I, like most role playing geeks, got my start with role playing games using Dungeons and Dragons. Before I ever played I used to as a kid walk into hobby and toy stores and wonder, "How do these games work?" I remember looking at a Ral Partha minutes set box and looking at the artwork and thinking "Do you go to these worlds, how is that possible?".
My father caught my interest and bought me a Dungeons and Dragons red box basic set. I was fascinated and set out to read the rules. Mind you at this point in life I had only ever read maybe one novel of any length and the rules were a bit much for me. I loved the artwork and managed on my own to role up a few player characters, but with no one to play with I shelved the book for a couple of months and didn't think more about it.
Then my friend Dale and his brother Kyle came over one night while our parents did their monthly bridge game. Dale had figured out the rules enough to play and had his brother and others to play with. We played that night, and how things worked all came together in my mind. He gave me the key and the door to my imagination then opened. Soon I found other players to play with and we soon moved into "Advanced" Dungeons and Dragons first and later second editions. I an my friends played these games almost every day through high school. We branched out into other TSR games including Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret, and non-TSR games like GURPS, Rolemaster, Spacemaster (one of our favorites though I don't think we ever played it correctly), and many others.
I became a Christian when I was 18, and because of the various concerns about RPG's from the Christian community I ended up getting rid of most of my games (though fire actually...none of them screamed as they burned like I had heard). Looking back it might have been a dumb thing to do, but I do think I was way to inro RPGs and as I moved into college I needed to make some attempts to catch up on other things, like pursing girls and having a non-fantasy life.
I still played rarely, having a few short lived campaigns in college (a decent one with Rifts) and every few years beyond up until I was in my late 30ies. I liked RPG's but I was worried I'd become addicted to them like in the past and perhaps more importantly players were hard to find. During this time I played a little 3rd and 3.5 edition. I liked it but the vast array of new feats and the like was staggering to me.
Now comes my later life. I'm married, no kids, and have free time. We meet some older gamers like myself and instead of poker night every once in awhile we have game nights. And from here I was introduced to the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
Firstly, I will say what I like about D&D in general and D&D and 5th Edition in particular. First, Dungeons and Dragons for better or for worst is the standard in role playing games. It is the most famous, did the most to open up the hobby. Side note, I hate it when game nerds talk about RPGs as "the hobby" even though I just did. It makes gaming into "a thing" when I think gaming should be about fun and imagination. I'll flush that thought out another time perhaps but leave it that for now. If there has to be a standard in the pen and pencil RPG sphere Dungeons and Dragons is a great choice. There are now five official versions (really more if you count the basic versions). Each version has all sorts of material and was well/is supported. 3rd edition's Open Gaming License (OGL) gave game designers license to use the core D&D rules as they liked and his spawned unprecedented game derivatives and supplements. I think it would take someone literally decades at this point to go through and read all the available material for D&D that is out there. So as a standard it isn't obscure. Dungeons and Dragons's core mechanics are also fairly easy to learn and generally translate across editions. If you can learn to play D&D you pretty much learn the basics of role playing and can quickly pick up other rule systems.
Secondly, and perhaps Dungeons and Dragon's greatest strengths, is the game's (all versions) ability to support long campaigns (multiple gaming sessions). People have run Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for years, meeting once a month or more, and having generations of characters involved in complex plot lines in ever evolving imaginary universes. There are other role playing games out there that support multiple game sessions, but I've yet to see one do it as successfully as the D&D franchises. If you have a Dungeon Master (the person who runs the games) invest time and energy into keeping the players engaged you can keep the players coming back for more for a long time with D&D. Thirdly and related is the power curve of players in Dungeons and Dragons. There is continual and substantial improvement of characters and players enjoy seeing their characters grow in capabilities with each level. There is also numerous magic items that can be found, new feats to learn, new spell books to read, all this makes characters have enough nobs and dials to tweak that keeps their characters improving. Although I do think the power curve breaks down somewhat at higher levels (players become too powerful) in general Dungeon Masters (DMs) can scale challenges and rewards to keep players interested.
Fourthly and again related to points two and three, there is a large group of very flushed out foes for players to face. I remember the 3.5 version having numerous monster manuals filled with foes that could keep the players guessing as to what they were facing and how best to beat foes. DMs could be cruel with these foes (see 1st edition's demi-lich from the Tomb of Horrors) but reasonable DM's can spin some interesting challenges with an amazing list of otherworld denizens for the player's characters to face. Other games often lack the list of variety of foes that are generated for the DM to throw at the adventuring party and 5th edition though it has a smaller sampling of creatures (so far) is no exception. Plus 5th edition adds "legendary actions" to some of the bigger boss type foes which make them harder to defeat and slightly less predictable.
