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Lavender-Fae
@Lavender-Fae

my first tabletop RPG was D&D second edition. Well, it was the first one I owned or read. I didn't play frequently or seriously until 3E, but 2E captured my imagination hard as a kid. I had the revised books, the ones with the black-framed covers, and they are still the first things I think of when someone mentions a tabletop RPG.

I still play D&D. (and 13th Age and many other systems.) And I still like D&D because I'm a messy high-fantasy bitch and having a decently lengthy campaign doing magic stuff and slamming a trident into things is still fun. I haven't played Pathfinder, because it does the stuff I do like (huge variety of fun options and character generation ideas) but it also does a thing I like less which is that it's upped the crunch in ways I find kinda cumbersome. I'd probably like it, and I'll probably get to it one of these days, but it really isn't a high priority.

I do have some problems with 5E, sure. I'm not necessarily out here to go in hard on defending it-it serves its purpose but I'll always be happier with something a bit more rules-light and a bit less combat-oriented. (for my money I'm a big fan of Unknown Armies, a lot of PbtA games, and I really like how Daggerheart's shaping up, so far.) But I still have fun playing it, and my little yuan-ti storm sorc eats up more of my brainpower then is necessarily healthy, even when we're not playing!

so it gives me no pleasure to observe this copy of the 2024 Player's Handbook, that has fallen off a truck onto my hard drive. why am I not deriving pleasure? it stinks

first and foremost, structurally, the book is a bit odd in its layout. by this I mean the introductory What Is This Game And How Do You Play It chapter is also the combat chapter. not like an overview, not like an example of combat flow in gameplay, it is the entire combat chapter. I feel like going "what's this all about?" directly into "aaaaaand this is how temporary HP works!" is basically all that really needs to be said about the priorities of the people designing D&D.

and it's not bad info, it really isn't. it gets through the rules pretty clearly and it flows okay. if you're new it'll get the job done, but damned if it doesn't establish what they expect you to do, and what they expect you to do is murder shit. which, if that's the campaign you want? sure cool welcome.

it is my experience most people are not necessarily here for that. lotta people want to have character moments or engage in local intrigue in ways that don't involve bashing a dude's face in. nobody I know who follows Dimension 20 or Critical Role or any other AP does it because they're purely excited to listen to combat rolls.

and I'll say this: the actual bits of it that actually talk about how the game works are pretty good! art of people gesticulating at a game table while their characters match their movement behind them, actually neat. Art of tabletop groups with mixed physical attendance and people on video call, sure-you understand how people actually play your game. suggestions to go watch people play online to figure out the style you want (albeit without actually saying the words "actual play" which might be helpful, presumably because they might lead people to APs of other games), useful info to the newcomer actually. surprisingly limited hawking of their VTT.

the art's inconsistent. good, on the whole, but stylistically mixed. there is a really realistic picture here of some guys fighting a wyvern.

their names, a caption happily tells me, are caramon and raistlin.

this brings me to my first issue:

this is weirdly nostalgia-fueled in a way that makes little god dang sense

it's all over this book and it's been all over recent sourcebooks for regular style 5E: the published campaign setting Wild Beyond The Witchlight is full of references to the early 1980s action figure line and the cartoon series. it's one thing when it's just, like, a little easter egg in the maps, which that book does fairly well; it's another thing altogether when the book's entire climax hinges on going Look At This Guy! He Was A Toy Chris Perkins Had As A Kid! and the emotional twist is that one of the characters is secretly Tasha, from lore.

the 2024 DMG's cover prominently features Warduke, a character who was in one episode of the old cartoon, who has also gotten a very nice Neca figure recently. He looks like a fourth-string He-Man character, but they are pushing him. that's him, atop this post. look at 'em. he's silly. he isn't the boy you hang your franchise on. Vecna and Strahd are all over their recent stuff, and this PHB's samples of play are all explicitly from Curse of Strahd for some reason. but also: all these people come from forty-year-old media.

it feels, in a lot of ways, like they wanna Marvel this, like they wanna Star Wars this. like they wanna have a Boba Fett or a Thanos they can point to. like they have realized they don't have any specific marketable stuff and they want a breakout from names they already have out there. they want people to get excited for their little branded blorbos, in a game explicitly about making your own people and worlds, because they want you to buy Vecna merch.

