D&D 5E Do we need a Fifth Edition Revival (5ER)?

[overgeeked]

Which, while great for creativity, turns any attempt at large-scale community-building into an exercise in herding cats.

Fair.

Many splinters do not a table make.

But that same creative and curious bent also gives players a desire to try more games, so you don’t need to worry about say a DCC player only ever wanting to play DCC and turning their nose up at OSE. It just doesn’t happen. They don’t splinter and isolate as you’re suggesting. People still have preferences, yes. But people is the OSR will, generally speaking, play whatever you put in front of them. The DIY hacking culture creates players who are more curious about other games and systems and experimental enough to give them a go.

 

[Lanefan]

Nope. Every earlier edition had a few things it did better than 5E. But there’s nothing 5E does better than any of them. 5E is the secord or third best at everything it does. Except sales.

Perhaps more importantly, 5e hasn't shown itself to be the worst among the editions at doing any major thing, which makes it good enough to be good enough.

It's the jack-of-all-trades edition.

 

[Lanefan]

I saw an article the other day that argued that the different editions are trying to do different things, especially the TSR versions versus the WotC ones. So I'm not sure "better" is the right word here, except for specific use cases.

5E is definitely better at zero-to-hero than 1E was, for instance.

I have to disagree with this claim. There's no real 'zero' in 5e (as proven both by the mechanical gap between a commoner and a 1st-level adventurer and by how quickly the first few character levels go by), the journey to hero is quite short, you're into superhero territory (tiers 3-4) before you know it, and you stay there for the duration.

 

[M.T. Black]

@SlyFlourish has just posted up an article related to this topic: https://www.enworld.org/threads/dont-throw-5e-away-because-of-hasbro.702010/

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which, while great for creativity, turns any attempt at large-scale community-building into an exercise in herding cats. Many splinters do not a table make.

And yet, there is an OSR community.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Perhaps more importantly, 5e hasn't shown itself to be the worst among the editions at doing any major thing, which makes it good enough to be good enough.

It's the jack-of-all-trades edition.

That is certainly more important for the sales that are the actual index at which 5e excels.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think the actual issue we face is right here in how you say what you said here (and similarly in Sly Flourish's other post he made about wanting everyone to call the game revision 'D&D 2024' instead of '5E24')... people seem to want to treat the term '5E' as a generic brand. One that you can use to talk about all manner of games that use the D&D 5E game engine but not have that conversation be connected automatically to the Dungeons & Dragons game.

But to me, that's virtually impossible and people shouldn't even waste time on that idea because it's only going to lead to annoyance and disappointment. Reason being... the term '5E' only exists because it is related to Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast's 'Dungeons & Dragons'. It is a marker for D&D's 'Fifth Edition'. The terms are interlinked. And it doesn't matter if a game designer uses the 5E game engine but creates a game wholly separate from D&D... if they attach the term '5E' to it, then it's going to be considered a "D&D product"-- or at least part of the D&D conversation. And that's never going to change. So what I think has to happen is that the 5E people need to take their cue from the 3E era.

In the 3E era there was a specific branding created to denote products that used the D&D 3E engine but were not actually D&D related-- the 'd20' identifier. That brand (even though it was created by WotC) was specifically to allow people to talk about and identify products in the greater landscape of gaming that had this connection to each other, but was not a part of the talk of Dungeons & Dragons itself. And it worked. People could talk about 'd20' products freely and rarely have people assume they meant Dungeons & Dragons or have 'D&D people jump into the convo thinking they were talking about something else. But unfortunately for today, the current landscape does not have that. And the term '5E' cannot and will not become that because a large swathe of the gaming populace will not go along with it.

So what I think really had to happen is that anyone and everyone who wants to make and talk about product that uses the 5E game engine but not actually be connected to the Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition conversation... needs to come up with a new term altogether. A term different from 'D&D' and '5E' (as both those terms were created in direct reference to Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition.) Only once a term like that can be created for that purpose... maybe then places like E.N. World can make a separate branding board that will allow those people to congregate and talk specifically in the manner they wish about those games that use the engine but are completely separate from D&D and Wizards of the Coast.

EDIT And just to be clear... '5E Revival' or '5ER' cannot be that term, because it includes '5E' in it-- meaning that for most players it is specifically referencing the Fifth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (even if it's not meant to be.)

The how about D205E as a term for those games that use the 5e engine as defined in the SRD's, and something like Alt-D&D for those games that play in the D&D lore sandbox (but are not OSR or OSR like) but use non D20 systems. Older D20 games could be D20 3.x.

 

[LordEntrails]

Yes. This thread is not a personal attack on you or your lifestyle.

I have no idea what you are going on about. But besides you doing a great job of insulting me without breaking forums rules, it's really not adding any value to this thread. Enjoy.

It's a hard thing for me to articulate, because I've been immersed in the OSR and indie games for the last year or two, so I can feel the difference but hard to exactly articulate it.

I appreciate you reply. I don't see it yet, but I trust you do see it. I just don't yet. But that's ok

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have no idea what you are going on about.

I was responding to the people who are appear to be taking offense at anyone suggesting that 5E might not be the Perfect Game For All Purposes. If that's not you, it was misdirected, and I apologize.

 

[overgeeked]

Perhaps more importantly, 5e hasn't shown itself to be the worst among the editions at doing any major thing, which makes it good enough to be good enough.

It's the jack-of-all-trades edition.

Well, I’d say exploration, dungeon crawling, hexcrawling, etc. are all nearly absent or completely absent from 5E whereas they were present in earlier editions, to varying degrees. I’d count those as fairly major aspects of the game. So 5E is the worst for those things. The feel of zero-to-hero is also a fairly major aspect of the game for a lot of people, and, as you say, it’s completely absent from 5E. Admittedly, this is also the case for 4E, so they’re tied for worst at that piece.