D&D General It's really weird loving D&D and not loving the current rules.

[Celebrim]

Over the last 10 years I have just kind of soured on 5e. I think it is a perfectly serviceable D&D game, but I just don't think there's actually a lot of "there" there.

I totally get how you feel. I got left behind by the rules of D&D when they "fixed" 3.0e by introducing 3.5 and instead of being just errata for a few known issues, they broke huge portions of the rules. Then 4e came along and it was "D&D for people who never liked D&D in the first place" and I had nothing in common with the community. Then 5e came along and it was "Basic D&D 2nd Edition" and I totally get why that has been amazingly popular and they've done a great job managing the brand and making quality content and I'm hugely happy about the state of the game, but I still have nothing in common with the community and no desire to use the current rule set or even talk about the current rule set. It's great and there are some features of it I like, but the trade-offs IMO are bad.

 

[MichaelSomething]

What's stopping you from adding race as class, gold for XP, or the craft and profession skills back in??

I bet you could just use the AD&D Monster Manuel, convert on the fly, and your players won't even notice!

 

[Micah Sweet]

The existance of Level Up has saved 5e for me.

 

[dave2008]

I grew up on BECMI and would run it any day ever.

I grew up on BECMI to, but I can't see myself ever running a game of it again. There are so many advancements in the game that I can't see myself going back.

In response to the OP: I love the game, but I've never loved the rules of any edition. I find 5e the easiest for my group to modify to a game we really enjoy, but that work started in 1e and BECMI.

 

[Quickleaf]

It's pretty natural as we mature and grow more experienced with something to develop our personal tastes more precisely. 5e is a very wide net. There's plenty to like and plenty to dislike.

One of the things that I started doing last year – which I've found very helpful (YMMV especially if you're already doing this) – is running one-shots in a diversity of game systems (recently I ran the GM-less time-travel RPG Mage Against the Machine, and soon will be running Beyond the Wall which is a B/X inspired d20 system modeling YA fiction like Prydain & Earthsea). The best gift you can give yourself is a chance to find games - or elements of games - that really sing for you.

 

[dave2008]

The existance of Level Up has saved 5e for me.

LevelUp is even less like BECMI, if that is the goal (which at point it seemed to be for the OP)

 

[grimslade]

If 5E is not thrilling you, there are plenty of other systems to scratch that itch, even digging out whichever old edition you prefer. I have jumped into running Symbaroum when I need a different feel. I find that I can't recover any joy from playing old editions of D&D. The little idiosyncrasies I had house-ruled away stand out much more. I have not tried going back to Basic, so that might work.

 

[Charlaquin]

When 3E came out I thought the innovations were great from AD&D. 4E we played for a bit and then switched to Pathfinder, then to 5E. But I feel the same way about the rules as you. Even though 5E is streamlined enough, it still seems like there's more nuances in the rules than I'd like and the page flipping to put all the relevant ones together just annoys me. In a lot of ways, the class features all seem the same but are named something different but get the same effect in some instances. If I had the wherewithal to go back and read 2E I think I'd rather play that, but we play 5E because that was the decision we made when our group got together. I really wish that WotC followed through with the modularity model they were working towards before 5Es release. I know the DMG has optional rules, but I'd prefer a very stripped-down ruleset, 50 pages or so. If you can imagine doing it and want to try it go ahead, after all at the end of the day you have a 50/50% of sucess or failure. Maybe a few options but I don't need as many as there are. I'm old and my feeble brain can't remember all of them anymore. I want D&D Geriatric.

Have you considered using only the basic rules?

EDIT: (That is to say, the rules in the free “Basic Rules” PDF for 5e. Not the rules for Basic D&D. I mean, that would also be a perfectly valid option, just not what I was asking about.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

LOL so many people so late to the party in this thread.

I felt this way not long into 3E, especially after 3.5E. I'm fairly happy with 5E, and the stuff I'm not happy with the is the poorly-done throwback stuff (like the 3E-style Sorcerer), or the cheesy/weak-seeming attempted nostalgia cash-ins (hello Spelljammer). It's like, by all means cash in on nostalgia, but don't just do it to gouge, people.

4E actually got my group playing D&D again after we'd given up in 3.5E.

I think RC D&D is the edition of D&D I have the most actual respect for, weirdly. We never played it much, but it seems like the most "together" edition of D&D/AD&D by some margin.

 

[Reynard]

What's stopping you from adding race as class, gold for XP, or the craft and profession skills back in??

I bet you could just use the AD&D Monster Manuel, convert on the fly, and your players won't even notice!

I am not sure why the effort wouldbe worth it rather than just running an earlier version, aside from gathering players (who you a
re lying to anyway).