E does it does well. But it is one of the worst game systems with which to introduce newcomers to the hobby.
It seems to be doing ok at it, all things considered.
The core mechanic is rather simple. Roll d20. Roll high. But it's playing at make believe to pretend that 5E is as simple as this. Even at just 1st level characters start with so many things and with so many choices to be made the game can be overwhelming for anyone who hasn't spent a whole weekend reading the Player's Handbook.
It's really not bad. The new PHB improves on the cueing, and provides suggestions for most or all of your lower-level decisions, but it wasn't much different before. (This is the reason for level 3 subclasses.) It's just:
pick your class
pick your species
pick what you did before
You don't need to know any of the stuff outside of your character, and the leveling process is pretty good at introducing new things gradually.
Is ancient D&D simpler? Yes, but that simplicity comes with a lack of options for everyone.
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.
What 5E does it does well. But it is one of the worst game systems with which to introduce newcomers to the hobby. The core mechanic is rather simple. Roll d20. Roll high. But it's playing at make believe to pretend that 5E is as simple as this. Even at just 1st level characters start with so many things and with so many choices to be made the game can be overwhelming for anyone who hasn't spent a whole weekend reading the Player's Handbook. Never used to be that way. I typically run games for newcomers. I use a version of D&D in which characters can be rolled up in mere minutes. Those to me will always be the superior iterations of the game.
RPG's have definitely become a lot more involved compared to the old 1e B/X days when you rolled 3d6 down the chain and just from that act you were reduced to a single decision.. what class to play and your character was ready.
The thing is and this is the important part of the story, that wasn't enough for players back then either. I mean even the Basic D&D set eventually shipped with the Expert set as well and by the time B/X was 10 years old you had the BECMI system and the D&D Cyclopedia and already that was waaay more complex of a system than what 5e is today.
The growth of complexity is a natural evolution of the game, but its worth noting that the 2024 PHB is not for novice players, its not a starting point for new D&D players. 5e has starter sets for that and they come with pre-generated characters and easy to follow adventures just like the B/X 1e set did. Things really haven't changed, we just have a different perspective.
What made systems like 1e B/X for example not that great for beginners despite the ease of rules was that the game was very hard to be successful at. You were never more than 1 small error in judgement from a character death, the game was incredibly unforgiving. It also was driven by gaming philosophies that are quite advanced, I think even expert modern role-players struggle to understand how you can run D&D without a skill system for example or how do you balance encounters without a CR system to help you.
Running B/X 1e well, I would argue requires you to be a borderline master DM, it is incredibly tricky with tons of nuance to create a good experience for players. I love it mind you, it still is to this day my absolute favorite system to run, but yeah, I sort of don't agree that it was "simple". The rules were simple, but to run it and play it... that took a lot of experience and skill to do well.
I might even argue that once you have run 5e long enough, you might be sufficiently skilled to take on a real challenge and run a 1e B/X game. That in my opinion, is a real test of DM skills.
All of your "criticisms" of B/X are exactly why it remains so popular among old-school gamers—even more so than AD&D—and why it's the preferred iteration of D&D for hacking in the OSR movement.
More OSR games are built on its chassis or are even direct or near direct copies of it than they resemble any other edition of the game. Including the most recent one.
I questioned before your understanding of what the OSR movement is about. Because you have a tendency to say what players "back then" did not like despite the fact so many of us so thoroughly enjoyed it we have returned to it. That we are fewer than those who play 5E is moot. It's a movement that has had such a strong and lasting presence on the blogs and beyond for the past twenty years that today we see entire online shops dedicated to products birthed from the movement and more zines and other DIY products than 5E could ever hope to produce and sell to its devotees—so obsessed are they with what is official. There is no telling where current official D&D will be in the next fifty years of its existence but I seriously doubt it will have that sort of cult following. Most of those devotees will have moved on to play the next version of the game.
That it requires no small degree of skill to DM B/X is not at all a criticism in my mind. Personally I would never want to play in a game run by a mediocre DM. One of the best DMs I have ever had in my four decades of playing runs a heavily modified 5E. Many of his changes reflecting some of those "criticisms" of yours: the lethality of it and a draining of bloat and in its place a simplification of rules that made things much more open and allowed for negotiation between players and DM for how something might work. But for one other player and myself the others at the table were new to not just D&D but to table-top role-playing. This game started in the early days of the pandemic. We are still playing. Too many are the stories of newcomers hoping to get the D&D experience they saw on Freaks & Geeks or Stranger Things coming away less than satisfied because they spent more time trying to understand all the things their characters could even do than they did playing and having fun. Like I said: what 5E does it does well. But it is not at all a good introduction to the hobby for those who don't want to have to read the Player's Handbook. I run games for both students and friends of mine who are already busy enough as it is.
Is ancient D&D simpler? Yes, but that simplicity comes with a lack of options for everyone.
That's just not true. What that "lack of options" meant was more negotiation at the table so that players could play characters they wanted. Balance was an afterthought in what was a game more about having fun and telling stories not unlike those we encountered in fantasy masterworks than it was about the rules.
What that meant was the options were limitless.
