Stop Talking About 6th Edition Or I'll Burn This Place to the Ground: A Rant

I am starting to see it more and more, now: despite the fact that there are no stated plans to do this, a small but insistent clutch of Internet pundits and YouTube Personalities are calling out for a 6th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Nate Howe's article on CBR and Professor Dungeon Master on the Dungeon Craft Youtube channel are the most vocal champions, but there are a lot others out there. I'm no Internet influencer or Big Name Personality in the Gaming world, or any other world, really; I'm just a guy with a small following and a 'zine I am working on. But I have to say this, as respectfully as I can, in the hopes that my small cadre of fans might see fit to amply my voice with the following directive: please shut the fuck up about this.

The Problem With All of this Gorgeous Artwork

While working on the Monty Haul ‘Zine Project, I’ve been revisiting the aesthetics and materials of the 1980s gaming scene and I stumbled across something that I think is missing from the current version of the game: scale. Especially where the monsters are concerned. This is all the more galling because D&D has never looked better, but for some reason, the monsters have lost some of their oomph, and I think I know why.

Early D&D, from the blue box to the original AD&D hardbacks, featured illustrations that were, shall we say, varied in both tone and technique. A few of the illustrations in the rules were outright jokes, little more than single panel gags. But the various rulebooks, and later the modules, managed to convey a sense of genuine menace in their depictions of classic D&D monsters that are lacking in today’s game.

I’ll give you an easy example: The umber hulk. Classic monster, right? One of the chinasaurs, allegedly. But either way, a thing that only exists in the hallowed halls of D&D. Here’s what the current version of the umber hulk looks like.

A lovely piece of design work by Cory Trego-Erdner.

 Okay. That’s cool and all, but it’s not really hulk-y. And it’s more insect-y, like a mutated praying mantis.Not as chunked out as the original Umber Hulk. Here was our first look at the monster.

The thing about the AD&D Monster Manual was this: all of the artwork was approximately the same size. That means that the dragons have the same real estate on the page as the pixie. That little space. A couple of inches square. And to be honest, from the angle, the umber hulk looks more cute than terrifying. Like a gremlin. The stats said it was large, 8’ tall and 5’ wide, but we really couldn’t picture it.

Then the module The Ghost Tower of Inverness was published. And this was one of the best things about the modules; they almost always featured artwork of a party of adventurers getting the shit kicked out of them by monsters. I cannot stress how useful this was, especially when dealing with things like, well, umber hulks.

Here’s Jeff Dee’s take on the umber hulk.

That fighter? He’s toast. And the umber hulk suddenly looks frightening, and that fighter looks completely out of his depth. Best of all is the scale that he clearly shows. Now you know why it's called an umber hulk and not an umber insect. 

But just in case you aren’t convinced, here’s Erol Otus’ version of the umber hulk encounter.

That’s a three on one fight and it looks to me like someone’s going to bite the dust before that umber hulk is slain. Now that’s a D&D monster. Now I’m interested in sending this against my party and watching them freak out when you show them the picture.

There are many instances where the original art teams got it right. The action scenes give these monsters a context that most of us didn’t have. For a generation of kids, the Monster Manual was the first bestiary we’d ever seen. Dragons, we got. Goblins, no problem. But the owlbear? What the hell was that?

We know now, of course, but back then, it just seemed a little silly. That is, of course, until Jeff Dee (again) showed us what we were really up against.

Side note: This thief is an asshole.

Now whenever I see a fifth edition owlbear, I think, "Nice artwork," and it is. But that's not scary. Not to me. Not like this big-ass-beak, bear-bodied, what-the-hell-man monstrosity scares me. 

And again, I want to say, the artwork in 5e is almost universally incredible. It's technically adroit, with lots of character and excellent design. Maybe the owlbear above isn't my favorite owlbear, but it's not the fault of the artist, Brynn Metheney, who is responsible for some killer work elsewhere in the book. I don't know who is to blame. 

Maybe they think the pop culture zeitgeist has done the heavy lifting for them, i.e. "oh, everyone playing D&D knows about owlbears, so we don't have to define the terms." All I know is, back in the 1980s, I was relying on context clues because there wasn't a place to google "owlbears" and get a treasure trove of information to parse. I was at the mercy of TSR. And sure, some of the early artwork wasn't particularly sophisticated, especially when compared with today's computer-painted graphics, but what it lacked in polish, it made up for in evocative imagery. And when even that failed, there were other illustrations to show you how things might be put into practice in your games. For example, Bill Willingham showed us all how a medusa could get the drop on a couple of characters by hiding her snake hair under a cloak. 

