My Unasked-For Thoughts on 5e

Well, they certainly solved the question of
scale. That's a second-level cleric.
I kid! I kid the Player's Handbook.
It's really a third level cleric.

It’s obvious, I think, to everyone reading this blog that I’m currently playing and creating in the fifth iteration of Dungeons & Dragons, or 5e, as the kids call it these days. Part of this was an economic convenience in that it’s what’s out right now, and also one borne of necessity, i.e. that’s what all of the content is aimed at. But it doesn’t HAVE to go down that way, right? I mean, there are a metric shit-ton of Old School inspired systems out there, all using some version of the Basic/Expert edition of D&D or the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Or, if I wanted something insanely commercial, there’s Pathfinder, which is D&D 3.5 re-skinned.  Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no way in HELL I would inflict Pathfinder on anyone. I’m not a monster.

But that brings up another factor: I have been running games for newcomers to tabletop role-playing games. Twelve new players in all, spread over several games and campaigns, each one of them familiar with the subject matter, but have never rolled funny-shaped dice before in their lives. Is the current version of D&D a good “first RPG” experience for newcomers?

I think it is, by a considerable margin. There’s a lot of brand-name recognition that’s built into the phrase “Dungeons and Dragons.” It’s an established entry point, and has been for four decades. I think that the current version reflects that, and does the herculean task of synthesizing four and a half previous incarnations into a flexible and expandable framework with just enough structure to hold it all together.

Barfight!

In particular, 5e jettisoned the Fortitude and Reflex roll in favor of a single saving throw mechanic, linked to proficiencies. There’s also a “mastery” category that doubles your proficiency bonus, all of which means there’s no more counting on fingers to figure out your thief’s lockpicking ability with tools. Maybe it’s all still baked into the system, but the new parenthetical expression is more digestible (d20 + Ability Bonus + Proficiency + any other modifiers).  Lumping them onto

 your character sheet ahead of time does most of that work, too. Now it’s just a single d20 roll, plus whatever, and you have to beat a 13, or a 15, or what have you. Armor Class got a reversal and now all of the integers go in the same direction. This and skills were the most mind-blowing change from 1e to 5e (remember, I didn’t play any of the in-between stuff). 

The other favorite new thing for me is the addition of the background section. It’s a wonderful mechanic, perfect for new players who don’t have the foggiest idea of how exactly to build a character in a game. These few tables, all linked to a character’s backstory, fill in those details that even experienced players wouldn’t necessarily bother with, and puts it right up front.

Finally, the advantage and disadvantage mechanic is bloody genius. It’s the best thing for on-the-fly rulings. It’s quick, simple, and keeps the decisions with the dice, on the table, with the players’ agency. “Yes, you can try to shoot that arrow through the Goblin King’s helmet visor slot as he’s riding past on his armored giant boar, bearing down on you, but you need a 18 or higher to hit, and you have disadvantage.” No player argues. They simply reach for that other d20. You know, the lucky one. And if they make it, then cool, it’s a great war story. But if they don’t, they never feel cheated because you gave them the chance.

Production values have
only gotten better over
the decades.

Is the system perfect? No, of course it isn’t, and if you creep on the Reddit forums or RPG.Net, you have read countless shrill screeds about how the game is borken and the devs don’t know what they’re doing and Rangers are overpowered, and clerics are too, and what they SHOULD have done was blah blah blah blah blah. Anyone over the age of thirty-five knows the drill: if you don’t like the rule, change it. Or strike it. Or fix it. But there is a generation of gamer out there, righteously indignant, who would rather give tongue to everything they perceive to be wrong rather than fix it themselves and be happy that the new game is out. Not sure if this is a tenet that can be laid at the feet of computer gamers, or if it’s an across the board thing. All I know is this: no one who has ever called themselves a Coca-Cola fanatic, in the history of the world, has ever said, “Well, I like Coke, but what I wish they’d do is add more caramel color, and maybe cut the carbonation by ten to fifteen percent. Basically making it like RC, only better, because it’s Coke.”

