D&D 5E My Journey to 5th Edition

[neobolts]

Not the first or last to do a thread like this, and while I have edition preferences, I don't consider myself any sort of "edition warrior". The "7 years" thread inspired me to share.

2e
I started here. Wacky, unbalanced wish fufillment campaigns. Awe inspiring settings. A total sense of wonder and mystery. Hey, I was in middle school when I started playing.

3e
Eric Noah's site had us up and playing prior to launch. 3e was AMAZING. I was older, had the advantage of getting in on the ground floor, and the rules were much more stable and polished. Loved 3e. Played countless campaigns and kept wanting more. Bought 1 zillon rulebooks for 3.0 and 3.5. Played it through the majority of my 20s. Noticed the bloat factor and the math piling up, but wasn't unhappy.

4e
4e was an exciting new thing for me when it hit. We had a few great campaigns in it. But then it started to lose its sparkle in a way 3e didn't. Over time, I started to feel like AEDU added this sense of "sameness" to all the classes. Worse, some of the classes had obvious choices at certain levels (moreso than other RPGs). 4e was a good experience, but it wasn't the "evergreen" RPG that 3e had been. It was more like many other RPGs I'd enjoyed but only needed so much of...GURPS, Paladium, Everway, Traveller.

Essentials (i.e. Pathfinder instead)
Essentials came out. It frankly struck our gaming group as an unexpected move. In a system where I was already fretting over the "sameness" of everything, it came across as "dumbed down" rather than "streamlined." Our group headed to Pathfinder. Pathfinder was full of replayability on the mechanics side (I had a blast with inquisitor). But the numbers creep in 3.5 was marching on, there were way too many modifiers in play and there were a number of item and feat taxes (one player calls it "Mathfinder").

5e
5e hit, and the playtest impressed me. It felt like 3e, basically. But streamlined. Not overly simplistic like Essentials, and not overly fiddly like PF. 5e brought me back, and it has that "evergreen" feel from D&D of the past.

The design philosophy for 5e makes me feel like I wasn't alone in getting here, that my journey from 3e to 5e isn't that uncommon. Maybe I'm fooling myself. Maybe we all just want whatever we were playing at age 20.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My road to 5E started with Red Box Basic, went through AD&D, 2E, 3E, 3.5, and 4E... with major detours into James Bond, 7th Sea, Star Wars d6, Star Trek, Talislanta, Shadowrun 2E, Shadowrun 3E, The Riddle of Steel, Feng Shui, FATE, Fading Suns, and Battlelords of the 23rd Century.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

My progression is very similar, but with a few twists...

BECMI

I started with the Mentzer "Red Box" and it was a very natural progression from the Choose Your Own Adventure books I'd been reading, since it had a solo adventure. After playing the Red Box Fighter in my step-brother's campaign for a little while, I moved on to DMing and never looked back.

2nd Edition

So many more options and classes and races, oh my! I geeked out for a good long while over the expanded options in 2E, and DMed a fair number of totally gonzo, over-the-top campaigns. Right around when the Player's Options books came out is when I ran out of steam, though, and started exploring other game systems.

3rd Edition

I got my first taste of 3E from Dragon Magazine as I was not yet fully plugged in to the internet at that point. It renewed my love of D&D and I stuck with it through its entire lifespan, though, being poor, I managed to avoid the feeling of bloat by simply not picking up every supplement. Savage Species fascinated me in particular and I spent many an hour making my own monster progressions.

4th Edition

By this time, I had immersed myself in the online fandom to such an extent that I was a volunteer on the WotC forums (Gleemax, at the time), and had an "in" with the community management team. So, I got Keep on the Shadowfell and the core books for free. I tried really hard to like 4E and, for a while, I did. I started to drift away as I did with 2E, after a much shorter span of time, however.

Pathfinder

I wanted to like Pathfinder, too, and, for a little while, I did. But, some of the things I liked most about 3.5 were gone (ironically, the things most folks expressly didn't like - spending XP on making magic items, level adjustment, and a few other things). I kept at it, mostly for my wife's sake as she had begun to freelance for 3rd party publishers after making it to Top 16 in RPG Superstar 2011.

