Being genuinely serious here, what RPGs do you have any experience of other than D&D 5e? And preferably games that are less than 15 years old. Also do you DM are you almost exclusively a player?
From
this post (and your reply here) it makes it seem that you are almost exclusively a player with only a tiny amount of DMing experience who is nevertheless trying to blame DMs for problems that are fundamentally to do with the system - and your main approach is to tell the DM to become a game designer rather than to try to fix the actual problems with the game.
To pick one place where you appear to have almost exclusively a player-focused perspective
First,
every rule you need to use is an overhead that means that you are engaging with that rule and not doing something else, and learning rules to the point of not slowing the game down takes time. Saying "there are lots of [optional] rules that DMs are not engaging" is effectively saying "DMs should be making things harder on themselves because that will make things more fun". For a few it will - for most it's extra work doing something that isn't their thing.
Second you talk about "looking for cover". This is tactics - but it is the sort of player-determined tactics that actively make the game more boring by drawing out the combats longer, keeping the characters more static (as they stay behind cover), and ensuring that fewer interesting things are going to happen. Making the whole combat slower, more frustrating, and less interesting.
To pick out another example where it is blatantly obvious that you are almost exclusively a player there's
this post where you suggest
Feats are positively
toxic for GMing, as are obscure mechanics like the 5e Net rules, and I believe no monsters in the Monster Manual use feats - with good reason. They are fine on
Player Characters who have been using the same basic stat block session after session and even when they are using complex weapons have time to get used to them.
On the other hand a decent DM will be using two to three monster statblocks
per combat. And the average NPC will die that combat. You give the net rules
here - which is 110 words of pure rules text that in order to use the DM needs to either copy and paste into the statblock (for a much bulkier statblock), memorise, or stop to look up during play. All this for something that they aren't likely to do again for at least another month, probably longer - long enough they'd have to learn it all again.
This is a lot of overhead for little reward so most DMs don't do it.
Meanwhile
4e would have handled things very differently. A Retiarius gladiator would get something like the following in their statblock.
Net Toss: Standard Action, Target: One enemy. Range 5 +6 vs Reflex, Encounter
Hit: 1d4+3 bludgeoning damage and the target is Restrained until they or an adjacent ally pass a DC15 Acrobatics check as a move action.
Stab the Fish: Melee, Bonus action, Target: One restrained enemy. +8 vs AC
Hit: 2d6+3 damage
Little more than half the word count, much more standardised and structured so it flows better to the point you can use it in play with only minimal prep because it is right there in the statblock. It's also much more interesting than just a generic net attack because it shows how the Retiarius' combat style works with their net; they also have a basic attack and if you start their turn still netted they get both. Slavers with nets would handle them differently. Which means you have distinctive and unfolding tactics because you're using
this NPC
The key things here are that all the rules are right there in the stat block and structured clearly. No need to look things up, and you know what you should be doing at any given time.
And yes a 5e DM could handle things that way but there are several issues.
- D&D 5e already has net rules in the PHB. These rules are different and aren't part of the 5e rules set.
- There's nothing in 5e saying you should do things like this and from the net rules it implies you shouldn't.
- There is a lot of published D&D 5e material that does nothing like this
Stop blaming the DM for the flaws in the design of the game. And then telling them it is their fault because they engage sensibly with a game that doesn't give them good tools.
If you think that the system has no impact on the speed of the game that's more a reflection on you than anything else. And if you think that a 19hp AD&D ogre isn't going to lead to a more rapid game than a 59hp 5e ogre even if it takes the same number of rounds to bring down then you're wrong. And Bullet Sponge design is integral to 5e
Indeed. The DM
can house rule by taking in the multi-page character sheets, tearing them all up, and handing out index cards for Fate Core while claiming it's D&D 5e. The DM can do anything. But when they do so it's very dubious to treat this as at all representative of D&D.
Meanwhile D&D 5e if you use the actual rules and guidelines and do not instead tell the GM that it is their responsibility to re-write the game then you are supposed to have 6-8 encounters per adventuring day with defined XP rewards. Given that some classes have mostly daily resources, some have mostly encounter resources, and some have mostly at will resources if you are at all worried about sharing the spotlight and class balance you need a lot of fights.
You misread - I wrote stun
ting - using 7th Sea or Fantasy AGE style mechanics. The closest to Stunting rules 5e comes is with the Inspiration system.
Have you actually played or even read Wushu Open? There's a cap of IIRC three or five elements depending on the scene. You can generally reach that in two short sentences. This means that what you get is the literal
opposite of what you describe; there is no benefit at all to being "the most descriptive player", but everyone produces a description of their actions.
Game design is an interesting subject and 5e does some things on the player side well. But the design of 5e has certain impacts that lead to slow boring combats and although DMs can
mitigate this the flaws are largely in the design of 5e.
