Funny thing is that I've been looking for weeks on RUclips for comprehensive retrospectives for some roleplaying games (notably D&D 5 and Pathfinder 2). Turns out I found one all the way back here while catching up instead LOL There are countless full-length "reviews" by people who played a single session and talk like they know all about a game system meant to be used for years (sometimes decades). Now, actual system (and product-line) reviews that rely on extensive experience, actual play, insider insight and proper critique, like this one here, are rare and invaluable. If anyone reading this can refer me to other such retrospective reviews, I'd appreciate any shout-outs and name-drops!
I don't understand how with all the books and knowledge we have collected over the decades why we even need WoTC? As DM we can do what ever we want to do. We can make any sub classes we want in our games. Make any spells we want in our games and change anything we see fit. Players typically come to hang out with other friends and have an enjoyable evening gaming. Maybe I just am lucky and have a small tiny player base in my neck of the woods who trust and enjoy what I create and put out. No one argues with me over mechanics and trusts that I am making things fair enough that the game can move along. Everyone realizes they are not the main character in any of my stories. We already got out those power fantasies back in the 80's and 90's. As we went through the Moldvay style gaming in the 70's. We don't need them. We have never needed them after we paid and bought our books. Everything can be updated to our own liking and help make our games run smoothly. Yes we have kicked out a few players who wanted to barge in with their new 5.e rule set thinking they were going to "own" the DM by bringing their min / Max nonsense onto my table. Nope I gatekeep and for good reason. So why do we need WoTC or D&D One? It's Done. I wouldn't use their crooked system if they paid me. Also WoTC offered a horrible deal so when they gave us the real deal, they thought gamers were stupid enough to fall for typical Upsale nonsense. They are acting like the snakeoils sales men I ran back in the 80's.😆😆 Screw WoTC and screw D&D. I don't need them. It is what the universe gave us imaginations for.
@@underfire987 Thanks man. Strange world we live in these days that is for sure. WoTC has no idea what they had or what they are doing. These people need us 100% more than we need them. I hope more folks who think like us can teach them this valuable lesson in life.
While I support this completely and will always sing Larry's praises, the piece shown is Clyde Caldwell, who has fought a lifelong crusade against pants.
Between your comments on Ravenloft becoming "Goosebumps" and Spelljammer ship combat nonexistent, 5e has gravitated toward removing tension and terror and become Sword Coast Avengers styled play.
A lot of that going in the gaming sphere: Diablo 4 came out earlier this year and while many loved the storyline, it felt exactly like a generic Marvel movie and nothing like the original Diablo games. Corporations in 2023 will sell their whole product identity if it means 10 extra bucks made by the next earnings call - and you do that through mass appeal. 5 out of the 5 game-of-the-year nominations for the Game Awards this week are sequels to or remakes of older games (including one from 2005). Not a single new franchise or stand-alone game. Our culture desperately needs a reset.
Before I get into my own gripes with 5E, I gotta say, your Mystara players guide and your various videos thereof has proven massively inspirational to me in my own creative endeavors, there's so much life and creativity and imagination in that book that I just find...lacking, in vanilla 5E. I love imagination and storytelling in games, but Whenever I wanted to play a game with my buddies, I usually find myself pigeonholed into 5E because that's what my friends are familiar with and are the most willing to play, but 5E just doesn't give me enough of anything to work with. Thankfully for me, this recent controversy with Wizards has actually given me an opportunity to help my friends and players transition away from 5E into something better, and your PHB for Mystara reminded me that better is possible, so for that, I thank you. P.S. I actually found it really cool how Ethengarian Spirit Shamans are warlocks instead of being Clerics, I love the idea of holy men not being immediately all shoved into the cleric class, I am certainly stealing that concept.
I started D&D with 5e in Highschool, and when DMing I usually found myself reading 3.5 or 2e books to research the lore for my campaign, even for established modules, because 5e's content is so bland and empty. You summarize it pretty well.
Here is what you can do, just use the 2014 5e core Rule books and build your own world off of that and if need to be customize the rule to fit your world. Just like what I am doing.
Or you can just play TSR D&D. I did the same thing, going back to look for lore, and in the process, realized the D&D I was looking for was right in front of me. New doesn't mean better
I started to heavily homebrew 5e once they released the first one d&d thing, because i felt that the promise of modularity that I saw in 5e was going to be unfulfilled and i wanted to show my friends the potential fun i saw in that. So I created a lot of subclases, spells, a diplomacy subsystem and an exploración system to give substance to the survival skill. Then i realised that I was making so much in the name of entertaining my friends i might as well make my own system... And i've belen doing that thanks in great part to your mad musings giving good pointers and the incentive of seeing someone else being as passionate about this hobby as i am, so thank you mr. Welch.
@@nidhoggstrike the doc is in the office computer, but roughly: use Charisma stat as diplomacy HP, make a table per cha skill to give rough target numbers, make it an offer and counter offer "combat" where once someone succeeds the core is set but they can argue the details. Damage for a failed check should be from d2+cha skill mod of the opponent to 12+cha skill mod of the opponent. It's not that good but i feel that it gives more personality to each skill.
That's how my play group went. I took 5e as a base then built up on it. I literally wrote books and made my own world up since my players decided to go full endtimes in the forgotten realms in a attempt to achieve God hood (after 5 years they came close and ultimately destroyed each other and the world) after that point I just made up my own world and we been playing that since, it's not even dnd anymore. It's fantasy monsters and labyrinths ttrpg
I played every edition at one point or another and many other games for years, so at this point homebrew is second nature and the settings are all my own to begin with. After enough experience, you really don't need books to tell you how to play a game.
3rd ed was influenced by magic the gathering and that is from an ex WotC employee (not me). As for what 5th ed was. It was a politician campaign. All promises no substance. It should have been a twofer. A simple system and advanced rules. Simple for the quick little game and introducing players. Advanced for the rest of the game.
The thing that bothers me most about DND 5E is the whole, “everybody gets along” attitude. Original DND made it a point of emphasizing that elves and dwarves, despite both being good species, didn’t generally get along. There was friction caused by DIFFERENCES… whereas DND 5E just hand waves it away and essentially you just have tall humans, short humans, skinny humans, ugly humans, demonic humans, draconic humans, etc. That’s not realistic. Look at the strife between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. It went on for centuries… and nobody outside of Ireland could tell the two sides apart… yet we’re to believe that Dragonborn and gnomes and humans will all magically get along? Sigh…
I vividly remember the exact moment when 5th edition lost me. The characters were trudging through a hot, muddy, foul smelling swap. Hip deep in the muck to get to their destination, I described how the mud caked on every crevice, fouled their armor, and seeped into uncomfortable places. Insects buzzing around them, some drawn to the dampness only worsening their misery. Traversing the swamp was SUPPOSE to be unpleasant. I was throwing an adversary at the players that wasn't a monster, but perhaps just as insidious. That is until they found a patch of dry land, and the wizard cast the prestidigitation cantrip over and over again until 'everyone was all clean.'. In my head I was like, seriously... 'eff this game.
I thought it was going to end with "I cast Leomund's Tiny Hut & we take a long rest." but this is so much better and really shows how easily the most minor of magics can trivialize adversity in 5e. Don't even get me started on Mage Hand or Guidance.
@@MrSteveK1138 It's an edition afraid of having an actual identity. The base rules could be decent, but the classes and backgrounds are a huge list of "I'm immune to that'. The exhaustion condition, for instance: Under core rules, it's a serious condition, but what's the point if WotC uses any and every opportunity to tell players: "Relax, that doesn't apply to you".
Yeah, I don't know how many times my plans were thwarted because of a riskless, low level spell or even because everyone just dogpiled on a skill roll or saying they use the help action for advantage when they don't have the background or skills to help out with the action at hand.
Channel's focus on Mystara?! Color me intrigued! Mystara was my FAVORITE setting back in the day! I keep telling myself that I should try to update it but I'm too lazy! Think I will have to stick around and check things out!!!
I have a sneaky suspicion that the reason why Dragon lance, Raven loft, and spell jammer cam e out is because of the same reason you see certain superheroes pop up for a limited run or one shot and then are not seen again in years.
It saddens me to say that I knew this day was coming. Truly. You shouldn't let the current situation sour you forever. Look at like any bad break up. At first, it's so awful that you swear that you're not EVER going to let something like that happen to you again. Then, slowly, you start to look back on things after most of the anger and grief have subsided, and you start to get a LITTLE bit of perspective. Then, the work starts. After realizing how everything went so spectacularly wrong, you see the red flags that were there all along, and you become wiser. You realize that the old thing that you loved, was the best thing. Not everything that's new or improved is better or even improved. It just LOOKS shiny and new. The problem with that is looks really are just skin deep. I'll stick with my 2nd edition every. time. It's not perfect, but it's perfect for me. I hope this helps, Glenn. Happy trails.
I know a dm who was very exited to run Stryxhaven and Spelljammer before being given the sourcebook and the campaigns falling apart shortly after. More so the Spelljammer game, she was looking into 5e homebrew and the old 2nd edition books so she could get the game up and going a few days after the book game out. But after it did enthusiasm turned to disappointment and disappointment turned to boiling anger. Thats the final straw on the camels back that made the group convert to Pathfinder lol. For the past 5 years all I've really cared about has been the 3PP. The monster books from Kobold Press have just been phenomenal.
Thing is, I've felt like this for a while and it feels like a lot of people are just now catching on strong. 3rd ed is what it was, but it started with one of the best books in WOTC's tenure - if not the best - in the FRCS. Except that was done by Ed Greenwood and a bunch of ex-TSR vets. The more Wizards has taken over, the lazier they've gotten.
