D&D General Rant: Sometimes I Hate the D&D Community

[Yaarel]

Spoiler: the video

I enjoyed the YouTube by Indestructoboy. He voices his love for D&D 5e, and his frustration with it as a DM.

A central point is, 5e is easy for players to play, but less easy for DMs to DM. All of the mechanical burdens are on the DM. The players can do pretty much whatever they want. The DM has to figure out how to make this freeform workable as a game. Different DMs have different feelings about this burden. Some DMs ignore mechanical rules, with a style that can feel arbitrary or inconsistent. Other DMs defacto rewrite a new game from scratch. A complaint is, 5e is rules-light for players. But it remains rules-heavy for DMs.



Indestructoboy calls for WotC to give more products that make the 5e DMs job easier.

The DM needs solid, reliable, and easy to understand, rules for creating new combat encounters. Relatedly, there must be a clear way to know exactly how much more powerful one magic item is than an other magic item. Hopefully, the anniversary DMs Guide will revamp and recallibrate these mechanical issues for ease of use.

Personally, I hope all things in the DMs Guide evaluate according to their appropriate character level. Whether a powerful creature, a powerful magic item, a powerful spell, a powerful feat or boon, a powerful race or class feature such as at-will flight, need to assign to a specific character level where the DM can be confident that it is unlikely to imbalance the gaming engine. If a DM wants to introduce a monster whose level is way too high, that is fine and can be fun on occasion, but the disparities in level should inform the DM how disruptive the situation is likely to be. Similarly, if the DM wants to grant powerful magic items to players, the mechanical rules need to inform the DM what the DM is getting oneself into. Some things can be blurry and refer to "tiers". Even here, I prefer each tier to refer to a useful cluster of levels, namely 1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, and 17-20. The 9-12 is important because it works like neither level 5 nor level 16. These tiers correspond to when the profiency bonus improves, so there is a real mechanical upgrade for each of these tiers. An adventure is an example of something that can target a tier, rather than a specific level.

As far as I can tell. 5e doesnt need more rules. It needs the rules that it already has to work better. If character level becomes a universal measure to measure everything from characters to monsters to magic items, then have a single metric makes the DMs job much easier. Of course, the assigned levels actually need to work reliably, mechanically.

 

[Azzy]

I think I'm starting to agree with the OP's premise about the community...

Agreed. It's sad and maddening.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I am Norwegian. I and many other Nordic citizens sometimes feel concern about how D&D portrays Nordic peoples. Nordic peoples do have fun and silliness with their own culturally sacred heritages. We get that. That is not a problem. The problem is the stereotyping. D&D typically portrays "Nordic inspiration" as if being dirty, unkempt, uneducated, Conan the Barbarian in "viking horns". Not only is that stereotype weirdly untrue, it is insulting. But the insult persists within many D&D traditions.

This whole post raises some good points (not quoting the whole thing because it is long).

I would add that something that North Americans like myself don’t have to grapple with is that our culture is so omnipresent that we don’t have to deal with an incorrect characterization that becomes so prevalent that it overwhelms the truth.

Imagine a Japanese anime in which George Washington is portrayed as a sexy anime catgirl and Abraham Lincoln is jacked and defeats the Confederacy due to a demonic pact. Now imagine that that the anime is wildly successful and that it is the only portrayal most people are going to see. That anime is going to shape not just their impression of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but of all Americans.

I think that is why a lot of minority cultures are very sensitive about how their cultures are portrayed in media.

 

[tetrasodium]

I enjoyed the YouTube by Indestructoboy. He voices his love for D&D 5e, and his frustration with it as a DM.

A central point is, 5e is easy for players to play, but less easy for DMs to DM. All of the mechanical burdens are on the DM. The players can do pretty much whatever they want. The DM has to figure out how to make this freeform workable as a game. Different DMs have different feelings about this burden. Some DMs ignore mechanical rules, with a style that can feel arbitrary or inconsistent. Other DMs defacto rewrite a new game from scratch. A complaint is, 5e is rules-light for players. But it remains rules-heavy for DMs.



Indestructoboy calls for WotC to give more products that make the 5e DMs job easier.

The DM needs solid, reliable, and easy to understand, rules for creating new combat encounters. Relatedly, there must be a clear way to know exactly how much more powerful one magic item is than an other magic item. Hopefully, the anniversary DMs Guide will revamp and recallibrate these mechanical issues for ease of use.

Personally, I hope all things in the DMs Guide evaluate according to their appropriate character level. Whether a powerful creature, a powerful magic item, a powerful spell, a powerful feat or boon, a powerful race or class feature such as at-will flight, need to assign to a specific character level where the DM can be confident that it is unlikely to imbalance the gaming engine. If a DM wants to introduce a monster whose level is way too high, that is fine and can be fun on occasion, but the disparities in level should inform the DM how disruptive the situation is likely to be. Similarly, if the DM wants to grant powerful magic items to players, the mechanical rules need to inform the DM what the DM is getting oneself into. Some things can be blurry and refer to "tiers". Even here, I prefer each tier to refer to a useful cluster of levels, namely 1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, and 17-20. The 9-12 is important because it works like neither level 5 nor level 16. These tiers correspond to when the profiency bonus improves, so there is a real mechanical upgrade for each of these tiers. An adventure is an example of something that can target a tier, rather than a specific level.

As far as I can tell. 5e doesnt need more rules. It needs the rules that it already has to work better. If character level becomes a universal measure to measure everything from characters to monsters to magic items, then have a single metric makes the DMs job much easier. Of course, the assigned levels actually need to work reliably, mechanically.

I made my post with the links after being up a bit late reading/watching them. 5e being a heavy burden for the GM in order to provide players with the appearance of what seems to be a rules light game is a good way to phrase it that gets away from the endless list of things that can look little in isolation if everything else is assumed to be fine or mostly fine most games but putting it in terms of. I do think that there are a lot of rules that need to be added in order to make other areas "work reliably" though.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Imagine a Japanese anime in which George Washington is portrayed as a sexy anime catgirl and Abraham Lincoln is jacked and defeats the Confederacy due to a demonic pact.

can someone please make this anime... and make sure they team up (age difference be damned... rule of cool it)

edit: demonic pact warlock lincoln and sexy anime catgirl Washington need to have chemistry and a will they wont they question, give the last episode Jon Wilks booth a mech.

 

[Vaalingrade]

can someone please make this anime... and make sure they team up (age difference be damned... rule of cool it)

edit: demonic pact warlock lincoln and sexy anime catgirl Washington need to have chemistry and a will they wont they question, give the last episode Jon Wilks booth a mech.

I cried at the part where Grant finally reached Super General III.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If agency and freedom are that important to a player, I wish they would just say so before the campaign. I can't accommodate players if they won't tell me what they want.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Agreed. It's sad and maddening.

But the community ~looooves <3 <3~ you.

Which... is a much bigger problem admittedly.

 

[theCourier]

can someone please make this anime... and make sure they team up (age difference be damned... rule of cool it)

edit: demonic pact warlock lincoln and sexy anime catgirl Washington need to have chemistry and a will they wont they question, give the last episode Jon Wilks booth a mech.

They don't need to, it's called Fate/Grand Order and it already exists

 

[Alzrius]

They don't need to, it's called Fate/Grand Order and it already exists

adds to watchlist