Have you tried 5th edition, or do you just refuse to play it because of the stereotypes you’ve imagined?
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Set and setting strike again. I misread “In 1577, the Spanish Carmelite nun Teresa of Ávila wrote a prayer manual called The Interior Castle…” as “player manual”.
“Seven statistics durth thou have to defynge thy imaginary mien; of these, Charisma is thyn dump stat.”
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Basically anytime you see the words “D&D” from someone like that you should picture them saying “Third Edition D&D” or “Third and Fourth Edition D&D”. I can’t bash 4e much though I didn’t like it but it is an extremely tightly made tactical combat game, but 3.5 (and pathfinder) are rough to defend.
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This is a very good point. 3e had serious issues and 3.5 made things extremely complex (and Pathfinder didn’t fix things in the slightest). I enjoyed playing a multi-year 4e campaign, but I was lucky to have a DM who stressed storytelling and role-play rather than focus on the MMO-esque combat that alienated a lot of old-school players. D&D birthed a lot of terrific RPGs, but I’m hoping people who’ve decided they hate the game give 5e a shot, at least.
Well the people that hate d20 have some legit sounding gripes about statistics (3d6 or 4df being a better bell curve for generally being able to do what you are meant to be capable of), but in the end it is a pretty slight variance and 5e addresses this issue directly with advantage/disadvantage.
Very interesting article!
I am a drama therapist who uses tabletop games therapeutically with teens, and have had many conversations about the “decline of imagination” in today’s youth.
What I have seen (and you can read about in Stuart Brown’s book Play) is that there has been a decline in unscripted narrative play. When kids get toys, they are encouraged to play with them according to the inherent “script” (i.e., G.I. Joes should stay soldiers, not be used as construction workers, etc.) and even many narrative video games with forking narrative structures still operate on rails, by the necessity of the medium.
Sometimes video games/tech are believed to reduce imagination. People who make this claim generally don’t play video games… (Play an hour of Minecraft and try to honestly repeat that claim)
What makes D&D (and especially the changes they made in -> 5e) a compelling remedy to this “problem” is that it gives a loose but safe structure to allow a group to have in-person barely-scripted narrative fantasy play.
We have play 3.5 in our therapeutic groups, but are seriously considering switching to 5e. Just got my DMG yesterday!
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Every time I see Gamergate used as an offhand punchline, my soul gets one degree warmer. It’s a benison.
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5th edition is actually the first edition of D&D I ever bought (if I don’t count the Pathfinder core rules). I did buy a few AD&D books back in the day, but never one of the core books. I used to hate D&D for its focus on combat, lack of realism, and restrictive character creation, preferring WFRP, GURPS, Shadowrun and many others. 3rd edition changed my perception, giving me the impression of a game that was more a system and less a patchwork, and it had more flexible character creation. But as it progressed, it started making less and less sense, and forums had a big focus on designing broken builds, power tiers, etc. Skills were either meaningless or broken powerful. Pathfinder fixed some things, but the more I played it, the more I realized how mechanics-heavy it really was. I call systems like Pathfinder and D&D 4 “mechanics-first” games, because you often play from what the rules let you do, rather than from your imagination.
During the playtest, D&D Next looked like it might reverse that trend. The final product doesn’t go nearly far enough in that respect, with a flood of class features very reminiscent of Pathfinder. Still, it looks a lot lower on rules and higher on imagination, and in the end, that’s all I really want.
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