I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
5e has both too many rules and not enough rules.
It has very specific rules in some places. Item interactions, many spell specifics, grapple, holding your breath, etc.
It has very lackluster rules in other places. Social conflict, item and spell crafting, metagame stuff like making your own class or species.
I think a lot of people playing DND would be happier playing a different system. Just not the same system for everyone.
Exactly. It’s sort of an uncomfortable middle ground, but also just kind of messy.
And I’m tired, as someone who DMed it a bunch, hearing people act like broken or missing rules aren’t a problem, or somehow even a good thing, because the DM can just make something up. Yeah, not shit. I can do that in literally any game I run. It’s just unpleasant to do in 5e, yet I have to do it all the damn time to keep the game running smoothly. I’d rather have a game that either supports me as a GM, or is easier to improvise.
I think it was a different thread where I posted about how a guy in my dnd group straight face told us something like “the beauty of DND is we can just try out different rules. If we want to do a chase scene we can try it one way, and if it doesn’t work or we don’t like it we can try something else”.
I’m just like that’s not a unique property of DND. That’s just how playing make believe works. And I’d rather have a game that runs okay out of the box rather than keep playtesting as a DM, or deal with unchecked dm whims as a player.
That sounds familiar! Partly because I recall reading that, but also because it’s a frustratingly common scenario.
D&D is, for a ton of people, synonymous with tabletop RPGs. Often that means people think the things they like about playing tabletop RPGs are unique to D&D, even they aren’t.
What gets me are people who complain about Pathfinder 2e having more rules. You’re just as free to ignore them, and no one has to read much less memorize all the rules. Besides, is anyone under the illusion that players are learning all the rules to 5e?
It also suffers from not using consistent language and keywords in the rulings.
The more recent rewrites are better but there would be way fewer discussions on “what exactly does this mean” if there were consistent keywords for things.
…also I am currently writing a pile of homebrew to try and run a spelljammer game because those books they released inspired me to run a Treasure Planet campaign but didn’t give me nearly enough material.