Essentials

Around the same time my wife was participating in RPG Superstar 2011, WotC contacted me out of the blue and offered me a job, doing what I had been doing back in the Gleemax days. So, now I was "on the inside" so to speak, albeit in a work-from-home capacity. Essentials was much more to my liking, at least in presentation and style, and got me interested in 4E again. But, part of my job was compiling errata suggestions from the forums. The seemingly endless churn of errata burned me out on 4E again very quickly.

D&D Next

Rumors and whispers of "a new way to play D&D" started floating around the internet in 2011. A few months after I started working for WotC, my boss gave me the inside scoop, while avoiding any phrasing that would make it sound like a new edition. I said, "That sounds like 5th Edition to me." He didn't correct me. Soon enough, I got the alpha playtest packet and got my group to sign NDAs and off to the races we went. The early playtest was pretty rough, but I liked what was there a great deal. In particular, bounded accuracy solved a problem I hadn't realized I was having with 4E and Pathfinder - numbers bloat. Once the public playtest started, my job shifted to compiling playtest feedback and commentary from the WotC forums and here on EN World - weekly reports about what everyone thought about the latest packets and the various articles (Legends & Lore in particular). I didn't burnout on the game because of this like I did with 4E, but rather burned out on the community...the arguments and trolling and edition warring were not much fun to deal with on a daily basis.

5th Edition

When the public playtest was over, WotC didn't really have a need for my position anymore so I was laid off. I had no hard feelings on the matter, to be honest, as the job had become stressful at that point anyway. When the 5E products started coming out, I was 12 again - 5E really makes D&D come alive for me again. I have the child-like joy of discovery I had with BECMI, the gonzo array of options of 2E, and nifty things to tinker with of 3E. It makes me happy.

 

[David Fair]

I started in middle school with the D&D basic set (2nd edition, blue box) but we quickly moved over to AD&D and played that high school and college (I remember the original 1e Unearthed Arcana coming out in my sophomore year... man did we LOVE that book). I skipped 2e as it came out right after i was out of college and I was starting a career; I had no time to play. I also got married in that time. When 3e came out I played again for a while, but kids were getting born right as 3.5e came out and they interfered for a while. Now I am playing 5e with those same kids...

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Essentials (i.e. Pathfinder instead)
Essentials came out. It frankly struck our gaming group as an unexpected move. In a system where I was already fretting over the "sameness" of everything, it came across as "dumbed down" rather than "streamlined." Our group headed to Pathfinder. Pathfinder was full of replayability on the mechanics side (I had a blast with inquisitor). But the numbers creep in 3.5 was marching on, there were way too many modifiers in play and there were a number of item and feat taxes (one player calls it "Mathfinder").

Mathfinder, indeed!

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

My journey...

A friend gave me a copy of the red player's book from the basic set in the 80's. I got to play a mash-up of Basic and AD&D with him and his friends for a few adventures. When he retired from the game, he sold me his AD&D DM's Guide. I picked up an AD&D Player's Handbook and it wasn't long till I was hooked on AD&D and Dragonlance. My friends and I must've had 50+ characters in various parts of Krynn and in different times or timelines (including a wizard that became a lich and another player that had an incredible fighter with a vorpal sword he'd taken from a giant chief). Not to mention going immortal and battling some of the deities from Legends and Lore and taking over their spheres of influence. Those were the days!

Then, graduated high school and moved on to jobs and college. Bought the AD&D 2nd Edition core books and several of the Player's Option Guides, but didn't get a chance to play them much.

Didn't think much about D&D until I happened upon 3.0 by accident. The core books were on sale on Amazon for something like $13 a piece. Couldn't pass them up, so I got them and called some old friends from high school and immediately got a game going.

Then there was 3.X. Loved it. Lots of options, but couldn't keep up with all of them or all the math. But, played and loved it, anyway. When 4th edition came out, a long time friend and I went to the bookstore and looked through the PHB and were unimpressed. It didn't seem like a D&D book. But, Pathfinder did. So, we gradually embraced a mashed up version of 3X/PF and played it for a long time (sticking to the lower levels, as I was a real fan of E6).

Then came 5E. And, the math and advantage/disadvantage seemed so simple. And, it looked like it'd be easy for me to houserule anything I wanted to keep from 3X/PF. So, we've embraced it and are using our 3X/PF materials as we want (converting math as needed). I'm getting characters ready to enter a friend's Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign, soon. And, I'll continue the Shackled City, too. And, we've got about three other homebrew campaigns going, too.

