Quote from: tenbones;1115053So did we get to the center of this Tootsie-Pop yet?

I believe that people are generally enamored with D&D as an investment in gaming, as opposed to it being "the best system ever". Which is fine. But 52+ pages of debating what "bad" about it... I mean, you know, what's been said that hasn't been said already?

I'm more curious to know whether anyone changed their views at all? Who here budged on their feelings/opinions and in regards to what? I'm genuinely curious.

I get the impression that this topic is more about venting and bitching about what people don't like about 5e--which is fine, particularly since I happen to agree with most of the bitching. And also find venting to be therapeutic from time to time. I haven't joined in mostly because this thread was already quite long by the time I started to post here regularly (and just kept getting longer) and also because I haven't actually played 5e yet (played mostly 2e and 3e, and briefly 0e when introduced into tabletop), so most of what I have are impressions from what I've read in the PHB.

From a more productive POV I think this discussion could be veered into what people would prefer or have done differently, which could lead to ideas to house rule the F out of it or creating an alternate system that avoids the pitfalls of 5e.

Quote from: Chris24601;1115062Not even a little. I got disillusioned early in the "playtest" and had resolved to develop my own system shortly after the finished product turned up. I'm now 99% done with mechanics and playtesting them and 90% through writing my own system so I'm not going to reverse course on that now.

Where this discussion has been enlightening for me is in highlighting the areas of 5e people are dissatisfied with and that I handled differently. That suggests areas I should be pushing when it comes time to actually promote my game in earnest.

In my case I wasn't really active in tabletop around the time 5e was being developed and had already given up on D&D since past editions, cuz I always had a love/hate relationship with the game, with some mechanical elements I liked and others I absolutely hated. I've been working on my own system on an off for years (which got sidetracked a bunch of times and even put in the backburner for a couple years) and grudgingly playing D&D 3e when I get the chance to play tabletop.

As it happens I happen to agree with some aspects of the direction they took with 5e (namely making everything a skill and toning down the ability ranges) but dislike the implementation. I've come to prefer skill-based systems but hate classes and have qualms about level-based progression (considering it the main source of the bloat and power creep in D&D, preferring freeform progression instead.

One thing I really don't like about 5e, which has come up in this discussion, is the samey feel that the system creates, which I think comes from there being no variability between Skills/Proficiency values beyond stat differences, making all characters of the same level have mostly the same ability roll values. You either have Proficiency or you don't, and the differences between training or no training are slightly more minimal than I would've preferred. Fighters and Wizards of the same level now have the EXACT same hit probability, provided they each have "Proficiency" in their respective weapons and comparable attributes. Yay? *big think emoji*

My solution would probably be to make skill progression individual, slightly increase skill ranges (to +8 or more) and probably ditch class and level-based progression. Which is totally my preference (and kinda what I already do in my own system), but not sure what people look for in D&D.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1115064It would be the equivalent of me budging on liking the taste of Melons because other people like them. I still think that 5e, as it stands, could have been better even for the people that like 5e (which I don't). I still stand by 5e being a lucky flash in the pan propelled by just the right timing of internet fame than any innate quality.  D&D 6e won't be as lucky.

I give 5e slightly more credit in that it (over) simplified a bunch of things, making the system overall more accessible to normies. Now people don't have to "waste" time individually leveling a bunch of skills or looking at separate combat or saving through progressions. They all have same samey "Proficiency" values based on whether or not they actually have training instead. Speeding things up and dumbing things down considerably for the TTRPG illiterate. Conversely, they've also doubled down on the class ability bloat to justify a 20 level progression, which is something I think works counter to that end, but still manages to meet expectations for those coming from video game RPGs, where the focus is getting "something" every level.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115070I give 5e slightly more credit in that it (over) simplified a bunch of things, making the system overall more accessible to normies. Now people don't have to "waste" time individually leveling a bunch of skills or looking at separate combat or saving through progressions. They all have same samey "Proficiency" values based on whether or not they actually have training instead. Speeding things up and dumbing things down considerably for the TTRPG illiterate. Conversely, they've also doubled down on the class ability bloat to justify a 20 level progression, which is something I think works counter to that end, but still manages to meet expectations for those coming from video game RPGs, where the focus is getting "something" every level.