I've been joking about how humans in D&D should have their lack of darkvision/low-light vision count as a _weakness_ - because _almost everyone else_ has it. It's effectively a baseline ability.
This is a very valid criticism of 5th edition. I will still be playing 5e stuff for awhile. I like it. It's what I bought. But you make a ton pf fantastic points as to how it could've been a lot better and where they failed. While I do like 5e. I definitely have my gripes with it. There wasn't a single critique you had that I felt was off base. As someone who only got into dnd in the past decade, I'm glad they rehashed old adventures. But I could see being annoyed by that as a veteran of the game. All in all a well thought out and savage kick to the teeth of 5e and wotc.
Can I just say that your video title captures my feelings perfectly? I was never the biggest 5e fan, actually prefering 4th, but I still recognized 5e had potential, even if it was largely untapped. There have been some *awesome* third-party settings for 5e, like the incredible Japanese-flavored screampunk "Mists of Akuma", the Dragonlance meets Redwall heroic fantasy of the Chronicles of Aeres, the neo-pulp of Midgard, the ultimate Dark Fantasy of Grim Hollow, and the awesome "bonepunk" of Planegaea, which captures the "feel" of what a hypothetical Stone Age of a traditional D&D world might look like to excellence. But Wizards has squandered all their potential, all their talent, and given us underwhelming, watered down *garbage* for too many years. It's become a toxic soup of laziness, greed, and virtue signalling, and it's time to let it go. Maybe there will be a better D&D one day, but it certainly won't be the One D&D that Hasbro is trying to push. Me? I'm going back to 4th edition; the last edition where WotC genuinely gave a damn.
The funny thing about 5th edition, is that the best stuff for it was always 3rd party. Be it Welch's own Mystara handbook, the Midgard setting from Kobold Press, Scarred Lands from Onyx Path Publishing (a reboot of sorts from the 3e/3.5e version made White Wolf), Aetaltis from Mechanical Muse, Fateforge from Studio Agate, and so on. At best, all you could really say about WotC was that it provided some rulebooks, and little else in the end. For a company that loved to constantly use the Forgotten Realms as a default setting of sorts for their core stuff, they really failed with using it as an actual "setting" for 5e. It's funny, for all that I criticize Forgotten Realms as being sort of generic, the earlier editions had more real "fluff" more setting, more *something* to it, compared to what they put in for 5th Edition. I don't give WotC any credit for Eberron or Dragonlance, because those were the works of other people who wrote and designed them. Hell same with Critical Role's Exandria. WotC mostly has just been milking them for success, their own hard work. Honestly everyone in D&D 5e, be it "core" or 3rd-party, deserves better than how WotC has treated them all.
I don't know if it has been said already, but I beg and plead for you to continue with your efforts to create 5E DM & MM books for Mystara. Outside a few things from the VoP and Thorf's maps, your books are the only thing that has excited me D&D wise in years. I was happy to make a contribution for the PHB and wish it could have been more. Your PHB is the only 5E book I own and it was because of the Mystara setting. You did what many of us wished to do and for that, you will be an Immortal. Ka The Preserver could not be any prouder. Set our fledgling fears to rest and tell us you will complete your holy trinity. Oh and thank you for voicing that many of us think and feel. Especially at the end when you proclaimed this channel's future.
“necessity is the mother of invention” is a phrase I think also applies to restrictions. Without some level of distinct parameters, choices and differences become inconsequential.
I was so happy that planescape was coming back, little did I know it was just like you said. All of it was half-baked cliffnotes, such little actual content.
I loved 3.5… I played for a decade, and that was more than a decade ago. I’ve checked out later editions but never saw a real improvement. Great summary
Ever since 1981 I've been saying all you need is the TSR Basic and Expert D&D... and if you want to delve deeper, go no further than 1st edition AD&D - and use your imagination.
Stumbled across this a year later while the previews of the 5.24 books are popping up, and many of your points are even truer now. Races are reduced to cosplays and the world is a fantasy skinsuit over the modern world.
Thanks for all the mystara content and your efforts sharingbyour passion for the table top with us. Heres to the future and new TTRPG,new to you or otherwise, to cover.
I respect that you were saying this all along, you saw the writing on the wall. I hope that whatever happens you don't stop making videos, because it is passionate fans like you that give the tabletop RPG hobby its lifeblood.
Everybody should've seen the writing on the wall when "OneD&D" decided that having different races was bad and wrong and they all needed to have their abilities nerfed to be the same because "equality" or something. Also the name itself was a big red flag. It's like when a nation decides to call itself The People's Republic Of X.
Thank you for this. These are the reasons I moved away from 5e in 2018 after playing/running for 4 years and went back to Basic Fantasy rpg for the BECMI style games. And yes, your book is one of the best setting books because I use it as the setting base for Basic Fantasy Mystara. 🙂
On the exploration point: I've had 5e players rage *RAGE* at the mere suggestion they might look around the dungeon a little instead of rushing right to the end. It's baffling.
I've been looking at OSR recently the two games that caught my eye are 1) Castles and Crusaders and 2) Adventurer, Conquerer, King. Pathfinder 2E is my go to for modern stuff but those two draw me in for different reasons, C&C because it focused on taking what was good from modern games and combining them with AD&D while also trying something new. Adventurer, Conquerer, King because of how it handles Races, instead of having either "Race as Class" or just locking off some classes based on race, each Race has their own classes, of course the standard classes are there but those are for humans, just as how there's no default human class (aside from Fighter arguably) there's no default "Elf" or "Dwarf" class, those races have their own classes to choose from. It also has excellent management rules if someone wanted to know what Birthright done right is like or how to give the Kingmaker module a run for it's money they've found their answer. I guess this is also a request for a Mad Musings on any of the games mentioned that you haven't done
C&C has been my AD&D version for a while now since I can use many modules w/little conversion issue, coming back to it for those types of games after leaving 5e. But there is so much variation in the OSR & Nu-SR for different styles that you really can find what you are looking for. The hard part is pulling players out of the 5e cave and seeing the greater rpg world around them.
My group mostly sticks to 3.5. We tried 5E recently a few times and my general thoughts were "Wow. This has potential to be a fun system once they flesh it out with some more content." And shortly after having that thought, I heard they were already moving on from 5E to a new edition.
Something occurs to me on a rewatch of this vid. If the disabled character art showed an adventurer crawling through blood towards their wheelchair,I'd respect it a lot more. That's honoring the disabled. Show those moments of powering through pain.
Thanks for summing it all up. I pretty much agree with everything you've said especially the part about Tasha's it was the book that made me finally go from having issues with 5E to outright hatred at what the game and players had become. That line about how players will not accept not using Tasha's hit hard I had players non stop complaining about that and I just stopped playing and sold all my 5E books. I'm glad to see people are finally starting to turn on Wotc D&D and try other games. I feel players today are too close minded when it comes to actually trying something new or going against the way wotc tells you to play. My new favorite system is BX and BECMI partially thanks to your channel so thank you for showing me the best version of D&D and the best official setting you're doing great work.
I feel you brother. My play group stopped with 3.5. We also played pathfinder, WOD, and Paladium. I don't have a group at the moment because I moved but my guess is those folks are still rocking the 3.5 epic level handbook and I would want to find a group running those systems now. I have not seen anything from 4th or 5th that makes me want to go find a group. Actually I think I hesitate to try finding a group because I am afraid they will be using 5th edition....lol
A lot of the old promises of this was something I forgot until you brought them up. The promises in the playtest back then are a rather stark mirror to the promises they are making for 6th :/ We've mostly been doing homebrew but even kn that the feel of magic is crazy, and I REALLY felt that when we did the first Strad release finally, as I was the only mundane in the group (fighter, later was forced to multiclass to keep up) because we just didn't get any magic gear. So in the end, our sorcerer, cleric and blood hunter just dominated. Only after I finally got that sword of light did I finally match, and that really hurt the enjoyment. I was just a bag of HP so the others wouldn't die. And while I don't mind that, that wasn't the character I was building at the time. I love Fighters, it's always the thing I do first thing in a system, was to see how well a spear and shield fighter can do. 5th can still do that pretty well if you have the feats, but compared even to a pally or a Warlock there really isn't a reason to play them :/
I think part of the problem is Hasbro. After all they only bout Wizards of the Coast because one the manufacturer rates the Pokemon which Wizard had at the time.
Funny you mention the healing kit because despite saving countless greenhorns nobody still ever wanted to spend the money to pick up an extra healing kit in case something happened to me.
I don't understand how with all the books and knowledge we have collected over the decades why we even need WoTC? As DM we can do what ever we want to do. We can make any sub classes we want in our games. Make any spells we want in our games and change anything we see fit. Players typically come to hang out with other friends and have an enjoyable evening gaming. Maybe I just am lucky and have a small tiny player base in my neck of the woods who trust and enjoy what I create and put out. No one argues with me over mechanics and trusts that I am making things fair enough that the game can move along. Everyone realizes they are not the main character in any of my stories. We already got out those power fantasies back in the 80's and 90's. As we went through the Moldvay style gaming in the 70's. We don't need them. We have never needed them after we paid and bought our books. Everything can be updated to our own liking and help make our games run smoothly. Yes we have kicked out a few players who wanted to barge in with their new 5.e rule set thinking they were going to "own" the DM by bringing their min / Max nonsense onto my table. Nope I gatekeep and for good reason. So why do we need WoTC or D&D One? It's Done. I wouldn't use their crooked system if they paid me. Also WoTC offered a horrible deal so when they gave us the real deal, they thought gamers were stupid enough to fall for typical Upsale nonsense. They are acting like the snakeoils sales men I ran back in the 80's.😆😆 Screw WoTC and screw D&D. I don't need them. It is what the universe gave us imaginations for.
