D&D 5E Is 5E Special

[UngeheuerLich]

Just want it quoted in its entirety so I'm not at risk of twisting words to something other than what they were.

As I said, glad you noticed my perfectly reasonable and well researched number.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I was about 12 then and I figured it out, yeah. But I had friends who didn't. My now-wife tells me how she wanted to play as a kid but had trouble wrapping her mind around it (and now she's a doctor with an Ivy League degree).

Worse, I knew people who were excited about playing a mighty wizard, went though a session where they cast no spells then died the first time they were touched, then quit and never came back. Hard to blame them, honestly. That isn't fun.

People are looking at Basic with rose-colored lenses. Some of those people weren't even alive then, oddly enough. I was, so let me tell you: 5e is vastly friendlier to new players. VASTLY.

Well I was little then and played in grade school. And we just bought pdf of all of BECMI and played with my 8 year old.

I don’t have many illusions about it’s harshness. We lost plenty of characters quickly. My son has a dwarf that survived and dealt the killing blow to an ogre. His other character died! But as it was, he was dubbed ogre slayer and had a good experience.

One roll the other way and he would have had a different experience I am sure.

But the rules are…bare. There is not much there. From that standpoint it seems simpler/easier.

All of that said one pal got into it and wanted to keep with it. I like the added options and if I am being honest (this one hurts!) the added survivability of 5e.

We fudged a lot in 1e. That the simple truth of it. And by so doing we had lots of fun.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[...] Snipped for brevity.

I know this is a Ship of Theseus/sorites paradox situation, there are no clean answers. But the point stands that even among people who love 5e and have been there from the beginning, there is already some disagreement as to what 5e is or should be. To extrapolate from 5e's success to the idea that all of its systems are "near-perfect" or that it was truly, uniquely special in a way that is more important than the context in which it appeared...it just isn't justified.

I do not object the discussion about anything you described above.

I only object the claim that the success of 5e is pure luck.
And just to be sure not to have my 98% quoted out of context drom the other posts again:
I don't think the design is perfect or near perfect, but I do think it hit the nerve of that time (10 years ago) so well that success was possible (with good outer circumstances... and we were far away from the pandemic back then).
But of course, I lack the same proof for my claim as you do for your claim.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I do not object the discussion about anything you described above.

I only object the claim that the success of 5e is pure luck.
And just to be sure not to have my 98% quoted out of context drom the otger posts again:
I don't think the design is perfect or near perfect, but I do think it hit the nerve of that time (10 years ago) so well that success was possible (with good outer circumstances... and we were far away from the pandemic back then).

I never said it was pure luck.

I'm only saying that it's more luck than quality, and that many of 5e's issues are (as others have said) back-loaded, as has been the case for past editions, like 3e. As a result, you have a game that gets people on board fast, gets them committed, and only after that begins to be not all it's cracked up to be. But because network effects are a thing and switching systems is a pain and often an expense (and scary if you've never played any other system), there's a lot of resistance that has to be overcome before someone would consider playing something else.

If 5e were in fact "perfect" (or even remotely close to "perfect") it would not have induced the creation of things like Level Up, which has been in the works for years now. Yes, being relatively familiar and lower engagement made it somewhat easier to get into. (People often underestimate just how complex even 5e is to people with zero RPG experience, where you have to teach them even the concept of hit points or attack rolls.) But the real most important factors were the enormous amounts of free advertising, overall outreach, old players being enthusiastic proselytizers, etc. In other words, 5e was a decent but not perfect game for its context, and could have done even better than it did, and that context was overwhelmingly favorable to it.

I am 100% confident we will see changes in 2024 that the ~20% of fans who were around before 5e launched will be at best divided over, and at worst united against, in order to adapt 5e to the 80% who are newcomers with none of the preconceptions, prejudices, or received wisdom. I cannot with any confidence predict exactly what those changes will be, nor whether they will be changes I personally like. But I am completely certain such changes will occur, specifically because 5e is not and never was even remotely close to perfect, neither in general nor in the specific context of 2014.

 

[Oofta]

Sure. But it's exactly that "we'll never know" that is the problem.

