5e - why you think it sucks, and why you're wrong

[EOTB]

It wasn't meant to make you feel any lesser - I was mainly writing it as my own reflection.

The gaming community likes to spar over what gaming should be. This isn't new - go back and read the "forum" feature in Dragon magazine back in the 70s and all of what we write has already been said. And it will be as impactful now as it was then. Because there are some who enjoy the game as a hammer, and some as a screwdriver, and many of both would feel best if the other agreed with them because it's much more comfortable when others agree. But this last bit is what's unattainable, though much ink (wet or digital) is spent.

 

[Slick]

Coming in late, but I have to make a quick clarification regarding DP's claim that 5E is the evolution of D&D (and related to EOTB's point about different design intents): the most you could say is that 5E is an evolution of the game. The OSR began as a revisiting of the older rulesets, but quickly became a scene based around revising/remixing/updating it with new material (hence "renaissance"). The game has evolved within the OSR just as much as it has within the WOTC-sphere, just in a direction more in line with the original scope/emphasis of the rules.

For example, most old-school games I hear about use some variant of the "significant items" encumbrance system. Is that in the original rules? Hell no, old encumbrance was a fiddly, bean-counting headache, but those of the OSR mindset recognize that encumbrance is still and important factor of the game when it comes to reinforcing a dungeon-crawling, exploratory play-style. New streamlined systems have been developed for old-school games across the blogosphere over the past decade+, so it's pretty disingenuous to imply that everyone playing a version pre-5E has just been sitting around playing a stagnant ruleset as-written. Hell, if you ask Pathfinder fans, they've been playing the proper "evolution" of the game for years. If you ask 13th Age fans, they've been playing the "evolution" of the game as it branched off from 4E.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Fair point Slick; just as nature's evolution results in trees of spin-off variants stemming from common ancestry rather than a straight line, so too flows the evolution of D&D and the OSR.

While my intent was to exemplify 5e over older editions as being farther along the evolutionary chain, that's not to say OSR has been stagnant either, specifically because OSR is not older editions. You may enjoy Zweihander or LotFP or whatever, but recall that those products were designed within the last decade (roughly) - it's much tougher to hold the claim that 0e is a more streamlined, sophisticated experience than 5e. So to clarify: when I say 5e is an evolution of the game, I am referring specifically to the direct ancestral line of Dungeons & DragonsTM, not all RPGs in general.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Not to start a separate chaotic debate, but I have to admit that of the non-OSR descendants of D&D 3.x, I prefer Pathfinder 2e to D&D 5e. I think they're both doing very different things from one another, with PF 2e expanding and rationalising the system, vs. 5e pruning it back and simplifying a lot of its quirks.

 

[Slick]

I had time to kill at Gen con last year (maybe the year before? Whenever they were doing the playtest) and sat down for a 30 minute demo of PF2 on a lark, but I don't remember much about it, care to elaborate?

 

[Malrex]

Pathfinder 2e.....finally the banana has entered the chaotic discussion!

I'd be interested to hear more about PF2e....

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

The snarky version would be that after 20 years of playtesting, they have finally arrived at a version of 3.x that works.

More seriously, the system is extensively rebalanced and rationalised for the better. Spellcasters no longer dominate, and a lot of the fiddlier bits have been smoothed down.

One example of what I mean by rationalisation is that the myriads of different action types in 3.x (full, standard, move, swift, immediate, free) have been turned into two types: Reactions and Actions (you get three actions a round: to attack multiple times, you spend multiple actions).

Another example would be that there are now only five kinds of bonus or penalty: status, circumstance, proficiency, item and untyped. There are no untyped bonuses, only penalties, and multiples of the same type don't stack (except for untyped penalties).

I've been playing in a 3.x campaign now for about two years with a group of people who range from someone who's been playing 3.x nonstop since 2000 to someone who learnt the system six months ago. Understanding the categories of actions and bonuses, what things fall into which categories, and how different categories interact with one another are some of the hardest demands on new players.