This is basically the thing with 5e. Any attempt to make 5e into a more detailed game will just turn it into the complicated mess of 3e which too few people are going to sink time into in order to play it "right". You can "fix" 5e into the game you want by toning down magic or whatever, but there's no way to simplify 3e, everything is too unified.

Everyone is perfectly entitled to vent and bitch. The thread *is* about what's "wrong" with 5e, after all. And let me be clear here - I'm talking about the system, not the settings.

I think part of it is purely generational and branding.

Generational in the sense that many of us old folks have been doing this for so long 1) we're used to the assumptions of D&D so with only a few exceptions it's easy for us to parse 2) those of us that have GMed D&D for a long period of time have become used to the "bad" parts of previous editions. We put up with those issues. And then there exists a sub-division of us D&D GM's that took one hit too many and we moved on to other systems for *reasons*.

Branding, in the sense that many of us got into gaming via D&D. We naturally feel loyalty. But casual observation of the history of D&D... WotC ain't TSR. And now we're a couple of generations into WotC control of the brand... and it's not hard to see there have been differences in design direction. A lot of it has to do with ideological shifts, biases on the playerbase and the generation gap that exists between them. The game iterations have reflected that.

So the real question is - how much of that Brand Loyalty and Generational inertia informs your view?

For me personally - Brand Loyalty stopped being a thing around 4e for me. And for Generational inertia, I'm one of those guys that was spun out of D&D as a go-to system because frankly, I've never felt comfortable that WotC was "fixing" anything even when I was writing for them and Paizo. There are certainly genius design mechanics that have sprouted up over the years in d20... but without fail, they never made it into the core editions which became insulated by the all the new younger players who were just getting their foot into the door and were filled with that Nerdzerker edition partisanship we all had when we were new to the hobby.

I'm not gonna crap on people because they *loooooove* (I definitely have mine). I'm merely wondering in the big picture of gaming - how much of that is because of habit or branding? I can run D&D settings better, faster, stronger with at least a half-dozen other systems with fidelity (with the only issue being conversion work if anything) - so it makes me question "Is 5e *really* that good/bad vs. any other available alternative?" Because whenever I get around to running a Fantasy game... my *die-hard* D&D group... has asked me to run D&D (any edition) exactly zero-times in the last 5-years. It's not the settings... it most certainly is the system. And that says a lot to me.

NONE of my players hates 5e either. None of them. Neither do I. But in realities of competing interests in terms of what system we use to game with - 5e is almost never on the menu these days.

It's curious.

Quote from: Doom;1115072This is basically the thing with 5e. Any attempt to make 5e into a more detailed game will just turn it into the complicated mess of 3e which too few people are going to sink time into in order to play it "right". You can "fix" 5e into the game you want by toning down magic or whatever, but there's no way to simplify 3e, everything is too unified.

I don't want to make this a tangent...

but wouldn't Mutants & Masterminds 3e be that simplification to D&D3e? It's pretty simple. It's 3e... mutated into another thing. But it's all right there. Pretty easy (and quite powerful in its flexibility).

I think the REAL issue is the emergent herd of Sacred Cows(tm) that are hallmarks of D&D itself that are the issue.

I am so thankful for primarily playing a game that doesn't suffer from edition wars at all... Borderline unanimous opinion shared across a given fanbase is so hard to come by, particularly with such divisive niche hobbies like RPG's.

Too much angst! I've got enough of my own home-grown angst to handle anyway.

Quote from: tenbones;1115053So did we get to the center of this Tootsie-Pop yet?

I believe that people are generally enamored with D&D as an investment in gaming, as opposed to it being "the best system ever". Which is fine. But 52+ pages of debating what "bad" about it... I mean, you know, what's been said that hasn't been said already?

I'm more curious to know whether anyone changed their views at all? Who here budged on their feelings/opinions and in regards to what? I'm genuinely curious.

Very rarely is it ever the game itself, it is the general tendencies of the people attracted to the game who play it that turn people off. WotC's deep dive into SJW wankery as displayed in the writing of the product, the public statements of their writers, and (for me at least) the behavior of that unpaid advertising arm known as the Adventurer's League all have contributed since the playtest to erode interest in the game itself.

Quote from: tenbones;1115074So the real question is - how much of that Brand Loyalty and Generational inertia informs your view?

