D&D (2024) Command is the Perfect Encapsulation of Everything I Don't Like About 5.5e

[jayoungr]

What do you mean a step too far? The rules "just worked" too well?

I'm not the OP, but I interpreted that to mean that the 4E rules (arguably) codified things so tightly that some DMs may have felt there wasn't enough space to improvise or make their own calls. Not saying this is objectively true, as I don't want to open the 4E can of worms, but I can see how some DMs might have felt that way.

 

[KYRON45]

I would imagine that for the rules to "just work" you would need a DM and all of the players to be so blase' about the rules that they just didn't care that much about them.
I know that as a DM i don't give a fig about rules....until i'm working on a scenario or encounter that NEEDS a certain rule to be enforced.

 

[Minigiant]

You have provided no evidence that this is anything other than your personal opinion and it contradicts the success we've seen over the past decade.

Have fun with that.

https://www.geekwire.com/2023/dungeons-dragons-in-2023-wizards-of-the-coast-reveals-planescape-revival-and-more/

• The player population for D&D is cross-generational, with the bulk of respondents (48%) identifying as millennials, vs. 19% from Generation X and 33% from Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012).
• According to Wizards’ surveys, the player population recently crossed a point where the majority of current D&D plans are those who started playing the game with the fifth edition. Previously, the most popular version of D&D was still the second edition, published in 1989. (“We actually built fifth edition as a follow-up to second edition,” Crawford said at the panel.)

Crawford and Perkins both worked on D&D 5e in 2014, and according to Perkins, “started building [5e] 2024 as soon as [5e] 2014 went to the printer.” The original version of fifth-edition D&D was done on a comparative shoestring, with fewer resources and contributors than modern D&D has to offer

Again the designers said this.

 

[Oofta]

https://www.geekwire.com/2023/dungeons-dragons-in-2023-wizards-of-the-coast-reveals-planescape-revival-and-more/

• The player population for D&D is cross-generational, with the bulk of respondents (48%) identifying as millennials, vs. 19% from Generation X and 33% from Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012).
• According to Wizards’ surveys, the player population recently crossed a point where the majority of current D&D plans are those who started playing the game with the fifth edition. Previously, the most popular version of D&D was still the second edition, published in 1989. (“We actually built fifth edition as a follow-up to second edition,” Crawford said at the panel.)

Crawford and Perkins both worked on D&D 5e in 2014, and according to Perkins, “started building [5e] 2024 as soon as [5e] 2014 went to the printer.” The original version of fifth-edition D&D was done on a comparative shoestring, with fewer resources and contributors than modern D&D has to offer

Again the designers said this.

Taking inspiration on design from TSR era D&D does not mean it was targeted at 2E DMs. It just means they looked at what had worked in the past and tried to figure out why.

 

[Micah Sweet]

• According to Wizards’ surveys, the player population recently crossed a point where the majority of current D&D plans are those who started playing the game with the fifth edition. Previously, the most popular version of D&D was still the second edition, published in 1989. (“We actually built fifth edition as a follow-up to second edition,” Crawford said at the panel.

And yet 2e was most notable for its campaign settings and lore, which Crawford and crew largely ran roughshod over in 5e, increasingly so as time went on. Crawford even publicly disregarded pre-5e lore as a guiding light in a public statement. How does that compute?

 

[jayoungr]

I also note that article says that it has only recently been the case (as of 2023) that the majority of D&D players are "5E babies."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

(“We actually built fifth edition as a follow-up to second edition,” Crawford said at the panel.)

This is believable to me, because one of the first things I called 5E was "Alternate reality 3E".

5E, whilst incorporating lessons and ideas from 3E and 4E (less from the latter - though that is increasing with 2024), basically seemed like a different way 3E could have gone, rather than a true derivation from those later editions.

But I don't think WotC actually are targeting 2E DMs or anything. Rather, they crafted an "apology edition" designed to appeal particularly to people who used to play 2E/3E (and to some smaller extent 1E), but lapsed, and also to avoid horribly offending 4E DMs/players so much they didn't play it.

And they succeeded, by and large - not without faults, not without faults, but this was I think the most "broadly" aimed D&D since 2E. Yes they wanted 2E people back, but they particularly wanted 3E/PF1 players and 4E players as well (and probably 1E if they could get them). And in the process of doing this, they made a D&D that's more accessible/easier to engage with than really any other AD&D-derivation, which largely accidentally set 5E up for far more massive success than anticipated.

It's important to remember - they didn't plan for success with 5E really. They planned it as a contingency to keep D&D going - D&D had failed to pass the bar that had been set by Hasbro for 4E, which is why 5E was given a lower budget and seen as a small project (which is also why they took the approach to book releases that they did). This is also probably what caused Hasbro/WotC management to allow them to bring back the OGL etc., after insisting on the awful and damaging GSL for 4E.

 

[Minigiant]

Taking inspiration on design from TSR era D&D does not mean it was targeted at 2E DMs. It just means they looked at what had worked in the past and tried to figure out why.

The part I highlighted was that 5th edition tilts young, shifted over to majority New games, and the designers admitting that the game resources were lacking and disorganized.

This might shift those DMs to favor more concrete closed rules.

 

[Oofta]

The part I highlighted was that 5th edition tilts young, shifted over to majority New games, and the designers admitting that the game resources were lacking and disorganized.

This might shift those DMs to favor more concrete closed rules.

Once again, the DMG needs to be redone. Of course the game can be improved, everything can be improved. I would be worried if they thought 5E was perfect.

That doesn't make the game particularly difficult to DM (compared to other D&D or similar games) or support your other extreme claims.

 

[Malmuria]

I'm not the OP, but I interpreted that to mean that the 4E rules (arguably) codified things so tightly that some DMs may have felt there wasn't enough space to improvise or make their own calls. Not saying this is objectively true, as I don't want to open the 4E can of worms, but I can see how some DMs might have felt that way.

It's just that it implies that everyone has a preference for how much they like the rules to be vague/codified. It's a spectrum and different people fall on various places in the spectrum. It's not that more codified = "rules that work," because things can be so codified that they become a "step too far." A step too far, in that that the codified rules of 4e did not allow for creativity and versatility for some. The OP of this discussion is simply stating that 5.5 goes too far in one direction for them.