A Brief Review of 5e D&D From an Old-School Perspective


So when I get sent all three main books, I may write a more detailed review of them all as a set.  But for now, I want to say a few words about the Player's Handbook.  Many people have written very good and detailed reviews from a general point of view, so what I wanted to emphasize is whether (and how) the PHB is useful from the point of view of an old-school gamer.






For the interest of disclosure I should point out, to the two gamers on the planet who haven't heard this already, that I was involved in the creation of D&D 5e as a paid Consultant.   That said, and while I certainly think that was one factor in playing a part in how old-school-compatible this game is, I don't think that as such the fact that I have my name in the credits affects the opinions I'm stating now; had things gone a different way and had the 5e rules not been really good for this sort of thing, I would not be speaking favorably of it now.

So first, it's clear that the PHB is not in and of itself an OSR game.  But it is certainly informed by a strong old-school feel.

I can say that on a personal level, 5e D&D was the first edition of D&D in 25 years that I've felt really excited about; and the first in about 15 that I've been at all interested in playing (neither 3.5 nor 4e did anything for me at all; though I quite liked the D20 system itself).  I can actually see myself running a campaign with this game, and that says quite a lot.

The first thing to be said from the OSR perspective is that the spirit of the game is very much one of "rulings, not rules".  Yes, it's a bit more complex than the simplest of OSR games, but there are certainly old-school RPGs that feature similar levels of complexity.  Consider, for example, the level of rules in AD&D 1e, or Adventures Dark and Deep.
There's also a lot of innovation to be sure, but there is innovation that works against old-school principles, and innovation that works with it.  I had pointed out "Dungeon Crawl Classics" and "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" as an example of two games that take two very different approaches to "innovation" in rules from the D&D standard, as exemplars of how to do Innovation 'right'. And there's certainly elements of innovation in 5e's rule-set that remind me of both those games.

The structure of the rules are extremely modular; whereas in certain other editions it was very hard to houserule without disrupting an intricate and delicate web of rules, exceptions, feats, or class abilities, in 5e it is much easier to houserule without difficulty.
Note how things like multiclassing and feats, two of the bugbears (pardon the pun) of recent editions, have in 5e been shunted off away from the main section of character creation, and explicitly presented as optional.

There are certainly some features that aren't very conducive to what people think of as OSR play.  One is obviously in the matter of healing.  Now, I don't think that every old-school game needs to be one where you heal 1hp/night; but at the same time, the notion that you heal ALL your hit-points overnight is likely to leave a bad taste in the mouth of even the most liberal of grognards.
But you can change it pretty easily. You could change it, all the way to 1hp/night if you really wanted to.  But a more intermediate solution could be to turn around the nature of recovery at night: instead of healing all your hit points, you heal your hit dice, and then decide how many you want to use in healing and when.  Want to be a little tougher? You heal half your hit dice.  It's very easy for you to make these kinds of changes in the game.

There's also the matter of how elements of the rules serve to inspire old-school houserules.  Backgrounds, which no doubt some new-schoolers feel is very much in keeping with their preferences, are something that can totally lend itself to a more old-school hack of 5e. You could easily remake D&D 5e backgrounds into a "0-level character" thing.
If you were running an OSR-style 5e campaign, you could start PCs at level 0, have them choose a background, get d4+con HP; and then after a suitably small amount of xp (30?) get to level 1, where they'd choose a class, and roll 1st level hit points instead of taking max.  Suddenly you've got a game that's looking an awful lot like DCC.

These are only a few examples; and judging by how many known old-schoolers are already talking about using 5e, and what they're doing with it, and what old-school settings and adventures they want to adapt to 5e, and adapt 5e to, it's pretty clear that this game has caught the imagination of gamers of all stripes.

And that's what really convinced me that this edition is going to be very special.  As much as everything else I mentioned has interested and motivated me, what blew me away was that as I was going through the book and thinking about possibilities, I started to think about what kind of setting I might make that would be really suited for 5e.  What I came up with was a setting that would really work with an old school type houseruling of 5e; so fine, that's to be expected. The surprising part was that the setting hinged on the Dragonborn as an absolutely central race of the setting.

