Tell me about when you realized that D&D is a fundamentally broken game regardless of edition

>*slowly raises hand*

Some of them are ok, others suck.

Which and why?

>oh no, it's Veeky Forums and they're tired of this repeat troll thread

Please, unironically.

I only didn't played 1ed

I have played all of them, but not all extensively. I loved 2e more than anything, but it might just be nostalgia. The game was filled with mystery to me, and felt more deadly and scary. Plus we just kind of assumed most skills and stuff, so it felt more freeform in some aspects.

1e was kind of dated but works
AD&D and 2e were fun if clunky
3.X is only really fun if you play a caster
4e and 5e both work, but I'm not a fan.

When I realized that cinematic, rules-lite RPGs were way more fun, much more streamlined, and presented significantly better opportunities to RP.

3.5 and 5e just occupy a niche of being too rulebound to view creative maneuvers in combat as anything but unoptimized mistakes (why did you disarm him instead of Power Attacking him a third time) but not complex or tactically satisfying enough to make me wonder why I'm not playing a videogame instead.

its real fucking rare but i have an older friend in his late 40s whos been around to play every edition as well as a myriad of other systems like palladium, traveller, gurps, other ones that he hasnt mentioned but he stands by Dnd as an above average system with a handful of its own flaws. He also was one of the guys to call 5e a streamlined and more freeform 1e.

That said, with all of our experience combined we generally agree that 3e-4e were the worst editions.

Huh. I've actually played all but first. My buddy's got a redbox we've been meaning to bust out at some point, but we've never gotten around to it.

GET READY FOR SOME PIPING HOT OPINIONS

I'd say AD&D was groundbreaking for its time, but doesn't really hold up. It had lots of good ideas, several bad ones, and overall wasn't well-constructed by modern standards. It's outdated, but we only got where we are because of it. It was ahead of the curve.

3rd and 3.5 were not. They were playable, you could have fun with your friends, but the system would sometimes get in the way of the fun. They frankly weren't as well-designed as other games available at the time. This caused my groups to move away from D&D for years.

4e was well-constructed, almost excessively so. Everything was carefully balanced and standardized, and it was as much a grid-based wargame as an RPG. If that was how you always wanted to play D&D, it was great. If not, it was weird and unpleasant. Had some fun one-shots, but no one wanted a campaign of it.

5e is good. Wizards really learned from their earlier experiments. It's got some of the competent construction of 4e, and some of the looseness and liberty of AD&D. It's easy to teach to new players, the classes are decently balanced without all working the same. It's the first one where we finished one campaign and decided to just run another with the same system (instead of doing a WoD or Dark Heresy campaign or something.) Good job, fun game.

>more deadly and scary
I imagine this is largely due to both players and DMs sucking at using combat properly in later editions. Certain save or suck effects might as well have been save or die, inhaled poisons were really strong because you could stack doses, typeless damage, etc.

>Plus we just kind of assumed most skills and stuff
This is just shit game design by my standards. If you haven't defined central mechanics like skills the game isn't finished.

>3.X is only really fun if you play a caster
Mmm, you just can't go for a straight martial with no prestige class and no monstrous HD or templates. As long as you already have a build planned out you can make pretty much any play style mechanically viable.

>That said, with all of our experience combined we generally agree that 3e-4e were the worst editions.
Why?

>it's the Veeky Forums is one person episode again

I get repeating memes, thats what makes them memes, but we have this thread literally every day. Everything that can be said has been said. There is no point anymore beyond just wildly shitposting.

>Come into a thread about how frustrated people are with DnD
>Start shilling/defending it like your empty life depends on it.

Unironically you're fucking retarded and unhealthily obsessed.

And triggering little sissy faggots like you.
D&D is shit, it must be said as often as possible in case anyone new to rpgs comes now into Veeky Forums for the first time.

And yet here you are, feeding the supposed "trolls" while desperately trying to convince yourself DnD isn't dying as real TTRPG players move on to better games and have nothing to say about DnD because there's nothing worth saying about it. Have fun with your normies and Critical Roll episodes.