Go crack open some of the spellbooks out there that have come out of the OSR. The spells and magic items in these things are the sorts of things that would likelynever make an appearance in a 5E game. And certainly never in an official product. So just who is experiencing a lack of options?
Saturating the rules with options has ironically limited the options now available to players.
To play within the confines of the rules and only ever make selections from the menus available to you will never provide the infinitude of options or provide the experience old-school play provides.
You don't need to know any of the stuff outside of your character
How does one even begin to know what one wants to play without knowing what it is others can do?
You can give a new player a shorthand description of a class to help them make this decision. But then your issue with earlier editions seems to be the "lack of options." All those menu items are rendered pretty meaningless if you are to withhold from a new player what information they would require to make an informed decision just to simply the process of character creation for them.
Is ancient D&D simpler? Yes, but that simplicity comes with a lack of options for everyone.
That's just not true. What that "lack of options" meant was more negotiation at the table so that players could play characters they wanted. Balance was an afterthought in what was a game more about having fun and telling stories not unlike those we encountered in fantasy masterworks than it was about the rules.
What that meant was the options were limitless.
Go crack open some of the spellbooks out there that have come out of the OSR. The spells and magic items in these things are the sorts of things that would likelynever make an appearance in a 5E game. And certainly never in an official product. So just who is experiencing a lack of options?
Saturating the rules with options has ironically limited the options now available to players.
To play within the confines of the rules and only ever make selections from the menus available to you will never provide the infinitude of options or provide the experience old-school play provides.
It's an interesting premise, but I don't think it quite worked as you describe it unless you freeze time at a very specific point in AD&D's history right around 1980ish.
Consider what the lack of options triggered in classic D&D? TSR printed books with more options. Why? Because players wanted more options. They printed a lot of books. In fact by 1995, 2nd edition had more character options available than any other edition of the game since. Was the game ruined then? I guess that is the question, at what point did creating supplement books that offer options become a bad thing? Was it the Expert set? The Companion set? Arcana perhaps? Survival Guides? Kit books? When did D&D have too many options and was there ever a point when there weren't enough?
What you are describing certainly existed for a very brief moment, but the reality is that the reason we have more and more character options, the reason there is the DM Guild pumping out 10+ new books full of options every day, 365 days a year since the Guild launched is that that's what players want....
It happens in the OSR as well. Think about it. Old School Essentials comes out, then immediately Advanced Fantasy is launched and right after that they start pumping out Caracas Crawlers and today there are at 200+ books of options for OSE on RPG Drive Thru.
Is that bad? I don't know, maybe. But I don't know how anyone can suggest something everyone wants is bad? Especially in a place like a hobby where you pretend to be a warrior or Wizard so you can fight monsters.
Is ancient D&D simpler? Yes, but that simplicity comes with a lack of options for everyone.
That's just not true. What that "lack of options" meant was more negotiation at the table so that players could play characters they wanted. Balance was an afterthought in what was a game more about having fun and telling stories not unlike those we encountered in fantasy masterworks than it was about the rules.
What that meant was the options were limitless.
Go crack open some of the spellbooks out there that have come out of the OSR. The spells and magic items in these things are the sorts of things that would likelynever make an appearance in a 5E game. And certainly never in an official product. So just who is experiencing a lack of options?
Saturating the rules with options has ironically limited the options now available to players.
To play within the confines of the rules and only ever make selections from the menus available to you will never provide the infinitude of options or provide the experience old-school play provides.
Limitless?
I guess if you never wanted a dwarf who could cast a spell or elf who could pick a lock. But there were some very non-negotiable limits BECMI. Limits which are only now, finally, fading away.
And your assertion that earlier editions were more about storytelling is patently false. At some tables it may have been about the same as it is now, but it was certainly not more about it then. No version of the game has a monopoly on any playstyle.
I'd rather crack my actual books from that period, when I played the game.
"Old School" is rather hilarious to me, because I am Old School, and what they play bears jack in relation to what I played.
What it should be called is Basic School. Because they aren't looking to AD&D, they are looking to the B/X/BECMI stuff that was removed from the entire product line up once Hasbro paid off Arneson.
And the only reason it even made it past X was the lawsuit that forced them to produce it. Hasbro culled the entire line out when they took over -- so if that's what folks think of as "old school" then they only have half the old school -- and not even that (AD&D was more widely played, which is why it is 1e in the current schema).
As for options in 5e, well...
I have 20 classes. None of them are found here, and none of them are or have subclasses. I have 25 Species. None of them are found here. I have an entirely new magic system based on spell points that has a couple hundred spells not found here -- and it uses the base game spells but allows for players to create their own.
What does that have to do with 5e?
I could make those classes and the system that supports them because of 5e -- its very structure gave me way more options and flexibility to design the systems and classes and such that my players wanted, and that are not entirely beholden to a eurocentric basis and so not possible here.
The *game* is flexible and presents options out the wazoo. The website does not.
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It's an interesting premise, but I don't think it quite worked as you describe it unless you freeze time at a very specific point in AD&D's history right around 1980ish.
