As is my tradition, each time a campaign ends, I'm trying to learn from it. This time, the campaign that concluded was my second running of Curse of Strahd. This is the end of my 5th edition experience. So, on a bigger scale, I'm trying to learn from my experience with the system as a whole. I have no plans to run the system again. I will put it in deep storage along with my 3.x/PF1 books - another system I'm so burned out on, I don't even want to look at the books (and I haven't for around a decade). Like how my burnout on 3.x applied to Pathfinder 1e, I don't expect I will purchase anything from Tales from the Valiant. Likewise, Level Up is going into storage ... "baby and the bathwater" and all that.
Initial "Encounters"
The D&D Next Playtest excited me. I was playing mostly 4E at that point and was interested to see a more streamlined game with connection to AD&D that didn't have all the complexity of d20. At the time, my gaming consisted of running D&D Encounters at the FLGS - and what an event that was! I was spearheading 3-4 groups of players, which was something in our town. (I didn't have a "home" game because I didn't have a home at that time. My soon-to-be ex-wife had filed for divorce, and I was crashing at my mom's until I could get my life in order. Yeah, it was a period of big transition.)
The Playtest did feel flat compared to all the options we had in 4E ... but they were going to improve it later, right?
When the actual rules came out, we started with Hoard of the Dragon Queen at D&D Encounters. The 3-4 groups of players shrunk down to one table of around 10 players. Some players from the 4E Encounters lost interest, but no one would DM 5e. (This would become an ongoing issue.) After the unceremonious TPK in that terribly written adventure, Encounters folded. Live playing D&D at my FLGS was killed by 5e.
Potion Mixing
5e was supposed to be the edition to bring all players together. When I got my house, that's the angle I took too. It had a large basement, big table for gaming, walls lined with bookshelves of miniatures, fantasy literature, and game supplements. I got in contact with some of the lapsed players from the FLGS and invited them to my house, where we weren't constrained by operating hours, be expected to pay to play, etc. Since there was nothing out but Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I decided to create my own campaign, based around Ravenloft (one of my favorite settings. It was a short campaign, based on old horror films and literature. As would become a 5e tradition of mine, it ended with a TPK because I couldn’t balance the challenges.
Take the Aid Action?
After what I considered a “failed” campaign, I turned to some of the newly released campaign adventures, and I ran quite the assortment (though not all of them to their completion due to TPKs and loss of player interest): Lost Mines of Phandelver (x?), Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Princes of the Apocalypse (x2), Out of the Abyss (x2), Curse of Strahd (x2), Storm King’s Thunder, Tomb of Annihilation, Dragon Heist, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Tales from the Yawning Portal, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and Rime of the Frostmaiden, And that’s just the first party stuff – I also ran some Goodman Games Original Adventures Reincarnated, Frog God Games adventures, Kobold Press, etc.
Over the decade or since 5e’s release, I ran a lot of games for many players – some at public events, some in my house, some on Roll20 or other VTTs. Most of them were pre-published because I didn’t have often time to write original content for the 2-3 weekly games I was running. And – more importantly – I didn’t trust the tools OR myself to make appropriate challenges.
Eventually, I thought I’d figure out the CR system, or that Wizards would release something workable. They were going to improve it later, right?
But nothing improved. The adventures were largely milquetoast, illogical, disconnected as if written by a committee who hadn’t seen each other’s notes. The challenge never felt right either, every encounter for the first two levels felt like a teetering on TPK, while the higher level encounters were frequently laughable. Until, well, a random impossible encounter came out of nowhere and TPK’ed the party.
3rd Level of Exhaustion
After running 5e for nearly a decade, mostly for two or more sessions a week, I’m tired. The system never got more interesting than it was in the playtest (and I think I could make the case that the playtest was actually more interesting than the final product). It’s difficult to DM – because there is nothing to help DMs. Even the adventures are almost universally bad compared to what we get in other systems (let’s compare them to Cthulhu’s Masks of Nyarlahotep, Orient Express, or Mountains of Madness; or Warhammer’s Enemy Within; or Pathfinder’s Kingmaker.) I’d say that two of WotC’s adventures stack up to what other companies release (Strahd and ToA).
There’s a bland “sameness” over 5e. There aren’t ancestries that make me excited. It’s rare to get magic items at all (and really, the characters are too powerful already that they would break the game). Any settings that feel unique?… no, just vanilla Sword Coast. Alternate systems of magic? Monsters that aren’t just bags of hit points?
Elf Rogue, takes disengage action, moves into flanking position with a rapier, and then moves out. Elf ranger … hunted prey, colossus slayer, fires bow. Dwarf cleric casts Healing Word if someone’s dying or just attacks. Paladin smites.
I’ve run this encounter more times than I can count. I’m tired of this system.
Saving Throw?
Can anything be saved from 5e? Can I hobble together some golem to make a game I like? Maybe I could take MCDM’s Flee Mortals to make more exciting encounters and put them in a unique setting like Metis Creative’s Historica Arcanum? Maybe I can sprinkle in the magic item economy from Level Up and put in some new classes from EN Publishing’s Masterclass Codex? Put in some psionics from Steampunkette’s Paranormal Power. (No complaints on any of these products. I own all of them, and I think they’re pretty great.) But at this point, it seems like putting blush on a corpse. I’d rather just move on.
Move Action
Not playing D&D 5e (or the 2024 edition or whatever) will have some consequences. Not playing the biggest game means it will be harder to find players, being out of the loop on online discussions and feeling out of place on sites like ENWorld (I’m already not posting here very often), and the Sunk Cost of all the 5e-compatible stuff I’m putting in storage.
