D&D 5E 5th edition driving people back to 1st/2nd edition.

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Well, in fairness one other thing (and I'd hazard a guess the most common thing) that can force a mutually exclusive decision is sheer availability of time.

If a DM only has time to run one campaign she (and her group) have to choose what system it'll be using; with the choice of one by extension thus excluding all others. She might be quite happy to run 5e, or 1e, or 3e; but she only has time for one of them and once one is chosen that's it for that campaign.

Lanefan

I don't consider not having time to do more than one campaign but being willing for that that singular campaign to be any of a number of games/versions and not being willing to run/play anything but a singular game/version to be the same thing.

For example, I only have the time to gather all my preferred players once weekly, so we alternate D&D 5th edition and Shadowrun 5th edition in that scheduled session - and we have more D&D 5th edition campaigns, and campaigns of other game lines (Exalted, Call of Cthulhu, etc.) waiting to fill in once one of the currently running campaigns reaches its conclusion, plus I am willing to run other versions of D&D and other D&D-like games (Dungeon Crawl Classics, Adventurer Conqueror King System, etc.) but my players prefer D&D 5th edition over those.

Which is markedly different from if I were to say "We can only play on Friday nights because of our schedules, and also we can only play specifically D&D 5th edition because I refuse all other versions of D&D and also all other table-top role-playing games."

 

[Maxperson]

Something I've noticed in my area is that people are dropping their 5th edition games and going back to playing 1st/2nd edition games. I've noticed on the Dungeon Master's Guild site that the top 7 most popular books are the 1st and 2nd editions of the game. People in my own game are wanting to drop 5th and go back to 2nd edition.

Is this becoming a trend? It's like playing 5th edition is sparking an interest to go back and playing those older editions.

It has me wanting to play 2e again. If I still had all my books, I'd re-start a 2e campaign in a heartbeat.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

The most active player in my group is tired of all the options of 3rd and 5th editions. He wants to play only 1E, now, but with 3d6 in order, instead of 4d6 drop the lowest. And, randomly determined races. Needless to say, most characters die quickly.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I'm one of those guys who isn't going back to 1e...because I never left. My group and I play 1e/HM (Hackmaster 4th Edition). We have been playing with 5e for about a year now? I don't know...since the Starter Set came out. We have done a few sessions here and there of other games (like a Shatterzone 6 or 7 session campaign, a good 10 or so sessions of SUPERS!, and a handful of others sitting at around 4 or 5 sessions each), but other than that it's been all 5e. We think we 'get' the system now, and it's easy for us to find stuff and remember reading about some obscure rule suggestion somewhere in the books, etc. So, play is smooth for us most of the time.

What we have found about 5e that we don't like? The "increase HP of everything" is starting to get to us. We've only played to about 5th'ish, but the monsters they were fighting just seemed to get their asses kicked for minutes until they finally go down. Combats are too long in 5e at those levels...we like short, sweet, and relatively deadly. I'm thinking about introducing Penetration Damage from Hackmaster, or maybe even HM's Critical Hit tables. That should make hacking and slashing a bit more "surpising and unpredictable".

Our next campaign? Who knows...could be 5e, but just as likely to be 1e/HM. Slight chance of 2e just because we haven't played that since the late 90's.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[ninjayeti]

In my experience the complexity of 4th Ed (and to a lesser extent 3.x) drove people back to the earlier editions in droves. I'd say the more streamlined rules of 5E have really eliminated the biggest reason reason to play earlier editions.

The top sellers on DMG tell you nothing about what people are actually playing. None of the 5E books are even available in PDF format, so of course it always looks like the earlier edition stuff outsells 5E. Moreover, the current top sellers are items that are fairly new additions, including the OD&D rule books which were unavailable as PDFs until the last month or two.

 

[Dire Bare]

Which is markedly different from if I were to say "We can only play on Friday nights because of our schedules, and also we can only play specifically D&D 5th edition because I refuse all other versions of D&D and also all other table-top role-playing games."

While I have a curious interest in other systems, games, and editions, I have limited time and money to invest in gaming. When I run games, I run D&D 5E, and that's pretty much it. Because that's what I want to do, because I love D&D and 5E is my favorite edition. Because I don't feel like taking additional time/money out of my life to invest in another system, even realizing that there are a LOT of really cool games out there. This doesn't make me some sort of close-minded GM whom players should avoid. Of course, if I'm running D&D 5E and one of my friends isn't really interested in playing this game/edition at the moment, then they should most certainly not participate. It's all good. But I hope they wouldn't sit at home not playing at all because I'm too "narrow" in my gamemastering.

As a player, if I have a choice of options, I'm going to go play D&D 5E for the same reason I like to GM it. But, I'm not against playing an earlier edition or a different game altogether, as long as the group I'd be joining doesn't expect me to run out and purchase one or more expensive books. Maybe an inexpensive core book or "player's guide".