Everyone praises video (for good reason), but I praise the comment section for giving so many game and settings recommendations! Haven't heard about two thirds of those so far.
Around the 2:05 mark: And this is why I'm still on 3.5e (or Pathfinder 1e to be more accurate). I've just recently checked out Pathfinder 2e and...it's not for me. I'll be sticking with 1e, but I may nip bits and pieces of 2e for my House Rules document as seem useful.
This has to be one of the best analysis of the problems with 5e I have ever heard. I only heard about your channel 2 days ago and already it is my favorite.
i mostly agree, except with the magic setting books part. Ravnica & Theros are somewhat decent setting books. Theros does a decent job at bringing that mythical greece tone and Ravnica has some unique rules regarding factions and stuff, at least when it came out. of course, in the end, they are like cold hot dogs, but the rest of the line since 2017 has been pieces of already chewed hot dogs compared to them
Thank you Mr. Welch. I was wondering if you mystara guide could be converted to other systems? Similar to what paizo did with Savage Pathfinder for the Savage Worlds system? I don't know what kind of work this would entail or how hard that might be. Just thought I would ask.
How did I not know about your Mystara focus. I started in D&D basic as a players and had the pleasure of playing within and later running each of the box sets, ending in Immortals. Thank you for this review. Earth Shaker, Vengeance of the Alphaks, Red Arrow Black Shield for the Win!
As a forever DM since 2016, I 100% agree with you here. 5e really have massive issues. Many of them comes from the designers. They really does produce a lot of garbage that do not help the DM at all. And whenever they do produce something to help the DM they tend to just make everything the same. With TCOE they just made everything powerful with no restrictions. If I wanted to play a game where everyone are powerful and unstoppable, I just do that in my own head.
90% of this is why I'm going to Dungeon Fantasy GURPS. It has everything I want in a system (Because can literally add or remove what I want) and won't ever give a dime to Wizards of the Toast.
And I perked right up when I heard "Instant death". One of the big things in D&D that gradually got dropped were Save or Die abilities. Classics like Slay Living or Finger of Death went back since the early D&D spell lists. D&D3.5e had even more Save or Die Spells, and they got altered or removed in 4th edition D&D/Pathfinder. I hate that. It makes enemies into trees you have to chop down and makes players characters too tough to believably be in danger.
Yeah the three successes or three fails takes all the tension out of combat. No one likes losing a character, but dying at 0 or -10 hitpoints (or a massive damage option) makes combat more risky and therefore greater stakes. Having said that, I'm not a fan of save or die rolls unless there is a way to reroll (spending hero points etc)
I spent so many sessions trying to kill a 5e character through things that should have been fatal. Not even remotely close. How people find any satisfaction without the chance of failure is beyond my comprehension. Consequences what?
Save or Die still sucks and only magic classes ever got a chance to use them. It should be Save or (Get captured, tail the mission until the next time, lose something of value that you can replace following an adventure). And let non-magic casters a chance to use them.
@@comstr if your character is in a lightless, deadly place and you open a chest without checking for traps, save or die is very fair. Player skill is important in D&D. Making a new character & trying again is easy.
@@jasonjacobson1157 Fighter/Thief: I hit them with my weapon. Wizard/Cleric: Make one roll you can't modify or impact or die. I agree: make some player skill in it! But a lot of spells have none, either to use it, or attempt to defend against it. It'a when the game removes from both the attacker and defender it's bad.
I am of the opinion that WotC will never actually fix issues, because I don't think the profit motive is even there these days. Seeing as how most companies are IP mills, and have all manner of accounting tricks they can use to write off bad books, along with being able to tap near endless reserves of VC funding due to connections, reputation, and the general state of how VC funding works nowadays, this situation will not improve, either.
Nice rant. I stopped actually buying the books when Icewind Dale came out. I was very aware of the re-skinning of old adventures, as I still had most of the modules they were written off. I'd turn to the old module and run that and use the new book to help place individual encounters; it worked fine. But it has been completely derivative and pricy as all get out. Even for the books I bought, I would obtain a PDF copy so I could strip out the page-wasting and difficult-to-read text through background art and edit out the amazing wads of puffy padding shoved in everywhere. The 5E DM's Guide, complete with its non-functioning index, comes down to just over 60 pages of actual content if you do so. You know, my group might return one day to Ravenloft castle and finish off Strahd, but these days I'm off to Travellers' second edition with its working index, concise writing style, and legible pages. Excuse me while I attempt to create a believable spaceport in an Andre Norton and C.J. Cherryh mash-up space opera.
Thank you for pointing out that there's no high-level playing in 5th edition. The reason for that is pretty basic, those aren't the people they're trying to Target. The client base that they're aiming for are the people that just want to have something very basic for them to hang their FanFiction on. They aren't interested in growing a character, building up new stats, building a history for that character. They want it all, they want it now, because the character in their head is a Mary Sue that is more than likely based off of something they've read or watched. Chunk of those kind of people have found themselves being hired by Wizards of the Coast, they're going to make what they want and that isn't what they want. Of course, it avoids the blinding obvious which is that the longevity players, the people who have been invested actually in the community for years to decades, they do like that. They don't want immediate gratification and they do want to explore and develop. Which is why drive-thru RPG does such good business, which is why they will wind up canceling it 1/6 Edition hits because they don't want the competition
We don't need WizBro to play the kind of D&D we want. Many of us have become so steeped in the lore and rules that in a weekend (or maybe an afternoon) we could knock out our own rules made from our favourite bits from the various editions and other games. It may not be Dungeons & Dragons(tm), but it is still d&d. I'm playing other games now, I'd prefer to remember D&D fondly than see it uglied up by the suits at WotC/Hasbro.
I am setting up to run a campaign for some friends and its based off another campaign that one of them ran for us, However he ran his in 5th Edition I am using Pathfinder 2E. Simply because it is a more varied system, at this piont and i can truely challenge my players as 2 are loot gremlins 1 is a complete murder hobo and then theres the Power Gamer. and in DnD that means i would have a Warlock 2 thief types and a Barbarian. Pathfinder will allow me to make them cry as they suffer consquences from actions as i am a firm believer in Issac Newton.
Wizards of the Coast only ever put out massive expensive books and then wondered why no one bought them. It’s baffling that they never considered putting out something smaller, like Pathfinder’s Adventure Paths, or the old TSR modules that could be easily dropped into an existing campaign. Everything had to be a 200+ page book. And, like you mentioned, not even particularly well written books. I ran Tomb of Annihilation and Descent into Avernus, and both were plagued with problems. Tomb of Annihilation’s wilderness crawl rules are awful and don’t compensate for 5e’s resting system, and Descent into Avernus is bafflingly linear and gives the players all the tools to defeat the demons of hell BEFORE they get to hell, making their own CR system completely worthless because it assumes the entire party doesn’t have silvered weapons. You mentioned damage types, and the fact that it’s either Magic or Not Magic when it comes to resistances, which is absolutely true and absolutely stupid. As a 5e GM I hate this system, and it’s been making me want to try Basic because I’m tired of my players being so durable and strong that it’s nearly impossible to put them in a fight with something dangerous unless that thing can basically instakill them. I also disagree with the premise that there’s *nothing* that kills players instantly, there’s at least one thing that can seriously mess up a party. A Beholder’s Death Ray or Disintegration Ray instantly kill a player who is reduced to 0 HP.
My biggest petty frustration is the fact that 5e has taken Gnolls, my favorite species, and reduced them to slavering demons who can barely think and exist only to murder. They’ve been playable in literally every edition except 5. They went on this big morality crusade to make sure no ‘intelligent species’ is ‘just a stat block to be killed’, but for some reason it’s fine for gnolls to be exactly that, despite the fact that they had some tiny amount of nuance in prior editions. I’m gonna die mad about it. Gnolls being playable in Mystara is… absolutely a significant part of why I’m very interested in it. Even if they’re from a joke book.
For someone who has played GURPS in Mystara I can say that it's way better suited than 5e ever was. The only problem GURPS has is that combat with inexperienced players take forever because it's too finegrained with 1 second rounds and actions taking multiple rounds, so it may take 3 rounds to reload your crossbow, 1 to 3 rounds of aiming properly and one round to shoot finally. This way you can't ask one player after the other what he would do that round and pause for his answer like you usually do in other systems, but you need players who react in the round that is vital for the effect on their own, but just skip over the rounds that are prep tasks that lead up to that round. With experienced players this is usually no problem, but a bit tedious with beginners. But apart from that it's easy to learn and perfect for adapting it to any campaign world imaginable. GURPS, BECMI and Pathfinder 2e are still my most beloved game systems when it comes to Fantasy (GURPS for Cthulhu Horror and Sci-Fi as well) and Golarion is imho the most Mystara like campaign world I know of apart from Calidar maybe, which is why I've switched from Mystara to Golarion in the last years.
