D&D General Folks Who Came Back With 5E: Did You Stay with 5E?

[Necropolitan]

I started with 3.5 D&D and from there went to Pathfinder 1E and then D&D 5E.

I see no reason to switch from D&D 5E unless something I like more comes along.

 

[Reynard]

What do you mean? If you buys something old as a pdf they cut out the parts they don't like? or is this a hypothetical?

I think "redacted" is a placeholder for a naughty word in that post.

 

[Reynard]

For my own part, I was one of the lifelong D&D players that left during 4E (I swear we gave it a chance) and moved to Pathfinder 1E. I did not engage in the Next playtest and honestly did not expect 5E to be worthwhile, but was pleasantly surprised. For years, i enjoyed running it and I agree that part of that was that in some ways it felt very much like AD&D 2E.

I was already getting tired of it to some degree before the OGL debacle, but that was the thing that broke 5E for me. I refused to give WotC any more of my money and did not want to support them by running 5E at cons, so I tried Pathfinder 2E (it turned out to be too fiddly for me) and ran lots of Savage Worlds and other games. What really put the nail in the coffin for me and 5E, though, was Shadowdark: I was presented with the fact that all the things I love about D&D I can do with a MUCH slimmer ruleset.

I don't expect to run 5E again. I certainly won't buy 2024 5E unless WotC makes good (for me, that means putting the 3.0 and 3.5 SRDs out in CC) and have balked a couple times now on buying ToV. That I actually put it in my cart yesterday whn it was stupid cheap and did not pull the trigger tells me I am over 5E.

For the record, I don't think 5E is a bad game, just that I am done with it. 10 years is a long run for an RPG. I would certainly at least entertain the idea of a 6th Edition (though issues with giving WotC money remain).

 

[The Soloist]

What really put the nail in the coffin for me and 5E, though, was Shadowdark: I was presented with the fact that all the things I love about D&D I can do with a MUCH slimmer ruleset.

Kelsey should find a Canadian shipping hub. The book price in Canadian dollars is steep for a black & white digest-sized book, and I have to pay random duty fees on top of shipping. PDFs don't do it for me.

 

[Emerikol]

<snip>

I don't expect to run 5E again. I certainly won't buy 2024 5E unless WotC makes good (for me, that means putting the 3.0 and 3.5 SRDs out in CC) and have balked a couple times now on buying ToV. That I actually put it in my cart yesterday whn it was stupid cheap and did not pull the trigger tells me I am over 5E.

For the record, I don't think 5E is a bad game, just that I am done with it. 10 years is a long run for an RPG. I would certainly at least entertain the idea of a 6th Edition (though issues with giving WotC money remain).

I think I'm going to write my own game and be done with it. I think C&C and ACKS are both good baselines. I always liked ACKS best but it seemed unsupported and I thought the publisher had abandoned it. I was wrong on that point as an ACKS II is coming out. C&C is very well supported but I want just a bit more. I think I may be a 1e playstyle (deadly, dangerous, and skillful) but I'm a 3e rules lite person.

I've been done with WOTC for a while now. I find myself just not liking that team and their thinking.

 

[Reynard]

Kelsey should find a Canadian shipping hub. The book price in Canadian dollars is steep for a black & white digest-sized book, and I have to pay random duty fees on top of shipping. PDFs don't do it for me.

Can you get it through a private seller in the US who can send it media mail or something similar, to avoid the extra cost? (Note: I have no idea how international shipping works.)

 

[Reynard]

I think I'm going to write my own game and be done with it. I think C&C and ACKS are both good baselines. I always liked ACKS best but it seemed unsupported and I thought the publisher had abandoned it. I was wrong on that point as an ACKS II is coming out. C&C is very well supported but I want just a bit more. I think I may be a 1e playstyle (deadly, dangerous, and skillful) but I'm a 3e rules lite person.

I've been done with WOTC for a while now. I find myself just not liking that team and their thinking.

I don't have a problem with the creative side of 5E (even if I am not a big fan of the art direction recently).

Creating your own game is a sure fire way to only ever get support you make yourself.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Nope. I play-tested it, then ran two adventures, then dumped it.

Held my interest until '18.

For anything D&D, the Rules Cyclopedia does it. GURPS is a great alternative.

The Rules Cyclopedia is SO GOOD.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Kelsey should find a Canadian shipping hub. The book price in Canadian dollars is steep for a black & white digest-sized book, and I have to pay random duty fees on top of shipping. PDFs don't do it for me.

Printout the PDF. I printed out a nice 8X11 size and put in a little plastic binder. Looks and works great. Not to mention, it's not digest size! (which is great for those of us who dont like tiny tiny text.)

 

[schneeland]

I played a bit of 2e (but more Shadowrun at the time), then a lot of 3e (for a good decade). I skipped 4e (which wasn't very big in Germany anyway) and came back for 5e. But while I was initially very enthusiastic about it, it didn't hold my interest for too long - roughly 5 years I would say, though we kept playing until 2022. I played other games in parallel, though - the longest campaign was a Forbidden Lands one, and there were also a number of Dungeon Crawl Classics sessions and two shorter campaigns using Dungeon World and The Sprawl. These days, I mainly play Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulhu/Pulp Cthulhu. There's no intention to return to 5e (neither v.2014 nor v.2024), but I might try to set up a game of B/X / Dolmenwood once the books arrive.