Consider what the lack of options triggered in classic D&D? TSR printed books with more options. Why? Because players wanted more options. They printed a lot of books. In fact by 1995, 2nd edition had more character options available than any other edition of the game since. Was the game ruined then? I guess that is the question, at what point did creating supplement books that offer options become a bad thing? Was it the Expert set? The Companion set? Arcana perhaps? Survival Guides? Kit books? When did D&D have too many options and was there ever a point when there weren't enough?
What you are describing certainly existed for a very brief moment, but the reality is that the reason we have more and more character options, the reason there is the DM Guild pumping out 10+ new books full of options every day, 365 days a year since the Guild launched is that that's what players want....
It happens in the OSR as well. Think about it. Old School Essentials comes out, then immediately Advanced Fantasy is launched and right after that they start pumping out Caracas Crawlers and today there are at 200+ books of options for OSE on RPG Drive Thru.
Is that bad? I don't know, maybe. But I don't know how anyone can suggest something everyone wants is bad? Especially in a place like a hobby where you pretend to be a warrior or Wizard so you can fight monsters.
I believe the "sweet spot" when it comes to D&D was before TSR began to churn out needless supplements. I'd say this began well before the arrival of even 2nd. Edition. 1st. Edition saw some pretty pointless books get a release. The worst sellers on the second hand market are always such pointless additions to the game. I paid a fraction of what I did for a 1st. Edition DMG than I did for a copy of Niles' Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. Because the latter is all but useless at the table.
Yes. All those books on DMsGuild and DrivethruRPG filled with options. It ain't for nothing so many of them are PWYW.
I have no problem with supplements in theory. It's a means for tables to share ideas. That's a good thing. And that is why we see their presence in the OSR movement.
But you are comparing apples and oranges. You are missing my point. It's not about "options." It's about how when people limit themselves to official options and official supplementary material how they are then ironically limiting their options.
Personally while I've shelves heavy with game products—I'm a collector as well as a gamer—I keep things simple when running a game. A book for procedural generation that is usually the DMG. A ruleset. This usually based on B/X. A monster manual that is not going to mean players know the ins and outs of everything I throw at them.. A setting book. And maybe an adventure module or something else.
The options are without limit because I am all ears if a player has what I think is a good idea for his or her character at the next level up.
I trust the imaginations of those I play with more than I do a company that just wants my money and whose design team hasn't designed anything I would call close to spectacular since 2014.
But you are comparing apples and oranges. You are missing my point. It's not about "options." It's about how when people limit themselves to official options and official supplementary material how they are then ironically limiting their options.
D&D Beyond has a huge and thriving homebrew section. DMsGuild and DriveThru RPG are thriving. Third party supplements from big names can take in huge amounts of cash. The most popular D&D setting remains “homebrew” followed by “homebrew campaign in an official D&D setting.”
Reality not only does not support your narrative, if actually disproves it. People are clearly going outside of the official options all the time - by homebrewing on their own, by using others’ homebrew, or by purchasing third party content.
Is ancient D&D simpler? Yes, but that simplicity comes with a lack of options for everyone.
That's just not true. What that "lack of options" meant was more negotiation at the table so that players could play characters they wanted. Balance was an afterthought in what was a game more about having fun and telling stories not unlike those we encountered in fantasy masterworks than it was about the rules.
What that meant was the options were limitless.
Go crack open some of the spellbooks out there that have come out of the OSR. The spells and magic items in these things are the sorts of things that would likelynever make an appearance in a 5E game. And certainly never in an official product. So just who is experiencing a lack of options?
Saturating the rules with options has ironically limited the options now available to players.
To play within the confines of the rules and only ever make selections from the menus available to you will never provide the infinitude of options or provide the experience old-school play provides.
This. To have this and yet have a set of mechanics that support the negotiations and make it easier to utilize the limitless options. This is how I was introduced to 3e. 3e was a language for the above and advice for new DMs to achieve it.
I guess if you never wanted a dwarf who could cast a spell or elf who could pick a lock. But there were some very non-negotiable limits BECMI. Limits which are only now, finally, fading away.
And your assertion that earlier editions were more about storytelling is patently false. At some tables it may have been about the same as it is now, but it was certainly not more about it then. No version of the game has a monopoly on any playstyle.
Yes. Limitless. Because a DM had it within his or her power to allow a player to play whatever he or she wanted. Regardless of what those "non-negotiable" rules said.
In one of the very first games I ever ran using the B in BECMI one of the players played a humanoid fox terrier as a character. We just made up any features for this playable race.
Did TSR come to my home and scold me for breaking their "non-negotiable" rules? They did not.
You are acting as if home-brewing started five minutes ago. We were doing in back then so players could play whatever they wanted.
No version of the game has a monopoly on playstyle. You are correct. But with more recent editions of the game increasingly more and more about combat to the point that now every single class is practically as adequate as any fighter is at it as far as dealing damage goes and with so many players today optimizing solely for purposes of damage and with next to zero official content about domain-level play despite how quickly characters become powerful it shouldn't be hard to see why so many 5E tables constantly have to endure the type of player who just can't wait to fight the next thing and who grows bored of anything that happens outside of combat.
