Pulling the plug

[Ninja-radish]

I'm curious, did you primarily play 5e or run it?
I find that it's much more engaging to run, personally, because it tickles my nostalgia for the long AD&D campaign I ran back in the day.

I'm currently running 5E. My group really wanted to play it and I didn't. I tried playing a character for a few sessions and hated it. After the delicious crunchiness of 4E and Pathfinder (I'm a mechanics guy) I couldn't deal with the simplicity of 5E. I would get really bored during games so I volunteered to DM instead.

I wouldn't say 5E is more engaging to run for me. However I would say running it is the "lesser of two evils". I still have major issues with the system but at least as DM I can house rule things that bother me.
As I mentioned I am a mechanics guy so I'm definitely not the target audience for 5E. My opinion is just that; one opinion among many.

 

[pogre]

Random thought: I think there is a considerable difference between leaving a game you tried a few times and leaving one you have played consistently for a few decades.

You're not leaving the game really - just this edition and that's cool. That happened last edition a lot, and thus, Pathfinder was born.

I'm not trying to belittle your emotions - I hope I don't come off that way.

When WFRP 3e came out we tried it and found it not to our tastes. We sold the 3e stuff and stuck with 2e. It didn't feel like we were abandoning the game, just using a ruleset that suited our style.

A similar thing happened with 4e for my group. We were playtesters and bought the core. I really enjoyed the game, but my group did not. We sold our books and moved on. We played a fun little Pathfinder campaign for a couple of years after that.

The purpose of my post is to be reassuring - I hope you see it that way.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

For me 5E is the first D&D edition where I didn't even get all of the core books. I even bought the core three for 4E, which I actively hated. I wanted to like 5E, and there's a lot of good stuff in there. It didn't inspire me though. Some of it actually left me cold. I thought the backgrounds were a good idea poorly executed - I felt like it narrowed the scope of RP possibilities rather than enhancing it. My favorite D&D to play is 2E and the best one to read is certainly AD&D. If I get another D&D game going it will use one of these. Or maybe 6E will catch my interest whenever it comes around.

 

[Miladoon]

Stay optimistic.

The sole purpose of 4th edition was to get me reacquainted with my OSR roots. The money I saved helped me buy a bunch of tools for my garage. I didn't sell my 4E PHB because it does not make a difference about how I feel about it. It's just there. In my bookshelf next to other games I don't play. 4E is unsupported but it is not gone. Play it!

Do something else, enjoy it, and don't worry about 5E. I skipped the 2nd edition entirely. Play around with Seventh Sanctum and other random generators to help you with inspiration.

 

[Lanefan]

How dare you! I cast Force Engagement!

Fail your save on that and he'll cast Force Marriage...

 

[Lanefan]

But for the record, I absolutely loved running 4th Edition. I adapted Red Hand of Doom from 3/3.5e and ran it online for a couple years. It was so well organized and flexible. The digital tools were invaluable. Everything I needed to run an encounter could be laid out in front of me, and I never needed to look up anything. That was my D&D. But unlike everyone else's edition, I did not get a friendly OGL for anyone to use after the rug was pulled from underneath. I don't have access to those invaluable tools to let me continue evolving it. And no one will likely be able to develop them on their own. I know I lack the skills. And if I did, there is no license that will allow me to do so easily.

Er...why do you need an OGL, or a licence, in order to keep playing/running/evolving 4e?

I have to assume you've got enough material (i.e. rulebooks, adventure modules, etc.) to run 4e right now. You obviously know the game, and know how it works, and have some experience running it...which means by default you also have enough knowledge to evolve it on your own. You know what works well, you know what works well enough, and you know what might need a little tweaking. So go ahead and tweak it. Evolve it. Make it what you want it to be, then run it for your crew. In person, not online, for those same people you were thinking of running in 5e.

Sure you won't have the online tools, but who needs those anyway? You've got your own brain, and pen/paper/computer to build your ideas on - and that's all you need.

Lan-"a fine example of why not to depend on online anything, as it might not always be there"-efan

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Er...why do you need an OGL, or a licence, in order to keep playing/running/evolving 4e?

Why did we need one for d20/3rd Edition? The short answer is we don't. But what about everything that came about because of that? Pathfinder is the most obvious example, and I think a great many people are thankful for that. Hero Labs has officially licenses for both 3.5e and Pathfinder, which I think a great many people enjoy. And so many other companies have continued producing supplemental material and tools to continue their games long after the parent company has abandoned them. So while we don't need an open license for any of this, can you imagine what the last decade would have been like without one?

Yes, I have a great big brain. Which means I understand that using a tool to spend less time and effort doing something that would take a lot more effort without one leaves more time and energy for other things. That is being efficient, not lazy or feebleminded. I don't need it (and yes, I have the offline ones that are buggy and difficult to modify using other people's hacks), but that doesn't mean I don't want it. And frankly, if WotC is done with 4th Edition, it seems to me that keeping others from making use of it with a similar OGL means they don't want to give anyone else a chance to do it better. And if any edition is in need of some cleaning up and making improvements, it is 4e.

Jacob "smiley face is your friend" Lewis

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fail your save on that and he'll cast Force Marriage...

Material Components: 1 shotgun (focus), 2 shells. Shells are not consumed if the saving throw is failed.

Er...why do you need an OGL, or a licence, in order to keep playing/running/evolving 4e?

Oh, you could probably keep running 4e for 20 years or so before you run out of interesting stuff to do with it - longer if your roster of players changes up now and then & some old things become new again, or you were just really, really set in your ways.
I've been running a campaign since the end of 2011, it's 24th, now, it'll probably end sometime in 2018, and that's just /one/ campaign.
But ongoing development keeps the community around a game vibrant, and games like D&D benefit from at least a trickle of new material.
Also, the underlying system had tremendous potential for other genres, and that wasn't much explored thanks to the very restrictive GSL, even when it was the flagship, and now would be very risky to try, indeed.

But, really, the point (the point I made in the post your quoted, not the point of the thread) isn't that you can't, the point is that the OP can, and is, in spite of the fact he has less support to do so than everyone who felt 'betrayed' and 'forced out' by WotC with 4e, and felt that justified their edition warring.

 

[Imaro]

But, really, the point (the point I made in the post your quoted, not the point of the thread) isn't that you can't, the point is that the OP can, and is, in spite of the fact he has less support to do so than everyone who felt 'betrayed' and 'forced out' by WotC with 4e, and felt that justified their edition warring.

One of these days I want to start a forum game to see who can guess how many times Tony Vargas can manage to bring up the edition wars in a single thread...

 

[Tony Vargas]

One of these days I want to start a forum game to see who can guess how many times Tony Vargas can manage to bring up the edition wars in a single thread...

Winner should definitely be the one who gets closest without going over, otherwise, it'd be too easy for you to guess really high and just start edition-warring until you get to the desired number.