EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
The bad:
1. If 5e does something, it's presumed good/right/best/etc. Any discussion on design theory or practice, as something that can actually improve, gets instantly (and infuriatingly) dismissed because D&D sells. Absolutely everything in it must be integral to that success and beyond reproach. Until, that is, a critical mass is reached, at which point the switch flips instantly from refusal to discuss because nothing is wrong, to refusal to discuss because "everyone already knows"--a very "UGH, can we PLEASE stop talking about that?" response. (A bogus argumentation tactic one youtuber refers to as the "slow breakup": deny problems until they're old news, then zoom past them because they're old news.)
2. 5e homogenizes character mechanics. While it hasn't eliminated class features, there's a strong push toward turning them into spells whenever possible. E.g. Four Elements Monks, or the failed playtest effort to make Warlock pacts cantrips. This has two problems. First, it makes learning to play harder. You have to really read and understand all the spells at your disposal--especially for classes like Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Paladin--but those spells are NOT arranged together, slowing this process immensely. Bespoke class features, all presented right there in the text of the class itself, are far easier to learn and understand. Second, the mechanical framework of "a spell" is actually pretty limiting. Spells collectively are quite diverse and powerful. But one single, individual spell is often quite limited, and can only work on one of two resource schedules ("Spellcasting" and "Pact Magic.") Bespoke class features can be...whatever the designer needs them to be. That's kind of the point of being "bespoke."
3. Despite the many, many protestations to the contrary, 5e has its own distinctive style, imprint, and focus. That focus makes it hard to run certain kinds of campaigns, or certain parts/sections of campaigns even if the overall structure is fine. However, because of the "big tent" rhetoric from the D&D Next playtest, and the pervasive idea that 5e genuinely offers full-throated support for all fans of D&D no matter what their preferences are, the success of 5e means that those parts it neglects are, unfortunately, likely to continue to be neglected in the future. Third-party supplements are kinda helpful, but 5e--despite allegedly being made so it would be easy to modify--has a very strong anti-3PP culture of play (and note, I mean 3PP, not "the DM wrote some houserules," not "the DM created this monster herself," ACTUAL products produced by a third party for use in conjunction with first-party content). Many gamers simply don't get the opportunity to ever use 3PP, and many DMs are incredibly picky about what 3PP they allow, if any at all, so anything non-official which addresses these gaps is often a non-solution.
4. 5e is...well, to put it bluntly, it does absolutely f#$k-all to support DMs running it, to the point that nowadays, one of the few criticisms even diehard 5e fans will readily accept is that the DMG is badly written. (This is an example of point #1--as little as three or four years ago, folks insisted the 5e DMG was great and beyond reproach.) But because of 5e's "DM Empowerment" ethos, which effectively cashes out as a designer shrug, "you're the DM, you figure it out" approach to design issues, this means that newbie DMs are effectively thrown to the wolves with the extremely helpful advice of "don't die, come up with a plan." I have personally seen how terrible this can be; a friend of mine got into a 5e game with a well-meaning newbie DM who was exceedingly bad at actually DMing to an upsetting degree, such that my friend (genuinely in tears, it was a rough period of his life) was seriously considering abandoning TTRPGs in general. That was, I am not joking, the impetus for me getting my Dungeon World game going--because no matter how much impostor syndrome I might have, I know I'm not that bad.
(Of course, point 4 is specifically dependent on the design and writing of the DMG, and we'll be getting a new one either late this year or early next year. That means things might change. I'm not gonna hold my breath though--especially since it's extremely unlikely that the corpspeak-named "One D&D" playtest will include the information we would need to speak cogently about it anyway.)
5. The whole OGL fiasco. Just...top to bottom, that whole thing was garbage. It may have a silver lining though, see below.
The good:
1. It is easier than ever for folks to find a game, if 5e is the kind of game they want to play--and for folks new to the hobby, they aren't looking for any specific kind of game yet, so any game will do. This plus the proliferation of VTTs and voice chat programs has led to more people doing more games than ever before. Granted, this is...effectively just a long way of saying "5e is successful because it's successful," but still, the point is worth stating.
2. D&D has been thrust into the cultural spotlight again, and is enjoying all the benefits that provides. Plus, the stigma associated with D&D of the past, where D&D players were socially-maladjusted shut-in dweebs who couldn't fit in with other people, so they invent fantasies (often sexualized ones) as an unhealthy coping mechanism, has been pretty much dispelled. Popular media has put centrally D&D-related things right into the public eye, and things very near to D&D (like LotR and Harry Potter, and latterly GoT) have made being into fantasy stuff with swords and warriors and magic and fantastical characters an acceptable mainstream hobby.
3. While there are ways in which I am not at all happy with the specifics, D&D being successful can help create some elements of lingua franca. Calling "roll twice and take the better result" "Advantage" is looking like it's going to become an industry standard term, and certainly I use it in contexts well outside of D&D. For all the fans' claims about how great "natural language" is, it turns out that clear, specific jargon terms are in fact quite useful, and 5e has introduced a few to the gaming community at large.
4. It gave us things like Baldur's Gate 3--and I would be literally zero percent surprised if we see more well-made D&D-based RPGs going forward, especially once 5.5e comes out. (I think it's likely that any folks interested in following on BG3's coattails are likely to wait for updated rules, regardless of whether they're easier to implement.) My keenest interest is in whether folks start to use something based only on the absolute most barebones elements of 5e, that is, literally just the underlying math but building up something completely distinct on top of it. Because if someone does so and does it successfully, that could open a whole new world of CRPG implementations.
5. The OGL fiasco's potential silver lining, as mentioned above, is that it may put stuff like 2e and 4e actually into the OGL, finally freeing them from the WotC content vault. Without 5e's success, the OGL-breaking fiasco would never have happened, and we might never have gotten these (potential) gains. If this comes to pass--I'm very hopeful that it will, but very afraid it won't--it would be the single greatest windfall to the D&D community since...well, the OGL itself. I don't just say that because I'm a 4e fan and would love to be able to use stuff like Arkhosia and the Dawn War in actual created works. I say it because opening up access to what has come before, so that people can both innovate new things and preserve old things for posterity, is extremely important in...pretty much everything. It is better for us, and for those who come after us, that these things be allowed to flower anew, and be remembered as and for what they were in the past. If WotC puts every edition prior to 5e into the OGL, all of us would benefit.
