D&D 5E If you've ever left D&D, what made you come back?

[Manbearcat]

Lets see. Among a few other games, I ran AD&D and Basic from 1984-1999 (I think). Participated in aspects of the 3e playtest and ran 3e until a little bit into 2006. At the same time, I started running more and more indie games. From 2004-2006, I was running indie game sessions in equal amounts to D&D 3.x. I shut D&D down early 2006 and just ran indie games (a ton of Dogs in the Vineyard) until 4e was released.

I was sucked back into D&D's vortex. Big time.

 

[76512390ag12]

5e and I left twice too

Posted by C4-D4RS on the MetroLiberal HoloNet

 

[MarkB]

For me it was Baldur's Gate, in a roundabout way.

I played D&D in school for a couple of years, a depressing number of decades ago - pretty sure it was 1st Edition - but left the hobby completely after that. I was much more into computer games, and when Baldur's Gate came out on the PC, my nostalgia for D&D persuaded me to try it.

I enjoyed it, and its sequel and expansions, a great deal - but still, I never even considered looking for my RPG fix in tabletop form. But when Bioware began working on Neverwinter Nights based upon 3rd Edition D&D, I became an active and vocal participant in their development forums, enjoying the discussions of game mechanics and plot design. But I was hampered in those discussions - everyone was talking about how different 3rd Edition was from the 2e rules used in Baldur's Gate, but I knew nothing about it. So I bought the 3e Player's Handbook, and later the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide, purely so that I could learn enough about the rules to participate meaningfully in the discussions.

It must have been a few months after I'd bought the books, immersed myself in them, and thoroughly familiarised myself with their contents from a game designer's perspective, that I finally had the thought process of "well, I've got the books - I might as well at least try to see what this tabletop RPGing is about", and after checking forums and phoning around, I finally found a local gaming club, and went along to try it out.

15-ish years later, I'm still a member of that same club and have met many friends there. We play a lot of different games, but I've never really gone away from D&D since then.

 

[pdzoch]

My kids.

The game from my childhood seemed like a good fit for them. I showed them, and they loved it. The whole family plays now (including the in-laws)

 

[Argyle King]

I came back because 5E is the easiest thing for which to find a group.

I like it, but my preference is still a game that is not D&D.

 

[Blue]

I don't know that I've ever left D&D. I've played and ran in other systems, in both the high fantasy genre and in other ones, but it wasn't to exclude D&D, it was because I enjoy more than one thing.

Right now, I love the 5e ruleset, and have a good selection of people to play it with. But that doesn't stop me from running my 13th Age game which is very similar in target audience and philosophy. And that game doesn't stop me from playing 5e.

There's been times when I haven't played D&D due to not having accessibility of a group that wanted to play D&D, but since I was okay playing ti would that of counted?

4e did burn me out (after several great campaigns) when it was taking a session and a half to run a single high level combat online. Really sad - for whatever system issues there were the DM had crafted an amazingly mythic world and we were really getting meaty in it. I wish could have seen where it was going. But 5e was right there and I was willing to play.

So I guess I've never left D&D, I've always been willing to play. I've just enjoyed the grace of many other systems as well.

EDIT: Just for completeness my wife used to play D&D back when she was in girl scouts. I asked her why she broke with it, and her answer was "puberty".

 

[Caliban]

A few years after 2e came out, I stopped playing for several years. Life got busy, didn't have any friends playing it.

3rd edition brought me back, played it up until 4th edition. Played 4e for a year and stopped again because I wasn't enjoying the way the RPGA ran it.

Came back for 5e, and now I play Adventure League and run my own home game.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

It entirely depends upon how one defines "left D&D" as to whether I've left or not, so here's the relevant details to figure it out:

When 4th edition was being teased in online articles, and those fluffy little books I can't remember the titles of leading up to the release, I announced that my 3.5 campaign at the time would be the last 3.5 campaign I ever run or participate in. I was never really a fan of the 3rd/3.5 system, and was thinking that everything I disliked was going to be done in a way I would like in the upcoming edition.

4th edition came out, and as I played more of it each week I kept noticing things that I was jazzed about during the "tease" period were delivered on in ways I wasn't fond of (the best example I can give is Critical hits; the tease material said there would be no confirmation roll, which was true, and that crits would do maximum damage for the attack, also true, and that certain weapons with special properties like axes would add an extra die, which was not as true as I was hoping, since almost every magical weapon had some amount of dice tacked on whether it was an axe or not), and after a few months of weekly sessions the game just wasn't working for my group the way we wanted it to. I took 6 months off of the campaign to run other games and devise strategies to make 4th edition work for us, and we tried them out, changed out for new ides, tried again, and repeat. We took another break from the 4th edition game to play other stuff, and when Essentials products had come out we dove back in to try those out. They worked better for us, but I wasn't really interested in DMing 4th edition anymore, so another of our group took over the DM seat... and ended up running our last 4th edition campaign ever (he accidentally highlighted everything we weren't happy with about the system).

So we quit playing 4th edition, but that didn't actually mean we quit playing D&D. All throughout the time that my group was playing 4th edition, I also occasionally ran Rules Cyclopedia D&D and AD&D 2nd edition. I still do, even though we mostly play 5th edition since its release.

So maybe I never quit because I was always up for AD&D or Rule Cyclopedia, or maybe I quit during 4th edition, came back for Essentials and quit again, being drawn back by 5th edition (we participated in the open play-test as much as we could, and have been playing at least once a week since the day the Starter Set showed up at my FLGS).

If you do count me as having quit, then what it was that drew me back was new material aimed at people that prefer the early '90s and before style/feel of game-play.

 

[thanson02]

I left between 3.0 and 3.5 for various reasons. I will say that the cherry on top was I was playing a tiefling and in the course of one battle I attempted to grab somebody with my tail. Apparently this is a big No-No since I got yelled at by the entire party and the DM for breaking the rules because apparently I needed a feat to use a natural appendage that I was born with to let me do that....

ANYWAYS, what brought me back was 4E. I like to the change in pace as well as the darker flavor. Also like that they actually provided quality DM tools so the players could really enjoy themselves.



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[ammulder]

I was away since before 3e. I played some completely different game systems, and later some non-D&D systems based on 3.5. It was nice to try some different things and get some perspective. I played systems with classes (but different ones), systems with no classes, and systems with generic classes on which you piled loads of feats for personalization.

Bounded Accuracy brought me back -- with a side dose of no crunch books. I got really tired of needing to master loads of detailed options to get a competitive build, and then having another player who threw something together just for kicks unhappy because they were so totally outclassed. Sometimes it was fun to use obscene skill bonuses as score-keeping, but it got old when the GM just stopped rolling for things because the numbers were too high. The balance just wasn't there.

Since playing 5e, I looked at a GURPS PbP game that was recruiting. For one thing, I wasn't that keen on diving back into needing a whole collection of books to find the powers that made a character meaningful (there was basically mandatory stuff in the core plus at least 2 supplemental rule books). For another, it was clear that you could build a character who was completely overpowered in some area(s) quite easily. And as soon as someone did it, then everyone else needed to adjust to not be left in the dust. But then those points weren't going to anything else, and you ended up with a group of hyper-specialists. Might be OK for Champions, but not what I'm looking for in general.

I like 5e a lot for keeping everyone relevant. I don't much like tieflings or dragonborn, but hey. I wish your forever selection of skills wasn't basically locked in at character creation, but hey. I'm still back.