I do enjoy, when I can afford it, to purchase "near-D&D" books like 13th Age, and incorporating new ideas into my D&D 5E campaign, both for story, setting, and mechanics (house rules). I also like going through my D&D collection of older edition titles for the same reason. But it's almost always through the lens of, "How can I use this in my 5E game?" That, and the pleasure of reading game books just for the sake of it.

Some groups are "all D&D, all 5E, all the time" and that's cool. Or substitute a different edition, or a different game (like Pathfinder), that's cool too. Other groups enjoy "changing things up" and playing lots of different rpgs and even editions of the same rpg, and that's cool too. (Not picking on Aaron the Barbarian here) I feel like there's an undercurrent of judgement going on in this thread, perhaps because I'm a bit tired or maybe it's really there. The only thing I get tired of in gaming is "drama". Play what you want, when you want, balance your life how you want . . . but don't get cranky when others needs/wants don't align with yours. GM's should choose their own games and styles without any sense of guilt, and players' should feel free to say, "You bet!" or "No thanks!" without worrying about offending anyone.

Perhaps I'm oversensitive to these sorts of conversations as I've experienced that sort of unnecessary drama in the past. I don't put up with it in my old age!

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not seeing any major move to 1e/2e - I am noticing the guys who have all along said they preferred 1e/2e migrating back after trying it (much as I returned to Cyclopedia after 3E got annoyingly problematic).

Organized play is still strong. We had 28 players show this week but only 3 DMs... one was out due to a work conflict.

5E is a solid game. It's not the game for everyone, tho' and like all editions of D&D prior, it will result in some players leaking away to other games, either permanently or temporarily.

I have heard from a few friends in odd places that Pathfinder is still stronger in a few markets, D&D in others, but one or the other of the two are the dominant RPG in almost all US markets.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

This doesn't make me some sort of close-minded GM whom players should avoid.

I've snipped the rest for brevity, leaving this piece just for the impact.

I'm not talking about a situation like you describe where you are saying basically "Hey guys, wanna play some 5th edition?" and getting interested parties to join your game.

I'm talking about a theoretical group of people that are trying to figure out what the 4-40 of them want to play together and someone in the group says "If it ain't X, it's not an option," when everybody else is more open about what can be played, then it is often better for everyone involved to tell that person to go find a group that is already planning on going with whatever X was while the rest of the group plays whatever they would agree to play together without one person being insistent on a specific thing.

To add real example to provide clarity I seem to have lacked thus far: Back in the day, I had a pair of large groups that would occasionally blend into one group and in all cases we played a wide enough variety of games - but there was one player, we'll call him Joe, that insisted D&D was not for "real role-players" so we shouldn't play it. To which all of the rest of us responded by occasionally getting together to play D&D and not inviting Joe. The same guy later decided that the then brand-new Vampire: the Requiem was completely un-playable and he would not run it or play it (basically at that time he was very much saying "It's Vampire: the Masquerade, or it's nothing") and so the rest of us said "Yeah, Joe, we're gonna go ahead and play Vampire: the Requiem for a while anyway. We'll let you know when we're done so we can play some more Masquerade with you, hope you can find some people to play with in the meanwhile because this looks fun so it could be a while before we are ready for a break."

Rather than all the rest of us not allowing ourselves the enjoyable experience of trying something new just because a particularly stubborn friend wasn't also up for it.

Some people refer to it as the principle of "You don't have to play ever game with every friend you have, maybe some of them you should just bowl with."

 

[mflayermonk]

The most active player in my group is tired of all the options of 3rd and 5th editions. He wants to play only 1E, now, but with 3d6 in order, instead of 4d6 drop the lowest. And, randomly determined races. Needless to say, most characters die quickly.

1e and 2e play is up in my area. I started playing in a 1e campaign about 6 months ago and that got me invitations to other games where high player numbers were welcome (8+ players).

We've got players that have started from 3e, 4e, and 5e so its fun to see what a difficult game 1e was. Our 9 PCs (all level 4 and higher) were recently TPKed by an elephant and 3 0-level tribal warriors. That was a complete shock to the 5e players. The DM was taking it slow up to level 4 but now that everyone had a chance to get used to the system, everything was fair game.

Since the "Nellie the Elephant" incident, things have changed greatly.

For example-ogre in the area, the 9 PCs spent an entire session rallying the local people to kill the ogre-3 stayed to fight the ogre and the other 6 PCs stole the ogres treasure while no one was around except for some guard dogs.

 

[mflayermonk]

After some thought, I think people are going back to 1e/2e because of how much content is being made available on RPGNow-the stuff is out there for a reasonable price and its been so long it feels like it is new.