I think you hit it in this video Hi, long time DM here, started a campaign on the early days of 3rd Ed that goes on until today. I play on forgotten realms and the campaign guide from 3rd was genuinely a masterpiece that guided my games and made me love the realms. Then came 4th and destroyed the game and the setting so I just ignored everything altogether (liking the realms its wizards and Mystra is a heavy burden that's for sure) and just kept into 3rd. We where by level 14 at the time and a had a full campaign that would take some years to finish after we ended the one we where at. So came 5th edition. With a lot of potential and everything you pointed out in your video. It corrected a lot of problems I had specially the bigger numbers at higher levels. I really liked the system the flavor, the care it seem to have so at the time we where level 19-20 and my last campaign was at its end. We wrapped everything up, defeated Malkazid from The las Mythal trilogy and saved the universe. My players chose their endings and I time skipped the setting 100 years in the future, having SCAG to orient me and carrying their legacy into the setting cannon. I decided to do princes of the apocalypse as my first campaign. It had a good chunk of info in a part of the world very near to where our previous characters settled and very interesting villains and a theme that I hadn't used it. Everything went fine and we had a lot of fun with the adventure plus the custom stuff I filled it with. But yet I was waiting for a full campaign setting. Storm King Thunder went next. I finished it last month after 4 years and it gave me A LOT of work. Specially because the lack of support to high level I had to adapt and adventure for 4 people from level 1-13 to a campaign for 9 people 12-16. Chapter 3 was very challenging because it's hard to keep the theme of the campaign, I changed most of the adventures using the characters own storylines and even have one of then flesh out a magic school that was the legacy of his previous character so we could have an adventure in it. After finally finding an important NPC that put everything back on tracks we moved on through the rest of the campaign. Again with very heavy customization because we went against the giant lord's at level 15. How do you make a hill giant fortress challenging to 9 lvl 15 players. To put it shortly the Hill giant lord ended up an aerial battle. This leads me to the big bad of the campaign. The dragon Imyrith and high level play. At 3rd edition high level enemies really weren't something you could ignore. The CR was very useful most of the time and gave me the general idea of the challenge. Malkazid a cr26 demon was very challenging against 8 lvl 19 adventurers and individually none could stand a chance. Now an ancient blue dragon on the other hand. It has nothing besides 1 high damage attack and a lot of hp. Some of the players even started to notice this on some high level threats. To change Imyrith to something fearful I had to give her full spellcasting and legendary actions like Halaster and Acerrerrak. Now finally I had something that put some pressure as well as defend itself before it's turn and it really payed off, but I never had to do this in 3rd edition high level play. Now the campaign is over and I have 9 lvl 17 adventurers. What WoTC can offer me to challenge such a party 8 years into 5th edition? Nothing. What has come for the Forgotten Realms? How it's great story have progressed these last years? What it's building up for the lands? Nothing. 5th remains how it was when I started to play it (some could say it got worse) and I have nothing to look forward to progress my campaign and give something that can challenge my players. My setting was almost untouched and every new adventure that come off goes to that damn level 12 cap some don't even get that far. And the biggest sin of all that I found so perfect in this video. The lazyness, why everything seems to be done so lazy. Every new book that comes out have nothing on it. The settings after waiting so long to come by have the bare minimum. We used to have a full setting guide and then a book per region and now we have nothing. And I am not even going to talk about the perpetually offended clache and the gargantuan amount of races , oh my God make human dwarf and elf and be done with it so we can focus on what matters good lord why do we need so many. Anyway this brings me to the conclusion and why I wanted to tell my story. In 3rd edition to do a campaign I use to go after the latest Realms novels to know what was happening and convert that into a campaign. I did return of the Arch wizards (we participate in some of the events like assaulting the floating city of Shade and defending the elven realm of Evereska) Year of the rogue dragons (replacing the characters from the book with my players) and The last Mythal trilogy (my players and book characters together in the story) the monsters the challenges the location and story was all there. Sammaster, Malkazid the princes of Shade all of the stated, all the info I needed to run then as my villains available for me. Come 5th edition I have to do a lot of work on full made adventures that should make my life easier but didn't, the high level play now that we are high level have become a problem for me (not my players though 5e high level is easier than 3e ) and I have nowhere to go because WotC have launched until this day as you pointed out 3 high level dungeons. I got from 3rd party now Crown of the Oath breaker, my wizard character is hunted buy his three aunt witches so I will morph then together with the antagonist hags of the module and will heavily adapt it for the Forgotten Realms, bringing every loose end the players still have and balancing it to make it high level. That's my path forward and I hope my coming years continue to be successful until now because I know that nothing will come from WoTC. Thank you for the video, sorry for this gigantic wall of text and indeed Mystara, Faerun, Kryn will endure WoTC
You channel inspired to try DMing D&D for the first time - this was 2 years ago. I used BECMI to run a game set in Darokin for a couple of noobs and we all had a blast. Now Dark Dungeons, a retroclone of the Rules Cyclopedia, is my main system and Mystara is my main setting - and depending on WoTC this won't change anytime soon.
Hey! I _do_ play *_GURPS!_* You are not wrong. I've always said *_GURPS_* is the second-best game for any setting. There's probably a better, dedicated game for it. But, *_GURPS_* can do it, reasonably well.
I agree with much of what you said. There are many things I don't. But it just feels like you expressed exactly my core issue with 5e. The settings are poorly summarized and sold as a full product. The settings are all the too vanilla. I believe the rules are also a method of storytelling, but they couldn't be bothered to create specialized rules to fit the settings. I was once upset that they hadn't done Dark Sun, but now I'm glad. It's like WOTC's taking a page from Hollywood; finding an IP or classic movie that people are interested in, then failing to pay proper homage to the source. Why should I pay for a new book that I have to end up personally hacking up anyway? Why wouldn't I just find the original source and hack that? This is especially frustrating because of all the new players to the hobby. It's like only watching the sequels of Ghostbusters without ever watching the original. Many new players don't even understand that there are original sources.
Do You remember 2nd edition D&D? Yeah you had magic that could create food but once the duration on the spell ended ha ha ha.. it was right out of Celtic mythology you starved to death. Cuz the food was all illusion! As for the costumes in 5e being Victorian oh my God you're right I'd hadn't realized. Oh my God you're right
That's the problem with all high fantasy. It gets out of hand. The solution is low fantasy. Restrictions. Realism. And TPKs enough until players gain in skill versus having some min/maxed stat block Incredible Hulk had a baby with Doctor Strange superhero. I started playing in 1980 and was a forever DM. I used to lose sleep over being a hated DM because the game was that deadly to anybody's beloved adventurer. You could be minding your own business and fall on your sword for no apparent reason other than it was a cursed path. Grab a new character sheet. I remember it taking six months to achieve level 3 and at that level you felt like a god. Not superpowers. Just, confident you weren't going to die before you even got to the dungeon's guard room at the entrance.
"What we are testing here is the advanced version of the game" - Said Jeremy Crawford, in 2012 video. It is still up in the main D&D yt channel (code VQrUZJICAlE -- won't link it in case youtube auto-deletes this) Make no mistake; this was all planned.
The thing with the 5e campaign settings is that they are basically superficial theme park versions of their former self, done _by_ people who haven't actually done much in the way of research, and done _for_ people who ideally have never actually come into contact with the setting before (outside of maybe video games). They don't like race/class restrictions - if they are even aware of them in the first place - because they see these books as video game DLC that only ever _adds_ content. Plus is every setting is effectively the same with different location names, they can probably draw from a pool of generic D&D art.
3rd edition is for Math Nerds...and Mage players who were mad at the first 2 editions hence why Martial classes are fucked and the one book meant to help Martial classes was reviled. And yes, I did start with 3rd edition.
Great video. I've found myself walking away from 5e, and you've articulated far better than I can the reasons why. Pretty much word for word. I've turned my attention back early editions, particularly B/X by way of picking the OSE sets.
I didn't finish watching, but quite frankly, I play to finish my Mystara campaign in 5e and then seek a different system, even if I will still run 5e adventures in it. I lost faith in WotC when I saw how they realized 3rd party publishers flesh out flawed aspects of their game and....decided to destroy them. That being said, t feels to me a number of your complaints would be adressed by EN World's Advanced 5e and some books from Kobold Press (Beyond the Damage Dice is whole supplement for weapons for example). I think if you have any lingering sympathy for 5e it would be best channelled by supporting these publications. Plus it sticks to WotC.
Ok got to the settings part and I'm just gonna double down on recommending Kobold Press because soemthing tells me you may like some sensibilities of their Midgard setting (for one, they follow some of your sensibilities like "Why are there no Drow or Illithids? Ghouls from Empire of Ghouls ate them". And that's not even in the "if you want to stick to 5e", Kobold Press decided to make their own game due to WotC's recent fuckery. And it seems they're aiming on basics similiar to 5e, but built upon (like what Pathfinder did to 3e) and for free.
I'm from the ancient aeons of 0E D&D, and there is nothing about 5E D&D that looks interesting to me. Looks like a superhero version of D&D for soy crybabies. Art sucks too, as you so aptly pointed out. EXCELLENT presentation
in all honesty, would the complainers want Chult to resemble Africa's history? because I've fairly literate on the subject and most people usually are quite shocked and appalled at all the excessive racism, slavery and genocide and that before I mention anything about the Europeans if Chult resembled Africa in anything more then vague esthetic and geographic sense they'd complain more, heck Pathfinder did the opposite and made their Africa magic Wakanda and even then they weren't happy
My take on African cultures for Eastern Skothar was pretty well received, focused on the great heroes and folklores with a little bit of fantasy elements sprinkled here and there so it wasn't all human. Never could find anymore about the legend of Housa, the Roman version of Prester John sadly.
My biggest complaint was that I dont feel like I fully played a full game of 5e. I have friends that talk about long campaigns that reach 20 in previous editions. I have never as a GM run a game passed 8th level because the players are ready to move on, and as a player my gms have decided they wanted to try something else (aka bored). I want to play a game when I make my sacrifice meaningful, or pull a sword from a stone, or make a decision that affects the setting. Nope, it was all oneshots string together. Sure i had fun with my friends but that is a given. I want to play a long game that has meaning. Now I am looking at this fallout and my players are ready to move on, but I just want to play a game that lasts for a year and not because we could only meet once a month.
