D&D 5E What D&D Does That is So Good: A Celebration of 5e's Advantages

[Marc_C]

But, if you are doing gamedesign, isn't it just better to embrace this fact, give your baby an awesome name and work on it, like, for real?

That is exactly what happened to me in 2019. It kept working on 5e house rules (unplayed and untested) until I realized I wanted to go further. I ditched D&D and started from scratch. The pandemic gave me more time to read other game systems and write my own RPG. It's much more demanding but I find it more rewarding.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I didn't say anything about making a game from scratch. I'm bad with words.

I say, screw houserulling. Stop living in the shadow of D&D. Steal their engine, scrap off their paint, smash it to pieces and rebuild it a new. Give your damn game a cool name, that rolls pleasantly on the tongue.

So people wouldn't call you "oh, that weird dude with with a 100+ pages of houserules on naval combat", but "author of Burial at Sea, a cool seafaring 5e hack"

1. People would still call me, "That weird dude."

2. Smash the control images, smash the control machines.

 

[Campbell]

5e has a fairly robust and extremely accessible combat mini game that is a lot of fun to play.

It's core model of a team of adventurers tackling heroic adventures is extremely casual player friendly. The drop in Adventurers League format shows the power of that model to get people in the door.

There's also pretty good adventure support.

It's a great game with loads of mainstream appeal that is extremely good at what it does.

It's really not anymore flexible from a technical standpoint than any other game, but it does not need to be. It's great st what it does and people like what it does.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

5e has a fairly robust and extremely accessible combat mini game that is a lot of fun to play.

It's core model of a team of adventurers tackling heroic adventures is extremely casual player friendly. The drop in Adventurers League format shows the power of that model to get people in the door.

There's also pretty good adventure support.

It's a great game with loads of mainstream appeal that is extremely good at what it does.

It's really not anymore flexible from a technical standpoint than any other game, but it does not need to be. It's great st what it does and people like what it does.

I think that a starting analysis, like yours, is actually really helpful when people try and understand what makes D&D good and why it is popular.

The idea of a team of co-equal adventurers (the party) is engrained in D&D and part & parcel to TTRPGs; it is much easier to envision "the party" in this genre for a number of reasons (the legacy of Tolkien and other fantasy authors being among them) than it is in many other areas.
Needing only one person (the DM) who is rules-savvy and comfortable with narration allows it to be newbie and causal friendly.
The simple, "DM describes environment, players describe what they want to do, DM narrates the results," loop is simple and easy to understand.
The zero-to-hero, gain new abilities and power and items over time, is such a successful and powerful rewards-loop that it is the basis for a good deal of the CRPG industry (and, arguably, even more).
And then, contrary to what you ended with, I believe that the core rules supporting and encouraging multiple modes of play, from variant rules to the interminable TOTM/GRID debate, creates an atmosphere that encourages flexibility in a manner unlike most other TTRPGs.

 

[jayoungr]

I agree that the things you listed are good, but I find it interesting that you can't find anything about the design or rules that you think is worthy of praise. Are popularity, tradition, and flexibility really all that D&D has going for it?

 

[Sacrosanct]

In addition to the reasons you gave:

The brand matters. A lot. Any person who took a marketing class in college will tell you that. It's the reason why a generic brand of coke, for all intents and purposes is the same as Coca-Cola, doesn't sell as well as Coke despite being much cheaper.

D&D has that.

It also has a major reach and a big budget. Not just for marketing, but people who play D&D sponsored by WoTC all over social media.

5e does a lot of things right, which makes sense since a lot of people-hours and money went into its development. There's no way a smaller indie publisher like me can fund the work of hundreds of people who were involved just for the PHB. That results in a genuine good game, which also helps it a lot popularity wise. It meets the expectation of the brand. It's not "new Coke". It's the familiarity of the brand.

 

[Blue Orange]

All the stuff the grognards hate is probably good for getting new players in.

Low difficulty level and rapid progression hook people in. A wide variety of ancestry and class options let people create inventively weird characters (tiefling artificer?).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I agree that the things you listed are good, but I find it interesting that you can't find anything about the design or rules that you think is worthy of praise. Are popularity, tradition, and flexibility really all that D&D has going for it?

Well, I could say that, um, system really doesn't matter that much, but I didn't feel like opening that can of worms. Instead, I would say that 5te incorporates some of the best aspects of the prior versions of D&D, while maintaining a lightness to the ruleset that can either be drilled into to give it more complexity (such as the upcoming Level Up) or removed without breaking the system.

What I find most interesting isn't the particular rules or parts of the design that I think are worthy of praise, but instead that such a wide variety of different people find different aspects of the design or rules worthy of praise. You can have some people say that 5e is awesome for all the stuff that grognards hate, and grognards say that 5e is awesome because it's easy to run a 1e module on the fly, and both are right.

 

[Sacrosanct]

All the stuff the grognards hate is probably good for getting new players in.

This is nonsense. I am a grognard, and I like a lot of things 5e does. Bringing in more players is good for the hobby, and good for all of us. 5e does a good balance of letting you play how you want. For a grog like me, that means rulings over rules, and level 1 PCs that aren't already superheroes out of the gate (although they are much more powerful than low level PCs from earlier editions I like and grew up with). it allows you to play quickly, and not be required to play on a battlemap with a million conditions you need to keep track of.

And...

it allows to you to do the opposite of all those things too. So people who don't share my preferences can play their way too.

Whenever someone makes a comment like yours, it tells me that you aren't really knowledgeable about the people you are insulting.

Edit For example, these grogs who you're insulting prefer a game style that led to a meteoric rise of the game, so based on history alone, your comment makes no sense. Obviously a whole lot of new people were brought into the hobby playing a gamestyle that "grogs" like. We all, including grogs, were new players at one point.

 

[loverdrive]

The idea of a team of co-equal adventurers (the party) is engrained in D&D and part & parcel to TTRPGs; it is much easier to envision "the party" in this genre for a number of reasons (the legacy of Tolkien and other fantasy authors being among them) than it is in many other areas.

I'd say the concept of the party is treated as an important part of TTRPGs because of D&D, and not something, uhm, I want to say "valuable on its own", but I'm not sure. Required? I don't know. Damn why I can't just switch to Russian or Arabic.

Ok. I don't think that people outside of the hobby necessarily expect being the party. Someone who did dabble in something like Gears of War the Board Game (the best board game, ever, and not only because I love chainsaw guns) or Arkham Horror or party-based vidya maybe does, but I don't think that's universal (or even common).

I, personally, grew up on Conan (who isn't particularly famous for having a stable party) and in my first game ever expected that my character is going to go on adventures alone and maybe meet other PCs (which may mean clashing swords with them). My wife came into TTRPGs from forum games, where a game with a party is an outlier, and not a norm. And I often see people suggesting to split up to tackle the problems at the same time -- a thing that makes us boomers go "DON'T SPLIT THE PAAAARTY!".

Party-based game isn't something bad, but it's something that you need to unlearn if you, well, ain't running/playing a party-based game.

5e does a lot of things right, which makes sense since a lot of people-hours and money went into its development. There's no way a smaller indie publisher like me can fund the work of hundreds of people who were involved just for the PHB. That results in a genuine good game, which also helps it a lot popularity wise. It meets the expectation of the brand. It's not "new Coke". It's the familiarity of the brand.

It also gives you as an indie publisher much more flexibility. You have nothing to lose. There are no hoards of old fans that gonna crucify you if you dare to make a 4E.