What Coke fans do is this: they buy Coke. When Coke puts out a new thing, they try it, and then they either buy it, or they don’t. Coke then looks at those numbers and says, “Wow, no one is buying our new Diet Coke Blood Orange flavor, because blood oranges were a thing five years ago and orange-flavored Diet Coke is disgusting. Who knew? Let’s stop making it, then.” That’s how it is supposed to work. But the Internet has given everyone, even the inarticulate, the self-obsessed, and the righteously indignant and entitled, a voice, whether anyone wants to hear it or not.

I’ll be honest; there were a few things I didn’t like about 5e, but they were, I realized my specific problems, and thus, mine to deal with. I’ll go ahead and share it with you, since we’re all friends here: I don’t like Tieflings. Or Dragonborn. They feel tacked on and exotic for the sake of being exotic. I don’t know when they came in, but it’s clear they are a fan favorite of sorts. They were certainly after my time and they are nearly a Mary Sue concoction, like the Cat-People in Skyrim. I mean, really. Cat People. In SKYRIM. Sweet Baby Jesus. 

An Elf Bard. Kill me now.

Then again, I’ve never liked bards, or the people who played them. You know why. I don’t have to explain that to any of you. For five editions, now, Bards have remained one of the most overwrought and needlessly complicated classes, and it never fails that the people who want to play a bard are always the people that want to fiddle with your radio settings when they get in your car. They have to keep touching things, and they always bark the loudest when the thing they are fiddling with inevitably breaks in their hands.

Another thing I'm going to point out (and I can't believe I'm even bringing it up, especially after that long-ass Coke fan analogy above) is that while the artwork has increased in scope and quality a thousand-fold--and mind you, I'm not making any complaints about it--I will say that as gorgeous as it looks now, that specificity and concrete-ness kind of negates some of the charm and also maybe impacts the "theater of the mind" that we never had to worry about with old school AD&D artwork. 

Fifth edition owlbear. Sufficiently menacing 

I am pretty sure no one NOT in Generation X feels this way, and I want to stress again, this is not a deal breaker for me, but their is something charming about the drawings in the original monster manual; no, they weren't high art, but what they lacked in polish, they made up for in accessibility. Put another way, the goblin drawing in the original monster manual is goofy as hell. And as a player and a DM, I over-wrote that simple image with my own interpretation of the goblins by way of Tolkien's descriptions. Now when I look at 5e goblins, I think that they are a reaction to Pathfinder's goblins ,which were a reaction to Magic: the Gathering's goblins. As good as the 5e art is, and as imaginative as it is, we lose something creatively by having so well-rendered a monster in our midst. 

I also still don’t like the Forgotten Realms (again, my damage and my damage alone, I know) but I’m trying to fix that. My distaste for the setting was what made me create my current campaign and the world around it, so I can’t be too upset with it. I mean, it makes sense; to most people, the Forgotten Realms has been around for the majority of the game’s lifespan. It’s like the cool stepdad that marries your mom, and he rides a Harley, and all of your friends think he’s cool, and he’s trying to bond with you by talking to you about Conan and James Bond, but to you, he’s the upstart usurper, and you miss your real dad who had to move to another town because, in his words, “your mother’s clinically insane,” and so you’re trying to be nice to Harley Dad and still have a relationship with Original Dad, but he’s not returning your calls, because, according to your mother, “his 25-year old harlot of a secretary won’t get out of his lap to answer the damn phone,” so you end up sitting alone in your room drawing swords and barbarians on the inside of your Mead spiral notebook and listening to Led Zeppelin II…

Jeff Dee's owlbear, far more evocatively drawn, with proper
scale shown and a sense that these things are very dangerous,
as it should be. 

I feel like I’ve maybe said too much.

Later, I’ll talk about what I did with my campaign to “fix” it and bring it back to something I initially recognized.