I don't develop Brand Loyalty for much of anything, gaming included.  For whatever reason, my mind doesn't work that way.  To mix your terms, there is a little "Brand Inertia".  That is, if I've appreciated a thing for a long time, I might be a bit hesitant to drop it when it first starts to decline.  However, once the decline registers for me, I'm out so fast it will make your eyes bleed.  (I bought a different brand of shoes a few weeks ago, the first time I've changed in over 25 years.  Two pairs ago, thought it might have been a little substandard, but nothing really noticeable.  Last pair was definitely bad.  I knew I was out a few weeks after wearing those shoes.  I prefer to think of this as "Quality Loyalty", but maybe that's just me rationalizing it.)

The Generational Inertia, maybe somewhat explains it, though it isn't my whole reasons for doing things.  I'm not nostalgic for games.  I really do enjoy running something very much like D&D.  A lot of the pet bugaboos don't bother me, and most of them I appreciate them for what they are.  It helps that I run for players with a similar attitude.  I remember one conversation we had about AC and hit points and D&D magic and the like, where the upshot was that they said that not every game needed those things but D&D did need them.  When they played D&D, they expect that stuff to be there, and they enjoy it.  When they play something else, they don't.  

Suppose for a minute that all D&D products that had every been simply vanished in a puff of smoke, but the knowledge of them remained.  And for whatever reason, no one is putting out a set I can conveniently use.  Then I'd make my own--and it would include some items that are "D&D" to me that I wouldn't necessarily include in my own designs.

Quote from: tenbones;1115053I'm more curious to know whether anyone changed their views at all? Who here budged on their feelings/opinions and in regards to what? I'm genuinely curious.

I've moved from "not particularly interested" to "confident 5e offers me nothing of value".

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1115079I don't develop Brand Loyalty for much of anything, gaming included.  For whatever reason, my mind doesn't work that way.  To mix your terms, there is a little "Brand Inertia".  That is, if I've appreciated a thing for a long time, I might be a bit hesitant to drop it when it first starts to decline.  However, once the decline registers for me, I'm out so fast it will make your eyes bleed.  (I bought a different brand of shoes a few weeks ago, the first time I've changed in over 25 years.  Two pairs ago, thought it might have been a little substandard, but nothing really noticeable.  Last pair was definitely bad.  I knew I was out a few weeks after wearing those shoes.  I prefer to think of this as "Quality Loyalty", but maybe that's just me rationalizing it.)

This resembles my own view. I fully admit I'm much more "sensitive" to it as my experience as a GM gives me a very large bandwidth - I came this conclusion that my love for "D&D" was based in my experiences running the settings - not the systems themselves. Which was an odd thing to realize so many years ago, but now seems pretty logical.

Brand Inertia... I'm not so certain of. It's like Bob Iger saying "There is Star Wars fatigue" - I don't personally buy that. There is "Bad Idea Fatigue". If it happens to be hung on a brand... then so be it, we're on the same page. I always maintain "Reasonable people LOVE GOOD THINGS". "The Brand Inertia" comes from lack of innovation within the way we engage with these systems. Granted there has been SOME innovation... but if I'm honest, compared to other systems coming from more agile organizations with, imo, more invested interest in the hobby - do it as good if not better.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1115079The Generational Inertia, maybe somewhat explains it, though it isn't my whole reasons for doing things.  I'm not nostalgic for games.  I really do enjoy running something very much like D&D.  A lot of the pet bugaboos don't bother me, and most of them I appreciate them for what they are.  It helps that I run for players with a similar attitude.  I remember one conversation we had about AC and hit points and D&D magic and the like, where the upshot was that they said that not every game needed those things but D&D did need them.  When they played D&D, they expect that stuff to be there, and they enjoy it.  When they play something else, they don't.

Me either! But with age has come some wisdom. I'm *not* nostalgic for D&D as a system (literally nothing stops me from running Basic through 3e) - I'm nostalgic for the experiences I was able to generate using those settings that *happened* to be using those systems. Now I'm finding I can do that with much more ease due to 1) my experience as a GM (time in the saddle/age) and 2) honesty about what precisely I like/don't like as a GM in terms of "best practices". Plus years of doing design-work and playing a whole lot of other systems certainly informed that.