It's about how when people limit themselves to official options and official supplementary material how they are then ironicallylimiting their options.
um, I do not think that's actually ironic at all. I think that's the entire point of limiting one's self to just official stuff -- limiting one's self. Maybe you have an different understanding of irony, but it certainly doesn't fit any "official" version of it.
But more so, there's nothing in 5e, as a product or a game or even the marketing, that limits the creative player. I am at a loss here trying to figure out how folks think that it does (when the explanations have all been about how people limit themselves, which, you know, is a choice, like limiting yourself to game editions other than 5e).
As I noted above: I do not use any official classes. I do not use any official races. My classes do not even follow the standard structure, and do not have any subclasses.
I use a completely customized magic system that use spell points, an additional ability score, 5 forms of magic, has nulls, takes longer than 1 action to cast spells in, unfies damage by spell level and caster level, and ultimately ignores most of the basic sell stat blocks because they are already accounted for.
I have an entire vehicle system with maneuvers.
Nothing in 5e *limited me* in making those things -- I started all of them except the classes from something already found in 5e -- I just made it work for my table.
So I am at a loss for understanding how this is 5e's "fault" or the fault of Hasbro/Wizards. Care to catch me up? What did the game or the company do to limit what is possible in 5e?
Genre? Hell, I've got space pirates cruising between parsecs, gunslingers shooting train robbers, skyships raining hell on a crusade against the cannibal goblins of Lemuria.I run urban fantasy, mystery, comedy, thriller, western, gangster, heist, and more all in my games. Right now I am in the midst of the early stages of a romance subplot that's totally film noir, all by itself -- and that's alongside a supernatural "monster of the moment" hunt!
Nothing in the game has stopped me from doing any of that -- and I am not an outlier here in the sense that I create my own stuff. (ok, I am in other ways like having played for decades, but, eh).
The game isn't holding me back or stopping me or limiting me at all.
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But with more recent editions of the game increasingly more and more about combat to the point that now every single class is practically as adequate as any fighter is at it as far as dealing damage goes and with so many players today optimizing solely for purposes of damage and with next to zero official content about domain-level play despite how quickly characters become powerful it shouldn't be hard to see why so many 5E tables constantly have to endure the type of player who just can't wait to fight the next thing and who grows bored of anything that happens outside of combat.
This came in while I was typing.
Each new edition being more and more about combat is not a limiting thing.
In 3.x, the got rid of to-hit tables. That was one of the balancing features of the game -- the more magic you have, the less good at fighting you are. That was a limitation -- one a lot of folks ignored. But that was the game adding a limitation in. And that was in both Basic and Advanced, btw.
5e removed that limitation. (technically, it was done earlier, but this about 5e limiting people).
I am a worldbuilder as a DM. I have all manner of limitations on stuff -- no, you cannot play a class or race from the books. That's a limitation. Not one the game creates, but one I -- as a player -- create.
You know who else are players? so many players today optimizing solely for purposes of damage . <-- they are.
That's not the game doing that. That's the players doing it. That's not the fault of 5e, as a product. Again, note that I don't have that problem -- because in my dungeon crawl, which is a 5e raw game -- there's only about 20 to 25% of the whole thing being combat. The rest is exploration and some light role playing.
The game didn't do that, I did. By designing a decent dungeon. Which is a real, nonsensical, old school, grimtooth's traps type of hellscape.
next to zero official content about domain-level play
This is the first thing I have seen that can be said to be the COmpany's fault, but is still not the game's fault -- the guidelines for creating a high level dungeon are right there in the DMG. My opinion of them is not printable, but they are there, and my opinion does not change that as a fact, nor does it make them "bad at it".
because "bad at it" is an opinion, and we all have them.
the rest of that stunningly constructed sentence is questionable becaus eit returns to blaming either the game or the company for players not being creative and coming up with solutions. There are some high level play option -- Domain level, you called them. Five of them, i think, though since I never use the published adventures I don't recall for certain.
So that comes across as them not giving you what, in your opinion, they should have given you. or us. And, lo and behold, what is coming in the 2024 DMG and the 2025 MM? Oh! All new options and guidance on high level campaigns and adventures.
So apparently they are hearing you as a company, but, again, how is that limiting on the part of the game when you just finished complaining about ow the use of the products themselves is limiting -- something done by the players to themselves, and not forced on them by the game or the company.
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
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Fair enough.
"I think what you're trying to do is change the way people think about 3.5e"
Not quite. How most people think about 3.5 is not the way the design expects them to think. My system is designed for a similar mindset. 3.5 serves as a good example that people will not always bring the same expectations to the table that the design is built around. Thus, I want to be able to make the design expectations clear. I really want the mindset 3.5 was built on to be more popular and recognizable, regardless of who or what system, but for my system in particular, I'd rather players walk away from it understanding what the system was trying to do than to be shoved in a trash bin because they bring the same mindset as 5e and when it fails to be any good under that mindset call it trash because they never actually saw what it was trying to be.
To use a metaphor, it's like calling a car a really bad design because it can't pull a 52' tractor trailer fully loaded, when the car is supposed to be a speedy little sports car.