Fifth edition D&D adds some additional rule tweaks mostly borrowed from other games that really helps flush this edition out and in some ways simplifies this edition over previous ones. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic (role two dice instead of one to generate a random result...advantaged use the higher, disadvantaged use the lower). This reduces number crunching (in the old systems say you would subtract 5 from your role or add something depending on situations). In past editions typically you gain plus one every level or plus one every couple of levels to add to your combat and skill roles depending on what your class or character's profession was good at. 5th edition simplifies this a lot with it's proficiency bonus. All classes now (except fighters(?)) now gain pluses to their die roles based on level bonuses at a much scaled back rate. This helps with the number crunching and scales back the power of higher level characters to some degree. Also the skill system is simplified. If you are proficient in a skill you add your proficiency bonus to it. If not, you don't. Simple. Saving throws (resistance to things like spells and poison) are now based on a character's six primary attributes rather than a whole new set of attributes. A character typically gets to add his proficiency bonus to saves made with two of the six attributes unless additional feats are taken. Feats are nerfed a bit in 5th edition. There are fewer and one you can pick them is less frequent. Prestige classes are gone and replaced with sub classes for each class (typically each character class has four or more variants, allowing character to specialize in given task a bit more then just picking classes. I think this works pretty well. Rounding things out are character background which is new. Characters gain small advantages based on backgrounds and background fill in a back story with beginning characters. Lastly, I'm not sure if this is a 5th edition thing or was introduced earlier (but ignored by my friends and I) but characters have a limit to how many powerful magic items then can "attune" to. This concept doesn't apply to simple magic items, but most everything good requires attunement. Characters are limited to attuning to three magic items at a time, and switching which magic items a character is attuned to takes time. I generally like this as it puts an additional governor on how fast players grow in power at higher levels which is needed.
All these things I dig about 5th edition. Now, let's hammer on some things I don't like about D&D that applies to 5th edition.
The first is hit point inflation. I'm not anti-hit points. They work pretty well to represent an abstract value of how much damage a player character can take before succumbing. All versions of D&D eventually have characters with hit points that go into the 100's and I wouldn't be surprised if characters in 5th edition with a few magic items could go into 200's. Although it seems in 5th edition more (but in other past editions) sometimes foes could deal massive damage that makes fights speed up somewhat. But generally as your characters grow in levels fights take longer...too long in my opinion. I've see other game systems skip hit points for essentially a save vs how tough your characters are. This kind of works. I think the sweet spot for me are games like Barbarians of Lemura and Warhammer FRPG where character hit points are limited to the teens rather than the hundreds. Foes especially mythical monsters do sometimes have a lot of hit points, but not the players. This makes combat a little more intense, faster moving, and in my opinion a little funner.
Secondly, magic in D&D is generally predictable and more like a science then something...well...magical. I like magic much more like it is found in sword and sorcery novels...dark, mysterious, ancient, evil, and corrupting. "Good magicians" are more like scholars who know about magic but only practice it at very low levels because they fear it and respect it. "Evil magicians" are those in their quest for power give themselves over to the dark mysteries, and end up at the price of their increase in power become slaves to the darkness and thus becoming excellent foes for player characters to beat up on.
Thirdly, building upon this but applying the predictability of rules in D&D makes D&D what DM's call "munchkinable". I hate this. What does it mean? Since so many people play D&D and especially now with the advent of internet forums lot's of nerds pour over the rules and figure out how to best min and max their characters...minimizing weaknesses and maximizing power. Some personality types take advantage of every slight rule imbalance (and these imbalances are present in every version of the game) to build their characters to take advantage of these imbalances. When done in the extreme this annoys me both as a player and a DM. When I'm running games I nerf imbalances with house rules quickly. But when I do this I'm not running "official D&D" anymore and players drop. As a player if I'm playing with a min / maxing crew I'm looked at as not a good player and a liability to the party. Which, I guess to be fair if I'm not using a character to it's max potential I am failing the party to an extent. But this reduces the game to studying rules and reading forums on "the best build" for a given character. This kills the mystery and imagination of gaming for me. I don't want characters to even know how to max there characters out because the predictability of their future capabilities and powers is limited. D&D especially 5th edition when played by the book makes munchkining irresistible to many players and perhaps even recommended. I don't like it.
