What went wrong?

...

>It's like asking a weeb to speak Japanese
I have a weeb friend who is actually working as Japanese/Spanish teacher in Japan so I think he handles himself ok with Japanese

It tried too hard not to be 3.5, and ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It's from data collection from 47,000 user profiles (from the listings people make of what games they prefer) and 46,000 individual games (from what game it is set as playing) on Roll20.

So, very real, but extrapolating that out to the general populace or smaller locales (such as your own town or your friend's town) is unwise.

Its growth on Roll20 alone is still quite impressive despite not being out even 2 years yet.

I mean like one who isn't fluent. They'll say something like "Arigoto nani sore itadakimasu gozeimas" and you'll be like "Wow! Real Japanese!" even though it ain't.

Everyone I know plays pathfinder and 5e because we only have a handful of competent GMs and that's what they run

Such is life in a college game club

It's been out for 3 years. Don't give me that, they're just starting horse shit. The fuckers working on 5e are lazy.

*meant to say 2 years not 3.

I never quite understood what exactly the difference between "other games" and "other listed games". Which games do those catagories focus on?

Other Games is just someone putting "Other" in the "what game do you want to play" or "what game are you playing" bit. Other Listed Games are other ones specifically spelled out by Roll20's system.

What you have is a small collection of anecdotes. What has is a statistically significant data set. So... yeah.

Mind you, you have to be careful when extrapolating from one data set. Trends present in one section of the population may not be reflective of the whole. So, in order of decreasing certainty:
>People are playing 5e
>5e is very popular on Roll20
>5e is very popular for online play
>5e is the most popular iteration of D&D in current play
>5e is the most popular P&P in current play

I had bad experiences with this system, not because the system per se, which is simple and unimaginative as fuck, but with GMs, which are still DnD GMs therefore conditionated to be That GMs. It was selled as a good and balanced 3.5, which kinda is, but holy shit the fandom is still fucking cancer.

>What you have is a small collection of anecdotes.
Not that guy but so do you, in my country almost nobody is playing 5e, most played is 3.5 though.

What country is that, Laos?

Several things:

> stat increases were retarded: if they wanted to encourage spreading out stats, why not limit it to +1 to two different stats every 4 levels, instead of allowing +2 to one? They probably wouldn't have even needed the hard cap at 20.
> bounded accuracy is good but the accuracy was *too* bounded; your numbers only went up every 5 levels or so. If 20th level proficiency was +10 instead of +6, it'd be a better game
> tried to pander to grognards but inherent failed at that by having the class features framework and skills and feats.
> barely any feats
> lack luster choices

Proficiency was a really good idea, and the tightening up of the system as a whole was a good idea. Size-based hit dice for monsters is cool and the monster stat block is great.

The rest is kinda shit, but overall 5e is decent. Not good, but decent. That's my honest opinion.

What went wrong for me?

It was designed for people who don't care about the rules or options and entirely for the "lol who cares its fun" crowd. Is it easy to run? Well, yeah because you only have one mechanic everyone fights over, and that's Advantage/Disadvantage.

It feels like at some point, they decided to start designing a rules-lite game after they'd designed half of a D&D system, and then said "Fuck it, the book's done just print it."

*meant to say 1.5 not 2

I ONLY CONSIDER D&D PAST 2000 CANON.

I agree, advantage / disadvantage was a nice idea but was overused. The bonus-phobia from earlier editions was easily solved by not being retarded, but they went overboard and made everything boring as fuck. The bellcurve deal is nice but it's not really what D&D is about.

The rules-light wasn't the issue, it was the autism that was basically a mix of 4e and AD&D (and not even AD&D, because all it really had similar to AD&D was attribute-based saves and rules-light)

Not much, in my opinion. It's the best D&D I've played. I enjoy it, but my biggest criticism is that it's still D&D.

What systems do you prefer?

I should clarify that I don't /hate/ D&D. I run a 5e game myself, and play in a 4e one. Both are games I enjoy a lot, even if it's often in spite of the system, instead of because of it.

