D&D General Does Dungeons & Dragon ever make you feel overwhelmed? (Letter about 1E that could be about any edition)

[Jmarso]

Not overwhelmed, no. It's never been work/ a school assignment. It's a game, meant to be fun, and that's how I and everyone I've ever played with have treated it. I haven't always played it correctly, especially in the beginning, and I've improved my understanding of the various rulesets over the years. In the meantime, I always play to my group's current understanding of the rules. I've never felt overwhelmed by it.

 

[Horwath]

I can relate. I know that past editions have had way more content and products than 5e has had so far, but I was really enjoying the simplicity of 5e back at the start and started to feel a bit overwhelmed by it around when Volo's came out. I've purchased every single 5e book that's come out so far, but I haven't read them all.

It's hard to keep up with all the races, subclasses, spells, magic items and so on that players want to make use of now.

Personally, 5E is very light on additional options(that is in general a good thing, more quality not quantity), I mean we got for player's more or less just 3 books with rules. PHB, XGE and Tasha's. SCAG, VOLO's, MToF have just s sprinkle of content for players. Over 7 years.
Comparing that to a book threadmill of 3.5e or PF1, this is really light reading.

 

[AtomicPope]

I could understand the frustration, especially as an adult. When you have a full life outside of D&D, keeping up with the changes seems more like homework or even a second job than a hobby. My experience was different. I got into D&D as a kid and 2e was coming out. I was hyped, and then a little let down. Imagine a new edition that doesn't impress a child. Nice job TSR! So from an early age I was reading articles, adapting material, and merging editions. We used both AD&D and 2e at the same time until 3e came out. Then, we kept some of the material from 3.0 when 3.5 was rushed out.

I suppose I'm lucky that I experienced the big changes when I was first learning the game. It prepared me for the rest of my life.

 

[pukunui]

Personally, 5E is very light on additional options(that is in general a good thing, more quality not quantity), I mean we got for player's more or less just 3 books with rules. PHB, XGE and Tasha's. SCAG, VOLO's, MToF have just s sprinkle of content for players. Over 7 years.
Comparing that to a book threadmill of 3.5e or PF1, this is really light reading.

I know. I wonder if the fact that it’s spread out across so many books (a new spell here, a new race there) makes it feel like there’s more there than there actually is.

 

[Rabulias]

And here I sit, in my corner, wondering why you didn't include the answer in your scan, and where the city of "Sam Jose" might be....

I am out of town right now, but if I remember when I get back home I will snap a pic of the answer to the letter, which from what I remember is very unsatisfying - or at least, I would have been unsatisfied with it if I was that dude from "Sam Jose"

I have the Dragon CD-ROM archive handy so here you go:

 

[Sword of Spirit]

As long as the new casters still have the "character is a X level caster" text, I can work backwards to use it correctly by my view.

From the current examples of the new stat blocks, they won’t.

The best we can do if we would rather that stay (unless you‘re a personal friend of those in charge and call up and say “Yo man, what the crap? If you haven’t heard the issues some people have with this, lemme explain“) is to make sure to give useful feedback on every survey that comes out.

 

[el-remmen]

I have the Dragon CD-ROM archive handy so here you go:
View attachment 144858

Hmmm. . . That is a much better response than I recalled!

 

[Orius]

Hmmmff, this guy had yet to see the excesses of 3e. Now THAT gets overwhelming. I've been going over some of that material, and there's just way too many things like feats to read over. The worst part is that I like the concept of feats but when every 3e book boasts dozens of new feats as a selling point, it's a lot of work as a DM to properly evaluate it all, especially since I don't have a strong charop mindset. That's not getting into spells and magic items, but those can be more readily controlled. I don't blame a lot of guys for going back to the old rules or OSR sometimes but I like what 3e does in general.

 

[Baron Opal II]

It was really easy, with a ddi subscription.

Yeah. And for me that was a problem. It was one of the things that pushed me away from 4e, actually.

 

[TSR-Hobbies]

There is no way I could keep up on everything out there, especially today. When we play it is very collaborative and my players sometimes know more about specific materials for their characters than I do.