3.5 was judged according to a mindset very dissimilar to the expectations of the design. This is the fate I'm trying to avoid. And to avoid that, I need to be able to present the rules that makes the expected mindset clear. And I can't even make the mindset clear after multiple pages of forum posts. Admittedly, this particular thread is more about generating discussion and understanding the more popular mindset, but still, it is not like this is my first thread.
"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."
3.5 isn't about getting appropriate DCs. It is about making sure that when the DM sets the DC, it A) communicates something about the world and task beyond simply chance of success, and B) it does not feel outlandishly low or high to the players.
For example, due to having looked up the world records on long jump, if the DM of a game set the DC for a 60' gap so low that a common farmer has a fair chance of success, then that would seem to me really messed up and far outside expectations, because I know that a 60' gap should be impossible for a normal human, even at peak athletic ability.
But not everyone has looked up the world records of long jump, so where is the line that the DC seems unreasonable will be different for different people, unless you all write something down or otherwise agree on something already written. 3.5 was that already thing everyone could see and thus have closely aligned expectations and also understand intuitively what was communicated when the DM gave a DC. For example, if the DM set the DC for a lock at 35, then everyone knew that the lock was an amazingly well crafted lock of supreme quality, thus the maker of it had to be a really talented master smith, and that the lock was very expensive and hard to acquire, etc. But that communication only works when everyone has their expectations in line with each other and particularly the DM.
I don't think this is true.
One thing I've found, is that introducing players to certain other mindsets first tend to be better able to learn different mindsets later, especially if multiple games of different mindsets early on. But basically every player I've met that is introduced to the mindset 5e promotes first, has a massive load of trouble figuring out how to use mechanics with any other mindset.
I would say therefore, teach that mindset first that remains easy to discover new mindsets, rather than teach the mindset that makes it harder to discover other mindsets. This tends to be orthogonal to how easy or difficult the mechanics are to use.
Sounds great. Though I'm not sure how Perception plays into it, but I also notice they didn't use any other mechanics in a creative way, and they didn't have a go to mechanic as a default action. Of course, neither trap was something to be disabled anyway, since they were just pits it doesn't make sense to "disable them," but it's nice to know that 5e doesn't have an anti-trap skill (no idea how I missed that). The weird mindset I am looking at is the ability to actually have a mechanic like Disable Device, without it preventing you from seeing solutions that wouldn't use them.
I'll get back yo you on the video.
I disagree, it was very much designed for this purpose. 3rd edition was a game designed in such a way that you could play it and never do any free-form role-play at all and you had all the rules to execute every last detail of every action you could think of. Everything you do, could be executed with a mechanic and a dice check.
I mean quite literally 3e had a very specific Anti-Trap skill, it was called Disable Device and that was the only purpose of the skill, to remove locks and disable traps. You also had Disguise, Move Silently, Forgery, Escape artist.... All PF2e did was lump those into a single skilled called Thievery to streamline the game.
Pathfinder 2e as was Pathfinder 1e is just an evolution of the exact same design as 3rd edition, the same playstyle, the same philosophy to execution of mechanics, they are practically indistinguishable. A playerstyle hyper focused on executing rules over DM Fiat and free-form role-playing and role-playing decisions. It was a game about rolling dice and very intentionally.
5e was a major pushback against this style of play. It brought the game back to an almost pre-non-weapon-proficiency era. Think about it. If you want to put on a disguise or disable a trap or forge a document... what skill would you apply in 5e? Which skill is the "anti-trap skill?"
My group played Pathfinder 2e for 2 years and the reason we gave up on the system was because it was too mechanized, we missed actual role-playing.
Talk of the game's popularity is about as valuable to any discussion about the value of the game as is talk of some band's popularity since they became vapid, overproduced tripe is to one about whether or not that band remain any good. The popularity of something has never been a measure of how good something is. From film to literature. To just about anything. The most popular of movies of any given year rank among the absolute worst in the medium.
I don't disagree with you, I do think people should be open to trying alternative styles of play, different RPG's and even go back to old editions of the game with an open mind and try to understand "why" these old styles of play where once THE way we played the game.
That said, most DM's, myself included, rather live in the now, in the current method and participate in the current culture, than simply sit around not playing at all and being angry that "our way" is no longer popular.
5th edition D&D as a ruleset and as a culture is a fun experience, its actually really fun and Im not at all surprised or have any confusion about why. Its a good rule set, its easy to use, very approachable. There is lots of reasons to like it.
On the flip side, as much as I love for example 1st edition B/X and AD&D, I do get why people see its flaws and might not be as interested in its playstyle or its philosophy both as a culture and game design... It in a lot of ways is directly opposed to the things people like about 5e.
Now you could claim that modern D&D players are closed minded and I sometimes feel that way and its frustrating, but I think the truth is that people are just having fun, they enjoy their way of doing it and if you like something that much, why change? Why seek out things that are different, especially things that see less support, smaller player basis and just generally have more barriers.