My experience with 5e isn't super extensive - I've played in short 5e campaigns twice, and run two one-shots of it. IME the action economy seems to have been simplified but not clarified. You can move and attack and also interact with one thing while you move / instead of moving and make one bonus action if you have something that lets you, I think? This is definitely simpler than 3.x's action tetris but I find it personally a bit confusing to adjudicate, especially the interaction part.

One other element that I was really pleased about with PF 2e involves the procedural iteration/looping that I've come to place more and more emphasis over time in my OSR games. I wrote this blog post a while ago about what I call the "Rhythm of Procedure" to try to explain the idea at greater length. PF2e's ideas of encounter mode, exploration mode, and downtime fit more neatly into a playstyle built around the reiteration of procedural loops than 5e's rules do (I would still alter them a bit further to line up with my post).

 

[Beoric]

non-OSR descendants of D&D 3.x

If only I had the time to properly comment on THIS phrase. But by the time I do this post will be three pages gone.

 

[squeen]

I wrote this blog post a while ago about what I call the "Rhythm of Procedure" to try to explain the idea at greater length.

You have a wonderful blog, I've enjoyed it over the past several years. This post in particular really made me think about tightening up some of my loosey-goosey DM time-keeping. (My players frequently want to "rewind the downtime clock" and insert actions AFTER I tell them what happened to someone else during the previous day's cycle). If the action-cycles are more explicit, there would be less confusion all around.

Thanks for the mental house cleaning (and the PF 2.0 primer---Holy Hand Grenades! --- PF/3e is a such foreign beast! Doesn't sound like a it's even a distance cousin of any D&D game I've ever known.)

 

[Beoric]

EDIT: And if you don't think the cognitive load adds up, try building a flowchart of the entire process of resolving the first found of combat, from surprise to the end of the round (which then returns to the initiative phase every round until the melee is resoved). You may be surprised at how many calculations and decisions you actually make just determining attack order.

I finally got around to googling this, and found a step by step outline and flowchart setting out AD&D initiative and combat sequence. So @DangerousPuhson you can see just how simple and intuitive it really is.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I finally got around to googling this, and found a step by step outline and flowchart setting out AD&D initiative and combat sequence. So @DangerousPuhson you can see just how simple and intuitive it really is.

@squeen
You know what's a fun game? Kerbal Space Program.
You know what's not a fun game? Calculating ballistic equations.

 

[EOTB]

And we're so good, we can run a combat in 15 minutes or less. Only 10% of all that applies in any given combat, and the same 10% applies in 90% of encounters, but no matter which 10% applies to a particular encounter, we've got it down flat. Throw in a psionic demon and a greenhag attacking a dwarf using a short sword of quickness after drinking a potion of speed, and a ranger with an 18 dex firing a bow? No sweat.

Guys, the first word on the tin is "Advanced". It's perfectly fine to look at that and decide a nice vertical process tree with less than four boxes is more your speed; people buy honda accords because they do what they expect, rarely do what they don't expect, and they have all the modern accessories. AD&D's greatness is evident in how people can't really move away from it, ignore it, or stop reaching back to it for content. Until the day the dice drop from your cheeto-stained fingers, you'll fight a rear-guard action that stops mattering at all to any person hearing it who later sits down at my table to give it a spin.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Guys, the first word on the tin is "Advanced". It's perfectly fine to look at that and decide a nice vertical process tree with less than four boxes is more your speed; people buy honda accords because they do what they expect, rarely do what they don't expect, and they have all the modern accessories. AD&D's greatness is evident in how people can't really move away from it, ignore it, or stop reaching back to it for content.

"The old way is better, that's why everyone still loves it" - guy fixing a typewriter ribbon jam in a Starbucks.

 

[squeen]

@Beoric: Stirring the pot, eh? Too quiet for you? --- I've known about the ADDICT chart for a few years now. It's actually nice that someone went ahead and picked through all the AD&D sources to lay it out. That said...

I think Prata's outline and (even more-so) skidoo's flowchart were an attempt at performance art. They were honestly trying to emphasize complexity, and chose two hideous formats to satirized the system.

