D&D General The DM Shortage

[overgeeked]

Easiest D&D to run is the clones with ascending AC but I haven't tested out new clones like OSE more things like Basic Fantasy or Castles and Crusades.

OSE is even easier than B/X. It has an optional rule for ascending AC, the rules are better organized, and the layout is more spread out on the page and clearly marked. It's a dream, honestly. And if you want the cool stuff from AD&D, use OSE Advanced Fantasy. All the AD&D goodness imported to the B/X chassis. It's fantastic.

 

[Reynard]

Burden’s on you to show Cyclopedia was easier than 5e PHB.

That's pretty self evident. Just as a very basic example: there are fewer moving parts: classes, spells, monsters, skills, etc. Fewer moving parts means less complexity. Less complexity means an easier time running it.

Not that the RC didn't up the complexity from B/X. All that weapon mastery nonsense is definitely a mind bender. But even given that, BECMI is simpler than 5E. Just the presence of less basic arithmetic is evidence.

 

[Zardnaar]

OSE is even easier than B/X. It has an optional rule for ascending AC, the rules are better organized, and the layout is more spread out on the page and clearly marked. It's a dream, honestly. And if you want the cool stuff from AD&D, use OSE Advanced Fantasy. All the AD&D goodness imported to the B/X chassis. It's fantastic.

Yeah I've heard that it's just expensive shipping it here and probably wouldn't get to play it even if I did.

 

[Faolyn]

No. That Gygax's prose was so terrible that people didn't want to wade through that to try to understand the rules underneath it. The rules were, generally, fairly simple. Is the thief hidden? Make a % roll vs whatever is says on that chart. One chart that takes up about 1/3 of a page and a short paragraph description. Same thing in 5E? Rogue's DEX mod + prof bonus + (expertise?) + a d20 roll vs possible observer's WIS mod + prof bonus + (expertise?) + 10 or a d20 roll. About a dozen pages of rules, people still can't manage to get it right, and there's still arguments about how it's supposed to work.

The 5e version is a lot smaller than a 1/3-page chart. Especially when you realize that the same calculation is used for practically every single roll in 5e, and 5e is a simpler version of the exact same roll use for practically everything in 3x.

Am I the only one who remembers that basically no one ever bothered using those? Well, the list goes on.

Saying that the game was filled with rules "basically no one ever bothered to use" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

My experience is exactly the opposite. We didn't have any rules lawyers to deal with until 5E. And now they're literally everywhere.

The letter and forum columns of Dragon Magazine would beg to differ.

You're lucky. In my experience 5E players will argue until they're blue in the face about literally everything that isn't perfectly according to the letter of the rules. And if you read a rule differently than they do, they rage quit. The whole rulings not rules seems to have utterly missed them.

That's not been my experience, so... do two personal experiences cancel each other out?

 

[J.Quondam]

OSE is even easier than B/X. It has an optional rule for ascending AC, the rules are better organized, and the layout is more spread out on the page and clearly marked. It's a dream, honestly. And if you want the cool stuff from AD&D, use OSE Advanced Fantasy. All the AD&D goodness imported to the B/X chassis. It's fantastic.

I finally bit the bullet on OSE. Mine arrives tomorrow.
Woo-hoo!!

 

[overgeeked]

Professor DM has a response to Questing Beast's video.

 

[Reynard]

Professor DM has a response to Questing Beast's video.

Good video. Thanks.

 

[Zardnaar]

Good video. Thanks.

Watching that atm. Was gonna post it.

 

[tetrasodium]

Professor DM has a response to Questing Beast's video.

Good video, the shift of "as a referee the gm interprets rules & decides..." phrase in the dmg to the PHB & much more explicit rewritten versions he mentions towards the end is the kind of thing that 5e desperately needed. Too often 5e pays lip service to gm empowerment in a footnote somewhere & then provides player facing elements* that shackle the dm or allow a player to weaponize the social contract.

* Wordings of abilities, overly PC friendly rules, & specific omissions that can make rebuilding the vacant hole elsewhere difficult.

 

[overgeeked]

A related, if tangential, video just popped up. Again from Questing Beast.


I think that is a pretty good explanation of a lot of tension we see in things like this. There certainly are gamers who want the official rules to be X, Y, or Z and all the arguments about house rules or no, etc fall into this category as well.