D&D 5E Why do you play 5e? What game did you come from?

[jbear]

I began with Hero Quest. My parents had specifically prohibited me from any type of contact with the soul stealing game know as Dungeons and Dragons. They did not specifically prohibit me from a game called Hero Quest. From there I began making my own roleplaying game and collecting miniatures. Neither of these things were specifically the evil 'Dungeons and Dragons', so this was tolerated.

My best friend bought the 2nd Edition AD&D books ... They looked pretty awesome. But I felt too guilty to play 'D&D' so we basically cloned the system, stripping it of magic, gods and demons a played a conan/viking style version of the game I felt was not technically D&D.

Later as an adult the occaision arose to play again. I searched for D&D (not even really aware there were different versions) and ran into 3.5e. I played a very loose version of that for a while. Then eventually aquired more books and began running the system as it was probably meant to be... Lots of fun was had, but eventually the overwhelming amount of rules pushed me into saying no so often to my players, or stopping the game to search for obscure rules, that my fun died.

4e came along just as I rebooted my attempts to bring new players into the world of roleplay (3.5e again). The rules killed our fun. 4e brought the fun back. A single piece of advice from the DMG changed my whole outlook on DMing: say yes! So liberating. The rules were slick and clear but did not account for every single situation imaginable, so it was possible to learn them all fairly well, fairly easily. DMing became very easy again. The campaign I ran with the group was pure awesome with the most memorable epic combats I've ever devised/run/played. Ever. I moved countries just after the campaign reached paragon level.

Not having anything against the 3.5e system other than there being too many rules for me too handle to play as easily as I wanted/needed to be able to play, I began playing Pathfinder in online pbp games (here on EnWorld). I don't have to DM it... no worries. Like. I still play in those games.

5e was announced not long before I moved back to the country where my table top group is situated. I watched with mild interest as playtests went on and the hype fizzled out. 4e also fizzled out in terms of community interest. WotC gave the basic rules for free, so I took a look, and even tried it out on another pbp site, and found it to be as enjoyabe as any/all of the other versions I have played. Just before rebooting our campaign I asked my players how they felt trying out 5e, instead of restarting our campaign. The reasons: the 4e campaign required invention which required time. Starting again meant I could start with a published campaign. Also 5e had slimmed down combat (a tad much for my liking but hey ... that's only one part of D&D and easy enough to slim up back to here I enjoy in the right climactic moments as I wanted) which meant the story developed a lot faster. Everyone agreed upon giving 5e a try. Once we played everyone agreed that they preferred not having to play so tactically, and it sped up the game in a way that was more than worth missing out on the more exciting combats.

And that's about it.

I've played GURPS. Not sure I had the best GMs to really value the system on its own merits. I like the idea that you can use the same rules for any genre of game, and that you can fully customise any character ... but as a player, it was very evident that the GM was required to know a whole **** load of rules. And the games I played in were frankly ... a bit boring. Again, may well have been a DM issue, as opposed to a system issue. Not sure.

My personal opinion of roleplaying is that it is fun no matter the system you use. I'd be up for trying out any system. In the end its the story you create and the adventure that is the main part. The rules are just the vehcle you use at times to get from place to place.

 

[Blue]

I gave up no game to come to 5e, how would you like me to answer?

I'm still running 13th Age, just had the opportunity to add in playing 5e as well.

 

[ZickZak]

DrD > 3.0 > 3.5 > 7th Sea > DrD > 3.5 > 4e > Pathfinder > 4e > 5e

 

[was]

Started with 2nd ed.

 

[akr71]

I played AD&D (1e) back in the mid to late 80's in junior high and high school. I didn't do any roll-playing for close to ten years - in the late 90's my (now) wife & I played a lot of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale on the computer.

Then kids = no time for gaming. I thought tabletop RPGs were well and truly in my past.

Fast forward to Jan 2015 - perusing the local bookstore with the family while the kids were looking to spend xmas $$. The wife and daughter call me over to the game section, pointing to the Starter Box. "Wouldn't it be fun to play as a family?" they say. Well, now I DM for my family, a group of work friends and a group of my daughter and her friends.

 

[Piscivorous]

My D&D experience....