D&D 5e feels like... a "fantasy heartbreaker" to me. Which I realize the question becomes "what ISN'T a fantasy-heartbreaker" - which really simplifies the REAL underlying question: Which system *really* does the D&D-style fantasy genre best? To me that is the question. Because it opens up a LOT of other possibilities beyond the usual hand-wringing about D&D-specific Sacred Cows that only exist IN D&D...

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1115079Suppose for a minute that all D&D products that had every been simply vanished in a puff of smoke, but the knowledge of them remained.  And for whatever reason, no one is putting out a set I can conveniently use.  Then I'd make my own--and it would include some items that are "D&D" to me that I wouldn't necessarily include in my own designs.

And thus you're illustrating the challenge of my question succinctly. "D&D 5e" is merely a fantasy heartbreaker pointed at people vested in the "idea" of D&D. It's exists only to service what people come think of "D&D-style Fantasy". Why leave it in competition with itself when there is nothing particularly innovative about how it presents its own genre?

Quote from: tenbones;1115074Everyone is perfectly entitled to vent and bitch. The thread *is* about what's "wrong" with 5e, after all. And let me be clear here - I'm talking about the system, not the settings.

I think part of it is purely generational and branding.

Generational in the sense that many of us old folks have been doing this for so long 1) we're used to the assumptions of D&D so with only a few exceptions it's easy for us to parse 2) those of us that have GMed D&D for a long period of time have become used to the "bad" parts of previous editions. We put up with those issues. And then there exists a sub-division of us D&D GM's that took one hit too many and we moved on to other systems for *reasons*.

Branding, in the sense that many of us got into gaming via D&D. We naturally feel loyalty. But casual observation of the history of D&D... WotC ain't TSR. And now we're a couple of generations into WotC control of the brand... and it's not hard to see there have been differences in design direction. A lot of it has to do with ideological shifts, biases on the playerbase and the generation gap that exists between them. The game iterations have reflected that.

So the real question is - how much of that Brand Loyalty and Generational inertia informs your view?

For me personally - Brand Loyalty stopped being a thing around 4e for me. And for Generational inertia, I'm one of those guys that was spun out of D&D as a go-to system because frankly, I've never felt comfortable that WotC was "fixing" anything even when I was writing for them and Paizo. There are certainly genius design mechanics that have sprouted up over the years in d20... but without fail, they never made it into the core editions which became insulated by the all the new younger players who were just getting their foot into the door and were filled with that Nerdzerker edition partisanship we all had when we were new to the hobby.

I'm not gonna crap on people because they *loooooove* (I definitely have mine). I'm merely wondering in the big picture of gaming - how much of that is because of habit or branding? I can run D&D settings better, faster, stronger with at least a half-dozen other systems with fidelity (with the only issue being conversion work if anything) - so it makes me question "Is 5e *really* that good/bad vs. any other available alternative?" Because whenever I get around to running a Fantasy game... my *die-hard* D&D group... has asked me to run D&D (any edition) exactly zero-times in the last 5-years. It's not the settings... it most certainly is the system. And that says a lot to me.

NONE of my players hates 5e either. None of them. Neither do I. But in realities of competing interests in terms of what system we use to game with - 5e is almost never on the menu these days.

It's curious.

In my case at least I was never affected by brand loyalty too much because 1) I've never been one to become fanatical about brands (I may prefer certain products sometimes, but based on their own merits), and 2) that was pretty much squashed down for me from the get-go since being introduced with 0e, since I never liked that edition and always felt like there was something missing when playing that game. I felt like I wanted to like D&D more than I actually did and that it should be something I liked more than I did, but didn't, because I felt too limited playing 0e.

It wasn't till I tried 2e that I started liking the game (I skipped 1e, since I started playing shortly after 2e was released), since it seemed to provide a lot of the options and flexibility I felt were missing from 0e. And even then the feeling started to creep back in over the years as I started running into mechanical issues I didn't like. Exposure to other systems also contributed to that, since I started to learn different ways to handle things mechanically that seemed more efficient sometimes than how D&D handled things, and I started to favor skill-based systems over class-based systems till my motto became "Everything classes can do skill can do better", which is a hill I will die on to this day.

It wasn't long till I started tinkering with every system I played and making massive changes or homebrewed systems to "fix" issues I perceived with D&D and other games. I even figured out d20+Mod was a more efficient mechanics years before 3e (though, I partly stole that idea from the d10+Mod mechanic used in Cyberpunk 2020) and even toyed with the idea of reducing saving throws to just Physical, Reflexes and Mental (I called Reflex saves Reflexes, Will saves Willpower and don't recall what I called Fortitude--maybe Toughness).