I’m almost always 1 or 2 edition’s behind what’s “current”. I might get into an edition right at what turns out to be the end of its run. So of course it figures that just as I’m thinking about giving 5e another try, all this OGL stuff blows up. Been using 3.5 for a while, after years of 2e. Between your Mystara setting book and what ‘The Dark Elf 007’ had been putting up on his blog (some of which I really like, some I don’t) I was starting to think Mystara 5e could work. Oh well, maybe I’ll try hunkering back into BECMI for a while (and perhaps work on my Italian for some of the additions coming out of the Italian Mystaran community), at least until 7th edition comes out.
D&D players just want to play a pen and paper version of Skyrim. I guarantee most of them would prefer 4th edition but no one will ever go back to that game.
That may be the most articulate criticism of near a decade of gaming summarized in about twenty minutes. Well played.
Funny thing is that I've been looking for weeks on RUclips for comprehensive retrospectives for some roleplaying games (notably D&D 5 and Pathfinder 2). Turns out I found one all the way back here while catching up instead LOL
There are countless full-length "reviews" by people who played a single session and talk like they know all about a game system meant to be used for years (sometimes decades). Now, actual system (and product-line) reviews that rely on extensive experience, actual play, insider insight and proper critique, like this one here, are rare and invaluable.
If anyone reading this can refer me to other such retrospective reviews, I'd appreciate any shout-outs and name-drops!
So true
You gave me neck strain from nodding agreement so damn much... this is an excellent video!
AJ The Sage and The Battle Scarred Grognard Mr. Welch? ...That sounds like a great video discussion on various table top games waiting to happen!
I don't understand how with all the books and knowledge we have collected over the decades why we even need WoTC? As DM we can do what ever we want to do. We can make any sub classes we want in our games. Make any spells we want in our games and change anything we see fit.
Players typically come to hang out with other friends and have an enjoyable evening gaming.
Maybe I just am lucky and have a small tiny player base in my neck of the woods who trust and enjoy what I create and put out. No one argues with me over mechanics and trusts that I am making things fair enough that the game can move along. Everyone realizes they are not the main character in any of my stories. We already got out those power fantasies back in the 80's and 90's.
As we went through the Moldvay style gaming in the 70's.
We don't need them. We have never needed them after we paid and bought our books. Everything can be updated to our own liking and help make our games run smoothly.
Yes we have kicked out a few players who wanted to barge in with their new 5.e rule set thinking they were going to "own" the DM by bringing their min / Max nonsense onto my table. Nope I gatekeep and for good reason.
So why do we need WoTC or D&D One? It's Done. I wouldn't use their crooked system if they paid me.
Also WoTC offered a horrible deal so when they gave us the real deal, they thought gamers were stupid enough to fall for typical Upsale nonsense.
They are acting like the snakeoils sales men I ran back in the 80's.😆😆
Screw WoTC and screw D&D. I don't need them.
It is what the universe gave us imaginations for.
@@OldieWan spot on response, btw love your pfp it's so dam true 👍.
@@underfire987 Thanks man. Strange world we live in these days that is for sure.
WoTC has no idea what they had or what they are doing. These people need us 100% more than we need them.
I hope more folks who think like us can teach them this valuable lesson in life.
Lol agreed
I strongly support Larry Elmore's crusade against pants.
Hear hear!
Elmore! Elmore! Elmore!
While I support this completely and will always sing Larry's praises, the piece shown is Clyde Caldwell, who has fought a lifelong crusade against pants.
Tis a noble quest!
solomon grande wantt pants too!
DND left us. You are perfectly right.
Between your comments on Ravenloft becoming "Goosebumps" and Spelljammer ship combat nonexistent, 5e has gravitated toward removing tension and terror and become Sword Coast Avengers styled play.
A lot of that going in the gaming sphere: Diablo 4 came out earlier this year and while many loved the storyline, it felt exactly like a generic Marvel movie and nothing like the original Diablo games. Corporations in 2023 will sell their whole product identity if it means 10 extra bucks made by the next earnings call - and you do that through mass appeal.
5 out of the 5 game-of-the-year nominations for the Game Awards this week are sequels to or remakes of older games (including one from 2005). Not a single new franchise or stand-alone game. Our culture desperately needs a reset.
Yep... You could add marvel content to 5E and not even notice.
Before I get into my own gripes with 5E, I gotta say, your Mystara players guide and your various videos thereof has proven massively inspirational to me in my own creative endeavors, there's so much life and creativity and imagination in that book that I just find...lacking, in vanilla 5E. I love imagination and storytelling in games, but Whenever I wanted to play a game with my buddies, I usually find myself pigeonholed into 5E because that's what my friends are familiar with and are the most willing to play, but 5E just doesn't give me enough of anything to work with.
Thankfully for me, this recent controversy with Wizards has actually given me an opportunity to help my friends and players transition away from 5E into something better, and your PHB for Mystara reminded me that better is possible, so for that, I thank you.
P.S. I actually found it really cool how Ethengarian Spirit Shamans are warlocks instead of being Clerics, I love the idea of holy men not being immediately all shoved into the cleric class, I am certainly stealing that concept.
My guide was arcane magic=wizard divine magic=cleric otherworldly magic=warlock. And the first two do not tolerate the third
I started D&D with 5e in Highschool, and when DMing I usually found myself reading 3.5 or 2e books to research the lore for my campaign, even for established modules, because 5e's content is so bland and empty.
You summarize it pretty well.
Doing the exact same thing... all the lore and most of the cool monsters/charachters end up coming from previous editions
Here is what you can do, just use the 2014 5e core Rule books and build your own world off of that and if need to be customize the rule to fit your world. Just like what I am doing.
@@blacrow7 That's an option for sure but I actually like the setting for now ,what with it being a very home-brewed version of Mines of Phandelver.
Or you can just play TSR D&D. I did the same thing, going back to look for lore, and in the process, realized the D&D I was looking for was right in front of me. New doesn't mean better
I started to heavily homebrew 5e once they released the first one d&d thing, because i felt that the promise of modularity that I saw in 5e was going to be unfulfilled and i wanted to show my friends the potential fun i saw in that. So I created a lot of subclases, spells, a diplomacy subsystem and an exploración system to give substance to the survival skill. Then i realised that I was making so much in the name of entertaining my friends i might as well make my own system... And i've belen doing that thanks in great part to your mad musings giving good pointers and the incentive of seeing someone else being as passionate about this hobby as i am, so thank you mr. Welch.
Would you care to tell me about the diplomacy subsystem?
@@nidhoggstrike the doc is in the office computer, but roughly: use Charisma stat as diplomacy HP, make a table per cha skill to give rough target numbers, make it an offer and counter offer "combat" where once someone succeeds the core is set but they can argue the details. Damage for a failed check should be from d2+cha skill mod of the opponent to 12+cha skill mod of the opponent. It's not that good but i feel that it gives more personality to each skill.
That's how my play group went. I took 5e as a base then built up on it. I literally wrote books and made my own world up since my players decided to go full endtimes in the forgotten realms in a attempt to achieve God hood (after 5 years they came close and ultimately destroyed each other and the world) after that point I just made up my own world and we been playing that since, it's not even dnd anymore. It's fantasy monsters and labyrinths ttrpg
I played every edition at one point or another and many other games for years, so at this point homebrew is second nature and the settings are all my own to begin with. After enough experience, you really don't need books to tell you how to play a game.
3rd ed was influenced by magic the gathering and that is from an ex WotC employee (not me).
As for what 5th ed was. It was a politician campaign. All promises no substance. It should have been a twofer. A simple system and advanced rules. Simple for the quick little game and introducing players. Advanced for the rest of the game.
I wish it was like that
Real D&D got TSR logo...
"Gary gygax could take pointers from the great poet Homer, who was the immortal patreon of a total party kill" -- Mr Welch
The thing that bothers me most about DND 5E is the whole, “everybody gets along” attitude. Original DND made it a point of emphasizing that elves and dwarves, despite both being good species, didn’t generally get along. There was friction caused by DIFFERENCES… whereas DND 5E just hand waves it away and essentially you just have tall humans, short humans, skinny humans, ugly humans, demonic humans, draconic humans, etc.
That’s not realistic. Look at the strife between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. It went on for centuries… and nobody outside of Ireland could tell the two sides apart… yet we’re to believe that Dragonborn and gnomes and humans will all magically get along? Sigh…
I vividly remember the exact moment when 5th edition lost me. The characters were trudging through a hot, muddy, foul smelling swap. Hip deep in the muck to get to their destination, I described how the mud caked on every crevice, fouled their armor, and seeped into uncomfortable places. Insects buzzing around them, some drawn to the dampness only worsening their misery. Traversing the swamp was SUPPOSE to be unpleasant. I was throwing an adversary at the players that wasn't a monster, but perhaps just as insidious. That is until they found a patch of dry land, and the wizard cast the prestidigitation cantrip over and over again until 'everyone was all clean.'.
In my head I was like, seriously... 'eff this game.
So true
I thought it was going to end with "I cast Leomund's Tiny Hut & we take a long rest." but this is so much better and really shows how easily the most minor of magics can trivialize adversity in 5e. Don't even get me started on Mage Hand or Guidance.
And Goodberry? (Toss survival and supply rules out the window)
@@MrSteveK1138 It's an edition afraid of having an actual identity. The base rules could be decent, but the classes and backgrounds are a huge list of "I'm immune to that'. The exhaustion condition, for instance: Under core rules, it's a serious condition, but what's the point if WotC uses any and every opportunity to tell players: "Relax, that doesn't apply to you".
Yeah, I don't know how many times my plans were thwarted because of a riskless, low level spell or even because everyone just dogpiled on a skill roll or saying they use the help action for advantage when they don't have the background or skills to help out with the action at hand.
D&D 5th Edition: A study on what happens when you take the Kitchen Sink and pour it into a blender.