All I'm saying is I get it. I do think people are missing out on a lot of stuff in the modern era. A good, meaty 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Survival game is ... amazing. Its truly a unique experience, it has a tension and challenge that far exceeds anything you will ever get out of 5e.. but, I've kind of given up trying to convince people who are already very happy with the game they are playing to try something else.
So I do get your views and I do get what your saying, I'm just kind of illustrating the reality. Some styles of play are just destined to go extinct, at best maybe surviving as a nich throwback, but as I said before, I don't see things like 3rd editions style of play coming back anytime soon. Maybe some day it will be cool again when its sufficiently retro. Right now the best your going to do is like PF2e where you can find the evolutionary string within the system to those old school games. Then again, you can find a lot of the old school strings in modern 5e as well.
What 5E does it does well. But it is one of the worst game systems with which to introduce newcomers to the hobby. The core mechanic is rather simple. Roll d20. Roll high. But it's playing at make believe to pretend that 5E is as simple as this. Even at just 1st level characters start with so many things and with so many choices to be made the game can be overwhelming for anyone who hasn't spent a whole weekend reading the Player's Handbook. Never used to be that way. I typically run games for newcomers. I use a version of D&D in which characters can be rolled up in mere minutes. Those to me will always be the superior iterations of the game.
RPG's have definitely become a lot more involved compared to the old 1e B/X days when you rolled 3d6 down the chain and just from that act you were reduced to a single decision.. what class to play and your character was ready.
The thing is and this is the important part of the story, that wasn't enough for players back then either. I mean even the Basic D&D set eventually shipped with the Expert set as well and by the time B/X was 10 years old you had the BECMI system and the D&D Cyclopedia and already that was waaay more complex of a system than what 5e is today.
The growth of complexity is a natural evolution of the game, but its worth noting that the 2024 PHB is not for novice players, its not a starting point for new D&D players. 5e has starter sets for that and they come with pre-generated characters and easy to follow adventures just like the B/X 1e set did. Things really haven't changed, we just have a different perspective.
What made systems like 1e B/X for example not that great for beginners despite the ease of rules was that the game was very hard to be successful at. You were never more than 1 small error in judgement from a character death, the game was incredibly unforgiving. It also was driven by gaming philosophies that are quite advanced, I think even expert modern role-players struggle to understand how you can run D&D without a skill system for example or how do you balance encounters without a CR system to help you.
Running B/X 1e well, I would argue requires you to be a borderline master DM, it is incredibly tricky with tons of nuance to create a good experience for players. I love it mind you, it still is to this day my absolute favorite system to run, but yeah, I sort of don't agree that it was "simple". The rules were simple, but to run it and play it... that took a lot of experience and skill to do well.
I might even argue that once you have run 5e long enough, you might be sufficiently skilled to take on a real challenge and run a 1e B/X game. That in my opinion, is a real test of DM skills.
It seems to be doing ok at it, all things considered.
It's really not bad. The new PHB improves on the cueing, and provides suggestions for most or all of your lower-level decisions, but it wasn't much different before. (This is the reason for level 3 subclasses.) It's just:
You don't need to know any of the stuff outside of your character, and the leveling process is pretty good at introducing new things gradually.
Is ancient D&D simpler? Yes, but that simplicity comes with a lack of options for everyone.
All of your "criticisms" of B/X are exactly why it remains so popular among old-school gamers—even more so than AD&D—and why it's the preferred iteration of D&D for hacking in the OSR movement.
More OSR games are built on its chassis or are even direct or near direct copies of it than they resemble any other edition of the game. Including the most recent one.
I questioned before your understanding of what the OSR movement is about. Because you have a tendency to say what players "back then" did not like despite the fact so many of us so thoroughly enjoyed it we have returned to it. That we are fewer than those who play 5E is moot. It's a movement that has had such a strong and lasting presence on the blogs and beyond for the past twenty years that today we see entire online shops dedicated to products birthed from the movement and more zines and other DIY products than 5E could ever hope to produce and sell to its devotees—so obsessed are they with what is official. There is no telling where current official D&D will be in the next fifty years of its existence but I seriously doubt it will have that sort of cult following. Most of those devotees will have moved on to play the next version of the game.
That it requires no small degree of skill to DM B/X is not at all a criticism in my mind. Personally I would never want to play in a game run by a mediocre DM. One of the best DMs I have ever had in my four decades of playing runs a heavily modified 5E. Many of his changes reflecting some of those "criticisms" of yours: the lethality of it and a draining of bloat and in its place a simplification of rules that made things much more open and allowed for negotiation between players and DM for how something might work. But for one other player and myself the others at the table were new to not just D&D but to table-top role-playing. This game started in the early days of the pandemic. We are still playing. Too many are the stories of newcomers hoping to get the D&D experience they saw on Freaks & Geeks or Stranger Things coming away less than satisfied because they spent more time trying to understand all the things their characters could even do than they did playing and having fun. Like I said: what 5E does it does well. But it is not at all a good introduction to the hobby for those who don't want to have to read the Player's Handbook. I run games for both students and friends of mine who are already busy enough as it is.
That's just not true. What that "lack of options" meant was more negotiation at the table so that players could play characters they wanted. Balance was an afterthought in what was a game more about having fun and telling stories not unlike those we encountered in fantasy masterworks than it was about the rules.