Fourthly, official versions of D&D are expensive. You can get an OSR (think open source) version of a D&D game for free online or for in some cases under 10 bucks in print that give you a version of D&D with most of the trappings you need to play for extended campaigns. Some of the nicer rules might be missing, the artwork lacking, but you get...D&D. 5th edition books are expensive. I didn't mind paying at first because I felt like I was helping keep the proud tradition of D&D alive, and I figured it was nice to support the official torch bearer of the D&D brand. And to be fair the books, even though expensive, you can use for ears and if you factor in per hour of entertainment you get a very good value for what you spend. I still wish they were cheaper. True you can download a cut down "basic" version of 5th edition for free...but you get what you pay for.
Fifth, with each version of dungeons and dragons the amount of prep time seems to increase for DM's. Some games which are lighter, like say Barbarians of Lemuria, I can run with very little or low prep (unless dealing with a lot of magic which is rare). The same with Savage Worlds. Although 5th edition moves much faster than earlier editions...it is still a little slower moving then other games. Again using Barbarians of Lemuria as an example I can do in one four hour play session with what would take about three four hour sessions with D&D. Savage Worlds isn't quite that fast but still fast. Skilled DM's can with imagination both speed things up or keep things interesting while combat is moving along, but it takes a little more work than other games.
Lastly, and although I hear their are games out there that do this well, I have yet to play them and D&D fails at this point as well. D&D is a game where 90% of the tension, fun, and challenge comes from combat. Other games are starting to come out that claim to build other mechanics in for "social" combat, city and empire running, meeting needs and overcoming character personality weaknesses. There are plugins to deal with this for D&D, but they are non-standard and so far I haven't experience many that are great. But this critique goes much broader than just D&D based games.
So, where does this leave me with D&D especially 5th edition? Well I've got mixed feelings. I'd play D&D with a good DM anytime (our group's current DM is great and we have been in a very entertaining campaign for over six months now I think...time flies). How about an average or bad DM? I think I'd pass especially with 5th edition. I think an average DM can get away with some of the simpler OSR D&D derivatives, but not 5th edition. Now what about running a 5th edition campaign? If people wanted me to I would do my best, but munchkining, the magic system, and the slower pace of D&D I I think leaves it wanting for me. D&D will always have a place in my heart as it was my first...but other simpler games (with their own benefits and drawbacks) I think would be my go tos if I had a choice to run a campaign. But D&D is the standard, and players are fewer, and more demanding, so in the future depending on the group I might now have a choice but to run 5th edition. I'd give it a good go and I think we would all have a good time. But I think I could handle Savage Worlds, Barbarians of Lemuria, and other newer games that few have heard of better.
My father caught my interest and bought me a Dungeons and Dragons red box basic set. I was fascinated and set out to read the rules. Mind you at this point in life I had only ever read maybe one novel of any length and the rules were a bit much for me. I loved the artwork and managed on my own to role up a few player characters, but with no one to play with I shelved the book for a couple of months and didn't think more about it.
Then my friend Dale and his brother Kyle came over one night while our parents did their monthly bridge game. Dale had figured out the rules enough to play and had his brother and others to play with. We played that night, and how things worked all came together in my mind. He gave me the key and the door to my imagination then opened. Soon I found other players to play with and we soon moved into "Advanced" Dungeons and Dragons first and later second editions. I an my friends played these games almost every day through high school. We branched out into other TSR games including Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret, and non-TSR games like GURPS, Rolemaster, Spacemaster (one of our favorites though I don't think we ever played it correctly), and many others.
I became a Christian when I was 18, and because of the various concerns about RPG's from the Christian community I ended up getting rid of most of my games (though fire actually...none of them screamed as they burned like I had heard). Looking back it might have been a dumb thing to do, but I do think I was way to inro RPGs and as I moved into college I needed to make some attempts to catch up on other things, like pursing girls and having a non-fantasy life.
I still played rarely, having a few short lived campaigns in college (a decent one with Rifts) and every few years beyond up until I was in my late 30ies. I liked RPG's but I was worried I'd become addicted to them like in the past and perhaps more importantly players were hard to find. During this time I played a little 3rd and 3.5 edition. I liked it but the vast array of new feats and the like was staggering to me.