Dragonborn!  A race that until now I associated with all the worst moves of the last few years of D&D. A race I could never imagine myself using, and suddenly I'm dreaming up a world where they're right in the middle of it.
That was when I knew: these rules have been able to bridge a divide. They've done something that will not only change how I view D&D but how I operate old-school play and old-school worlds.

RPGPundit

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I was never, all along the process, excited for 5e. I think the slick marketing speak turned me off. It wasn't because I'm a grognard because I had no idea we had such a thriving community of people playing older games. I honestly thought people only played the latest game until about January.

That said, all my complaints are minor. It's a Good Game. It lives up to the hype. It is an able standard-bearer for the hobby as a whole.

So good job, WotC.

This did turn out to be better than I expected (or, actually, hoped for), and in many respects might be the best 'D&D-ish' game out there. I have a very warm spot in my heart for DCC, and I've probably played more C&C than anything else in recent years. But I've already found 5E better at the table than either.

I particularly like your comments about the ease with which 5E can be tweaked to yield something quite like the best elements of other games. One of my first thoughts on looking at the NPC and monster stat blocks and comparing them with player characters was just your point about a '0 level'. I.e., NPC's and monsters are generally given something like one more HD than one might expect (e.g., goblins have 2d6, etc.), and one could imagine that one of those counts as their '0 level'. PC's are given max HP at first level, which is for all practical purposes the same they would have if they had taken a 0 level but rolled for both. Anyway, it is all rather obvious how you would run a '0 level funnel' in 5E. And the Battlemaster options are effectively like a DCC fighter's feat dice. And one could go on and on.

The cleverness of 5E is that they managed to jack so much from earlier editions of D&D and various D&D-ish games, while presenting a coherent and easily understood whole. It is the first game I've seen in many years that made me shove my various game system design projects into a disused folder and throw the campaign maps and adventure notes onto the desk top. Which is exactly what a rule book should inspire.

Quote from: Larsdangly;782705This did turn out to be better than I expected (or, actually, hoped for), and in many respects might be the best 'D&D-ish' game out there. I have a very warm spot in my heart for DCC, and I've probably played more C&C than anything else in recent years. But I've already found 5E better at the table than either.

I'm really fond of both C&C and DCC and I'd love to see you elaborate on what is it that you feel that 5e pulls off better than these two.

My C&C group was quite taken with backgrounds, the abilities of the fighter class in 5E, the save vs. dying mechanic (which is quite dramatic) and the 5E version of 'healing surges' — something that has come to seem anti-old school because of its association with 4E, but actually was always a good idea waiting for a good implementation. More generally, C&C is pretty well stitched together, but the scale of difficulty for basic rolls (saving throws, attacks, etc.) goes off the rails quite often. I.e., the 'bounded accuracy' design of 5E keeps pretty much every roll interesting, whereas many rolls in C&C seem too hard or too easy. The heritage and purpose of these two games has a great deal in common, so on the surface they seem like a 'pick em' choice. But when the dice start to roll 5E has more going on each turn and more drama.

DCC is just oozing with flavor, visuals and creativity. Unfortunately, in play it suffers a bit from 'sub-system-itus'. Between the fighter feats, spell casting tables and luck mechanics, it feels like every 5 minutes you are fucking around with the book trying to figure out what comes next. I love it, but I kind of love it more as a coffee table book than I do as a game. Another issue is that 5E successfully jacked (or easily can jack) most of the stuff I like about DCC. The Battlemaster subclass has a fucking stupid name, but is actually as fun to play as a DCC fighter. The 0-level funnel is a fantastic, unique invention ... that I can implement in 5E with barely a moment's thought (I intend to post my house rules for this later today!). What I would like to do is play 5E while holding and leafing through DCC. The counter argument, at this point, is that DCC's pallet of adventures is just fantastic, whereas the two 5E adventures I have are mixed — mines of Phandelver is excellent; the dragon thing is too railroady.