It'd be hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to, it'd probably be Fate Core, and the various versions of it. Secrets of Cats is a fun one. I also really enjoy some PbtA games, mostly Apocalypse World itself, Dungeon World, and Sagas of the Icelanders. In general, I've played a lot of GURPS, Savage Worlds, some Torchbearer (want to try Burning Wheel itself, badly), familiar with Don't Rest Your Head and GUMSHOE, and both have some really neat ideas.

Overall, again, I don't hate D&D. I just wish it had less of a stranglehold on the industry, because one company happened to practically monopolize a niche industry early on.

>A sample size of 46,000 is a small collection of anecdotes

Thank you for that information Mr. Ambassador, i won't dare question your source or statistics.

thb senpai it is dope as fug desu

Problem for me is it just felt really boring.

All the numbers are really small compared to the previous WotC editions, though HP scaling is still about the same, so fights end up taking fucking hours if you aren't cheesing it with instant death spells.

Plus it's back to the "Wizards excel at everything except damage, Fighters get to do damage" when damage is usually the least efficient way to win a fight crap 3.5 had.

So you want a 5.5e?

I feel your pain. Only difference is my system of choice is Silhouette (Heavy Gear/Tribe 8/Jovian Chronicles).

I like 5e.

Is my fun wrong, Veeky Forums?

Your dad's condom had a hole.

The one thing I wish for is more feats. Is there any good list of non-setting specific feats for 5e, or a reworking of old feats for it?

>it can't cure brain damage
ftfy

Grognards

Oversimplified things to the point where it's difficult to make an interesting or unique character.

I enjoyed the edition but there just ain't much to it. It's just a very simple and streamlined RPG with a decent amount of balance - no class is outright garbage and everyone has something to offer to a party and to combat. It's okay.

It'll be interesting if they release more supplement content.

I really like the system. I think it could use more character options and published material but overall I think it keeps all the best parts of old editions while making it easy enough to get into. Class balance is good (except for poor shitty ranger), archetypes are a great idea.

It should have included more rules explicitly designed around 'theater of the mind' tho. Saying 'oh you don't need a grid for this one' then having a bunch of rules involving definite distances is kinda cheap

It just needs more books. Like, REAL books. Maybe a few more feats to allow a little more variety. It's more rules light, which is nice, especially after the clusterfuck that was the past two editions. I don't see why everyone says it's too much like 3.x when it's almost nothing like it. It's a comfy system; not overly complex, but nice and streamlined. And 3.x players will never switch over.

>I think it could use more character options and published material
This

5e is like a dull 3.5e.
3.5e had at least some crazy stuff to it when the splats hit. There are no splats to 5e, no crazy classes. It's been 2 years and we don't have anything new to explore.
I'm kinda 'stuck' in a 5e game because my brother overseas wants to play it. And he just doesn't have the time to learn something new. It's still D&D, it's alright, I'm just.. bored by it all. I'm playing a wizard and I'm bored to hell!

There's no content. Half of the rules are 3.5 phb optional rules, the other half are 3.5 ua rules, and a bunch of that is copy-pasted. They cancelled dragon and there's nothing coming out. They barely put effort into it and it shows.

tieflings and dragon borns are hella gay

Bounded accuracy is stupid.

>I just wish it had less of a stranglehold on the industry, because one company happened to practically monopolize a niche industry early on.

It was kind of inevitable, I think. It's like with WoW: When a game depends on having people to play with and most of those people are only going to play one game of its type, you're eventually going get a monopoly since most new players are going to choose the one with the most people. Until and unless they seriously fuck up and drive that massive playerbase away, whoever gets popular first can stay the most popular simply by already having been the most popular.

Really, it could have been far worse than D&D. Anyone who gets that big is going to be held back by institutional inertia and the lowest common denominator's demand for the same experience over and over again. WotC are pretty benign (when it comes to D&D) compared to what we could have gotten. They don't abuse their power like they easily could (for example, treating splats like DLC, where they leave out important chunks of the rules so they can charge you extra for them), and they've shown a willingness to try to adapt based on the wishes of the players, even if they don't always have the best grasp of what that is.

