5e needs a better way to balance encounters than Challenge Rating. It also has important rules for players in the DM book. Both of which are problems you can work around.
Yeah, it’s basically fine. It got a lot of new people interested in RPGs (and Critical Role certainly helped, too). If they’re all now looking for other systems to play, that’s fine, too.
Anyway the only thing about 5e that does suck is Wizards of the Coast.
The race/class system, the leveling mechanics, the Vancian Magic mechanics, and the general need to get into conflicts in order to progress the story / advance your characters has been a thorn in the side of the entire d20 universe from day one.
5e stripped out a lot of the math (which is good for bringing in new players but bad because actually having lots of gritty math in a game can be part of the fun of designing and playing) and smoothed the edges off 3.5e. But 4e also did this arguably too aggressively, giving us a game that was so bland and so generic that people flocked to alternatives for a good five years.
WotC is a mixed bag of old school TTRPG nerds and corporate suits that have somehow managed to keep the game cheap and fun while heavily investing in promotion. As enshittification goes, it could have been a lot worse. They’re a meaningful improvement over TSR, which is a low fucking bar. Lots to dislike, but nothing I can point to that I wouldn’t find in another system easily enough.
I’m more of a Pathfinder 2e guy tho.
IMHO, the math on PF2e is bad. They stripped out a lot of the more interesting abilities and features of 1e to make the game simpler. But, as a result, writing encounters is a balancing act between “trivially easy” and “functionally impossible”. Like, why even use the d20 if you’re going to build a game this way? Just make it an entirely points-based resource management game, with High Fantasy color.
I’d rather run up against the Big Red Dragon and have my DM say “You swing with all your might, but the beast barely notices” than to get handed a d20 while the DM laughs up his sleeve.
I would say that the main thing that “sucks” about DnD is that DnD has often been portrayed as appealing to the kind of nerdy rules-lawyers that like to argue “hey, the rules say (x) so I can do (ridiculous thing)” and end up in a big argument with their DM about what the rules do and do not say. A lot of my groups have been like this, and it’s okay for a game to cater towards that specific playstyle.
I’m not trying to make a value judgement whether this is a good or a bad way to play a game. It’s also just one of many ways to play the game. You can (and given the stuff I talk about below, perhaps you should!) play it differently, but regardless it is quite a common table-style that the various holders of the DnD IP have encouraged throughout its history.
What is a problem is that this kind of playstyle can often be quite acrimonious, especially when combined with adversarial DM styles, and arguments can get rather heated and angry. I’ve heard many a tale of a group that split up over a rules argument that left everyone at the table too angry and frustrated to stick together as a group.
DnD 4e made huge strides to mitigating these problems by having a whole lot of very tightly defined keywords and language which could almost always be resolved into a solid, consistent, official ruling. You had to do a lot of work to learn exactly how the language was being used, but it was possible to get a table of six rules lawyers to sit down and develop a shared understanding of what the rules meant - and know there was a right answer to any specific question.
DnD 5e has taken huge strides to re-introducing the uncertainty in the system, by very loosely defining how things work, or not providing official answers at all, preferring to go with a “the DM will make a ruling” approach. This can be a nightmare for groups that like to have a defined, correct, answer to things.
Now of course, many alternate systems take this stance as a given “The rules are a set of loose guidelines, the GM will run the game and just make up a lot of the rules on the spot.” - and this has a lot of advantages. It makes it easier to write systems because you don’t have to be completely rigorous, and it leaves the GM with the freedom to run the game they want, and it encourages players to not get hung up on the details - all healthy…
But DnD is in the unique position of already having proven with 4e that it can nail down a rigorous set of principles and a style guide that leaves ambiguity behind, courting a whole section of RPG players who desire that, and then retreating from that position with a new, fuzzier, system document.
Why is this a “problem” for DnD specifically? Well… I find it’s extremely common on internet forums like this one for a person to say “I was in a game and (x) happened” and then immediately three different arguments spawn, running in separate directions, all founded on the premise that the poster is playing the game wrong or doesn’t understand the rules. It’s exhausting.
DnD has often been portrayed as appealing to the kind of nerdy rules-lawyers that like to argue
Not a totally unfair critique, but also not unique to D&D.
