My Own Fifth Edition

Dungeonosophy · Oct 2, 2014

I promised the EN World community that I'd make My Own Fifth Edition.

Other projects in life are calling me away from tabletop roleplay for now, but I'll share my unfinished rough draft, such as it is. The PDF is at the bottom of this page:

https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/my-own-fifth-edition

Here's the cover:

I need to step away from EN World and TTRPGs for awhile.

Thanks to the responders, viewers, and administrators of my recent one-man foray into concretely picturing and frankly voicing (without demanding) what conditions I perceive would really evoke a Golden Age of tabletop, pencil-and-paper roleplay:

"From Open Gaming to Free Culture: For a Third Golden Age"
"I'll Make My Own Fifth Edition"
"What I Want: 17 books or book series (and two boxes) for a Golden Age"
"FREE D&D! and D&D COMPATIBLE: two new licenses for 2015" (a more nuanced revision of my original All Public Domain request)

Now I humbly ask: Mike Mearls, WotC LLC, and Hasbro Inc., would you enact nearly all of this, as a freely-given, unforced gift to the TTRPG lifestyle, culture, and community?

Good gaming! TTRPGs are my most favorite form of play.

Shane Henry / DnDPhilmont
https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/home

Mercurius · Oct 2, 2014

You deserve XP, which I gave you, for the wildness (and often glint of brilliance) of your ideas, and your fearlessness in coming back, again and again, despite the rough treatment. Hang in there, Shane.

Wrathamon · Oct 2, 2014

.... tick, tick, tick ... waiting for the boom

Tormyr · Oct 2, 2014

I don't know if you are taking edits, but it says there are 3 kinds of armor and then lists weapons instead of armor.

Morrus · Oct 2, 2014

That cover art must have taken you ages to draw!

SilverfireSage · Oct 2, 2014

This really doesn't make any sense to me, in pretty much every way. In the "White Book" as it were, you state that you want there to be a shoe string budget, with no extra books, no splat, no campaign guides, or anything of the sort. Yet later on, you mention that there will be a variety of creation tool books that will come out to help you design your own pantheons and worlds. Then later on you say that there will be the "Orange Book" which will include everything ever from every D&D book. I guess I just don't understand why. Why is this necessary? If you want to make your own version of these rules and play with your friends, go ahead, great. If you want them to be posted on here, well there they are, anyone can use them. But reading your other posts about how you dislike 5E's "price gouging" and want it to be public domain and simultaneously want them to create more books and compendiums than they ever have before is very incongruous. You want them to make your cake, give it to you how you like it, without you paying anything, and then let you eat it, and afterwards, for free, change what you don't like about it. You go further to say that you know that everything is copyrighted and this is in no way a challenge to that, but then call your game "Dungeons and Dragons" and use their artwork on the cover.

It seems like you like D and D. It seems like you thoroughly enjoy it and the work its creators have done to make it for you. But it also seems that you do not care to reward them for that, which is, frankly, terrible.

diaglo · Oct 3, 2014

OD&D(1974) is the only true game. All the other editions are just poor imitations of the real thing.

barrowwight · Oct 3, 2014

After seeing your cover I have to wonder. Do you happen to work for Outlaw Press?

Remathilis · Oct 4, 2014

Ok, I bit and looked at your PDF. I didn't read it thoroughly, but I gave it some eyeball time.

My initial impression is that it looks like any other OSR game based around OD&D/Basic, with some house-rules added in. Its very skeletal (as it doesn't seem you actually define classes or class abilities, nor spells) and basically isn't much different (in tone or spirit) than Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord. Certainly, it screams NOTHING of "Fifth Edition" except perhaps upwards AC (something that is an option in S&W I believe) so once you strip out the Free Culture Mumbo-Jumbo, its basically Yet-Another-Retro-Clone.

It looks interesting (though not my bag; if I was gung-ho into retros, I'd do Basic Fantasy) and I wish you luck (and certainly, check out S&W and LL for inspiration).

GreenTengu · Oct 4, 2014

I have to look through... and my initial impression is...

WTH is this crap?
Okay, so you create a bunch of level 0 "normies" of all the captacular names you could give something. They are determined by randomly rolling 3d6 from the first attribute to the last and you randomly roll a race which consists of "elf, dwarf, halfling or human"-- all which an equal chance of occurring, mind you, and none of them particularly well balanced against one another. In fact, let's face it-- it is just a bland attempt to put them back to the first draft-- in other words, the first set of really random and arbitrary abilities initially assigned to those races.

Even if this was supposed to be simulationist.... where is the chance to end up with a gnome, hobgoblin, or (half-)orc that generally appears in every bar, tavern, thieves guild and mercenary guild within most D&D worlds?

You know what. Nevermind that. Let's focus on taking these random characters who have a bunch of attributes that likely don't actually contribute to survival or completion of this same level 1 adventure. And the PCs agree to take one of their utterly randomly generated characters they have no real attachment to through this exact same adventure 12 times.

At that point, all the survivors become level 1 and take one of the four most dull and unoriginal classes. The can multiclass between them all they like, so I suppose that's something...

Okay, so only on the 13th adventure will players actually begin to see anything "new". And by "new" we mean old, tired, worn and familiar prewritten adventures that they will be railroaded through because the characters are specifically expected to have no personality, motive, ambitions, desires or emotions that would distract them from following the one path to the end of the adventure.

All in all, this seems to be an attempt to change D&D to the point that it well... would not only not be a roleplaying game, but so that it would be played best by computers rather than people. I am not even sure people would find this crap playable even if one were to turn it into a computer game. Who would want to run through the same exact level 12 times with utterly randomly generated characters that in no way reflect anything that came out of their imagination, but is just a random set of numbers on a sheet with no actual CHARACTER attached to it.

You know, Mr. Philmont, all considered-- it becomes clear to me that you have never actually played a roleplaying game. You seem to be willing to pour an enormous about of effort and work into ultimately proving that you have never actually played one and have no idea what makes one good or enjoyable. Basically, your entire aim seems to be to take Dungeons & Dragons and violently violate it while strangling every last breath of life from it.