In the former's case, he delves into every outlier that could possibly modify the "normal" procedure (honestly---sword of quickness? crossbow of speed? The Spectator? Really? ... Why didn't he cover every the magic items and every monster ever published in all modules that have special combat properties while he was at it?) The format is atrocious too: long winded examples are inserted to bloat the size, and pages are only 1/2 to 3/4 full to extend the page-count. This is NOT an attempt to succinctly convey the most relevant (and as EOTB points out, most commonly used) information...it's just plain satire.

The flowchart is even worse. Who on Earth makes a flowchart that long-winded, wiggles every which way, and again, emphasizes every remote outlying case? To everyone (except Bryce) this forum was originally a gathering of folks interested in good design principles, i.e. "How to best present material in a manner that assisted with the expeditious absorption of info at-the-table?" or colloquially, "How to write an adventure Bryce wouldn't think sucked." This flowchart is an epic-fail on all measures of organization. Useless as a tool.

The mystery to me is the motivation of the authors. Was it just a gag? ...or were they OD&D folks having a go at the AD&D windmill? A little of both I believe. Ironically, the ADDICT outline was actually embraced by the community.

When I first returned to DMing (2013?), I read ADDICT and was completely gobsmacked. I thought, "No way am I going to remember all this." ... But, now, I read it and nod to myself thinking, "Yup. No sweat." (Honestly, the ownership of knowledge, and gaining profficiency with repeated usage is not too different from learning Orbital Mechanics and Attitude Dynamics to design and simulate space systems. What started out as "hard" becomes an easy habit...i.e. "Fun!" )

Someday (soon) I hope to make myself a better flowchart and attached it to my DM's screen. I've said many times here, I'm an OD&D player from way-back and a S&W enthusiast since my return to the hobby as a DM (I LOVE having a single saving-throw). But again, EOTB is right. 1e has this powerful magnetic draw to it. WHEN YOU ARE READY (as a player and DM) it adds nuanced complexity to the game in a very workable way. It's a remarkably well-oiled machine, but only if you use it correctly. Like a well balanced-blade in an expert's hand, it is formidable. Most importantly, it does flesh-out some of the skeleton of the Rules-Light OD&D in a satisfying way that doesn't overly cater to player's self-aggrandizing wishes. As I said in the DMG thread: it's 1st-REVISION...a refining of OD&D almost a decade later---after a massive amount of play testing associated with the hobby's explosion on into the main-stream (and it's associated use/abuse).

But (again, I am just a windbag-echo of EOTB here), it has a serious learning curve --- for the DM (not so much for the players...I think the PHB is the most accessible of the core rule-books, and as a result that led to character fetish-abuse in the later additions).

The 1e DMG and these crazy ADDICT rules, and all the other tidbits that get dropped by most practitioners, are some seriously wonderful hidden gems. And (if you put in the effort to dig them out) they WORK. Huso's blog is dedicated to proving that point. My own personal experience with a long-running campaign---along with dozens of others---prove that the OD&D (+ AD&D) is rich and sustainable in a balanced way that later editions get wrong. Like the Tower of Babel, the others build high and fast --- but topple (get boring) in the long-run. Mixing metaphors, later editions are sweets that give the casual players an easily digestible taste of the game that does not nourish. Your toddler would gobble down candy all day if they could --- it's up to the DM to be the responsible parent that says "no" to excess until the child/newbie has learned self-discipline (= a long-term view that goes beyond instant gratification).

AD&D is not the game for the casual player or the casual DM. There are plenty of rules-light alternatives out there that provide an quick-fix of entertainment in the RPG genre. They are easier, but not necessarily "better". It depends on what you are looking for in the game. For example, I love space-travel and simulations --- but I find Kerbal kind of limited (fun once, boring in the long-term). I guess I am, and will always be, a Nerd --- who's tastes don't align with the majority. Que sera sera.

 

[squeen]

"The old way is better, that's why everyone still loves it" - guy fixing a typewriter ribbon jam in a Starbucks.

"It's so much easier on my smart phone, just hang on a second..." --- guy waiting for his iPhone to authenticate and update so he can find a Starbucks.