I’d say the bigger issue tends to be around certain players feeling creative or desperate and trying to lean into the plot/setting with less respect for the rules. So, for instance, “If I can’t move the big rock with a Strength check alone, can I get some ropes and set up a pulley system?” <throws a bunch of math at the table> “See? This should give me a 3x multiplier to my Strength, so I should be able to move it easily?” And the DM just looks at that, shakes his head, and replies “All that’ll do is give you Advantage (and if you move the rock you’ll derail my plot)”.
But more broadly, I’d say the problem with D&D is that it’s inevitably the same Medieval High Fantasy setting in one way or another. The format of the game is geared towards the classic Journey to Mordor, with challenges and story beats and pacing to match. It doesn’t play well with modern settings, because modern and futuristic technology tends to trivialize magic (especially under the Vancian system). It doesn’t play well with the Horror genre, because the game rewards “winning” rather than “survival”. It doesn’t play well with PC antagonists/betrayers as the class system puts you at a huge disadvantage when you’re not working as a team, so heel-turns and dramatic reveals can leave players with a sour taste in their mouths in a way a game more explicitly geared towards Finding The Traitor does not.
But DnD is in the unique position of already having proven with 4e that it can nail down a rigorous set of principles and a style guide that leaves ambiguity behind, courting a whole section of RPG players who desire that, and then retreating from that position with a new, fuzzier, system document.
As I understood it, 4e was an attempt to bridge the gap between the strategic tabletop genre and the D&D style of play. It was a kind-of Return To Chainmail, with this whole vision of the game really going back to these very grandious geographical set-pieces and large army combats, with the heroes playing as champions of great armies rather than rag-tag murder hobos. Very much inspired by Warhammer and Warcraft.
5e was more of a back-to-basics dungeon crawling game, keeping the streamlining of 4e but reintroducing a lot of the customization and flavor of 3e/2e/1e.
But they were still ultimately board games in practice. Positioning your models to flank or ambush or avoid a fireball remained a pivotal part of the game. Hell, the very act of flinging a fireball or swinging a sword to resolve a conflict was a fundamental cornerstone of the game.
Compare that to a game of Vampire or Call of Cthulhu, where a lot of the story is about investigating a conspiracy and surviving when you are surrounded by people who want to kill (and very likely eat) you, who you cannot trivially club to death in response. That’s the real bridge that you have to get people over. This idea that you’re not going into the spooky old house to simply loot it and bludgeon to death everything you find inside. The idea that you’re not playing in a world where Good Guys and Bad Guys are these equal-but-opposite forces clashing together along a territorial border. The idea that magic isn’t natural and meddling with these kinds of arcane forces comes at a terrible price.
Nevermind how the character sheets are all topsy turvy and new players - especially players coming from D&D - simply do not know how to build/play a character that isn’t geared to punch every problem directly in the face.
Why is this a “problem” for DnD specifically?
It’s a problem with any game that abstracts away reality in favor of dice and event tables, but still expects the players to Theater of the Mind their way through the abstractions.
This is all fine. I’m not arguing that this is a problem for ONLY DnD… It’s just that was the subject at hand, and it’s a problem with DnD.
I’d say the bigger issue tends to be around certain players feeling creative or desperate and trying to lean into the plot/setting with less respect for the rules.
This is an interesting point, but I would not say that the problem is with “certain players.”
DnD is heavily marketed and promoted as THE ttrpg. The default. The one for everyone. WotC talk about the game as being designed for an extremely broad pool of players, of many different styles. Players who want a more narrative experience, with less of a focus on rules are also a the target market for the system. If WotC say the game is for them, and the game doesn’t handle what they want from it, then the problem is either with the game design, or with the game’s promotion, marketing and reputation.
It’s interesting that my post was largely about how DnD 5e fails to cater towards people who want a strict set of rules for simulations, and your argument is about how DnD fails to cater towards people who want a loose set of rules that can be bent. I’m a firm believer that when you try to please everyone, you please nobody, and this is DnD’s biggest weakness as a system: If you have a strongly cohesive group of players who want a specific style, DnD will do an okay job at it, but there will always be a better system out there. It’s the ready meal you put in the microwave because it’s easy, not the specific gourmet restaurant that does that one dish you love perfectly.
DnD’s not really trying to cater towards any specific niche though - the design wants to appeal to the widest audience possible. By trying to cater to every style, it means you can pull together a group of players with a range of preferences, and put them in the same game. That’s a big part of why it’s got so much ubiquity after all. The logistics of setting up a group to play are rough for a lot of people, and just being able to put a game together is easier when your system promises fun to a wider range of players.