The thing is: in 5e, damage is the best way to win a fight, and the best caster spells in combat are the ones that let the damage-dealers get in and deal it even better (Hold Person for auto-crits, restrain spells like Web, and so on)

I think it's a good system, advantage/disadvantage is simple and easy to hand out, and nothing stops you from tacking on benefits or penalties after it. The classes feel more balanced, no longer is the wizard making personal planes while the fighter is just getting more attacks. The only thing I don't like is that there aren't more splats/adventure paths. I've heard there's only like 8-10 people working on it though, so I can't blame them, that's a tiny ass team.

>Really, it could have been far worse than D&D. Anyone who gets that big is going to be held back by institutional inertia and the lowest common denominator's demand for the same experience over and over again. WotC are pretty benign (when it comes to D&D) compared to what we could have gotten. They don't abuse their power like they easily could (for example, treating splats like DLC, where they leave out important chunks of the rules so they can charge you extra for them), and they've shown a willingness to try to adapt based on the wishes of the players, even if they don't always have the best grasp of what that is.

It's clear that WOTC has wanted to do new stuff with D&D for a while. Its peoples' unfamiliarity with the new stuff and a desire to stick with "classic D&D" that keeps them from going as far as they could.

5e is the best edition by a landslide. Smart people choose the best.

That's not how you spell 4e.

nobody can think 4E is best, don't be ridiculous.

That's a weird way of saying that the best spell is heat metal, hands down.

That's not how you spell
>I have shit taste.

It's a poorly designed herd of sacred cows.
The DMG illustrates well the opaque and slapdash philosophy behind implementation.
The significant number of good ideas brought to the table were buried under an endless appeal to lapsed or defector players rather than used as a framework to build a coherent game with.
In short, they tried to make 3rd edition again with more nods to AD&D. It has some appeal, more than just nostalgia... but the overt pandering prevented a decent D&D game from being a Good Game overall.

ITT: a ton of people butthurt their favorite fantasy heartbreaker will never have more than three players.

Nothing "went wrong". Every edition of DnD is about the same level of mediocre. Every edition is lauded and beloved by half of its fanbase, while being vilified and abhorred by the other half. Both sides are equally ridiculous, because the games are not good enough to be praised, or bad enough to be despised, and never vary from previous versions in any meaningful way.

That is to be expected. It is the way of things.

>Every edition of DnD is about the same level of mediocre.
That's simply not true. The editions are vastly different levels of mediocre.

>Nearly 70% of all games are Dungeons and Dragons.
That's so sad, really. It's like if you learned that 70% of all food consumed last year was tofu, or 70% of all songs sold on itunes were christian rock, or 70% of all college students were communication majors. It fills me with depression at the state of the human race.

>Is my fun wrong
No.

Unless you're hurting someone, fun is never wrong.

yes user i'm sure whatever shit, obtuse system you run is truly the choice of true patricians and has such depth that us plebian D&D players can't even begin to wrap our poor unenlightened minds around

I don't speak Japanese but I can haiku...

Stench of rancid shit
Wafts from your analogies
Please stop doing that

Thanks for taking the time to insult me, though.

It needs

>more feats. Way way way WAY more feats
>Dark Sun

> Everyone likes what I don't like
> There must be something wrong...
> ...with them.

He maybe shouldn't have used examples that are commonly disparaged, but there is a broader point in there, I think. If two thirds of all things being played confined are confined to a single line of games, that shows a distinct lack of diversity. It's one thing for a particular system to be big; it's another for it to have such a stranglehold on the market that it's twice as big as all other games put together.

It's only a lack of diversity in mechanics. Stories, settings, characters are all immensely varied between groups and dms.

Your complaint seems more like being upset that 70% of vehicles use an internal combustion engine and there just isn't enough diversity.

It's actually pretty solid as a ruleset, very easy to grasp yet it allows a lot.

>It's only a lack of diversity in mechanics

And you'd be suprised mechanics do actually help in terms of not only playing with certain stories in mind but also setting up stories in mind.

D&D covers really just a very broad generalization of fantasy that it ultimately created. It can do other things sure, to the extent I could run a lovecraftian horror game by having a bunch of friends say they do something and flip a coin to see if they succeed but that don't make a Call of Cthuluh campaign ya hear?

>Your complaint seems more like being upset that 70% of vehicles use an internal combustion engine and there just isn't enough diversity.
Well, considering that most internal combustion engines are incredibly inefficient and contribute a great deal to pollution and greenhouse gases, I definitely would say that that's a problem.