>haha you responded
>nobody would disagree with me unless they're TRIGGERED SHILLS
Have fun sperging out over something everyone agrees is bad, fuck this garbage thread.

If your whole premise is "I must justify why I hate something not worth hating," it doesn't take long for these guys to fall into deep exaggerations or to otherwise reveal how little they understand games.
These threads are the antithesis of meaningful discussion, while these trolls put no effort in hiding their mindless bias.

I don't even like D&D that much and I think you're fucking lazy and stupid.

Lazy? Yeah, probably? Still, I don't think you should need a 300+ page rulebook to do basic roleplaying though. I wana come up with cool ideas and have simple systems to determine the outcomes of those cool ideas. Instead coming up with a cool idea in DnD means stopping the game for 10 minutes while you look up some set of obscure rules in the horribly formatted rules books, spend another 10 minutes arguing over how to interpret it, and then 9 times out of 10 being told you can't do the thing or it's extremely disadvantageous to even attempt it, so just shut up and spam your full-round attack again.

...

>five editions
It's actually closer to 10 now. There are substantial difference in the different versions of Basic D&D, Ad&d is up to 5, there's the original chainmail hack and the brown book, ect.
Even if you count Basic as all one edition (and you shouldn't, because the red box and rules cyclopedia are different) and completely discount the original hack, there's 7 different versions of d&d.

Okay, see, your description just sounds like you've played with really horrible people in the past, which is not at all indicative of any sort of system's quality.

And say what you want about D&D, the books are actually very well formatted, and if you think they're bad then you have not genuinely seen a terribly formatted rulebook before. Take a read through Legends of the Wulin sometime, and then come back and say the same thing. I dare you.

>Oh boi, it's the "DnD is good if you have a DM who ignores all the actual rules" argument again.

Please, that poor user has suffered enough, don't make him suffer more.

Who are you quoting? Who said that? Nobody said that user. Are you alright?

Reminder that DnD started as a war game, and later became a dungeon crawler. It was never meant to be a "roleplaying" game in the sense that you're used to roleplaying games (rules-lite/freeform).

So yeah, it plays like a videogame because it's MEANT to play like a videogame.

Wow, this troll is really desperate for you's.

Which one?
Or do you mean ALL of them?

Don't you know that there is only one guy on tg?

M&M?

>5e is good.
It's not. The ability score cap / increase system is fucked up, chargen is boring as hell, they fixed a lot of things but tacked it on to the most bland boring system ever. It's fun for fucking around with normalfags and hipsters but it's really not fulfilling for a long campaign. Doesn't mean that 3.5 and a shitton of books full of rules is the answer, but neither is 5e. 4th edition is better than both but it also is full of it's own shitty issues like orcs that jump off a building and die instantly.

>D&D is shit, it must be said as often as possible in case anyone new to rpgs comes now into Veeky Forums for the first time.
Are you kidding? D&D is the containment RPG for newbies. I don't want retarded roasties who have watched The Big Bang Theory trying to join my Savage Worlds game and taking eight months to learn what a d12 is. Fuck off.

DnD is mostly fine, but I fucking hate d20s. If you could replace the d20 with something more balanced, with a bell curve or something, I'd be happy. 2d10, 3d6, something. Anything.

>*slowly emerge from shadows*

>eh...?

>...not bad...

>*inhale cigar*

>*teleport behind you*

>*unsheathe tanto*

>...owari da...

>*slash 666 times*

>omae wa shinderu...

>*exhale cigar*

>*sheathe tanto*

>*look at you being cut in 999 pieces*

>...arigato doeshtet sayonara...

>...

>*teleport away*

The only edition I haven't actually played is OD&D. Everything else I've played at one point or another.

D&D is a heroic fantasy game with a heavy focus on skirmish based combat.

In this sense it's perfectly fine throughout its various editions. It's only when people try to.treat it like something else that issues understandably arise.

>heroic fantasy
It's sword and sorcery you nigger.

Tired malicious shitposting is still shitposting.