What that meant was the options were limitless.
Go crack open some of the spellbooks out there that have come out of the OSR. The spells and magic items in these things are the sorts of things that would likely never make an appearance in a 5E game. And certainly never in an official product. So just who is experiencing a lack of options?
Saturating the rules with options has ironically limited the options now available to players.
To play within the confines of the rules and only ever make selections from the menus available to you will never provide the infinitude of options or provide the experience old-school play provides.
How does one even begin to know what one wants to play without knowing what it is others can do?
You can give a new player a shorthand description of a class to help them make this decision. But then your issue with earlier editions seems to be the "lack of options." All those menu items are rendered pretty meaningless if you are to withhold from a new player what information they would require to make an informed decision just to simply the process of character creation for them.
It's an interesting premise, but I don't think it quite worked as you describe it unless you freeze time at a very specific point in AD&D's history right around 1980ish.
Consider what the lack of options triggered in classic D&D? TSR printed books with more options. Why? Because players wanted more options. They printed a lot of books. In fact by 1995, 2nd edition had more character options available than any other edition of the game since. Was the game ruined then? I guess that is the question, at what point did creating supplement books that offer options become a bad thing? Was it the Expert set? The Companion set? Arcana perhaps? Survival Guides? Kit books? When did D&D have too many options and was there ever a point when there weren't enough?
What you are describing certainly existed for a very brief moment, but the reality is that the reason we have more and more character options, the reason there is the DM Guild pumping out 10+ new books full of options every day, 365 days a year since the Guild launched is that that's what players want....
It happens in the OSR as well. Think about it. Old School Essentials comes out, then immediately Advanced Fantasy is launched and right after that they start pumping out Caracas Crawlers and today there are at 200+ books of options for OSE on RPG Drive Thru.
Is that bad? I don't know, maybe. But I don't know how anyone can suggest something everyone wants is bad? Especially in a place like a hobby where you pretend to be a warrior or Wizard so you can fight monsters.
Limitless?
I guess if you never wanted a dwarf who could cast a spell or elf who could pick a lock. But there were some very non-negotiable limits BECMI. Limits which are only now, finally, fading away.
And your assertion that earlier editions were more about storytelling is patently false. At some tables it may have been about the same as it is now, but it was certainly not more about it then. No version of the game has a monopoly on any playstyle.
I'd rather crack my actual books from that period, when I played the game.
"Old School" is rather hilarious to me, because I am Old School, and what they play bears jack in relation to what I played.
What it should be called is Basic School. Because they aren't looking to AD&D, they are looking to the B/X/BECMI stuff that was removed from the entire product line up once Hasbro paid off Arneson.
And the only reason it even made it past X was the lawsuit that forced them to produce it. Hasbro culled the entire line out when they took over -- so if that's what folks think of as "old school" then they only have half the old school -- and not even that (AD&D was more widely played, which is why it is 1e in the current schema).
As for options in 5e, well...
I have 20 classes. None of them are found here, and none of them are or have subclasses. I have 25 Species. None of them are found here. I have an entirely new magic system based on spell points that has a couple hundred spells not found here -- and it uses the base game spells but allows for players to create their own.
What does that have to do with 5e?
I could make those classes and the system that supports them because of 5e -- its very structure gave me way more options and flexibility to design the systems and classes and such that my players wanted, and that are not entirely beholden to a eurocentric basis and so not possible here.
The *game* is flexible and presents options out the wazoo. The website does not.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I believe the "sweet spot" when it comes to D&D was before TSR began to churn out needless supplements. I'd say this began well before the arrival of even 2nd. Edition. 1st. Edition saw some pretty pointless books get a release. The worst sellers on the second hand market are always such pointless additions to the game. I paid a fraction of what I did for a 1st. Edition DMG than I did for a copy of Niles' Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. Because the latter is all but useless at the table.
Yes. All those books on DMsGuild and DrivethruRPG filled with options. It ain't for nothing so many of them are PWYW.
I have no problem with supplements in theory. It's a means for tables to share ideas. That's a good thing. And that is why we see their presence in the OSR movement.
But you are comparing apples and oranges. You are missing my point. It's not about "options." It's about how when people limit themselves to official options and official supplementary material how they are then ironically limiting their options.
Personally while I've shelves heavy with game products—I'm a collector as well as a gamer—I keep things simple when running a game. A book for procedural generation that is usually the DMG. A ruleset. This usually based on B/X. A monster manual that is not going to mean players know the ins and outs of everything I throw at them.. A setting book. And maybe an adventure module or something else.
The options are without limit because I am all ears if a player has what I think is a good idea for his or her character at the next level up.
I trust the imaginations of those I play with more than I do a company that just wants my money and whose design team hasn't designed anything I would call close to spectacular since 2014.
D&D Beyond has a huge and thriving homebrew section. DMsGuild and DriveThru RPG are thriving. Third party supplements from big names can take in huge amounts of cash. The most popular D&D setting remains “homebrew” followed by “homebrew campaign in an official D&D setting.”