>It's only a lack of diversity in mechanics. Stories, settings, characters are all immensely varied between groups and dms.
D&D isn't a particularly flexible system. Sure, you can play any setting with any system, but you can also hammer in nails with a screwdriver (sure, it's possible, but there are better ways to go about things). D&D is good at a particular niche, and there's nothing wrong with that. Honestly, I appreciate a good, specialized tool. But when the market is overwhelmingly dominated with a dungeon crawler, that's problematic. Hell, it'd be problematic for the market to be overwhelmingly dominated by a single generic, setting-agnostic system, but at least that would be a step up. The mechanics of a game do influence what is played and how it's played.

>D&D covers really just a very broad generalization of fantasy that it ultimately created

And that fantasy FYI is Dungeon Fantasy. Literally a genre it was named after.

Characterized by a normalcy of intermingling of races and classes (the thought of an Elf, a Dwarf, a buncha humans, an angelic wizard and some hobbits travelling together on a journey would be considered ludicrious in Tolkien it's why a fucking evil god on the rise threatening the world had to cause that shit to happen), an emphasis on action, exploring corridors and attaining power through the exploits of said action.

Every single major mechanic in practically all D&D games relates to combat or at least how things function in combat and every side mechanic relates more or less to examining ones surroundings for traps, ambushes or the attainment of gold and experience to ping your character as stronger.

These mechanics when ignored leave gaping holes in the system that're only really filled by... basically freeforming or ad-hocing random numbers.

>but overall 5e is decent. Not good, but decent. That's my honest opinion.

I think a lot of people fall into that category.

It's a serviceable game but it doesn't intrigue me the way that a game with a complex system or well done fluff and rules integration does these days.

10 years ago, it would have been excellent. These days it feels decent.

>Unless you're hurting someone who doesn't want to be hurt, fun is never wrong.

Fixed.

>It needs
>Dark Sun

/thread

>Every single major mechanic in practically all D&D games relates to combat or at least how things function in combat and every side mechanic relates more or less to examining ones surroundings for traps, ambushes or the attainment of gold and experience to ping your character as stronger.

This does need to be restated because if you actually examine these very core very simple principles you realize just how much a non-combat focused campaign of D&D in practically any edition just kinda falls apart.

I mean even if you give out level ups or XP arbitrarily based on shit like "How well did we convince the duke to give our army gold so that we could go to war with the opposing nation?" it still raises the unusual scenerio of our rogue who primarily is just bluffing or bribing people into our pockets suddenly dealing THAT much more damage when he attacks a flat footed target because he accomplished this feat of diplomacy.

You could maybe argue a wizard would benefit most from a series of non-combat sessions since they attain power through study BUT HEY as we all know the classes that need the most help in D&D are the spellcasters.

3-to-5 man production team for anything other than farmed out adventures, too-conservative content schedule.

>I mean even if you give out level ups or XP arbitrarily based on shit like "How well did we convince the duke to give our army gold so that we could go to war with the opposing nation?"
You realize nothing stops you from doing that right? Hell CoS encourages you to give out XP based on the party accomplishing story goals and not just combat?

>even if
Stop reading with your ass

You should reprocess that guy's comment. It's not "how well did we convince a duke", it's story goals. Not 'correct story progress', but any story progress.

And regardless I don't see how your criticism doesn't apply full-stop to the concept of XP in general. It's literally all made up and all arbitrary by any measure.

>I have no response the post
ok

No quality control on new books, hard to find any information about new content coming out, ignoring their own rules when they add class options. A level 5 wizard can currently have like 30 AC, thanks to Bladesinger adding 5 on top of the options they already had (mage armor, shield spell)

Discussion is dead
All that's left: edition wars
It's snowing on Mt. Fuji

Shield is a reaction that lasts a turn, and a level 5 wizard shouldn't have 20 int and dex

It's simple, fast and fun enough if you just wanna hang out with your friends and kill some monsters. :3

If you want muh realism and accurate simulation then look for another system, spergo

Or... people are playing what they enjoy.

I'll give that, without any evidence one way or the other, we're speculating and neither possibility can be proven.