Okay but as long as we are complaining about shit we see on RPG forums
“I wish I could do
$thingin DnD”“
$otherSystemhas a very cool subsystem for$thing”“Omg how dare you”
Had this conversation enough times to make it a pet peeve of mine
Anyway the only thing about 5e that does suck is Wizards of the Coast. Otherwise it’s fine. It’s just fine. You can have fun with it.
I’m more of a Pathfinder 2e guy tho.
(And pf2 is basically a more advanced take on what 5e was doing so…)
5e needs a better way to balance encounters than Challenge Rating. It also has important rules for players in the DM book. Both of which are problems you can work around.
Yeah, it’s basically fine. It got a lot of new people interested in RPGs (and Critical Role certainly helped, too). If they’re all now looking for other systems to play, that’s fine, too.
The race/class system, the leveling mechanics, the Vancian Magic mechanics, and the general need to get into conflicts in order to progress the story / advance your characters has been a thorn in the side of the entire d20 universe from day one.
5e stripped out a lot of the math (which is good for bringing in new players but bad because actually having lots of gritty math in a game can be part of the fun of designing and playing) and smoothed the edges off 3.5e. But 4e also did this arguably too aggressively, giving us a game that was so bland and so generic that people flocked to alternatives for a good five years.
WotC is a mixed bag of old school TTRPG nerds and corporate suits that have somehow managed to keep the game cheap and fun while heavily investing in promotion. As enshittification goes, it could have been a lot worse. They’re a meaningful improvement over TSR, which is a low fucking bar. Lots to dislike, but nothing I can point to that I wouldn’t find in another system easily enough.
IMHO, the math on PF2e is bad. They stripped out a lot of the more interesting abilities and features of 1e to make the game simpler. But, as a result, writing encounters is a balancing act between “trivially easy” and “functionally impossible”. Like, why even use the d20 if you’re going to build a game this way? Just make it an entirely points-based resource management game, with High Fantasy color.
I’d rather run up against the Big Red Dragon and have my DM say “You swing with all your might, but the beast barely notices” than to get handed a d20 while the DM laughs up his sleeve.
Those are all just
Like
Your opinion
Man
(Whereas wotc being a terrible company that mistreats its players is straight up fact)
I would say that the main thing that “sucks” about DnD is that DnD has often been portrayed as appealing to the kind of nerdy rules-lawyers that like to argue “hey, the rules say (x) so I can do (ridiculous thing)” and end up in a big argument with their DM about what the rules do and do not say. A lot of my groups have been like this, and it’s okay for a game to cater towards that specific playstyle.
I’m not trying to make a value judgement whether this is a good or a bad way to play a game. It’s also just one of many ways to play the game. You can (and given the stuff I talk about below, perhaps you should!) play it differently, but regardless it is quite a common table-style that the various holders of the DnD IP have encouraged throughout its history.
What is a problem is that this kind of playstyle can often be quite acrimonious, especially when combined with adversarial DM styles, and arguments can get rather heated and angry. I’ve heard many a tale of a group that split up over a rules argument that left everyone at the table too angry and frustrated to stick together as a group.
DnD 4e made huge strides to mitigating these problems by having a whole lot of very tightly defined keywords and language which could almost always be resolved into a solid, consistent, official ruling. You had to do a lot of work to learn exactly how the language was being used, but it was possible to get a table of six rules lawyers to sit down and develop a shared understanding of what the rules meant - and know there was a right answer to any specific question.
DnD 5e has taken huge strides to re-introducing the uncertainty in the system, by very loosely defining how things work, or not providing official answers at all, preferring to go with a “the DM will make a ruling” approach. This can be a nightmare for groups that like to have a defined, correct, answer to things.
Now of course, many alternate systems take this stance as a given “The rules are a set of loose guidelines, the GM will run the game and just make up a lot of the rules on the spot.” - and this has a lot of advantages. It makes it easier to write systems because you don’t have to be completely rigorous, and it leaves the GM with the freedom to run the game they want, and it encourages players to not get hung up on the details - all healthy…
But DnD is in the unique position of already having proven with 4e that it can nail down a rigorous set of principles and a style guide that leaves ambiguity behind, courting a whole section of RPG players who desire that, and then retreating from that position with a new, fuzzier, system document.
Why is this a “problem” for DnD specifically? Well… I find it’s extremely common on internet forums like this one for a person to say “I was in a game and (x) happened” and then immediately three different arguments spawn, running in separate directions, all founded on the premise that the poster is playing the game wrong or doesn’t understand the rules. It’s exhausting.