And Dave Trampier showed us why it's not a good idea to try and fight those goofy (and obscure) monsters like the catoblepas. 

Even mundane animals were challenging for a party of adventurers that were foolhardy enough to take them on. 

We, as fledgling DMs, would not have considered herd animals dangerous. Or frogs, or any of the other mega-fauna and seemingly silly things that are crowded into the monster manual and sprinkled throughout the early modules. We needed these illustrations to make sense of this strange new world. Maybe that's not as strong a consideration in 2020, with exponentially more sources to draw inspiration from, but I miss it in the new game, all the same. 

RPGaDay 2019: 29 Evolve

Looking at the evolution of Dungeons & Dragons is pretty interesting. Forty years. Let’s be charitable and say there have been seven iterations of the game, with each successive edition being a zeitgeist of the times. That’s what makes fifth edition so interesting. Sure, in many ways, it’s everything that forth edition wasn’t, but in terms of tone and can-do attitude, it’s more like vintage D&D than any other edition. In this regard, we’ve kind of come full circle.

Likewise, the players have evolved with the game—sort of. I think that gamer larvae start out pretty much the same: “I kill it with my sword!” But thanks to the rich vocabulary that has developed to support role-playing as a cultural pastime, and the highest levels of engagement in the hobby to date, and also a proliferation of tutorials and op-ed YouTube channels and podcasts and all of it, gamer larvae grow into gamer butterflies much faster these days. Or they leave and go back to Grand Theft Auto. But most, I would venture to say, see the value and the appeal of true freedom in gaming. My groups all have. They love God of War, but they talk about their table adventures with the same fervent and reverent tone of voice.

I can’t think of any other game that has tried so hard to keep up with the times. There’s a reason why D&D rules the roost; they have put the sweat equity in. Let’s throw a little love out.

First Edition/BEX/AD&D

This was the awkward, wonky, uneven, crude and strange version of the game and you know what? I still love it. I think it more for nostalgic reasons these days, but there is some great stuff still in the original game system. And there are a lot of old school players who feel that way, because they keep re-re-re-reprinting their version of the game, over and over, changing flavor and updating artwork but keeping all of the charts and tables that seem so quaint in the modern age.

There is still a lot to like about the original game, no matter how tangled its origins. It gets the credit for being the first and it really could not have gone down any other way. The language for role-playing games hadn't been invented yet. The systems for keeping track of things, combat, experience points, even skills--none of it was there. Not until this. And as creaky as it seems, if you sit down with a few friends and start playing it, it'll all come rushing back on you, muscle memory, and you'll be transported again--maybe not to Grayhawk, but definitely back to 1982.

Old gamers, the grognards and the neckbeards, often grumble and kvetch about these kids today not knowing their roots, and my first thought is always, "Oh, you make sitting down with you lecturing them for four hours seem so bloody interesting, it's a mystery why they don't."  I get the seed of their frustration, and I sympathize with it, but I don't blame all of the new gamers. Au contraire, I welcome them. For one thing, they are way less grumpy than a lot of the guys my age, so, right there, I'm on board with the new blood. And if my group gets a taste of the "old school" style adventures and classic modules via 5th edition, they are way more appreciative of my age and experience because I'm not talking down to them. But I digress. We were throwing love, not shade.

Second Edition
Okay, well, we might as well get this out of the way: I felt about this the way most Millennials feel about fourth edition. I didn’t like any part of what happened in Second Edition. Well, except for the artwork. The artwork stepped up, way up, and has stayed great ever since. But I hated the Monster Manual three-ring binder. I hated To Hit Armor Class Zero. I hated the “neutering” of the monsters (no demons or devils—and while I never used them in my games, this was all part of the same campaign that wanted to censor Warner Brothers cartoons and other such nonsense).

By this time I had moved on to other games. We still played AD&D, just not second edition. I did this up until probably 1991 or 1992.  Second edition was for the youngsters, with the new math and all of the fancy artwork. What a weird line in the sand to draw, but hey, that's what your twenties are for, right? 