Channel's focus on Mystara?! Color me intrigued! Mystara was my FAVORITE setting back in the day! I keep telling myself that I should try to update it but I'm too lazy! Think I will have to stick around and check things out!!!
You have 300 videos here to catch up on welcome aboard
I have a sneaky suspicion that the reason why Dragon lance, Raven loft, and spell jammer cam e out is because of the same reason you see certain superheroes pop up for a limited run or one shot and then are not seen again in years.
To keep their licensing rights, trademarks, and copyrights alive.
OG spelljammer was great...og everything was better.
It saddens me to say that I knew this day was coming. Truly. You shouldn't let the current situation sour you forever. Look at like any bad break up. At first, it's so awful that you swear that you're not EVER going to let something like that happen to you again. Then, slowly, you start to look back on things after most of the anger and grief have subsided, and you start to get a LITTLE bit of perspective. Then, the work starts. After realizing how everything went so spectacularly wrong, you see the red flags that were there all along, and you become wiser. You realize that the old thing that you loved, was the best thing. Not everything that's new or improved is better or even improved. It just LOOKS shiny and new. The problem with that is looks really are just skin deep. I'll stick with my 2nd edition every. time. It's not perfect, but it's perfect for me. I hope this helps, Glenn. Happy trails.
I know a dm who was very exited to run Stryxhaven and Spelljammer before being given the sourcebook and the campaigns falling apart shortly after. More so the Spelljammer game, she was looking into 5e homebrew and the old 2nd edition books so she could get the game up and going a few days after the book game out. But after it did enthusiasm turned to disappointment and disappointment turned to boiling anger. Thats the final straw on the camels back that made the group convert to Pathfinder lol.
For the past 5 years all I've really cared about has been the 3PP. The monster books from Kobold Press have just been phenomenal.
Thing is, I've felt like this for a while and it feels like a lot of people are just now catching on strong. 3rd ed is what it was, but it started with one of the best books in WOTC's tenure - if not the best - in the FRCS. Except that was done by Ed Greenwood and a bunch of ex-TSR vets. The more Wizards has taken over, the lazier they've gotten.
Imo 3e/3.5e faerun is the high point. Very well done. Lots of well done source books.
I've been joking about how humans in D&D should have their lack of darkvision/low-light vision count as a _weakness_ - because _almost everyone else_ has it. It's effectively a baseline ability.
This is a very valid criticism of 5th edition. I will still be playing 5e stuff for awhile. I like it. It's what I bought. But you make a ton pf fantastic points as to how it could've been a lot better and where they failed. While I do like 5e. I definitely have my gripes with it. There wasn't a single critique you had that I felt was off base. As someone who only got into dnd in the past decade, I'm glad they rehashed old adventures. But I could see being annoyed by that as a veteran of the game. All in all a well thought out and savage kick to the teeth of 5e and wotc.
Can I just say that your video title captures my feelings perfectly? I was never the biggest 5e fan, actually prefering 4th, but I still recognized 5e had potential, even if it was largely untapped. There have been some *awesome* third-party settings for 5e, like the incredible Japanese-flavored screampunk "Mists of Akuma", the Dragonlance meets Redwall heroic fantasy of the Chronicles of Aeres, the neo-pulp of Midgard, the ultimate Dark Fantasy of Grim Hollow, and the awesome "bonepunk" of Planegaea, which captures the "feel" of what a hypothetical Stone Age of a traditional D&D world might look like to excellence. But Wizards has squandered all their potential, all their talent, and given us underwhelming, watered down *garbage* for too many years. It's become a toxic soup of laziness, greed, and virtue signalling, and it's time to let it go. Maybe there will be a better D&D one day, but it certainly won't be the One D&D that Hasbro is trying to push. Me? I'm going back to 4th edition; the last edition where WotC genuinely gave a damn.
The funny thing about 5th edition, is that the best stuff for it was always 3rd party. Be it Welch's own Mystara handbook, the Midgard setting from Kobold Press, Scarred Lands from Onyx Path Publishing (a reboot of sorts from the 3e/3.5e version made White Wolf), Aetaltis from Mechanical Muse, Fateforge from Studio Agate, and so on.
At best, all you could really say about WotC was that it provided some rulebooks, and little else in the end.
For a company that loved to constantly use the Forgotten Realms as a default setting of sorts for their core stuff, they really failed with using it as an actual "setting" for 5e.
It's funny, for all that I criticize Forgotten Realms as being sort of generic, the earlier editions had more real "fluff" more setting, more *something* to it, compared to what they put in for 5th Edition.
I don't give WotC any credit for Eberron or Dragonlance, because those were the works of other people who wrote and designed them.
Hell same with Critical Role's Exandria. WotC mostly has just been milking them for success, their own hard work.
Honestly everyone in D&D 5e, be it "core" or 3rd-party, deserves better than how WotC has treated them all.
I don't know if it has been said already, but I beg and plead for you to continue with your efforts to create 5E DM & MM books for Mystara. Outside a few things from the VoP and Thorf's maps, your books are the only thing that has excited me D&D wise in years. I was happy to make a contribution for the PHB and wish it could have been more. Your PHB is the only 5E book I own and it was because of the Mystara setting. You did what many of us wished to do and for that, you will be an Immortal. Ka The Preserver could not be any prouder. Set our fledgling fears to rest and tell us you will complete your holy trinity.
Oh and thank you for voicing that many of us think and feel.
Especially at the end when you proclaimed this channel's future.
“necessity is the mother of invention” is a phrase I think also applies to restrictions.
Without some level of distinct parameters, choices and differences become inconsequential.
I was so happy that planescape was coming back, little did I know it was just like you said. All of it was half-baked cliffnotes, such little actual content.
I loved 3.5… I played for a decade, and that was more than a decade ago. I’ve checked out later editions but never saw a real improvement.
Great summary
I agree, 3.5 is prob the best edition overall. I still love 1st and 2nd though. 4th and 5th just suck.
Well said, sad, but well said. You held out hope longer then I did.
Ever since 1981 I've been saying all you need is the TSR Basic and Expert D&D... and if you want to delve deeper, go no further than 1st edition AD&D - and use your imagination.
Stumbled across this a year later while the previews of the 5.24 books are popping up, and many of your points are even truer now. Races are reduced to cosplays and the world is a fantasy skinsuit over the modern world.
Thanks for all the mystara content and your efforts sharingbyour passion for the table top with us. Heres to the future and new TTRPG,new to you or otherwise, to cover.
Superbly articulated.
I stopped with second edition, then went to gurps, came back to d&d because of my group. Now I'm back to gurps both me and my group are happy.🙏😇🇺🇸
I respect that you were saying this all along, you saw the writing on the wall. I hope that whatever happens you don't stop making videos, because it is passionate fans like you that give the tabletop RPG hobby its lifeblood.
Everybody should've seen the writing on the wall when "OneD&D" decided that having different races was bad and wrong and they all needed to have their abilities nerfed to be the same because "equality" or something. Also the name itself was a big red flag. It's like when a nation decides to call itself The People's Republic Of X.
@@DolFan316 I think there were certainly signs beforehand, but the ones you have listed hardly seem significant
Thank you for this. These are the reasons I moved away from 5e in 2018 after playing/running for 4 years and went back to Basic Fantasy rpg for the BECMI style games.
And yes, your book is one of the best setting books because I use it as the setting base for Basic Fantasy Mystara. 🙂
Great video. You summed up my feelings on 5e and why I am leaving it behind very well.
Wow this is so articulate and accurate. I can tell you've put the time in.
On the exploration point: I've had 5e players rage *RAGE* at the mere suggestion they might look around the dungeon a little instead of rushing right to the end. It's baffling.
Putting pants on Larry Elmore's women!!! Best line ever!
I've been looking at OSR recently the two games that caught my eye are 1) Castles and Crusaders and 2) Adventurer, Conquerer, King. Pathfinder 2E is my go to for modern stuff but those two draw me in for different reasons, C&C because it focused on taking what was good from modern games and combining them with AD&D while also trying something new. Adventurer, Conquerer, King because of how it handles Races, instead of having either "Race as Class" or just locking off some classes based on race, each Race has their own classes, of course the standard classes are there but those are for humans, just as how there's no default human class (aside from Fighter arguably) there's no default "Elf" or "Dwarf" class, those races have their own classes to choose from. It also has excellent management rules if someone wanted to know what Birthright done right is like or how to give the Kingmaker module a run for it's money they've found their answer.
I guess this is also a request for a Mad Musings on any of the games mentioned that you haven't done
The OSR is truly the future of this hobby just love everything in it.
C&C has been my AD&D version for a while now since I can use many modules w/little conversion issue, coming back to it for those types of games after leaving 5e. But there is so much variation in the OSR & Nu-SR for different styles that you really can find what you are looking for. The hard part is pulling players out of the 5e cave and seeing the greater rpg world around them.
My group mostly sticks to 3.5. We tried 5E recently a few times and my general thoughts were "Wow. This has potential to be a fun system once they flesh it out with some more content." And shortly after having that thought, I heard they were already moving on from 5E to a new edition.
Something occurs to me on a rewatch of this vid. If the disabled character art showed an adventurer crawling through blood towards their wheelchair,I'd respect it a lot more. That's honoring the disabled. Show those moments of powering through pain.
Thanks for summing it all up. I pretty much agree with everything you've said especially the part about Tasha's it was the book that made me finally go from having issues with 5E to outright hatred at what the game and players had become. That line about how players will not accept not using Tasha's hit hard I had players non stop complaining about that and I just stopped playing and sold all my 5E books. I'm glad to see people are finally starting to turn on Wotc D&D and try other games. I feel players today are too close minded when it comes to actually trying something new or going against the way wotc tells you to play.