I was also never an edition warrior, even though I preferred 2e (at least in the 90s), because to me 2e was just a means to an end--not the pinnacle of RPGs, just something less limited than 0e (or how I used to call it EXTRA Basic). I did run into a lot of 0e edition warriors back in the day, though, and I admittedly used to be apprehensive about the OSR due to bad experiences with people who couldn't process anything that wasn't Basic D&D.

Quote from: tenbones;1115082D&D 5e feels like... a "fantasy heartbreaker" to me. Which I realize the question becomes "what ISN'T a fantasy-heartbreaker" - which really simplifies the REAL underlying question: Which system *really* does the D&D-style fantasy genre best? To me that is the question. Because it opens up a LOT of other possibilities beyond the usual hand-wringing about D&D-specific Sacred Cows that only exist IN D&D...

None of them do, D&D or otherwise.  D&D-style fantasy is too wide a genre for any one system to do it best.  5E's popularity is that it hits a good chunk of the range close enough that you can get there with a little thought and effort.  You may be underestimating the appeal of "good enough" in our world.  

I don't spend a lot of design energy on D&D (any edition).  5E hits close enough to the parts of the genre that appeal to me.  Plus, I wanted a place that I could do a setting and run a game that required minimal other work--so that I can devote my energy to my own design.  I can't do that if I'm also trying to make D&D a better game, because not enough hours in the day.  

Quote And thus you're illustrating the challenge of my question succinctly. "D&D 5e" is merely a fantasy heartbreaker pointed at people vested in the "idea" of D&D. It's exists only to service what people come think of "D&D-style Fantasy". Why leave it in competition with itself when there is nothing particularly innovative about how it presents its own genre?

WotC aspired to do for tabletop what Blizzard did for MMORPG's.  It took them 5 tries (counting intermediate versions) to finally understand that the key to Blizzard's success with World of Warcraft had zip to do with innovation or gimmicks or external stuff.  All Blizzard did was take ideas others had innovated and implement them more cleanly.  While also selectively pruning some of the stuff that didn't work and/or that people didn't much like even when it did work.  Almost no one picks World of Warcraft as their favorite MMORPG, unless they haven't played anything else or have only played other games that are seriously deficient.  A lot of people played WoW while also playing several other games, because it was good enough, quirky fun, and a bunch of their friends were also playing it.  Sound familiar?

Of course, like Blizzard, WotC is actively forgetting what got them to this place, and managing to piss away their reputation in the process.  It hasn't gone yet, but it is one of those things that will be "slow, then all at once," if they don't pull their collective heads out.

I learned that brand loyalty is a fools game. Its not if a brand goes bad but when. My only interest in 5e is as a industry leader. Nothing else.

Quote from: tenbones;1115074I can run D&D settings better, faster, stronger with at least a half-dozen other systems with fidelity (with the only issue being conversion work if anything)

What are the other systems that you prefer?  Just curious.

D&D 5e is ok, but I want to branch out and try other fantasy RPGs.

Quote from: tenbones;1115075I don't want to make this a tangent...

but wouldn't Mutants & Masterminds 3e be that simplification to D&D3e? It's pretty simple. It's 3e... mutated into another thing. But it's all right there. Pretty easy (and quite powerful in its flexibility).

I think the REAL issue is the emergent herd of Sacred Cows(tm) that are hallmarks of D&D itself that are the issue.

I think there were a lot of people that expected simplification of 3.x with 4th edition, but that's not what was provided at all.  3.x can be simplified.  Unfortunately, the thing that made money in 3.x was supplement bloat.  Producing thousands of feats or spells is easy to do and all of those options interact with the game in unexpected ways.  Feats were new in 3.x, and they were too conservative with them, both in quantity characters received and in what they did - there's no reason to take Two-Weapon Fighting Feats 5 times - that could just be one feat.  The action economy also evolved over time; allowing people to move while taking a standard (or full attack) would help with a lot of martial/caster disparity issues.  More thematic spell lists would help even more.  

But if you have a spell list that is 'complete', there isn't much reason for you to spend money on a new supplement that includes 40 new spells that you can't access.