We have a history that happened. Both claims, "it was mostly due to coincidence, innate qualities played a small part" and "it was almost exclusively incredibly good/near-perfect innate qualities, coincidence was mostly irrelevant" are claims about speculative alternate histories about which we have no data. People continue to cast the former claim, no matter how mildly stated, as both an extreme hostile attack on 5e, and as requiring huge and conclusive data set. By contrast, the claim that 5e was literally actually perfect, or so close as to be essentially so, gets nothing but nods and approval, despite being dramatically more extreme than all but the most strident critics.

And people wonder why critics of 5e don't really feel like anyone takes them seriously. This isn't even the first time I've heard statements like 5e being "98% perfect." Back when 5e was still pretty new, I had someone say to my (digital) face that it was impossible for anyone to dislike 5e. I admit, at the time, my response to that statement was...unwise. But I hope that the example illustrates how pro-5e voices have been, in their exuberance, making such extreme claims and expecting (and, sadly, usually getting) approval and agreement despite the obvious issues with said extreme claims.

To be clear, that extreme claim was:


Just want it quoted in its entirety so I'm not at risk of twisting words to something other than what they were.

I did not claim you did, but you certainly didn't speak up when others did, either. If you ignore people repeatedly making extreme claims that favor your position and hound after burdens of proof from anyone making even mild criticism of your position, it is not hard to make the leap that you aren't really engaging with the discussion, just slapping down anyone who disagrees with you. Which is, more or less, what I've seen from most fans of 5e. It isn't enough to like 5e, or even love it; others must not be allowed to even criticize it without the kind of data set you'd use to prove the existence of a previously-unknown subatomic particle. But anyone making foolishly extreme praise of 5e? Sure, whatever, they're on board with the program, no need to react or correct them.

I didn't think the 98% perfect was serious. The "any edition would have succeeded just as well" was dead serious, an IMHO, laughably wrong.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I didn't think the 98% perfect was serious. The "any edition would have succeeded just as well" was dead serious, an IMHO, laughably wrong.

Well sure. I already said upthread I think 1e would have done very, very poorly, and I don't think 2e would have done much better. I could see both 3e and 4e doing more or less equally well though, perhaps slightly worse but not dramatically so. Especially if it meant not having the digital tools team implode due to horrible, unforeseen events.

 

[Minigiant]

I didn't think the 98% perfect was serious. The "any edition would have succeeded just as well" was dead serious, an IMHO, laughably wrong.

I think 4e Essentials as a standalone edition would have sold better than 5e in 2014 as it was stripped down but focused on archetypes, have a lot more ease introducing modern fantasy character types that work, and would have a DMG that was 10 times better.

4e was the only edition where the barbarian, monk, ranger, sorcerer, and warlock worked and we're good. Imagine if you simplified that without 4e's drama. Money printer.

 

[payn]

I think 4e Essentials as a standalone edition would have sold better than 5e in 2014 as it was stripped down but focused on archetypes, have a lot more ease introducing modern fantasy character types that work, and would have a DMG that was 10 times better.

4e was the only edition where the barbarian, monk, ranger, sorcerer, and warlock worked and we're good. Imagine if you simplified that without 4e's drama. Money printer.

Lacks broad appeal and ease of run.

 

[Minigiant]

Lacks broad appeal and ease of run.

4e is easy to run. Easier than 5e. I trained a 6 year old to DM 4e. So a simpler version would be even easier.

Essentials also had a lot of appeal for the people who'd became 40% of 5e's audience. It was just bogged down by 4e Drama.

10 levels of heroic play with no system mastery needed to play any of the classes, dynamic monsters, and a DMG that told you how to run almost anything with options to get more complex with a working VTT and D&DB character builders handling math?

 

[payn]

4e is easy to run. Easier than 5e. I trained a 6 year old to DM 4e. So a simpler version would be even easier.

Essentials also had a lot of appeal for the people who'd became 40% of 5e's audience. It was just bogged down by 4e Drama.

10 levels of heroic play with no system mastery needed to play any of the classes, dynamic monsters, and a DMG that told you how to run almost anything with options to get more complex with a working VTT and D&DB character builders handling math?

Not for us. Theater of mind nearly impossible among a number of other issues that had us leave it behind. As some folks have posted, you would have a hard time getting old timers, newcomers, causals, and hard core all at the same table for that game.