so we get caramon and raistlin. we get warduke and strongheart. what we DON'T get, weirdly, is...Drizz't. We don't get the guy that actually was a breakout, the guy who still has shooters out there, the guy people named their kids after. there are more "Drizz't"s in the US then there are people with my middle name per the last census. yeah he's kinda a cringe edgelord, but you know what? there's a great many people here for that. if people like Sasuke Uchiha, and I assure you they do, they could've found an audience with their dual-wieldin' drow. I went to a non-anime vegan fest full of local makers last fall and I bought Akatsuki print socks. half the people I know are excited about Shadow the Hedgehog being in a game again; half the people I know main Juri in SF6. people love that chuuni shit.

this kinda leads me to a theory I have: we aren't getting nostalgia in general, here. we're getting nostalgia from the writers specifically. it's Geoff Johns insisting that Hal Jordan has to be the main Green Lantern again. it's JJ Abrams insisting we need to cover a bunch of plot points from A New Hope again. but unlike those two, where Johns actually had a cool idea with the Lantern factions and expanded that corner of the DC universe in meaningful ways, or where Abrams had a full crew of charismatic actors, the nature of D&D is that they kinda can't do much with their trademarked characters. so it's just HEEEEEEERE'S DRAGONLANCE ISN'T THAT COOL and nothing is done with it. maybe we get a Raistlin toy at some point, who gives a shit.

the first paragraph in this book is basically going "one day Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson made a fun game to delight their players with!" which....okay, first of all, huge historical revisionism there, gang, what the fuck. but I think it sets the tone. this is a brand that really, desperately, wants to live in an era forty years past.

but it doesn't, also! it's new, it's hip! it's modernized the rules! and this brings me to my second issue:

they didn't do jackshit this is just 5E again

I think this is the most damning thing here, moreso then any of their business decisions or their baffling tonal choices.

they don't know what this is-or rather, what it is changes constantly depending on what's convenient for them. this is a new edition! they'll say to their contracted writers to avoid continued royalties on old works. this is just a revision and all your old stuff works! they'll say to their fanbase who has already bought in. this is the forever edition we'll update eternally! they say as they cannot make their minds up about whether or not all your old stuff on Beyond will be erased.

well I've read it now and I can tell you what it is: it's barely errata. a couple spells got tweaked, a couple abilities got tweaked, but for the most part: this is such a minor update the fact that they're charging full price for this and acting like it's new is actually kind of infuriating.

mostly what they have done is they've taken stuff away.

now, granted, that's a little unfair. 5E has had a decade of Unearthed Arcanas and Tasha's Cauldrons and so on to expand upon player options. regardless, it's wildly shrunk.

I've observed that Madlin, my 5E storm sorc, couldn't be made in this edition; I thought this was because she was a yuan-ti, who are not present as a playable character choice. but also, neither is storm sorcery. literally no combination of race and class I have made since 5E came out is doable here, it turns out. not a one. for $60 I have the exciting option of using materials I already have or not being able to do anything outside of the most barebones options.

they have changed "race" to "species." I'm honestly not sure if that's better or worse in the ol' bioessentialism camp.

but, then, also, other things are gone. did you like playing an aasimar? they're here. did you like playing a radiant, or a fallen aasimar? nope! just aasimar now. no variants. "what about my cool transformation?" you say, as an aasimar player? well you just sorta pick which one you want. you can be fallen today, you can be radiant tomorrow after a short rest. there is no meaningful choice to be made at chargen. there is no actual soul or meaning to the decision except what's tactically good for you in the moment. the concept of playing a consistent character is not relevant here.

i'm disappointed and also angry

look, I do not often log in to defend 5E except when someone is getting weirdly self-righteous about not playing it. like I said, I have fun with it, there's just a great many systems I think better deliver on what I specifically want.

but god damn. I've heard it argued that 5E is kinda lifeless, and I kinda agree-I think you have to play a little with your options to add any spark to it. (my sorc's magic missile is spectral cannon fire; my death domain cleric uses skeletal chill touch hands to gesticulate and as platforms should she need to get eye-level with the non-goblin people in her party. things like that.) and, like that's the tradeoff for being the infinitely modular Everything System they want to push it as, your world of limitless adventure that you have to kinda meet in the middle here and there. you can't, and don't necessarily have to, paint too many details unto the thing you encourage your players to make their own, in a world where the rules and specifics are gonna be tweaked to their liking.

but here, that genuinely feels like the design ethos. bland it up. care less. $60 gets you a picture of Tanis Half-Elven and a stat block for Magic Missile and fuck you.