Reality not only does not support your narrative, if actually disproves it. People are clearly going outside of the official options all the time - by homebrewing on their own, by using others’ homebrew, or by purchasing third party content.
This. To have this and yet have a set of mechanics that support the negotiations and make it easier to utilize the limitless options. This is how I was introduced to 3e. 3e was a language for the above and advice for new DMs to achieve it.
Yes. Limitless. Because a DM had it within his or her power to allow a player to play whatever he or she wanted. Regardless of what those "non-negotiable" rules said.
In one of the very first games I ever ran using the B in BECMI one of the players played a humanoid fox terrier as a character. We just made up any features for this playable race.
Did TSR come to my home and scold me for breaking their "non-negotiable" rules? They did not.
You are acting as if home-brewing started five minutes ago. We were doing in back then so players could play whatever they wanted.
No version of the game has a monopoly on playstyle. You are correct. But with more recent editions of the game increasingly more and more about combat to the point that now every single class is practically as adequate as any fighter is at it as far as dealing damage goes and with so many players today optimizing solely for purposes of damage and with next to zero official content about domain-level play despite how quickly characters become powerful it shouldn't be hard to see why so many 5E tables constantly have to endure the type of player who just can't wait to fight the next thing and who grows bored of anything that happens outside of combat.
um, I do not think that's actually ironic at all. I think that's the entire point of limiting one's self to just official stuff -- limiting one's self. Maybe you have an different understanding of irony, but it certainly doesn't fit any "official" version of it.
But more so, there's nothing in 5e, as a product or a game or even the marketing, that limits the creative player. I am at a loss here trying to figure out how folks think that it does (when the explanations have all been about how people limit themselves, which, you know, is a choice, like limiting yourself to game editions other than 5e).
As I noted above: I do not use any official classes. I do not use any official races. My classes do not even follow the standard structure, and do not have any subclasses.
I use a completely customized magic system that use spell points, an additional ability score, 5 forms of magic, has nulls, takes longer than 1 action to cast spells in, unfies damage by spell level and caster level, and ultimately ignores most of the basic sell stat blocks because they are already accounted for.
I have an entire vehicle system with maneuvers.
Nothing in 5e *limited me* in making those things -- I started all of them except the classes from something already found in 5e -- I just made it work for my table.
So I am at a loss for understanding how this is 5e's "fault" or the fault of Hasbro/Wizards. Care to catch me up? What did the game or the company do to limit what is possible in 5e?
Genre? Hell, I've got space pirates cruising between parsecs, gunslingers shooting train robbers, skyships raining hell on a crusade against the cannibal goblins of Lemuria.I run urban fantasy, mystery, comedy, thriller, western, gangster, heist, and more all in my games. Right now I am in the midst of the early stages of a romance subplot that's totally film noir, all by itself -- and that's alongside a supernatural "monster of the moment" hunt!
Nothing in the game has stopped me from doing any of that -- and I am not an outlier here in the sense that I create my own stuff. (ok, I am in other ways like having played for decades, but, eh).
The game isn't holding me back or stopping me or limiting me at all.
Edit
This came in while I was typing.
Each new edition being more and more about combat is not a limiting thing.
In 3.x, the got rid of to-hit tables. That was one of the balancing features of the game -- the more magic you have, the less good at fighting you are. That was a limitation -- one a lot of folks ignored. But that was the game adding a limitation in. And that was in both Basic and Advanced, btw.
5e removed that limitation. (technically, it was done earlier, but this about 5e limiting people).
I am a worldbuilder as a DM. I have all manner of limitations on stuff -- no, you cannot play a class or race from the books. That's a limitation. Not one the game creates, but one I -- as a player -- create.
You know who else are players? so many players today optimizing solely for purposes of damage . <-- they are.
That's not the game doing that. That's the players doing it. That's not the fault of 5e, as a product. Again, note that I don't have that problem -- because in my dungeon crawl, which is a 5e raw game -- there's only about 20 to 25% of the whole thing being combat. The rest is exploration and some light role playing.
The game didn't do that, I did. By designing a decent dungeon. Which is a real, nonsensical, old school, grimtooth's traps type of hellscape.
This is the first thing I have seen that can be said to be the COmpany's fault, but is still not the game's fault -- the guidelines for creating a high level dungeon are right there in the DMG. My opinion of them is not printable, but they are there, and my opinion does not change that as a fact, nor does it make them "bad at it".
because "bad at it" is an opinion, and we all have them.
the rest of that stunningly constructed sentence is questionable becaus eit returns to blaming either the game or the company for players not being creative and coming up with solutions. There are some high level play option -- Domain level, you called them. Five of them, i think, though since I never use the published adventures I don't recall for certain.
So that comes across as them not giving you what, in your opinion, they should have given you. or us. And, lo and behold, what is coming in the 2024 DMG and the 2025 MM? Oh! All new options and guidance on high level campaigns and adventures.
So apparently they are hearing you as a company, but, again, how is that limiting on the part of the game when you just finished complaining about ow the use of the products themselves is limiting -- something done by the players to themselves, and not forced on them by the game or the company.
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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