Now comes my later life. I'm married, no kids, and have free time. We meet some older gamers like myself and instead of poker night every once in awhile we have game nights. And from here I was introduced to the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
Firstly, I will say what I like about D&D in general and D&D and 5th Edition in particular. First, Dungeons and Dragons for better or for worst is the standard in role playing games. It is the most famous, did the most to open up the hobby. Side note, I hate it when game nerds talk about RPGs as "the hobby" even though I just did. It makes gaming into "a thing" when I think gaming should be about fun and imagination. I'll flush that thought out another time perhaps but leave it that for now. If there has to be a standard in the pen and pencil RPG sphere Dungeons and Dragons is a great choice. There are now five official versions (really more if you count the basic versions). Each version has all sorts of material and was well/is supported. 3rd edition's Open Gaming License (OGL) gave game designers license to use the core D&D rules as they liked and his spawned unprecedented game derivatives and supplements. I think it would take someone literally decades at this point to go through and read all the available material for D&D that is out there. So as a standard it isn't obscure. Dungeons and Dragons's core mechanics are also fairly easy to learn and generally translate across editions. If you can learn to play D&D you pretty much learn the basics of role playing and can quickly pick up other rule systems.
Secondly, and perhaps Dungeons and Dragon's greatest strengths, is the game's (all versions) ability to support long campaigns (multiple gaming sessions). People have run Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for years, meeting once a month or more, and having generations of characters involved in complex plot lines in ever evolving imaginary universes. There are other role playing games out there that support multiple game sessions, but I've yet to see one do it as successfully as the D&D franchises. If you have a Dungeon Master (the person who runs the games) invest time and energy into keeping the players engaged you can keep the players coming back for more for a long time with D&D. Thirdly and related is the power curve of players in Dungeons and Dragons. There is continual and substantial improvement of characters and players enjoy seeing their characters grow in capabilities with each level. There is also numerous magic items that can be found, new feats to learn, new spell books to read, all this makes characters have enough nobs and dials to tweak that keeps their characters improving. Although I do think the power curve breaks down somewhat at higher levels (players become too powerful) in general Dungeon Masters (DMs) can scale challenges and rewards to keep players interested.
Fourthly and again related to points two and three, there is a large group of very flushed out foes for players to face. I remember the 3.5 version having numerous monster manuals filled with foes that could keep the players guessing as to what they were facing and how best to beat foes. DMs could be cruel with these foes (see 1st edition's demi-lich from the Tomb of Horrors) but reasonable DM's can spin some interesting challenges with an amazing list of otherworld denizens for the player's characters to face. Other games often lack the list of variety of foes that are generated for the DM to throw at the adventuring party and 5th edition though it has a smaller sampling of creatures (so far) is no exception. Plus 5th edition adds "legendary actions" to some of the bigger boss type foes which make them harder to defeat and slightly less predictable.
Fifth edition D&D adds some additional rule tweaks mostly borrowed from other games that really helps flush this edition out and in some ways simplifies this edition over previous ones. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic (role two dice instead of one to generate a random result...advantaged use the higher, disadvantaged use the lower). This reduces number crunching (in the old systems say you would subtract 5 from your role or add something depending on situations). In past editions typically you gain plus one every level or plus one every couple of levels to add to your combat and skill roles depending on what your class or character's profession was good at. 5th edition simplifies this a lot with it's proficiency bonus. All classes now (except fighters(?)) now gain pluses to their die roles based on level bonuses at a much scaled back rate. This helps with the number crunching and scales back the power of higher level characters to some degree. Also the skill system is simplified. If you are proficient in a skill you add your proficiency bonus to it. If not, you don't. Simple. Saving throws (resistance to things like spells and poison) are now based on a character's six primary attributes rather than a whole new set of attributes. A character typically gets to add his proficiency bonus to saves made with two of the six attributes unless additional feats are taken. Feats are nerfed a bit in 5th edition. There are fewer and one you can pick them is less frequent. Prestige classes are gone and replaced with sub classes for each class (typically each character class has four or more variants, allowing character to specialize in given task a bit more then just picking classes. I think this works pretty well. Rounding things out are character background which is new. Characters gain small advantages based on backgrounds and background fill in a back story with beginning characters. Lastly, I'm not sure if this is a 5th edition thing or was introduced earlier (but ignored by my friends and I) but characters have a limit to how many powerful magic items then can "attune" to. This concept doesn't apply to simple magic items, but most everything good requires attunement. Characters are limited to attuning to three magic items at a time, and switching which magic items a character is attuned to takes time. I generally like this as it puts an additional governor on how fast players grow in power at higher levels which is needed.
All these things I dig about 5th edition. Now, let's hammer on some things I don't like about D&D that applies to 5th edition.
The first is hit point inflation. I'm not anti-hit points. They work pretty well to represent an abstract value of how much damage a player character can take before succumbing. All versions of D&D eventually have characters with hit points that go into the 100's and I wouldn't be surprised if characters in 5th edition with a few magic items could go into 200's. Although it seems in 5th edition more (but in other past editions) sometimes foes could deal massive damage that makes fights speed up somewhat. But generally as your characters grow in levels fights take longer...too long in my opinion. I've see other game systems skip hit points for essentially a save vs how tough your characters are. This kind of works. I think the sweet spot for me are games like Barbarians of Lemura and Warhammer FRPG where character hit points are limited to the teens rather than the hundreds. Foes especially mythical monsters do sometimes have a lot of hit points, but not the players. This makes combat a little more intense, faster moving, and in my opinion a little funner.