My new favorite system is BX and BECMI partially thanks to your channel so thank you for showing me the best version of D&D and the best official setting you're doing great work.
I feel you brother. My play group stopped with 3.5. We also played pathfinder, WOD, and Paladium. I don't have a group at the moment because I moved but my guess is those folks are still rocking the 3.5 epic level handbook and I would want to find a group running those systems now. I have not seen anything from 4th or 5th that makes me want to go find a group. Actually I think I hesitate to try finding a group because I am afraid they will be using 5th edition....lol
Pretty much the same here.
All this whole event is doing for me is reinforcing my decision to run nearly everything in either GURPS or Call of Cthulhu.
Cthulhu Invictus or Cthulhu Dark Ages with some Pulp Cthulhu elements = Sword and Sorcery or Dark Fantasy.
All that BRP goodness.
Well said sir. I find that I need a lot of 2e and 3e material to make 5e feel alive.
A lot of the old promises of this was something I forgot until you brought them up. The promises in the playtest back then are a rather stark mirror to the promises they are making for 6th :/
We've mostly been doing homebrew but even kn that the feel of magic is crazy, and I REALLY felt that when we did the first Strad release finally, as I was the only mundane in the group (fighter, later was forced to multiclass to keep up) because we just didn't get any magic gear. So in the end, our sorcerer, cleric and blood hunter just dominated. Only after I finally got that sword of light did I finally match, and that really hurt the enjoyment. I was just a bag of HP so the others wouldn't die. And while I don't mind that, that wasn't the character I was building at the time.
I love Fighters, it's always the thing I do first thing in a system, was to see how well a spear and shield fighter can do. 5th can still do that pretty well if you have the feats, but compared even to a pally or a Warlock there really isn't a reason to play them :/
Glad I play Pathfinder.
Lol me too
I think part of the problem is Hasbro. After all they only bout Wizards of the Coast because one the manufacturer rates the Pokemon which Wizard had at the time.
Thanks for taking the time to create a video that exactly matches my thoughts. 5E walked away from me WAY before this OGL nonsense.
At this point, Death to Nu-D&D, all of it! (Or at least help accelerate the death faster.)
To Quote a good evil man"kill everyone God will recognize his own! "
Funny you mention the healing kit because despite saving countless greenhorns nobody still ever wanted to spend the money to pick up an extra healing kit in case something happened to me.
I don't understand how with all the books and knowledge we have collected over the decades why we even need WoTC? As DM we can do what ever we want to do. We can make any sub classes we want in our games. Make any spells we want in our games and change anything we see fit.
Players typically come to hang out with other friends and have an enjoyable evening gaming.
Maybe I just am lucky and have a small tiny player base in my neck of the woods who trust and enjoy what I create and put out. No one argues with me over mechanics and trusts that I am making things fair enough that the game can move along. Everyone realizes they are not the main character in any of my stories. We already got out those power fantasies back in the 80's and 90's.
As we went through the Moldvay style gaming in the 70's.
We don't need them. We have never needed them after we paid and bought our books. Everything can be updated to our own liking and help make our games run smoothly.
Yes we have kicked out a few players who wanted to barge in with their new 5.e rule set thinking they were going to "own" the DM by bringing their min / Max nonsense onto my table. Nope I gatekeep and for good reason.
So why do we need WoTC or D&D One? It's Done. I wouldn't use their crooked system if they paid me.
Also WoTC offered a horrible deal so when they gave us the real deal, they thought gamers were stupid enough to fall for typical Upsale nonsense.
They are acting like the snakeoils sales men I ran back in the 80's.😆😆
Screw WoTC and screw D&D. I don't need them.
It is what the universe gave us imaginations for.
Heh Heh Heh... "Put the Boots to him. Medium Style."
Everyone praises video (for good reason), but I praise the comment section for giving so many game and settings recommendations! Haven't heard about two thirds of those so far.
Around the 2:05 mark: And this is why I'm still on 3.5e (or Pathfinder 1e to be more accurate). I've just recently checked out Pathfinder 2e and...it's not for me. I'll be sticking with 1e, but I may nip bits and pieces of 2e for my House Rules document as seem useful.
This has to be one of the best analysis of the problems with 5e I have ever heard. I only heard about your channel 2 days ago and already it is my favorite.
the thumbnail Fluggaenkoechiebolsen scene got me to click on this video :p
i mostly agree, except with the magic setting books part. Ravnica & Theros are somewhat decent setting books. Theros does a decent job at bringing that mythical greece tone and Ravnica has some unique rules regarding factions and stuff, at least when it came out.
of course, in the end, they are like cold hot dogs, but the rest of the line since 2017 has been pieces of already chewed hot dogs compared to them
Thank you Mr. Welch. I was wondering if you mystara guide could be converted to other systems? Similar to what paizo did with Savage Pathfinder for the Savage Worlds system? I don't know what kind of work this would entail or how hard that might be. Just thought I would ask.
How did I not know about your Mystara focus. I started in D&D basic as a players and had the pleasure of playing within and later running each of the box sets, ending in Immortals. Thank you for this review. Earth Shaker, Vengeance of the Alphaks, Red Arrow Black Shield for the Win!
As a forever DM since 2016, I 100% agree with you here. 5e really have massive issues. Many of them comes from the designers. They really does produce a lot of garbage that do not help the DM at all. And whenever they do produce something to help the DM they tend to just make everything the same. With TCOE they just made everything powerful with no restrictions. If I wanted to play a game where everyone are powerful and unstoppable, I just do that in my own head.
90% of this is why I'm going to Dungeon Fantasy GURPS. It has everything I want in a system (Because can literally add or remove what I want) and won't ever give a dime to Wizards of the Toast.
I'm glad you made this video. It's a very common view.
And I perked right up when I heard "Instant death".
One of the big things in D&D that gradually got dropped were Save or Die abilities. Classics like Slay Living or Finger of Death went back since the early D&D spell lists. D&D3.5e had even more Save or Die Spells, and they got altered or removed in 4th edition D&D/Pathfinder. I hate that. It makes enemies into trees you have to chop down and makes players characters too tough to believably be in danger.
Yeah the three successes or three fails takes all the tension out of combat. No one likes losing a character, but dying at 0 or -10 hitpoints (or a massive damage option) makes combat more risky and therefore greater stakes. Having said that, I'm not a fan of save or die rolls unless there is a way to reroll (spending hero points etc)
I spent so many sessions trying to kill a 5e character through things that should have been fatal. Not even remotely close. How people find any satisfaction without the chance of failure is beyond my comprehension. Consequences what?
Save or Die still sucks and only magic classes ever got a chance to use them. It should be Save or (Get captured, tail the mission until the next time, lose something of value that you can replace following an adventure). And let non-magic casters a chance to use them.
@@comstr if your character is in a lightless, deadly place and you open a chest without checking for traps, save or die is very fair. Player skill is important in D&D. Making a new character & trying again is easy.
@@jasonjacobson1157 Fighter/Thief: I hit them with my weapon. Wizard/Cleric: Make one roll you can't modify or impact or die. I agree: make some player skill in it! But a lot of spells have none, either to use it, or attempt to defend against it.
It'a when the game removes from both the attacker and defender it's bad.
I am of the opinion that WotC will never actually fix issues, because I don't think the profit motive is even there these days. Seeing as how most companies are IP mills, and have all manner of accounting tricks they can use to write off bad books, along with being able to tap near endless reserves of VC funding due to connections, reputation, and the general state of how VC funding works nowadays, this situation will not improve, either.
NotC lost my respect!
They don't really have settings in 5E, just small sections of their campaign worlds!
Wizbro
Nice rant. I stopped actually buying the books when Icewind Dale came out. I was very aware of the re-skinning of old adventures, as I still had most of the modules they were written off. I'd turn to the old module and run that and use the new book to help place individual encounters; it worked fine. But it has been completely derivative and pricy as all get out. Even for the books I bought, I would obtain a PDF copy so I could strip out the page-wasting and difficult-to-read text through background art and edit out the amazing wads of puffy padding shoved in everywhere. The 5E DM's Guide, complete with its non-functioning index, comes down to just over 60 pages of actual content if you do so.
You know, my group might return one day to Ravenloft castle and finish off Strahd, but these days I'm off to Travellers' second edition with its working index, concise writing style, and legible pages. Excuse me while I attempt to create a believable spaceport in an Andre Norton and C.J. Cherryh mash-up space opera.
I'm don't you for the issue I'm glad you're still trying to enjoy other things and say hi to Tex once in awhile Hail cargonia freight boss Man.
Thank you for pointing out that there's no high-level playing in 5th edition. The reason for that is pretty basic, those aren't the people they're trying to Target. The client base that they're aiming for are the people that just want to have something very basic for them to hang their FanFiction on.
They aren't interested in growing a character, building up new stats, building a history for that character. They want it all, they want it now, because the character in their head is a Mary Sue that is more than likely based off of something they've read or watched.
Chunk of those kind of people have found themselves being hired by Wizards of the Coast, they're going to make what they want and that isn't what they want.
Of course, it avoids the blinding obvious which is that the longevity players, the people who have been invested actually in the community for years to decades, they do like that. They don't want immediate gratification and they do want to explore and develop.
Which is why drive-thru RPG does such good business, which is why they will wind up canceling it 1/6 Edition hits because they don't want the competition
We don't need WizBro to play the kind of D&D we want. Many of us have become so steeped in the lore and rules that in a weekend (or maybe an afternoon) we could knock out our own rules made from our favourite bits from the various editions and other games. It may not be Dungeons & Dragons(tm), but it is still d&d.
I'm playing other games now, I'd prefer to remember D&D fondly than see it uglied up by the suits at WotC/Hasbro.