Rolling for stats, racial attribute bonuses and getting ASI at level 4 mean that they can.

I agree that they probably SHOULDN'T, but that's more a matter of opinion rather than a fact. You have a 0,34% chance of rolling two 18s with 6*4k3d6.
That's twice as likely as being able to play as a Paladin in 2E, by the by.

So if you roll two eighteens, just take a High Elf (+2 Dex, +1 Int) and grab the elf-exclusive Bladesinger and you're good to go.

In fact, High Elf giving +2 Dex +1 Int means that you're alright with just getting an 18 and a 17 - much likelier, although I can't be arsed to do the exact math.

I'd generally recommend that edge cases are taken into account when making random tables and such, since they CAN happen. Hell, I remember reading something about some guy in OD&D whose 1st-level Elf managed to get a Staff of the Magi in randomly rolled treasure. That shit's why 5E has so many subdivisions of the treasure tables by level and such, since a truly random game is extremely difficult to balance if you have "critical hits" in the reward tables.
Such as, say, getting a character with all 18s. Statistically possible, and I'm pretty sure that there's been a few over the years. Especially since 5E is so much less strict than OD&D/BD&D/2E's 3d6-down-the-line. How do you balance an encounter where one character can be so much inherently stronger than another? OD&D solved it by having stats not really matter, AD&D solved it by making the random generation more generous, and both also had static things that stats didn't affect and even more randomness in numbers of monsters and treasure.
Perhaps introducing more randomness makes the existing randomness more balanced? I don't really know, to be honest.

Since I feel like being contrarian, I'll just say that they went wrong the moment they published Greyhawk and have just be building on that flawed foundation since.

Seriously, though, I'd point towards their lackluster release schedule.

This kinda shit is why I use point buy desu famdesu.

Too bad the 5E pointbuy is horribly gimped and leaves you statistically worse than praying to RNGesus and rolling the dice!

It's not a bad thing if you're looking for a more low powered campaign. I like to have a more 2e feel when I do 5e so lower stats and rolling for hp at level 1 helps give it a lower power feel.

I decided to start using the rolling 3 stats, and generate the other 3 based on those table thing.
Gives everyone the same base before racial bonuses, allows for randomness, but not bullshit like one player having horrible stats and other guy rolling above 15 for everything.

I've done this for two campaigns so far, and everyone has seemed to enjoy it.

>All the numbers are really small compared to the previous WotC editions, though HP scaling is still about the same, so fights end up taking fucking hours if you aren't cheesing it with instant death spells.

Confrimed for never playing high level 5e?

Seriously, out of the past three editions, only 5e maintains a consistent average pace for fights. You seriously have no idea what you're talking about.

>Plus it's back to the "Wizards excel at everything except damage, Fighters get to do damage" when damage is usually the least efficient way to win a fight

Accurate until the last part.

Party's champion fighter excels in combat by leaps and bounds above the casters, and fights are usually impossible without him. Granted, that's just my personal experience, but that's probably more relevant than your theorycrafting.

Anyway, the only issue I have is the lack of content. This is a good and bad thing, cause the core content is pretty superb so there's always a chance they'll fuck it up (which is made extremely evident by Unearted Arcanas).

However, there's really no excuse for the lack of monsters. No templates, one MM, a couple of APs and that's it. I've pretty much exhausted the MM at this point.

>What went wrong?
Nothing. It's the best edition of D&D so far and I'm slowly converting all my 2e material over.
D&D has always been the gateway ttrpg, so in that respect it doesn't excel in any one area. Knowing that, it's just about everything you could want from a ttrpg.

In a chronological sense, 3e went wrong, then 3.5 went wrong, then 4e went wrong and Paizo swooped in, then the 5e playtest went wrong.

Don't forget Player's Options going wrong, 2E going wrong, Unearthed Arcana going wrong, AD&D going wrong, Greyhawk going wrong, and OD&D going wrong. (Seriously, it's kind of baffling that OD&D didn't have some of the stuff that's in the playtest documents. The combat system, for one.)

In reverse chronological order, of course. Dungeons & Dragons has a long and elaborate history of going wrong.

Also I double-checked and 5E still doesn't have GP=XP and that makes me sad because it really helps drive home how when they say AD&D they mean 2E.