 

[Sacrosanct]

My progression:

Moldvay's Basic. But only a very short time before we went headlong into...

...AD&D. Played it. Loved it. Adored the Dragon magazines. Made a buttload of maps and adventures. Then one day...

...2e came along. Hmm...this is interesting. THAC0 is now an official thing. Oohhh, I like the change to thief skill progression and the bard class. Quickly decided that 1e/2e classes would intermingle. which also quickly led to...

...going back to 1e, but used THAC0, thief skill progression, and priest spheres. then...

....3e came along. Saw it. Played a bit. Stayed with 1e. And then...

....4e came along. Looked at it. Said, "heck no, that's not what I want out of my D&D experience." Stayed with 1e. And then...

....5e came along. First with the playtest. Downloaded it. Got my buddies to play it. We all started to really enjoy it. It was, "Here is what 2e would look like if it were modernized, but we can play in the exact same style that we've been playing all this time." Then...

...when 5e officially came out, we were all in. Better than 2e. More customizable and easier than 1e. But the style of play was the same as 1e. TotM. Rulings over rules. The social aspect of the game is more important than the rules of the game, and 5e supports that very well. Super easy to use all my 1e adventures in 5e.

5e gives me the rules to play the style I want, but doesn't get in the way of us having fun.

 

[Psikerlord#]

2e was my favourite edition until 5e. Now 5e is my favourite. Discovered Roll20 about the same time 5e released. Let the good times roll !

 

[SoulsFury]

I could edit your statement some, but for the most part, you hit my experience. I think I liked 4th edition a bit more than you but enjoyed the bloat of 3E. My group never really used essentials.

 

[Uchawi]

1e/bluebox

I started here and it was a wonderful and new experience. It paralleled my thirst to read fantasy novels. And even through D&D does not mimic the majority of the fantasy genre, it did not matter because I was focused on the experience. The rest of the editions started to feed my hunger for more complexity and options.

2e
This was the best setting to fulfill my desire to explore other worlds, with so many supplements. I started to expand as a DM by adding my twist to officially released content. There was plenty of quality products to choose from. It was probably the level of complexity I enjoy in a game, but it was little unwieldy when dealing with all the sub-systems. Magic reigned supreme.

3e
I started to get burned out on D&D and wanted to try other things. I had a long run playing the GURPS system and converting over worlds like dragon lance for great effect. GURPS created a system with a lot of options, but it was more cohesive than 3E with the theoretical focus on system mastery. The sub-systems ran wild.

4e
This edition gave me a class system that had more of a GURPS focus where the underlying mechanics were simple and predictable, but it did not have the major downfall in GURPS in reference to being totally free form. I would spend a lot of effort in GURPS with all the nuts and bolts, so overall I prefer a class system to do that work for me. It was very easy to DM 4E. I introduced the greatest amount of new players to the game, including women that would never consider the predecessors. However, 4E did go to far with the AEDU structure in regards to limiting the amount of choices each class received. In addition, 4E had dismal support for adventures. So I did not have enough content to keep myself and players interested. The days of reading a fantasy novel, or even watching a movie and being able to create worlds or adventures on the fly were gone. To many other things keep me busy, but I still like RPGs.

Essentials (i.e. Pathfinder skipped)
I took a serious look at Pathfinder as a DM and a player, but it brought to many memories back of 3E and a multitude of sub-systems. In addition, Pathfinder was 3E on steroids, so it was hard to convert over older modules and adventures.

In regards to Essentials, it was a down grade to 4E in my mind. Instead of adding more choices to classes, expanding the ritual/martial practice/alchemy systems, it focused on making 4E even simpler. So it alienated the current supporters of 4E and probably had little chance of bringing over previous edition players currently using their preferred system.

5e
5e hit, and the playtest impressed me too, but then I started to see too many compromises for the sake of tradition or simplicity. The game was no longer transparent like 4E in regards to action economy, or classes. The spell sub-systems was brought back to the game, and martial classes were dumbed down without any meta-mechanics like maneuvers to support them. Other 4E ideas like rituals/martial practices/alchemy suffer the same problem made worse by 5E approach on keeping things light without much details.

I believe 5E is great for a casual game amongst friends, just like getting together to play cards is fun, but it is too simple to maintain any long term interest. But it also has the same problem of 4E without much content (adventures/worlds) to explore to keeps things interesting. It would have been great if they introduced a new world.