My friend and I walked into a Macy's [where you used to be able to find almost all of the Avalon Hill wargame line] and ran across a 3-volume set white box with the three rule books and the accompanying Reference sheets. Still have it. I added Eldritch Wizardy, Blackmoor and Swords and Spells as well as a 3rd-party book entitled "Magic and Monster from the Land of Volkorr". Was set to buy the last supplement, Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes, when I ran across the Holmes Blue book. This is when D&D for me and my friends really took off.

We graduated to AD&D through the core books and into many of the supplements, modules and Dragon magazine.

I kept playing while in the Army in the 1980s, with many diverse DMs and players. One DM, my platoon sergeant, designed one of the three Bounty Hunters in Dragon #52. When I left the Army, I picked up with my old gaming group which added a spouse-player.

We never really played 2E, although I bought a collection of the books. I drifted away from D&D through the 1990s and found myself working at Barnes and Noble when the 3.5 core rulebooks came out. I bought all three, looked through them and they sat for about 10 years on my shelf. I had become part of a wargaming [chits, dice and mapboard style] and played every Friday night. One of the players was remonstrating about how he had lost two D&D players recently and couldn't find anyone to bring his party back up to 4. I volunteeered.

Have been playing 3.5E since 2010 and running since 2011.

I picked up the core books for 4E, but didn't like the flavor. Coming from the Vancian system of magic, 4E played like a computer game, so we stayed with 3.5. I did, however, briefly play a 4E ranger in a local campaign, but that only lasted about 6 or 7 sessions.

We are currently playing 5E and I am a player. We'll mark our 3rd session shortly.

I play a character in 5E, but continue to run 3.5 in my own campaign.

The biggest hurdle in D&D, as a DM, is that the players I have been playing with either started at the tail end of 2E or in 3.5. Coming from the old-school waaaay back in the 70s, I have had many TPKs at my table. It has taken my current players a couple of years to realize that my campaign and my DMing style is not built entirely around running encounters that are trivial, easy, challenging, hard and difficult. They have grown to realize that they need to assess each encounter and make a decision on whether it is one they can win or one they need to avoid before committing themselves to it. They know now, that they cannot rely on the idea that if they are facing one of my encounters that I haven't specifically tailored it to be unbeatable....at this level. It's old school 1E in that sense. Any encounter in 1E is potentially deadly. I once wiped out a party of six 7th-level heroes with 12 average kobolds. Hey. They wanted critical hit tables...

That said, we have had the same core group for five years now. One moved to Dallas-Fort Worth and we haven't missed a session due to the wonders of the Internet Age.

Why do I play D&D? Love the competition, camaraderie and theme of the game. I read a lot of fantasy novels, so being able to be a part of it in a living, breathing sense appeals to me.

Why do I DM D&D? I like creating things. I like players to uncover, explore and find out things about my world, including things that they have no notion that they designed because I picked up on an idea of theirs and fleshed it out.

Coming from a wargamer's perspective, D&D [and a lot of RPGs] have an added dimension that wargames lack: The common possibility that everyone wins. The players triumphantly return to the big city with more notches on their belts, bristling with more magic and gold and the DM knowing that three sessions down the road when they're still talking about that trap room that they almost lost Delimoor in. Win-win. In wargames the closest you come to both sides winning is a stalemate. Hardly a good result, believe me.

 

[Arcshot]

From BECMI more than 20 yrs back. But what I really started with is Choose Your Own Adventures book. Thrilled to be able to make decisions on how stories can end.
Then Fighting Fantasy (FF), Lone Wolf, Blood Sword introduced me to dice rolling and character sheets. The very first real rpg experience I had was with FF, although it was only a couple of sessions.
Then BECMI showed me those fascinating little multi-sided gems they called Dice. This was where I started DM-ing and started collecting game stuff from books, board games and minis, not stopping to-date.
I had tried different D&D editions (except 3 & 4), Warhammer Fantasy, Palladium, Rifts, Robotech, Mechwarrior etc. Also bought many others but never played. I really like Warhammer Fantasy world a lot, but somehow D&D always truly captured our group's interest like no others.

I like BECMI over other editions simply because it is easier to use. But 5E strikes a chord linking simplicity and depth that brought my group back to gaming after 20 years again. Best thing about it is able to roll two d20s at the same time, feeling's great.

 

[Henry]

When Dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, I started Basic D&D with the Holmes Basic Set in 1981, in a toy store chain that no longer exists. More recently, I've been playing Pathfinder since 2009, and started 5e because it looked fun and simplified a lot of things. I found a gaming group that thought the same things, and have been alternating between playing in PF and running 5e ever since.