D&D General Explain 5(.5)e to me

[Edgar Ironpelt]

A theory I heard a while back is that your teens to mid-20s are the formative time when things ‘imprint’ on you, and that sets your preferences for the rest of your life. It’s why your dad hates your music and you hate your kids’ music. Your grandad hated your dad’s music. Your kid will hate your grandchild’s music. It’s just the order of life.

The music, the movies, the TV shows, the games, the lifestyle, the chocolate bars, the shops… the world was at its best when you were 14-24ish. Because that is what imprinted on you.

There's an old saying in the Science Fiction fan community that "The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 14."

 

[Warpiglet-7]

This is not a troll post. I am asking legitimately out of curiosity, and maybe a bit of wistfulness: why is 5e (and the newest iteration, 2024...5.5e) fun?
Background: the other day I looked on D&D Beyond and saw their new(ish) map feature. Since I play online with my friends pretty much exclusively, I was impressed to see how workable the VTT is. The map. The tokens. The turn order. The encounter builder. It's all just done for the GM and players. So freaking cool.
But: my crew and I, a bunch of grogs in our 50s, played 5e a few times and didn't find it to our liking. Characters were too powerful too quickly, the action economy is... let's say busy (readied action, action, bonus action, reaction), and the character options just an endless parade of race, subrace, class, subclass, with an inexhaustible list of mechanical stuff PCs could do just by rolling a die (vs. role playing, or having to think about what they wanted to do). It all felt like a video game to us.
But, people love it. Just love it. So my question is...why? What is it about this particular rule set and edition that makes it so fun? Is it because this is the only edition many people have played, and don't know any of the old ways? Or is it because so many people play video games, and 5e is sort of analogous?
I love Dungeons&Dragons as a concept, and I have since I was 11 years old (a very long time ago!) I feel like I am missing out on something because I am either too set in my ways, or missing some critical concept(s) in 5e. Help a brother out, friends.
And to reiterate: NOT looking to fight, or explain to anyone "why I am right." Just help me see it through the eyes of those who love it.
Because I want to love it, too.

This is not a troll post. I am asking legitimately out of curiosity, and maybe a bit of wistfulness: why is 5e (and the newest iteration, 2024...5.5e) fun?
Background: the other day I looked on D&D Beyond and saw their new(ish) map feature. Since I play online with my friends pretty much exclusively, I was impressed to see how workable the VTT is. The map. The tokens. The turn order. The encounter builder. It's all just done for the GM and players. So freaking cool.
But: my crew and I, a bunch of grogs in our 50s, played 5e a few times and didn't find it to our liking. Characters were too powerful too quickly, the action economy is... let's say busy (readied action, action, bonus action, reaction), and the character options just an endless parade of race, subrace, class, subclass, with an inexhaustible list of mechanical stuff PCs could do just by rolling a die (vs. role playing, or having to think about what they wanted to do). It all felt like a video game to us.
But, people love it. Just love it. So my question is...why? What is it about this particular rule set and edition that makes it so fun? Is it because this is the only edition many people have played, and don't know any of the old ways? Or is it because so many people play video games, and 5e is sort of analogous?
I love Dungeons&Dragons as a concept, and I have since I was 11 years old (a very long time ago!) I feel like I am missing out on something because I am either too set in my ways, or missing some critical concept(s) in 5e. Help a brother out, friends.
And to reiterate: NOT looking to fight, or explain to anyone "why I am right." Just help me see it through the eyes of those who love it.
Because I want to love it, too.

My friends and I are in our 50s. I r also play with our kids some.

I love 5e. It took some getting used to but not a lot.

When we want a tougher game we up the enemies, etc.

And frankly if you start with 12 hit points it’s only 12 hit points…character at low levels can surely die in 5e.

What whizbang suggested up thread is right. People want some continuity. Characters nowadays are less expendable. But in truth when we played AD&D, we did a lot of buffering to keep the party going intentionally, knowingly or not.

The attraction for me is inspiration for ideas…lots of inspiration in 5e for fiction. But I will say I found the rules as written a bit loose…not a fan of bonus actions broadly, etc but after you play a while it works fine.

You can alter things and create some nods to the older playstyles.