 

[EOTB]

Prata's a good guy, but I think/hope he wouldn't take offense to my saying he's very left-brained with an eye for minute detail. That helps him very much in editing where he is formidable in reviewing new product to ensure that all the stray ends are accounted for and consistent with prior text, as well as advising changes to make the various references play nice together. With AD&D none of that is possible, of course, and so I think he simply defaulted to thoroughly accounting for each possibility in a presentation that makes all possibilities seem equally likely.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

There are plenty of rules-light alternatives out there that provide an quick-fix of entertainment in the RPG genre. They are easier, but not necessarily "better".

Guys, the first word on the tin is "Advanced". It's perfectly fine to look at that and decide a nice vertical process tree with less than four boxes is more your speed

I figured out how to play AD&D in the fourth grade... my argument is that the O/AD&D rules are cumbersome to use, not difficult to use, and by using those rules not only are you neglecting a more streamlined modern option, but you are actively encumbering your game (as I'd argue, needlessly encumbering). The reason that innovations are developed is because the state of things is inadequate - D&D is no different.

The only reasons I can imagine why anyone would voluntarily make their game more cumbersome than it needs to be:

1) Hipsterism: "I play authentic whitebox D&D from the classic age, you know like Gary would have wanted... not like those nouveau-nerd, geek-chic poseurs lured to the game by the Big Bang Theory and Lost Mines of Phandelver. I bet those guys don't even write code! Poseurs..."

2) Grognardiness: "Ok, so I have to calculate armor backwards and look up a different rule for every single different action someone could take, but I'll be damned if I give those newfangled 'simplified, streamlined, well-balanced' rules a shot! Modern D&D is pretty much just a superheroes board game at this point anyway. Wizards isn't getting any of my money!"

3) Broke-as-shit: "I'd like to get into 5e but the books are $60 each, so I might as well use what I've already got - of course the last time I bought anything D&D-related was in the mid '80s...."

4) Old-as-shit: "Whoa, I don't like the looks of these newfangled concepts like Difficulty Class and Bounded Accuracy. How does Advantage work again? Arg, so much new stuff! I'll just stick to my THAC0 and demons listed as numerical types, thankyouverymuch."

5) Nobody to play with: "I've got all the stuff for a good game of 5e, but my group only plays Pathfinder, so I guess I'll shelve this until we collectively decide to upgrade. That's fine, I'm sure one of them will eventually want to dip their toe into it... probably... one day..."

6) Can't put finger on it: "5e sounds fine on paper, and yeah other people can get into whatever... but retro stuff, man, that's where it's at. It just 'feels' more D&D-like, you know? No? Mildewed books and yellowed paper, that's what really captures my childhood. What do you mean your childhood was vastly different than mine? Didn't you know how to have fun as a kid?"

I reckon most of you fall into the category #6, but I bet there's a few #2's and #4's lurking around here...

 

[gandalf_scion]

After three months away, I return to see the same circular arguments hashed and re-hashed. We've been over this already. 5e clearly has a more efficient rules set, but it's also needlessly bloated which negates its core simplicity. Therefore, the inefficient 1e rules set is actually less cumbersome to use and more fun to play. We see this in many ways. The super short 1e stat blocks, fast combats, and exploration sans skill checks stand as a prime examples. But, my personal favorite goes thus. In the 1e Players Handbook, Gary concludes the character generation section on page 34, right column, with this, "Next you must name him or her, and possibly give some family background (and name a next of kin as heir to the possessions of the character if he or she should meet an untimely death) to personify the character" That's it for character background. 5e, on the other hand, has a full 20-page chapter on this very (to Gary) tertiary element. This seemingly trivial difference speaks to a fundamental truth. 1e was looking forward with an emphasis on adventure while 5e looks backward with an emphasis on documentation.

 

[Slick]

words

I reckon it's mostly older folks around here considering how often they keep taking the obvious bait and arguing with you in good faith every time you act like a snarky provocateur.

 

[squeen]

Hey Gandalf! Guys! Look! Gandalf's back!

We're just fight again 'cause we got bored...Beoric poked the bear.

(touches nose, and yells "Not it!")