Third/Three Point Five Edition

While I wasn’t in it at this time, in hindsight, creating the Open Game License was the smartest thing they ever did. I know that because I was selling it to game and comic shops at this time, and it was like a whole new game. Now, did that kinda backfire on them, eventually? Yeah, it did. Players (and DMs) felt the “keeping up with the Joneses” vibe in that there was always a new book coming out with new feats and three spells and you just had to have it all. Might have been great for Wizards of the Coast's bottom line, but it looked like a cash grab to me (at the time).

There are still a number of people walking the earth that think D&D 3.5 is the superior form of the game, no take backs. I mean, where do you think Pathfinder came from, anyway? I did appreciate what 3.5 tried to do, which was fix stuff that was wrong with 2nd edition. Well, that and the very idea of giving the core game away for free and allowing all of these small companies to prop up and support your product line. I never took advantage of it, but I always thought it was a genius move.

Fourth Edition

The dreaded 4th ed. This is so taboo that we’re not even supposed to talk about it, especially if we liked 4th ed. It’s like how the Klingons aren’t supposed to talk about the smooth-headed versions from the original Star Trek series. They acknowledge it with their stony silence.

This was actually my re-introduction into D&D. I bought the Starter Box for my niece one Christmas and I ran a game for her and my brother, cold. It was a lot like my initial introduction to D&D in that I had to stop and stare at the rule book and try and decipher some of the changes while my two players rolled dice and drew elves on scratch paper.

It wasn’t my favorite, but I did like some of the things they tried to do. Stepping back from it, I do think that they were trying to mimic the feel of turn-based video games, and it was a great success, as a simulation of that. But I think maybe they forgot that they were, at their core, not video games. They were Dungeons and Fucking Dragons. They don’t copy everyone else, they let everyone else copy them. 

Fifth Edition

Here we are. The current version of the game; simplified and also expanded greatly with just a few interesting concepts. Gone is Thaco, and instead is the elegant armor class that we should have had all along—a target number. And speaking of “all along” the idea of advantage and disadvantage is so simple to grasp that it feels like it’s been there forever. I love the idea of conditions that are hung around character’s necks. Simplified skills are all folded into proficiencies now. And there aren’t a string of plusses you have to count up.

The esprit de corps of 3.5 is present, in the DM’s Guild, a marketplace for anyone to publish their additions to D&D for anyone to try. Most of these additions are inexpensive and some are even free. This means that there is support for the game on a daily basis, freeing the developers up to concentrate on big ticket items.

Looking back, it’s weird to me that character classes like the Barbarian—a class no one would dream of leaving out of the mix—was a class I remember being introduced in Unearthed Arcana as a new thing back in the mid-80’s. There’s a lot of seemingly vintage ideas that are back in, the biggest of which is the role-playing part of the game. If fourth edition went too far into skirmish and tactics, fifth edition is practically touchy-feely with all of the different ways you can make a character part of the overall story.

And I’m sorry, but the background system is kinda perfect. The idea that you get to walk onto the stage having already done something is just brilliant. It’s the thing that keeps your players from rolling up dead-eyed baby killers who burn down villages. It’s much easier to apply consequences to actions. It’s accessible and playable as a referee with just a few tables in your hand.

I really do think it’s the best version of the game we’ve ever seen. It embraces everything from the last forty years and takes the best parts of itself and leaves the rest. Few other game systems have the longevity to even try that as an experiment and the ones that do have the history haven’t tried to overhaul themselves more than once, maybe twice. I mean, the seventh edition of Call of Cthulhu is out, and while there are certainly more rules than ever, the basic game still looks almost identical to the one I first picked up in 1983.

I don’t know what the sixth edition of D&D will look like, or when if ever we’ll see it. I can’t fathom what that would be or why they would need to get away from what they have settled on here. I mean, there was almost a perfect storm of 5e hitting the marketplace, timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the game, and the outing of all the celebrities in geek culture who were “secretly” playing D&D. You couldn’t make that up.

It brought so many people back to the game, myself included, in a big way. And with few modifications, I was able to drop my old stuff into the new game and hit the ground running. Smart design, simple concepts, and a wide-open game license. It’s no wonder D&D is at the top of the food chain, the apex predator of role-playing games. And as of this writing, there is no meteor in sight to topple the old dinosaur’s reign anytime soon.