Well, you skipped the only good edition. You'd probably still hate it but it doesn't have those problems

I've played original AD&D through to 4th edition and also BECMI, so I guess that's five editions.

Can't say I particularly loved any of them.

>I'd say AD&D was groundbreaking for its time, but doesn't really hold up. It had lots of good ideas, several bad ones, and overall wasn't well-constructed by modern standards. It's outdated, but we only got where we are because of it. It was ahead of the curve.

2e AD&D was absolutely not ahead of the curve , it was a creaking dinosaur of a system that the writers kept piling more and more content on.

3e had a lot of problems its designers didn't foresee, but it did at least get D&D on board with what other RPGs had been doing as standard for over a decade, like having a universal resolution system and characters with a variety of skills

Meh. Having to whip out the binomial theorem for dice pools in Shadowrun isn't much fun either. At least D20 makes threshold tests easy to adapt.

There is a middle ground between success based dice pools and a flat d20.

Oh I can relate to this. 5e is basiclly a modernized second with the good ideas of 3.x and 4e thrown in.

I assume you mean more natural distributions like 3d6? Great for modeling randomness, but a flat distribution is nice when you want to just whip up a test with 3:1 or 4:1 odds.

>d&d is created and get famous
>its the first rpg so (since its famous) you have all those extreme amount of rpg players with different point of view of how a rpg should be, playing the exact same rpg
>after some amount of time playing some players discover some stuff they think are flaws, while discover some rules they think are really awesome
>because they have very different views on what a rpg should be (despise playing the exact same rpg), what some guy think is a good idea wont be considered a good idea by the other player, what some consider a shitty idea will be considered a good idea by other rpg
>new system is made based at this enviroment, and create a mess of a rpg system.
>many of those players quickly jump into the new system, expecting fixed to what they think are flaws
>because the players have very different opinions on what rpg should be (despise playing the same exact system), what is a flaw to some is a fix to another, and what is a fix to another is a flaw to someone. So the system CAN'T be fixed.
>all those extreme amount of players quickly jumping to this new system, bring new (to rpg) players to the new d&d system
>this make the game have an extreme amount of rpg players with different point of view of how a rpg should be, playing the exact same rpg
>because they have very different views on what a rpg should be (despise playing the exact same rpg), what some guy think is a good idea wont be considered a good idea by the other player, what some consider a shitty idea will be considered a good idea by other rpg
>new system is made based at this enviroment, and create a mess of a rpg system. No one knows what the system/d&d is suposed to be, because it was created based on a mess.
>the story continue ad infinitum

>freeform

Just end yourself now, because that is the gayest shit I've ever heard.

Its like acting but without getting paid. You're not even getting money for making a fool of yourself.

Not even being ironic, 4e was the best edition, but people shat on it for being different.

> Its like acting but without getting paid.
Some of us did that for fun back in school, user. I'd kill for a table of ex-drama goofballs.

So if D&D isn't the best fantasy RPG to start on, what is the top of the heap now for people wanting to run a high fantasy campaign?

>you can make pretty much any play style mechanically viable

... That's not actually a meaningful statement.

>You can play the game if you play it.

Holds just the same amount of weight.

Versions I've played

>B/X
>BECMI
>RC
>AD&D
>AD&D 2e
>3e
>3.5
>4e
>5e

Of those my favorites are BECMI, RC, and 4e with 2e hanging around in the background to steal setting stuff.

>this thread
>again
>and again
>and again

Please no.

When I saw just how small the modifiers are compared to the fickleness of a d20.
By design a 1 means you're a fucking cuck(no matter how good your character is at a particular skill), and a 20 means you're a god.

It's kinda stupid and leads to retarded situations like the barbarian failing to move the boulder but the wizard getting super lucky and passing the DC.
Or the expert rogue failing to pick a lock but the fucking paladin succeeds. Stupid shit like that

While I agree that the d20 just has too big of a spread to be used as the core die efficiently, even percentiles can have the same silliness you mentioned. For example, bend bars/lift gates in old D&D could see a barbarian fail to bend iron but the wizard could just roll up and get lucky with their puny arms. It all comes down to % likelihood, even a small chance of failure can come up and even a small chance of success can come up.

