D&D 5E Is 5E Special

[clearstream]

To me, the TTRPG community can be proud of 5th edition, and value its design as a remarkable accomplishment that in drawing in more people has created more room for a wonderful variety of other RPGs to thrive in. Were I one of its game designers I would feel incredibly proud.

5th ed PHB 43k ratings, 91% 5-star, 1% 1-star
5th DMG 23k ratings, 91% 5-star, 0% 1-star
5th MM 23k ratings, 91% 5-star, 0% 1-star

4th ed PHB 600 ratings, 76% 5-star, 2% 1-star
4th DMG 300 ratings, 77% 5-star, 3% 1-star
4th MM 300 ratings, 78% 5-star, 1% 1-star

3.5e PHB 600 ratings, 85% 5-star, 1% 1-star
3.5 DMG 400 ratings, 88% 5-star, 2% 1-star
3.5 MM 300 ratings, 84% 5-star, 3% 1-star

Call of Cthulhu 1525 ratings, 90% 5-star, 0% 1-star
Mork Borg 800 ratings, 89% 5-star, 1% 1-star
Blades in the Dark 800 ratings, 88% 5-star, 0% 1-star
Monster of the Week 900 ratings, 88% 5-star, 0% 1-star
Fiasco 200 ratings, 76% 5-star, 5% 1-star
Agon 50 ratings, 64% 5-star, 4% 1-star

ENnie Awards 2015:
Winner (Gold): Product of the Year: Dungeons & Dragons (Player's Handbook)
Winner (Gold): Best Game: Dungeons & Dragons (Player's Handbook)
Winner (Gold): Best Rules: Dungeons & Dragons (Player's Handbook)
Winner (Silver): Writing: Dungeons & Dragons (Player's Handbook)
Winner (Gold): Best Electronic Book: Dungeons & Dragons (Basic Rules)
Winner (Gold): Free Product: Dungeons & Dragons (Basic Rules)
Winner (Gold): Fan's Choice for Best Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Origins Awards 2015:
Winner: Best Role Playing Game: Dungeons & Dragons (Player's Handbook)
Winner: Fan Favorites: Best Role Playing Game: Dungeons & Dragons (Player's Handbook)

Golden Geek 2014:
Winner: Game of the Year: Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition)
Winner: Best Artwork and Presentation: Dungeons & Dragons (Player's Handbook)

Example positive testimonies

So far, the gift that 5th edition has given to me is a change in focus. My character has again become a protagonist in an adventure story, rather than a playing piece. I worry now more about the choices and decisions I make while interacting with the game world, and those choices making the character fun to play, rather than fretting over whether or not I have chosen the right Feats or if my modifier for a particular skill is as high as I want it to be.

This streamlined version is much more approachable for new players, which is fantastic, while still holding onto the depth that makes Dungeons and Dragons so enduring. Fortunately - if a looser system, with more subjectivity, just isn't for you - 5e is incredibly malleable. Homebrewing, tweaking, and making additions to the game is easier than ever. If there's a rule you love from older systems, it shouldn't take much work to adapt it to fit 5e's structure.

If you're new to D&D, the 5th edition is definitely the best set of rules available for balancing the technical aspects (ability checks, attack rolls, saves, etc.) with the delights of role-playing and actual game play. 5th edition errs on the side of the latter, but without sacrificing much in the way of texture and richness to the different character classes and races. When you play a different character, there are some distinctive differences in how each character class plays that keep them from feeling too generic, yet there is a reassuring consistency and simplicity to the core rules that really helps keep game play rolling smoothly and (for the most part) efficiently, without getting bogged down in too many moments when the game comes to a grinding halt to check a rule or perform and add up a series of complicated checks and modifiers.

An example negative testimonies

While D&D 5e is a very good game, there are some serious issues with the printing/storage/construction of the books. Two friends and I all got this book, and all three of us had pages that were warped.

Furthermore parts of the character creation includes some social justice wording that could have been omitted by simply informing the player that they can make any kind of character they wish, the wording however breaks any immersion in the fantasy and smacks of corporate pressure.

There is nothing I hate more then clunky rules in an RPG game. After the abomination that was 4E I was looking for a decent rule set that was slightly less expanded then 3.5E but had some sort of ability to customize your class and cover basics that the majority of adventuring groups would try. This system is a complete failure on those parts. It is slightly more bearable then 4E. That is the best I can say.

I'd recommend reading testimonials of the vast number of delighted (and a few disguntled) players to get a sense of why 5e is succeeding. Themes I noticed were

• Accessible - players find it easy to get into
• Creative expression - players describe being able to creatively play characters they love
• Focus on play - the rules don't distract from the play

What I notice in testimonies is the absence of concern for monk balance or champions being worse than battlemasters, or how martials compare with casters, etc. One possible conclusion is that here at Enworld we have many sophisticated TTRPGers able to analyse balance, deconstruct rules, contrast with the avant-garde. If I say that 5e is "special" and a "landmark" I would not mean that I'm oblivious to its flaws. Rather I examine as an expert its meaning to folk other than myself.

What does "special" imply? Taking the first definition offered by google - "better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual." 5e has succeed to an unusual extent in satisfying a broad TTRPG audience. It has proven better for that purpose, and done so to a greater extent than any other contemporary TTRPG. It is not just more bought, it is more liked. It surprises me that TTRPGers don't cherish the success of 5e - seeing it doing something remarkable that benefits the whole niche - even if we are able to appreciate everything that it doesn't do as successfully as other games we are aware of.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Making a book a pleasure to read has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether it uses "natural language" in its actual rules-text or not.