Secondly, magic in D&D is generally predictable and more like a science then something...well...magical. I like magic much more like it is found in sword and sorcery novels...dark, mysterious, ancient, evil, and corrupting. "Good magicians" are more like scholars who know about magic but only practice it at very low levels because they fear it and respect it. "Evil magicians" are those in their quest for power give themselves over to the dark mysteries, and end up at the price of their increase in power become slaves to the darkness and thus becoming excellent foes for player characters to beat up on.
Thirdly, building upon this but applying the predictability of rules in D&D makes D&D what DM's call "munchkinable". I hate this. What does it mean? Since so many people play D&D and especially now with the advent of internet forums lot's of nerds pour over the rules and figure out how to best min and max their characters...minimizing weaknesses and maximizing power. Some personality types take advantage of every slight rule imbalance (and these imbalances are present in every version of the game) to build their characters to take advantage of these imbalances. When done in the extreme this annoys me both as a player and a DM. When I'm running games I nerf imbalances with house rules quickly. But when I do this I'm not running "official D&D" anymore and players drop. As a player if I'm playing with a min / maxing crew I'm looked at as not a good player and a liability to the party. Which, I guess to be fair if I'm not using a character to it's max potential I am failing the party to an extent. But this reduces the game to studying rules and reading forums on "the best build" for a given character. This kills the mystery and imagination of gaming for me. I don't want characters to even know how to max there characters out because the predictability of their future capabilities and powers is limited. D&D especially 5th edition when played by the book makes munchkining irresistible to many players and perhaps even recommended. I don't like it.
Fourthly, official versions of D&D are expensive. You can get an OSR (think open source) version of a D&D game for free online or for in some cases under 10 bucks in print that give you a version of D&D with most of the trappings you need to play for extended campaigns. Some of the nicer rules might be missing, the artwork lacking, but you get...D&D. 5th edition books are expensive. I didn't mind paying at first because I felt like I was helping keep the proud tradition of D&D alive, and I figured it was nice to support the official torch bearer of the D&D brand. And to be fair the books, even though expensive, you can use for ears and if you factor in per hour of entertainment you get a very good value for what you spend. I still wish they were cheaper. True you can download a cut down "basic" version of 5th edition for free...but you get what you pay for.
Fifth, with each version of dungeons and dragons the amount of prep time seems to increase for DM's. Some games which are lighter, like say Barbarians of Lemuria, I can run with very little or low prep (unless dealing with a lot of magic which is rare). The same with Savage Worlds. Although 5th edition moves much faster than earlier editions...it is still a little slower moving then other games. Again using Barbarians of Lemuria as an example I can do in one four hour play session with what would take about three four hour sessions with D&D. Savage Worlds isn't quite that fast but still fast. Skilled DM's can with imagination both speed things up or keep things interesting while combat is moving along, but it takes a little more work than other games.
Lastly, and although I hear their are games out there that do this well, I have yet to play them and D&D fails at this point as well. D&D is a game where 90% of the tension, fun, and challenge comes from combat. Other games are starting to come out that claim to build other mechanics in for "social" combat, city and empire running, meeting needs and overcoming character personality weaknesses. There are plugins to deal with this for D&D, but they are non-standard and so far I haven't experience many that are great. But this critique goes much broader than just D&D based games.
So, where does this leave me with D&D especially 5th edition? Well I've got mixed feelings. I'd play D&D with a good DM anytime (our group's current DM is great and we have been in a very entertaining campaign for over six months now I think...time flies). How about an average or bad DM? I think I'd pass especially with 5th edition. I think an average DM can get away with some of the simpler OSR D&D derivatives, but not 5th edition. Now what about running a 5th edition campaign? If people wanted me to I would do my best, but munchkining, the magic system, and the slower pace of D&D I I think leaves it wanting for me. D&D will always have a place in my heart as it was my first...but other simpler games (with their own benefits and drawbacks) I think would be my go tos if I had a choice to run a campaign. But D&D is the standard, and players are fewer, and more demanding, so in the future depending on the group I might now have a choice but to run 5th edition. I'd give it a good go and I think we would all have a good time. But I think I could handle Savage Worlds, Barbarians of Lemuria, and other newer games that few have heard of better.
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