I think they mean Mutants and Masterminds

>doesn't understand how a binary pass fail system works

Did you really need to bump this thread just to show how stupid you are?

Shame you still basically require feats and the class design isn't as simple as second.

I keep hoping for a truly modernized take on the old school game that isn't something weird like the Black Hack.

When I played Tunnels and Trolls

When 4th fixed everything, and people literally called it "not D&D" because it wasn't broken garbage.

>implying 4e didn't have broken math

4urrie hypocrisy in action folks.

And this is why I only play wargames.

I demand a copypasta be formulated so I know what games people are actually trying to convert me to when they rag on D&D.
It looks like I have the same problems with the system as most people here complain about (percentile windows making stupid shit happen), but I usually took that as a side effect of playing a game where odds are involved in general- otherwise I may as well be bringing in PCs to a freeform RP.

Yell at me and tell me I'm wrong Veeky Forums, I want to know what the ideal tabletop experience is and whom to get it from.

Go play risus or lasers and feelings. (the easiest and shortest I can think of)
Just expose yourself to more games play new thinks and form your own educated opinion on what is a good role-playing game.
Whatching the same movie over and over will teach you a lot about that movie but very little about cinematography. You must watch lots of movies good and bad, so you can know what kind of movie you really like.

Most people don't get paid for their free-time recreation activities, user. Unless they're video game streamers or something.

This anons' taste is exquisite.

Henceforth, he is to be referred to as my African-American.

Do you want tight, concise rules for everything you could possibly imagine? Do you like bell curves that cause diminishing returns as you reach the bleeding edge of skill, but allow characters with true mastery over a subject to essentially never fail? Do you want material for any possible setting you could want?
>play GURPS
Do you want a lighter system with simple rules where the only real work is making your character? Do you want all of the information you could need during a session to be on your sheet? Do you want easy modularity due to a relatively low level of rules interaction within the same character, allowing really easy home brew?
>play basic role play
Do you want a setting focused,character focused drama centered around supernatural creatures and their social interactions?
>play world of darkness

DnD is really just the white bread of the table top world. It's not offensively bad, it's just incredibly bland, has very little flavor, tris to be good for everything, but just ends up being passable.

Mayne, stop. This board is angry enough without those threads. Be positive. Want to promote non-D&D - do it by some shit like this instead of shitting on D&D

>*it's a hologram*

>what is the top of the heap now for people wanting to run a high fantasy campaign?
Depends on what type of high fantasy we're talking about. Considering, however, that the two fantasy IPs that are most likely to inspire newcomers to the hobby right now are Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire (or rather Game of Thrones) I'd probably say people would be far better off trying The One Ring or Green Ronin's ASoIaF RPG (and I say this while not being much of a fan of the latter personally).

How about the GoO Tri-Stat/d20 SIF RPG?

>what games people are actually trying to convert me to when they rag on D&D.
Personally I don't have a single system. I play several different ones and will usually pick one specifically for the type of campaign I want to run. The only exception is when I use a generic system that I think handles things in a fitting manner for the tone I want, such as BRP or Fate. GURPS is also handy but in my eyes, at least, it's less of a system and more like a toolkit for creating your own system. Like, "here are some suggestions for rules you could use for your game, pick the ones you want and tell us how it went" or something. In theory highly practical, but can easily take far too much time for the average game unless you're highly familiar with the system.

This. 4e had a fairly consistent idea of the type of Heroic Fabtasy it wanted, and the mechanics pulled it off. Daily powers worked - within 4e's design. Minions worked - within 4e's design. Even WBL worked - within 4e's design.

The few issues I found in 4e were where a few things didn't quite get utilised as much:

>math fixes ie feat taxes, monster math
>rituals not as efficient as possible, could be made more accessible
>power creep naturally through supplements (minor; a phb1 human fighter is still VERY competent; you have to just about consciously go out of your way to fuck up a character and be dead weight)
>Essentials not being viable after heroic
>Essentials being a giant clusterfuck of misdirected design as failure to understand 4e in general
>runepriest, seeker etc coming too late to have options

Yeah, most of my issues with 4e are mostly 'This could have been done better' rather than 'This is actively broken'.