One thing I like to do is play what seems “cool” even if less efficient. It’s not like it’s hard for a party to survive and adapt usually so you can really be less uptight about what you create to play.

And something odd happened to me. We played becmi a little as a lark and I found I did miss some of the buttons to press.

That said I can like both playstyles and play both. But 5e has been good to me and will likely be the primary game we play unless 6e is on stud mode.

Skipping 5.5 fwiw

 

[Zardnaar]

My friends and I are in our 50s. I r also play with our kids some.

I love 5e. It took some getting used to but not a lot.

When we want a tougher game we up the enemies, etc.

And frankly if you start with 12 hit points it’s only 12 hit points…character at low levels can surely die in 5e.

What whizbang suggested up thread is right. People want some continuity. Characters nowadays are less expendable. But in truth when we played AD&D, we did a lot of buffering to keep the party going intentionally, knowingly or not.

The attraction for me is inspiration for ideas…lots of inspiration in 5e for fiction. But I will say I found the rules as written a bit loose…not a fan of bonus actions broadly, etc but after you play a while it works fine.

You can alter things and create some nods to the older playstyles.

One thing I like to do is play what seems “cool” even if less efficient. It’s not like it’s hard for a party to survive and adapt usually so you can really be less uptight about what you create to play.

And something odd happened to me. We played becmi a little as a lark and I found I did miss some of the buttons to press.

That said I can like both playstyles and play both. But 5e has been good to me and will likely be the primary game we play unless 6e is on stud mode.

Skipping 5.5 fwiw

Buffering. Translation max hp level 1, reroll ability scores until you get something you like. Care use of energy draining and fudged dice rolls lol.

 

[GothmogIV]

It seems like--and perhaps I am reading into what people have written--character longevity and development is much more of a focus now, vs. the fungibility of characters in the original/older game, i.e. "if I die, I'll just roll up a new guy". So that's a new way to look at things for me. I can see how that leads to a deeper, more narrative experience vs. a kick-down-door-kill-orcs-steal-stuff ethos.

That's actually kind of cool.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It seems like--and perhaps I am reading into what people have written--character longevity and development is much more of a focus now, vs. the fungibility of characters in the original/older game, i.e. "if I die, I'll just roll up a new guy". So that's a new way to look at things for me. I can see how that leads to a deeper, more narrative experience vs. a kick-down-door-kill-orcs-steal-stuff ethos.

That's actually kind of cool.

Yep!

When I run OSR games for modern players for the first time, I have to brace them up front: "This is more like a roguelike video game. Characters can and will die. But the high lethality is part of the fun."

In contrast, when I almost had a TPK running the new Heroes of the Borderlands 5E starter set, my players -- raised on Critical Role games where 99% of the characters last for years and grow to high levels -- gave me shocked puppy dog eyes until I had the giant spiders just bind the PCs up for eating later, and then had bandits rescue and rob them after that, leaving them alive and looking for revenge next time instead of making them reroll* characters.

* Which I guess means trading the character cards in Heroes of the Borderlands, but you get the idea.

 

[AlViking]

Yep!

When I run OSR games for modern players for the first time, I have to brace them up front: "This is more like a roguelike video game. Characters can and will die. But the high lethality is part of the fun."

In contrast, when I almost had a TPK running the new Heroes of the Borderlands 5E starter set, my players -- raised on Critical Role games where 99% of the characters last for years and grow to high levels -- I got shocked puppy dog eyes from them until I had the giant spiders just bind them up for eating later, and then had bandits rescue and rob them after that, leaving them alive and looking for revenge next time instead of making them reroll* characters.

* Which I guess means trading the character cards in Heroes of the Borderlands, but you get the idea.

I agree, but my players are still okay with their characters dying. On the other hand I also talk about it before we start playing and we discuss how lethal we want the game to be and I we generally agree that character death should be rare but (hopefully) meaningful. On the other hand when I was first playing, we had all grown up with fantasy fiction like Tolkien and Lieber where the heroes faced danger on a regular basis and mostly survived. I didn't even really know that tournament style high lethality and bring along hirelings to die for you was a thing until later in college.