genuinely, at the end of the day, though? setting aside the business practices, which I'm not dwelling on here because a great amount has been written about them by people who are smarter then I am (but which are also awful and should be enough of a deterrent): this is just not a good book.

this is just a shell. this is the Marvel Movie of tabletop RPGs: it's weirdly grey and lacking in character but Ronan the Accuser showed up that one time you remember him? this is a Youtube UI update that has dropped off a tiny bit of functionality but a department had to keep the lights on so we all have to deal with it.

but we don't! we don't have to deal with it! you have the power of choice here, and I ask you to love yourself enough to please choose something else, anything else. this includes normal 5E! at the end of the day this is an edition that exists for the shareholders and no one, and I mean no one, but the shareholders.


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in reply to @Lavender-Fae's post:

...they want us to pay 30-50 bucks for Venger and friends and Dragonlance characters? Is 5E the edition of "nostalgia, rehash, remaster"? They just had a massively successful game with all new characters stemming from their Descent to Avernus line in the Forgotten Realms, and now they're trying to appeal to...whom exactly with this Krynn and 80s cartoon references?

Sheesh.

It really is just bizarre and honestly, sincerely does seem like they are targeting exclusively 80s nostalgia-this is a Krynn and Greyhawk house, and Faerun need not apply. I'd argue 5E has always kinda been that, in a way-it really felt like a reactionary "oh shit 4E was weird let's just make 3E again!" from the jump, but this feels so specifically targeted to a specific kinda player (a 40something dude with a "man cave") even as their art shows younger people playing a very different sort of game from what 1E was.

I think you're right. As you pointed out in your post, they've got Vecna and Strahd plastered over EVERYTHING. They're dumping Vecna in everything from MTG to Dead by Daylight. It's always been the nostalgia remake edition, and they're just pivoting even harder with their 5.5 update.

"We want everyone to play, but we want the 40 year olds to remember that you're the REAL players" or something...

To be frank, I don't know why they are putting ANY emphasis on Dragonlance.

A) The relationship between WOTC and the the Hickmans (who made and to my knowledge still sort of own the rights to the setting) is BAD. So bad that the Hickmans fucking sued WOTC for failure to deliver on promises of publishing more Dragonlance content.
B) Dragonlance has a linear story. It's like, done. Many of the adventures have you playing canonical events in the history of the setting. They're SUPER railroady too. You're specifically told to remind players that they have to make canonical decisions.
C) The only Dragonlance product put out during 5e was critically THRASHED as one of the worst products in the entire edition. What's that? You didn't know that there was a Dragonlance adventure in 5e? That's because it was put out there with absolutely no marketing. They also have released 2 novels since, all of which was the result of the settlement of the Hickman lawsuit.
D) It has not been relevant to modern fantasy in decades. When you think "Dragonlance" you think "generic 80s and 90s fantasy". It comes up as a nostalgic thing. And unlike something like Planescape or Spelljammer, it was not a setting that when old player described it made new players go "cool, I wish we could play a campaign there!".

It's not even like the D&D cartoon which falls into some kind of "remember saturday morning cartoons" vibe that makes it cheesy and fun. I realize this isn't an enormous deal to include them as minor references or examples in the PHB. I'm probably overblowing this. But it just heats me up because they have the opportunity to take advantage of a new edition by championing NEW SHIT. I would be genuinely interested in seeing stuff from Radiant Citadel upsized and given proper campaign setting status. I don't need to be reminded that old stuff already exists! I already knew about it!

it's not necessarily an enormous deal in the way it's included, sure-it's art, mostly, references here and there, but not even so much as like sample stat blocks. (Dragonlance IS the first thing in their list of official realms in the multiverse appendix, because of course there's a multiverse involved. it's in there with Eberron and FR and Greyhawk and some other stuff, though, so not really a particularly weird shoutout.)

but there's this very distinct, very constant desire to circle the wagons around a few specific settings. it'd be one thing if it was one book doing references or one line of figures or whatnot, but it's becoming kinda regular, and there are a lot of settings that are being notably omitted.

I remember when I read that more radically different first draft of this that had a lot of neat ideas including the addition of a universal furry character option but...nope that was the first to go because 'It didn't fit into D&D'. Every single playtest packet I noticed the actually interesting little changes they were making were whittled away until...this.

I had some genuine joy with my encounters with those dudes, but it was channeled entirely through being a teenaged goth goblin in a mortuary educational program

the D&D module gave me a cackling necromancer and all three feet of me landed an Intimidation check of like 25