Now that the dust has settled... was 5e a good line or not? It got a lot of new people into the hobby, but it also has a lot of flaws at a design level.
5e wasn't meant to function on a "design level" in the first place.First & foremost, it was a product meant to get as many sales as possible.A legacy household name? Check.Bandwagoning on the "nerd culture" trend? Check.Celebrity endorsement? Check.Diversity & inclusion? Check.Emphasis of limitless modularity? Check.Free advertising? Check.Great marketing? Check.It's the perfect storm in terms of selling a product, reinforced by a tireless defense force & laundry list of excuses for damage control."D&D is the world's greatest TTRPG." It gets credit for what it doesn't do when it's good. When good DMs do good things for their good groups, D&D is good, but when something bad is brought up, D&D is suddenly absolved of any responsibility.Problem with the rules? Rewrite what you don't like, you don't need the book.Problem with the settings? Rewrite what you don't like, you don't need the book.Don't like the culture war shit? You don't have to include it.DM abusing the power granted to him by rule 0? Find a new table.Players being too whiny, troublesome, or "problematic"? Find a new group.The function doesn't matter, it's about people buying it & making whatever changes they want.When people recommend D&D to new players, they don't cite the supposed game, they tell you what your DM could do.What "D&D does" can be done without D&D, in spite of all the glowing recommendations for the system. When you point out any system can similarly be modified, the script flips to "well I personally don't have to change as much as I would for other games" ignoring the fact there are plenty of people who'd have to change most to all of it.It is closer to a philosophical conversational piece or a hypothesis of quantum physics, than to something with a consistent state of being. It doesn't have a "design level", because it isn't a game. It is a nothing that they want you to pay for, that they want you to say is good for what you had to do to change it.Don't do it.
>>964869305e was not good, objectively speaking it was seriously flawedbut its contemporaries are V5, PF2e, PBTA, a bunch of OSR/ruleslite/artbook games, and it's replacement 6e. they're all substantially worse5e is the smartest kid in the special classes
>>96486930No, it's one of the worst games I've ever played.
>>96486930it was, in fact, the best.
The PHB + Monster Manual are perfectly serviceable. At least 50% of their pages are useful or interesting. It's more balanced than 3.5, less stupid than 4e, and includes everything people are begging for in fantasy gaming. As a product line 5e sucks, but only because any RPG sucks after you make splatbooks for it. >>96487125>Problem with the rules? Rewrite what you don't like, you don't need the book.>Problem with the settings? Rewrite what you don't like, you don't need the book.>Don't like the culture war shit? You don't have to include it.>DM abusing the power granted to him by rule 0? Find a new table.>Players being too whiny, troublesome, or "problematic"? Find a new group.This is all genuinely good advice that applies to every RPG. The big question is, how much of it is worth keeping?
>>964869309/10, objectively one of the best games of all time
>>96487320>This is all genuinely good advice that applies to every RPGSo what makes D&D the world's greatest TTRPG?
>>96488731The SOVL.
>>96487320I would rather play 3.5 than 5e, terribly balanced as the former is. Bounded accuracy fucking sucks and is deeply unfun.
>>96486930I don't like it.
>>96487320There is like 5% of content that's useful or interesting in the PHB, with an even lower count with splatbooks. It is a much dumber game than 4E.
>>96489048>The incomplete mess versionTry SOVL with actual usability.
>>96487320>It's more balanced than 3.5Only barely. At the cost of being a lot more boring.>>96488731Older editions.
Hordes of Shitical Roll fans and powergamers infest modern D&D. They are literal virgin babies. Literally all the powergamers I know are actual fucking virgins in their mid-20s. Whereas all the people I play OSR with save for one are married or in serious relationships. Really says a lot about your power-fantasy power-wank games and how they make up for what a failure you are in real life.There is literally nothing interesting or compelling about modern D&D. The only possible way to make it compelling is by the DM working explicitly against the system. 5th Edition D&D combat is (1) easy, (2) free of consequences, (3) equipped with a set of rules to let players offload blame for their failure onto the DM (challenge rating), and (4) so hilariously unbalanced it doesn't even represent anything. There's no reason not to get into a fight in 5e cause you'll just heal once you take a nap. Hit points mean literally nothing except what the DM wants them to so the game loses all context and damage becomes meaningless. Even when you die, you have to be coup-de-graced 2 more times to make sure you're actually dead. Characters get so much plot armor that level 1 becomes a hilarious Three Stooges skit and the entire game just looks like a vidya, where "dying" means you just go down so your teammates have to revive you by waving their hands over you for a few minutes. At least you remain unconscious for a bit when you do go down. Not that it matters because a high level character literally has to take 400 damage to be one-shotted. What a game.
>>96489511>11good post.>>96489333>333nic3 rare books anon
>>96489511But I'm a virgin in my mid-20s and I prefer OSR?
>>96486930>was 5e a good line or not?Not. They failed to develop or improve it over 10 years, and this was after one of the longest and most exhaustive attempts at playtesting an RPG in the history of the hobby, which they proudly ignored 90% of the feedback and simply ended up sanding the rough edges off of 3.5 because they were fucking terrified of repeating the 4e mistaken and losing customers to Pathfinder forever. Even then, there were plans for additional splatbooks and further rule clarifications, more classes, Campaign setting books, and more... And they just never really got around to that. Forgotten Realms was the official default setting and they never made a book for it. They saw that pre-made adventures like Curse of Strahd were popular and just gave up on meaningfully working on the game to instead push more adventure league shit once CritRole and Strange Things gave them a totally unexpected boost in popularity again.
>>96489730>Forgotten Realms was the official default setting and they never made a book for it.They did and it FUCKING SUCKED
>>96489746The sword coast isn't the whole setting. And the fact that they did one corner of Faerun and fucked it up and then never did another just reinforces the point.
>>96489511>They are literal virgin babies. Literally all the powergamers I know are actual fucking virgins in their mid-20s. Whereas all the people I play OSR with save for one are married or in serious relationshipsYou're talking like a woman, fagmeister.