For many it does.
If you lose natural language, you lose many players.

The clunky language of 4e was in fact a hindrance.
For example "shift" came up in combats so often, and considering, there was no good translation to German, it was just annoying and comically funny.
Actually in 3e, 5ft step was just a little but less annoying.

The natuaral language during combat brought back what I missed in 4e and also in 3.x: the immersion.

I remember that when I think back to ADnD epic fights, I have pictures in my mind, how the PCs batteld against the Monsters. I have pictures in my mind how I my character used an illusion to shed the whole cave in Ice to make the enemies unconfortable. I remember it as scenes.

When I remember 3.x, I still remember some combats like this and especiall in 3.5 remember some combats as how we used certain abilities.

For 4e, I remember the battlemaps and the abilities I as a player used to defeat the DM.

In 5e, I am back to how it were in ADnD. And I think this is what makes the game so strong by design and so useful for Streaming games:
You just tell what your character does and the rules are rather in the background, not something that hinders your play, but enhances it.

Also, for those who think, everything in the playtest was just random flipping around:
They commited very early to advantage and disadvantage and the movement rules in combat. This is the core of 5e: no little bonuses to remember, no granular actions. This is what makes 5e so strong and gives it the certain rules light feel that made success possible.

 

[Minigiant]

For many it does.
If you lose natural language, you lose many players.

And if you lose instruction, guidance, and advice, you lose many players and DMs.

Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Twitch D&DB, and forums like ENworld covered 5e's butt on guidance, instruction, and advice.

All the ease for players and plain language means jack if your DM can't run you a game.
All the ruling freedom means nothing if straying one step of a standard, hack&slash, beer&pretzels game leaves you in the wilderness.

That's why almost all the positive statements about 5e are player side or by multi-edition veteran DMs.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And if you lose instruction, guidance, and advice, you lose many players and DMs.

Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Twitch D&DB, and forums like ENworld covered 5e's butt on guidance, instruction, and advice.

All the ease for players and plain language means jack if your DM can't run you a game.
All the ruling freedom means nothing if straying one step of a standard, hack&slash, beer&pretzels game leaves you in the wilderness.

That's why almost all the positive statements about 5e are player side or by multi-edition veteran DMs.

I think you are severely misjudging the ability of young people to play the game.
And although I admit, that the DMG could be a little better, more heavy rules and key terms had not helped.
I think in Germany there are not so many streams and I have seen 7th to 9th graders run their own home games. Something I did not see in the 3.x or 4e era.
I will ask them, how they managed as soon as school starts again after the vacations.

Still my point stands, while al tge outer factors surely helped, 4e would have never gained the audience 5e does, because it was not accessible (especially when you consider how clunky some technical terms translate into German).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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.

You base your conclusion on a false premise.

The correct premise would be:
there can't be a perfect game for everyone.

So the conclusion you draw from the existence of LevelUp is flawed.

You admit, that 5e did what it was designed for: attracting new and old players. It was designed that way and works well enough for that.
LevelUp gives an alternative for people who want a bit more detailed game. That does in no way devalue the base game, but rather complements it.

 

[payn]

On the contrary, the succesuful modular nature of 5E design is why I both agree that they will probably will do some radical stuff with Classes (looking st you, Monks and Rangers), but thst doesnequate to anything "radical."

Where exactly is the modularity in 5E? I'm with you on many of your postings in this thread, but this one is not obvious, in fact it seems quite the opposite.

Further, Pathfinder explicitly did sell itself as "100% backwards-compatible," and yet it invented a whole bunch of new mechanics (CMB/CMD, for instance), rewrote several core classes, and in several other ways made major changes to the 3.5e baseline. It still sold itself as that all the way up to the end, despite mountains of feats, hundreds of Archetypes (a system that doesn't even exist in 3.x), dozens of new spells, etc., etc.

PF1 was backwards compatible with exception of unchained. CMB/CMD was the only calc you had to make. Of course, you would be at a disadvantage not to use the new material, but I think that had more to do with 3E design then PF design.

 

[Oofta]

Oh God, don't even get me started on the flaws of "natural language design." That was one of the few outright openly BAD things 5e tried for. And they didn't even succeed! 5e is still FULL of jargon terms all over the place. Consider the incredible over-loading of the word "action," or "level."


Then "completely compatible" means very little as you define it.

Broken record here: natural language is BAD for you. For most players that I know it works just fine and it lowers the barrier of entry.

 

[Parmandur]

Or multiclass. Still works out most of the time.

Mostly, but it the one major tripping point.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Broken record here: natural language is BAD for you. For most players that I know it works just fine and it lowers the barrier of entry.

Well I think it depends on the goal and the audience.

In some hard core war games, there is a niche audience who want clarity for when old guys start arguing about ZOC and supply lines. It’s not really meant to be accessible per se. ASL etc is not a “fun” read so I haven’t made the attempt.

I suspect this is intentional here. Some of us are into the builds from a technical standpoint others want to get to it and “play” roll some d20s and get to it.

It’s and assumption here…my daughter has been reading PHB. If it was written like a war game manual I don’t think she would still be at it. She triumphantly said “I think I am getting it.”

Good on WOTC

 

[Parmandur]

Where exactly is the modularity in 5E? I'm with you on many of your postings in this thread, but this one is not obvious, in fact it seems quite the opposite.

Becauae the rules are exception based, individual rule units like a Race or Class are modules that can be removed and replaced easily. Making a new Ranger doesn't make.a new game.