Not a totally unfair critique, but also not unique to D&D.
I’d say the bigger issue tends to be around certain players feeling creative or desperate and trying to lean into the plot/setting with less respect for the rules. So, for instance, “If I can’t move the big rock with a Strength check alone, can I get some ropes and set up a pulley system?” <throws a bunch of math at the table> “See? This should give me a 3x multiplier to my Strength, so I should be able to move it easily?” And the DM just looks at that, shakes his head, and replies “All that’ll do is give you Advantage (and if you move the rock you’ll derail my plot)”.
But more broadly, I’d say the problem with D&D is that it’s inevitably the same Medieval High Fantasy setting in one way or another. The format of the game is geared towards the classic Journey to Mordor, with challenges and story beats and pacing to match. It doesn’t play well with modern settings, because modern and futuristic technology tends to trivialize magic (especially under the Vancian system). It doesn’t play well with the Horror genre, because the game rewards “winning” rather than “survival”. It doesn’t play well with PC antagonists/betrayers as the class system puts you at a huge disadvantage when you’re not working as a team, so heel-turns and dramatic reveals can leave players with a sour taste in their mouths in a way a game more explicitly geared towards Finding The Traitor does not.
As I understood it, 4e was an attempt to bridge the gap between the strategic tabletop genre and the D&D style of play. It was a kind-of Return To Chainmail, with this whole vision of the game really going back to these very grandious geographical set-pieces and large army combats, with the heroes playing as champions of great armies rather than rag-tag murder hobos. Very much inspired by Warhammer and Warcraft.
5e was more of a back-to-basics dungeon crawling game, keeping the streamlining of 4e but reintroducing a lot of the customization and flavor of 3e/2e/1e.
But they were still ultimately board games in practice. Positioning your models to flank or ambush or avoid a fireball remained a pivotal part of the game. Hell, the very act of flinging a fireball or swinging a sword to resolve a conflict was a fundamental cornerstone of the game.
Compare that to a game of Vampire or Call of Cthulhu, where a lot of the story is about investigating a conspiracy and surviving when you are surrounded by people who want to kill (and very likely eat) you, who you cannot trivially club to death in response. That’s the real bridge that you have to get people over. This idea that you’re not going into the spooky old house to simply loot it and bludgeon to death everything you find inside. The idea that you’re not playing in a world where Good Guys and Bad Guys are these equal-but-opposite forces clashing together along a territorial border. The idea that magic isn’t natural and meddling with these kinds of arcane forces comes at a terrible price.
Nevermind how the character sheets are all topsy turvy and new players - especially players coming from D&D - simply do not know how to build/play a character that isn’t geared to punch every problem directly in the face.
It’s a problem with any game that abstracts away reality in favor of dice and event tables, but still expects the players to Theater of the Mind their way through the abstractions.
This is all fine. I’m not arguing that this is a problem for ONLY DnD… It’s just that was the subject at hand, and it’s a problem with DnD.
This is an interesting point, but I would not say that the problem is with “certain players.”
DnD is heavily marketed and promoted as THE ttrpg. The default. The one for everyone. WotC talk about the game as being designed for an extremely broad pool of players, of many different styles. Players who want a more narrative experience, with less of a focus on rules are also a the target market for the system. If WotC say the game is for them, and the game doesn’t handle what they want from it, then the problem is either with the game design, or with the game’s promotion, marketing and reputation.
It’s interesting that my post was largely about how DnD 5e fails to cater towards people who want a strict set of rules for simulations, and your argument is about how DnD fails to cater towards people who want a loose set of rules that can be bent. I’m a firm believer that when you try to please everyone, you please nobody, and this is DnD’s biggest weakness as a system: If you have a strongly cohesive group of players who want a specific style, DnD will do an okay job at it, but there will always be a better system out there. It’s the ready meal you put in the microwave because it’s easy, not the specific gourmet restaurant that does that one dish you love perfectly.
DnD’s not really trying to cater towards any specific niche though - the design wants to appeal to the widest audience possible. By trying to cater to every style, it means you can pull together a group of players with a range of preferences, and put them in the same game. That’s a big part of why it’s got so much ubiquity after all. The logistics of setting up a group to play are rough for a lot of people, and just being able to put a game together is easier when your system promises fun to a wider range of players.