D&D 5E When Did 5E Peak Quality Wise?

[doctorbadwolf]

It hasn’t, yet, I hope.

I prefer Tasha’s overall to Xanathar’s, though I use both extensively, and new adventures have a lot more usefulness for me than older ones, because they have more stuff that can meaningfully be used outside that adventure.

The art has also improved, IMO, and I’ll take limited lore over the garbage they filled Volos and mordy’s fome of toes with any day. Especially since I don’t use all the detailed meticulous lore for settings like FR, and I wouldn’t ever want to.

I want a gilded skeleton, not 6 books, a novel line, and a video game. I love the Eberron book, but it’s the only detailed setting book I’ve enjoyed in years.

I want a page at most on even my favorite places in FR. Preferably written similarly to the Wildemount book’s sections on cities.

Anyway, we will see this year. Maybe it’ll end up that it peaked last year.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't really understand the premise of this thread. "Peaked" and "Golden Age" mean something very different. And both are subjective, unless you apply some kind of metric, like sales. Mostly this just seems like another excuse for people, many of whom don't play it, to dump on 5e.

 

[Hussar]

if you measure this in typos per page and book bindings, I agree.


I just do not find their new books all that interesting, I do hope this is about to change though. Going by what I was interested in, it was frontloaded up to Tasha's, with Tasha and anything since rarely having any interest for me,

But since when does "I am not interested" mean "this is poor quality"?

Why can't people just say they don't like something?

5e started with Horde of the Dragon Queen - a pretty lackluster adventure that has a number of pretty serious issues - the travel chapter is just brutal. Then we had Sword Coast Adventurers Guide, which, frankly, was pretty universally panned. I've never heard anyone say the book is actually good.

Then we had a number of other releases, to varying responses.

So, I would say that the quality has stayed pretty much within certain tolerances since day 1.

 

[mamba]

But since when does "I am not interested" mean "this is poor quality"?


Why can't people just say they don't like something?

I guess this depends on how you define quality. The bottom line is the likelihood that I own a 5e product has fallen by over 50% since Tasha's when I look at products up to Tasha and the ones since then.

5e started with Horde of the Dragon Queen - a pretty lackluster adventure that has a number of pretty serious issues - the travel chapter is just brutal. Then we had Sword Coast Adventurers Guide, which, frankly, was pretty universally panned. I've never heard anyone say the book is actually good.

Then we had a number of other releases, to varying responses.

So, I would say that the quality has stayed pretty much within certain tolerances since day 1.

yes, it is not a straight line, did not rate HotDQ as something I am interested in either, but the frequency of the misses has drastically increased for me.

 

[Zardnaar]

It hasn’t, yet, I hope.

I prefer Tasha’s overall to Xanathar’s, though I use both extensively, and new adventures have a lot more usefulness for me than older ones, because they have more stuff that can meaningfully be used outside that adventure.

The art has also improved, IMO, and I’ll take limited lore over the garbage they filled Volos and mordy’s fome of toes with any day. Especially since I don’t use all the detailed meticulous lore for settings like FR, and I wouldn’t ever want to.

I want a gilded skeleton, not 6 books, a novel line, and a video game. I love the Eberron book, but it’s the only detailed setting book I’ve enjoyed in years.

I want a page at most on even my favorite places in FR. Preferably written similarly to the Wildemount book’s sections on cities.

Anyway, we will see this year. Maybe it’ll end up that it peaked last year.

Well Eberrons the best campaign book but I also liked Theros and Ravnica. Throw in Xanathars which is my favorite splat book.....

Tashas is essentially errata and power creep. Kinda like 1E UA be careful what you allow.

 

[Zardnaar]

Really? You've noticed numerous editing errors in, post Tasha's books? Binding is poor? Bad printing?

What, exactly, is the quality that is declining?

Whatever it means to you. If you think the peak quality wise is right now that's fine. The adventures have never really been great with the odd exception but the crunch books since Tashas have been underwhelming and the adventures have gotten worse.

 

[Hussar]

Whatever it means to you. If you think the peak quality wise is right now that's fine. The adventures have never really been great with the odd exception but the crunch books since Tashas have been underwhelming and the adventures have gotten worse.

Worse? How? Candlekeep is solid. Light of Xarxes is a blast. I’m just about to start a Dtagonheist game.

If you refuse to actually define what you mean by quality, then all I can seem to deduce is Quality = stuff I like.

Same old same old.

 

[Umbran]

Certainly. I mean McDonalds is popular food. An appeal to 'most popular' version just isnt going to do it.

Okay, so... this argument again. I'll probably regret it, but I'll bite.

The problem with this position is that it assumes a pretty narrow definition of "quality" without stating that definition, and effectively takes the position that definition is the only one that matters.

Meanwhile, McDonalds pays more attention to quality management and assurance, and cares more about measures of its quality, than your favorite Michelin star restaurant. But they are just managing the quality of aspects you, personally, probably don't give a fig about. They measure and pay much attention to the quality of aspects that lead to popularity. The resulting popularity is an indicator of that quality.

And it is okay that you, personally, don't care about those aspects. But if you don't look beyond your own cares for ideas about quality, you miss a great deal.

As a personal example, I'll raise a movie from 2005 - Sin City, starring Bruce Willis and many other big names.

I hate this film. I find it both physically and emotionally unpleasant to watch. But, I recognize that I hate it because it is an incredibly well-crafted, high quality film. It does what it intends to do extremely well. But what it is doing is something I intensely dislike.

We could further go into dishes made with cilantro - to many, this is one of the most common and welcome herbs in their cuisine. But, for biological reasons, to some folks it tastes strongly like soap. For those latter people, they will have a bad experience eating a dish with a lot of cilantro in it, coming away feeling they've just eaten a bar of Irish Spring - but that doesn't mean the dish is low-quality, poorly made.

 

[mamba]

If you refuse to actually define what you mean by quality, then all I can seem to deduce is Quality = stuff I like.

pretty sure that is how everyone in this thread has been using it

 

[Lanefan]

In answer to the thread title: one hopes the best is yet to come, as despite its unarguable popularity 5e still has quite a bit of headroom for improvement.