4e is the only edition with a consistent vision; if you didn't like, say, Fantasy Action Heroes, then you won't like 4e, but at least it did it well. Unlike say 5e, which promises interesting things for Martials and then gives us the Battlemaster.

>4e is the only WotC edition with a consistent vision
FTFY

Mind you, it can do a lot wider things than most people expect if you want to go with more 'Die Hard' action hero. The lingering injury and disease rules are fucking brutal.

I'm not a huge fan of TSR-era 'roll a different table entirely for this resolution mechanic,' and I'm leery of a 'pre-Internet' gaming culture being in any way consistent, but it's still miles ahead of 3.pf so I'll give you that.

I mean as far as I know you Cnr heal someone by drowning them in AD&D.

I think that's a 3rd edition meme.

Unless I misunderstood you and you mean you don't know much about pre-WotC D&D.

Neither do I, I just played BECMI a few times, never even rolled an AD&D characetr

Harsh or not, I still don't think it's entirely possible to overrule how heavily invested 4e is in being Big Damn Heroes; that shit is engrained from the very concept and permeates every mechanic.

I've heard of people using 4e to run stuff like giant mecha or Scott Pilgrim, but those were still heavily themed on being Big Damn Hero (robots/fighters).

4e was a board game not an RPG.

I enjoy 5e a lot. I tried all editions but most of them only for 1-2 adventures, 5e is the one I can get down with hard enough for 1-2 campaigns.

4e is great if you wanna play Descent (the boardgame) and realize Descent (the boardgame) is shit.

3e and 2e are great if you have a computer to do all the shitty stats.

1e is for tourists and historians.

How much do they pay you to make these stupid threads every day? It looks like I'm going to be behind on rent and a little extra cash would do me a world of good.

I've played AD&D 1e, D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, and D&D 5e. Have DMed all but the first one, too. My favorite is still 3.5, followed by 5e.

>They frankly weren't as well-designed as other games available at the time
I'd disagree. 3.5 was probably the best designed game of its time. In fact, it was so fucking good its paradigms are still used, albeit in a more refined form, to this day and dominate the market. Having different ruling systems for different power sources was and is something that lifts DnD above most other RPGs and it's one of the main reasons people are 'uneasy' with 4E.

What 5E did of streamlining the resolution mechanics while retaining mechanical verisimilitude is exactly the sort of natural evolution you see in good systems, and the only other RPGs I can think of that had such impactfull core mechanics are GURPS (which sadly has not continued to evolved and as a result somewhat diminished in exposure) and more recently FATE.

WoD was close, but thanks to the authors not having the slightest clue about math its flaws kept it from spreading.

It wasnt a sudden thing. I tried designing my own systems and every time I tried copying D&D I realized something new just didnt work. After a few years I realized none of it worked.

A single die roll (D20) is probably its biggest problem. It creates a necessity for HP and AC bloat to prevent a diminishing return, whereas multi-roll systems have inherently increasing returns.

Aside from that the casting system is ass. Class systems are inherently sub par. Not to mention the lack of uniformity in mechanics across different aspects of the system. It all adds up to a game thats a bit of a mess. Not as much as SR, for example, but its a massive machine struggling very hard to do a simple job.

>chargen is boring as hell
there's what, 2 books out? It's certainly not as mechanical as 3.5, but backgrounds and character motivations are a neat tie-in for roleplaying and if you start at high level you can do some ok build crafting as well. And that's fine, we don't need a second 3.5 without the content.

Ive run 2, 3, 4 and 5. As a GM D&D is universally a pain to run.

Check out Splittermond. 2d10 system with integrated gambling mechanic where you can add or remove a die and the initiative system uses time-increments on a track instead of turns.

Its always weird when I see people say that 5e is easy to learn. Its certainly easier than 3.5, but its far harder to learn to play than 4. Im not really a fan of either though.