 

[Charlaquin]

It seems like--and perhaps I am reading into what people have written--character longevity and development is much more of a focus now, vs. the fungibility of characters in the original/older game, i.e. "if I die, I'll just roll up a new guy". So that's a new way to look at things for me. I can see how that leads to a deeper, more narrative experience vs. a kick-down-door-kill-orcs-steal-stuff ethos. That's actually kind of cool.

Yes, absolutely! That’s a very astute observation, and to me it’s such a given, I wouldn’t have even thought of this as something to hilight as a difference. In modern D&D, creating a PC is a significant investment of time and energy, both because characters are more mechanically complex and therefore are more involved to build, and because players tend to put a lot of creative detail into their characters. The default attitude in most D&D groups I’ve played with is that characters should not be treated as mere game pieces, but fleshed out like one would a character in a novel. Players often write detailed backstories for their characters, and DMs are encouraged to mine these PC backstories for elements to incorporate into the campaign, the better to foster personal investment from the players. Even when players don’t create character backstories, they will typically at least put some effort into coming up with personality details to help differentiate their characters from themselves, as playing self-insert characters is generally discouraged.

These factors tend to make it very difficult to look at character death as “oh well, I’ll just make another,” because making a character is a lot of work, and the hope is generally for the fruit of that labor to be a satisfying narrative arc. Death can be a compelling end to a character arc, but not if it doesn’t feel narratively significant. Players tend in my experience to be much more accepting of a death that feels like a heroic sacrifice or important emotional beat for the surviving party members than a death that feels random and pointless. Which is tough because the nature of the dice makes it so that most character deaths are very literally random. This has I think been a significant factor in pushing D&D combat to become less lethal with each edition.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’ve heard it said before that PCs in older editions are nobodies who might, if they’re very lucky, live to become heroes. Whereas PCs in newer editions are local heroes destined to become mythical legends, unless their tales are tragically cut short. And while I think the statement overlooks the fact that there have always been and will always be groups that play outside of these molds, I do think it’s a reasonable lens through which to analyze the shift in mechanics. PCs have trended more powerful and more durable as the editions have gone on, and I do think a significant part of the reason for that has been the designers embracing the tendency many groups have towards treating the PCs as protagonists in an evolving narrative rather than as ordinary people in a fantastical world.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

It seems like--and perhaps I am reading into what people have written--character longevity and development is much more of a focus now, vs. the fungibility of characters in the original/older game, i.e. "if I die, I'll just roll up a new guy". So that's a new way to look at things for me. I can see how that leads to a deeper, more narrative experience vs. a kick-down-door-kill-orcs-steal-stuff ethos.

That's actually kind of cool.

I think that is the culture now. But being old school in some ways, I go in knowing I could die. And that is fine. I want risk or it’s no fun for me.

It seems a little? Less arbitrary…fewer one bad roll = death now.

But I fondly remember falling into a pit of ghouls…and using magic and every resource at hand to escape.

It’s different now. It seems there are more tactical choices in a way and less avoidance of combat.

I don’t know. But it’s fun as hell to me

 

[AlViking]

I’ve heard it said before that PCs in older editions are nobodies who might, if they’re very lucky, live to become heroes. Whereas PCs in newer editions are local heroes destined to become mythical legends, unless their tales are tragically cut short. And while I think the statement overlooks the fact that there have always been and will always be groups that play outside of these molds, I do think it’s a reasonable lens through which to analyze the shift in mechanics. PCs have trended more powerful and more durable as the editions have gone on, and I do think a significant part of the reason for that has been the designers embracing the tendency many groups have towards treating the PCs as protagonists in an evolving narrative rather than as ordinary people in a fantastical world.

True ... but I would also mention that after a certain point if you could get the body back to town, you could likely get a raise dead done in return for some service in a lot of games. In some ways the more durable in the current version is also a bit of a myth or at least somewhat exaggerated in my opinion. As GM I'm far less likely to kill off a character by mistake and the players certainly have far more options to stay alive but that just gives them more options to use and resources to drain. At higher levels many monsters have multi-attack and if an enemy takes someone down in melee their next attack is with advantage and an automatic crit for 2 failed death saves out of 3 total so two strikes and you're out.

If I wanted to kill off characters in the game left and right I could, same as it ever was. For me it's not a matter of how quickly a character can be made because if you're using DndBeyond and don't go build crazy it's quite quick, it may well be a different approach for some people.