D&D 5E Is 5E Special

[EzekielRaiden]

I taught nieces and nephews how to play 3.5, and yes some were as young as 8. I did give them simple pregens, but they grasped the concepts of the game.

Teaching 5e would be easier, I'm not sure I would have tried that with 4e.

Well, if we're allowed to reference things people have done on that front, there was a series of absolutely delightful 4e-based kid-adventurer things that were made a long while back. I'll have to see if I can dig them up. They were certainly a little simplified relative to proper 4e, but they had the overall power structure and basic notions, and the characters were specifically meant to represent the children of powerful adventurers who were going off to have smaller adventures of their own.

As I said, genuinely delightful, something I would have paid real money for if it had been a proper published product.

Edit: Aha! I found it, Jim Stowe's DND for 8-year-olds (humorous coincidence, there.) If you'd like direct links, here's his blog posts.

DND for 8-year-olds (boy characters)
DND for Dads 2, The Girls (part 1)
DND for Dads, The Girls (part 2)

Delightful, charming, and clearly 4e-based, despite being a bit simplified.

 

[Smackpixi]

Okay, let's put some guesstimate numbers. I think 5e's success is probably 80% due to the design.

50% of it’s success is due to it still being called Dungeons & Dragons. Gives it a leg up over anything else in a time where people that played it when younger have kids coming to the age they can play and are making shows and movies that reference the game. Many people play D&D cause inertia and cultural weight. And cause other people are playing it. The other 50% is because of the design being very approachable compared to 3e and 4e. It’s still complicated as fork compared to Monopoly, but more approachable than it had been in a dozen years So when people decide to play D&D because of part A, they don’t bounce off. Easy to do totally ”wrong” and still have a good time.

All the people that want to tout Critical Role or whatever as being part of it’s success are both totally wrong and slightly correct. Sure them playing D&D feeds the success of D&D but they are playing D&D because it’s called D&D see 50% part one.

 

[Nightfly]

But I've already said that. Repeatedly. I even put it in bold recently (within the past 40 posts, this thread moves very fast.)

That's why I said "a person" had to give it credit, rather than "you".

(I'm serious, that really is why I said that!)

This is why I said what I said earlier: it feels like you cannot have a critical opinion of 5e. You have to love it, because any time you express a critical opinion, you're a hater trying to tear it down and prove that it's objectively wrong and awful. Anything less than outright praise is categorized as an active attack.

I've been pretty critical of 5e in the "what's wrong with 5e" thread. It is not perfect, and I'm looking forward took the 50th anniversary edition a lot, because there are things that need some sprucing up. All that said, I think 5e is indeed pretty special.

 

[Parmandur]

These are all good points/facts, but keeping them in mind, you should really appreciate the fact that the 5e Player's Handbook is in the top 55 bestselling books on Amazon right now. Literally today. That's not game books, it's all books. It's been out a good bit longer than the 4e PH had been at the point you're trying to shrug off the fact that it (possibly) wasn't even the best-selling basic rulebook for a D&D game.

You're correct that 4e was not some kind of disaster, even though a lot of people are under the impression that it was. I remember packed rooms of people playing 4e. It did fine, and brought in a lot of new players. That said, 5e is in an entirely different weight class of success, and it's been sustained success. At some point, a person has to give it credit for doing something right.

At this point in 4E's life cycle, 5E had been in the market for two years.

 

[payn]

I don't see how my characterization is incorrect. I didn't think what I said made them "bored trolls." I think it demonstrated that the 3.x fans were very conservative--they wanted nothing to change. And the problem is, they got more or less what they wanted, and over time even most of them had to recognize, "okay, yeah, there are some serious problems here."

You didnt say conservative, you said opposition movement, one not bore out of any desire for the actual product. Then, reduced the PF experience to a couple of poor play tests to knock down the system. Those were cheap political points you are trying to score to make a caricaturization of that community, not a characterization.

 

[Scribe]

At this point in 4E's life cycle, 5E had been in the market for two years.

If another Edition has been out for 2 years, safe to say the designers consider the previous edition concluded?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's helpful, though; if people really believe the ceiling of complexity for a game should be what an 8 year old can understand, then I know we have virtually nothing in common as far as gaming is concerned, and it saves arguments. I admit it's weird to say that's why the game is so popular, though...makes for some weird conclusions to be drawn.

You probably underestimate 8 year olds’ ability to understand a system, just for a start, but also what benefit do you believe making the system harder to understand actually has?

Anything less than outright praise is categorized as an active attack.

I criticize 5e quite a lot. Sometimes I’m pretty harsh terms. (There are places where the advise on how to run the game is outright garbage)

The thing is, if I say the above parenthetical once, it’s a criticism. If I repeat it, a lot, and keep coming back to it any time it could be interpreted as relevant, it becomes something else. (Note, that isn’t what I think you’re doing, that is more a “subtweet” toward someone else) At that point, people are going to react differently.

 

[Parmandur]

If another Edition has been out for 2 years, safe to say the designers consider the previous edition concluded?

Yes, that's just it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The poster has repeatedly presented it as such: that those criticizing the claim that 5e is special are saying "absolutely NOTHING about 5e was worth getting, so its success is a total statistical fluke and nothing more." And because that option is obviously untenable, the poster therefore concluded that its exact opposite, that 5e is successful exclusively because it's amazingly well-made, must be the only rational conclusion.

That is a classic false dichotomy.

When I read your bolded part of a different post, I need to object again.

You don't say: "it is only luck".
But you say it is more outer circumstances than innate quality.

Some critics here sounded like it was purely luck and that the playtest did not result in the game we got.

I think it is way more balanced and the outer circumstances were in parts created by 5e design.
In my post above you approved how movement in combat is much more natural than having a movement action.
I approve, that as a game, it might be a worse design than having clearly defined segments.

I know this sounds like a trivial difference, but for the game flow at the table and especially for watchers of streamed games, it makes a big difference. It does not disturb the flow of the game, combat goes by in more natural speach. You have more time to describe how your character is actually doing thing, and it does not feel like moving game pieces around and does not sound like it on stream.
Advantage/disadvantage has a similar effect. A lot more natural than having to do math everytime circumstances or buffs change.
The last point was a relative early decision, that the game needs to fit into a 2 hour session as well as into an 8hiur session, because they noticed, that many people have so much time for lengthy sessions anymore. Also something that perfectly fits for streams.

And those three decisions were fixed relatively early in the playtest and never changed.

And it happens, that those three things are also what makes it beginner friendly and attractive (by my observation). And this is what I as an old ADnD player appreciate most.

So my point stands: inherent design and outer circumstances both were EQUALLY important to the success of 5e.
And the designers of 5e had a good read of the outer circumstances and designed the game to fit in. It was a bit lucky, that it worked out even better than they could have hoped for.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Edit: Aha! I found it, Jim Stowe's DND for 8-year-olds (humorous coincidence, there.) If you'd like direct links, here's his blog posts.

DND for 8-year-olds (boy characters)
DND for Dads 2, The Girls (part 1)
DND for Dads, The Girls (part 2)

Delightful, charming, and clearly 4e-based, despite being a bit simplified.

I'd approve anything to get kids into the hobby. A simplified 4e would not be the worst entry for kids.
I think 5e works more or less out of the essentials box for kids.