I don’t know if I have a choice. The interviews and playtests I followed seemed to reiterate that D&D is continuing to move in a direction that takes what I disliked about 5e and just lean into it more.
So for the first time since I was 12 years old, I think I have to say, I’m done with D&D.
Initial "Encounters"
The D&D Next Playtest excited me. I was playing mostly 4E at that point and was interested to see a more streamlined game with connection to AD&D that didn't have all the complexity of d20. At the time, my gaming consisted of running D&D Encounters at the FLGS - and what an event that was! I was spearheading 3-4 groups of players, which was something in our town. (I didn't have a "home" game because I didn't have a home at that time. My soon-to-be ex-wife had filed for divorce, and I was crashing at my mom's until I could get my life in order. Yeah, it was a period of big transition.)
The Playtest did feel flat compared to all the options we had in 4E ... but they were going to improve it later, right?
When the actual rules came out, we started with Hoard of the Dragon Queen at D&D Encounters. The 3-4 groups of players shrunk down to one table of around 10 players. Some players from the 4E Encounters lost interest, but no one would DM 5e. (This would become an ongoing issue.) After the unceremonious TPK in that terribly written adventure, Encounters folded. Live playing D&D at my FLGS was killed by 5e.
Potion Mixing
5e was supposed to be the edition to bring all players together. When I got my house, that's the angle I took too. It had a large basement, big table for gaming, walls lined with bookshelves of miniatures, fantasy literature, and game supplements. I got in contact with some of the lapsed players from the FLGS and invited them to my house, where we weren't constrained by operating hours, be expected to pay to play, etc. Since there was nothing out but Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I decided to create my own campaign, based around Ravenloft (one of my favorite settings. It was a short campaign, based on old horror films and literature. As would become a 5e tradition of mine, it ended with a TPK because I couldn’t balance the challenges.
Take the Aid Action?
After what I considered a “failed” campaign, I turned to some of the newly released campaign adventures, and I ran quite the assortment (though not all of them to their completion due to TPKs and loss of player interest): Lost Mines of Phandelver (x?), Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Princes of the Apocalypse (x2), Out of the Abyss (x2), Curse of Strahd (x2), Storm King’s Thunder, Tomb of Annihilation, Dragon Heist, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Tales from the Yawning Portal, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and Rime of the Frostmaiden, And that’s just the first party stuff – I also ran some Goodman Games Original Adventures Reincarnated, Frog God Games adventures, Kobold Press, etc.
Over the decade or since 5e’s release, I ran a lot of games for many players – some at public events, some in my house, some on Roll20 or other VTTs. Most of them were pre-published because I didn’t have often time to write original content for the 2-3 weekly games I was running. And – more importantly – I didn’t trust the tools OR myself to make appropriate challenges.
Eventually, I thought I’d figure out the CR system, or that Wizards would release something workable. They were going to improve it later, right?
But nothing improved. The adventures were largely milquetoast, illogical, disconnected as if written by a committee who hadn’t seen each other’s notes. The challenge never felt right either, every encounter for the first two levels felt like a teetering on TPK, while the higher level encounters were frequently laughable. Until, well, a random impossible encounter came out of nowhere and TPK’ed the party.
3rd Level of Exhaustion
After running 5e for nearly a decade, mostly for two or more sessions a week, I’m tired. The system never got more interesting than it was in the playtest (and I think I could make the case that the playtest was actually more interesting than the final product). It’s difficult to DM – because there is nothing to help DMs. Even the adventures are almost universally bad compared to what we get in other systems (let’s compare them to Cthulhu’s Masks of Nyarlahotep, Orient Express, or Mountains of Madness; or Warhammer’s Enemy Within; or Pathfinder’s Kingmaker.) I’d say that two of WotC’s adventures stack up to what other companies release (Strahd and ToA).
There’s a bland “sameness” over 5e. There aren’t ancestries that make me excited. It’s rare to get magic items at all (and really, the characters are too powerful already that they would break the game). Any settings that feel unique?… no, just vanilla Sword Coast. Alternate systems of magic? Monsters that aren’t just bags of hit points?
Elf Rogue, takes disengage action, moves into flanking position with a rapier, and then moves out. Elf ranger … hunted prey, colossus slayer, fires bow. Dwarf cleric casts Healing Word if someone’s dying or just attacks. Paladin smites.
I’ve run this encounter more times than I can count. I’m tired of this system.
Saving Throw?
Can anything be saved from 5e? Can I hobble together some golem to make a game I like? Maybe I could take MCDM’s Flee Mortals to make more exciting encounters and put them in a unique setting like Metis Creative’s Historica Arcanum? Maybe I can sprinkle in the magic item economy from Level Up and put in some new classes from EN Publishing’s Masterclass Codex? Put in some psionics from Steampunkette’s Paranormal Power. (No complaints on any of these products. I own all of them, and I think they’re pretty great.) But at this point, it seems like putting blush on a corpse. I’d rather just move on.
Move Action
Not playing D&D 5e (or the 2024 edition or whatever) will have some consequences. Not playing the biggest game means it will be harder to find players, being out of the loop on online discussions and feeling out of place on sites like ENWorld (I’m already not posting here very often), and the Sunk Cost of all the 5e-compatible stuff I’m putting in storage.
I don’t know if I have a choice. The interviews and playtests I followed seemed to reiterate that D&D is continuing to move in a direction that takes what I disliked about 5e and just lean into it more.
So for the first time since I was 12 years old, I think I have to say, I’m done with D&D.