I am setting up to run a campaign for some friends and its based off another campaign that one of them ran for us, However he ran his in 5th Edition I am using Pathfinder 2E. Simply because it is a more varied system, at this piont and i can truely challenge my players as 2 are loot gremlins 1 is a complete murder hobo and then theres the Power Gamer. and in DnD that means i would have a Warlock 2 thief types and a Barbarian. Pathfinder will allow me to make them cry as they suffer consquences from actions as i am a firm believer in Issac Newton.
Wizards of the Coast only ever put out massive expensive books and then wondered why no one bought them. It’s baffling that they never considered putting out something smaller, like Pathfinder’s Adventure Paths, or the old TSR modules that could be easily dropped into an existing campaign. Everything had to be a 200+ page book. And, like you mentioned, not even particularly well written books.
I ran Tomb of Annihilation and Descent into Avernus, and both were plagued with problems. Tomb of Annihilation’s wilderness crawl rules are awful and don’t compensate for 5e’s resting system, and Descent into Avernus is bafflingly linear and gives the players all the tools to defeat the demons of hell BEFORE they get to hell, making their own CR system completely worthless because it assumes the entire party doesn’t have silvered weapons.
You mentioned damage types, and the fact that it’s either Magic or Not Magic when it comes to resistances, which is absolutely true and absolutely stupid.
As a 5e GM I hate this system, and it’s been making me want to try Basic because I’m tired of my players being so durable and strong that it’s nearly impossible to put them in a fight with something dangerous unless that thing can basically instakill them.
I also disagree with the premise that there’s *nothing* that kills players instantly, there’s at least one thing that can seriously mess up a party. A Beholder’s Death Ray or Disintegration Ray instantly kill a player who is reduced to 0 HP.
My biggest petty frustration is the fact that 5e has taken Gnolls, my favorite species, and reduced them to slavering demons who can barely think and exist only to murder. They’ve been playable in literally every edition except 5. They went on this big morality crusade to make sure no ‘intelligent species’ is ‘just a stat block to be killed’, but for some reason it’s fine for gnolls to be exactly that, despite the fact that they had some tiny amount of nuance in prior editions.
I’m gonna die mad about it.
Gnolls being playable in Mystara is… absolutely a significant part of why I’m very interested in it. Even if they’re from a joke book.
For someone who has played GURPS in Mystara I can say that it's way better suited than 5e ever was. The only problem GURPS has is that combat with inexperienced players take forever because it's too finegrained with 1 second rounds and actions taking multiple rounds, so it may take 3 rounds to reload your crossbow, 1 to 3 rounds of aiming properly and one round to shoot finally. This way you can't ask one player after the other what he would do that round and pause for his answer like you usually do in other systems, but you need players who react in the round that is vital for the effect on their own, but just skip over the rounds that are prep tasks that lead up to that round. With experienced players this is usually no problem, but a bit tedious with beginners. But apart from that it's easy to learn and perfect for adapting it to any campaign world imaginable.
GURPS, BECMI and Pathfinder 2e are still my most beloved game systems when it comes to Fantasy (GURPS for Cthulhu Horror and Sci-Fi as well) and Golarion is imho the most Mystara like campaign world I know of apart from Calidar maybe, which is why I've switched from Mystara to Golarion in the last years.
I think you hit it in this video
Hi, long time DM here, started a campaign on the early days of 3rd Ed that goes on until today.
I play on forgotten realms and the campaign guide from 3rd was genuinely a masterpiece that guided my games and made me love the realms. Then came 4th and destroyed the game and the setting so I just ignored everything altogether (liking the realms its wizards and Mystra is a heavy burden that's for sure) and just kept into 3rd. We where by level 14 at the time and a had a full campaign that would take some years to finish after we ended the one we where at. So came 5th edition. With a lot of potential and everything you pointed out in your video. It corrected a lot of problems I had specially the bigger numbers at higher levels. I really liked the system the flavor, the care it seem to have so at the time we where level 19-20 and my last campaign was at its end. We wrapped everything up, defeated Malkazid from The las Mythal trilogy and saved the universe. My players chose their endings and I time skipped the setting 100 years in the future, having SCAG to orient me and carrying their legacy into the setting cannon. I decided to do princes of the apocalypse as my first campaign. It had a good chunk of info in a part of the world very near to where our previous characters settled and very interesting villains and a theme that I hadn't used it. Everything went fine and we had a lot of fun with the adventure plus the custom stuff I filled it with. But yet I was waiting for a full campaign setting. Storm King Thunder went next. I finished it last month after 4 years and it gave me A LOT of work. Specially because the lack of support to high level I had to adapt and adventure for 4 people from level 1-13 to a campaign for 9 people 12-16. Chapter 3 was very challenging because it's hard to keep the theme of the campaign, I changed most of the adventures using the characters own storylines and even have one of then flesh out a magic school that was the legacy of his previous character so we could have an adventure in it. After finally finding an important NPC that put everything back on tracks we moved on through the rest of the campaign. Again with very heavy customization because we went against the giant lord's at level 15. How do you make a hill giant fortress challenging to 9 lvl 15 players. To put it shortly the Hill giant lord ended up an aerial battle. This leads me to the big bad of the campaign. The dragon Imyrith and high level play. At 3rd edition high level enemies really weren't something you could ignore. The CR was very useful most of the time and gave me the general idea of the challenge. Malkazid a cr26 demon was very challenging against 8 lvl 19 adventurers and individually none could stand a chance. Now an ancient blue dragon on the other hand. It has nothing besides 1 high damage attack and a lot of hp. Some of the players even started to notice this on some high level threats. To change Imyrith to something fearful I had to give her full spellcasting and legendary actions like Halaster and Acerrerrak. Now finally I had something that put some pressure as well as defend itself before it's turn and it really payed off, but I never had to do this in 3rd edition high level play.
Now the campaign is over and I have 9 lvl 17 adventurers. What WoTC can offer me to challenge such a party 8 years into 5th edition?
Nothing.
What has come for the Forgotten Realms? How it's great story have progressed these last years? What it's building up for the lands?
Nothing.
5th remains how it was when I started to play it (some could say it got worse) and I have nothing to look forward to progress my campaign and give something that can challenge my players. My setting was almost untouched and every new adventure that come off goes to that damn level 12 cap some don't even get that far. And the biggest sin of all that I found so perfect in this video.
The lazyness, why everything seems to be done so lazy.
Every new book that comes out have nothing on it. The settings after waiting so long to come by have the bare minimum. We used to have a full setting guide and then a book per region and now we have nothing. And I am not even going to talk about the perpetually offended clache and the gargantuan amount of races , oh my God make human dwarf and elf and be done with it so we can focus on what matters good lord why do we need so many.
Anyway this brings me to the conclusion and why I wanted to tell my story. In 3rd edition to do a campaign I use to go after the latest Realms novels to know what was happening and convert that into a campaign. I did return of the Arch wizards (we participate in some of the events like assaulting the floating city of Shade and defending the elven realm of Evereska) Year of the rogue dragons (replacing the characters from the book with my players) and The last Mythal trilogy (my players and book characters together in the story) the monsters the challenges the location and story was all there. Sammaster, Malkazid the princes of Shade all of the stated, all the info I needed to run then as my villains available for me.
Come 5th edition I have to do a lot of work on full made adventures that should make my life easier but didn't, the high level play now that we are high level have become a problem for me (not my players though 5e high level is easier than 3e ) and I have nowhere to go because WotC have launched until this day as you pointed out 3 high level dungeons.
I got from 3rd party now Crown of the Oath breaker, my wizard character is hunted buy his three aunt witches so I will morph then together with the antagonist hags of the module and will heavily adapt it for the Forgotten Realms, bringing every loose end the players still have and balancing it to make it high level. That's my path forward and I hope my coming years continue to be successful until now because I know that nothing will come from WoTC.
Thank you for the video, sorry for this gigantic wall of text and indeed Mystara, Faerun, Kryn will endure WoTC
You channel inspired to try DMing D&D for the first time - this was 2 years ago. I used BECMI to run a game set in Darokin for a couple of noobs and we all had a blast. Now Dark Dungeons, a retroclone of the Rules Cyclopedia, is my main system and Mystara is my main setting - and depending on WoTC this won't change anytime soon.
Hey! I _do_ play *_GURPS!_* You are not wrong. I've always said *_GURPS_* is the second-best game for any setting. There's probably a better, dedicated game for it. But, *_GURPS_* can do it, reasonably well.
My introduction to Mystara was (like most folks likely) reading about the isle of dread.
I agree with much of what you said. There are many things I don't. But it just feels like you expressed exactly my core issue with 5e. The settings are poorly summarized and sold as a full product. The settings are all the too vanilla. I believe the rules are also a method of storytelling, but they couldn't be bothered to create specialized rules to fit the settings. I was once upset that they hadn't done Dark Sun, but now I'm glad. It's like WOTC's taking a page from Hollywood; finding an IP or classic movie that people are interested in, then failing to pay proper homage to the source.
Why should I pay for a new book that I have to end up personally hacking up anyway? Why wouldn't I just find the original source and hack that? This is especially frustrating because of all the new players to the hobby. It's like only watching the sequels of Ghostbusters without ever watching the original. Many new players don't even understand that there are original sources.
Do You remember 2nd edition D&D? Yeah you had magic that could create food but once the duration on the spell ended ha ha ha.. it was right out of Celtic mythology you starved to death. Cuz the food was all illusion!
As for the costumes in 5e being Victorian oh my God you're right I'd hadn't realized.
Oh my God you're right
Amen to everything said.
Troll lord ftw
They took our Giant Space Hamster (Spell Jammer) and gave us a _Miniature_ Giant Space Hamster, basically?
And it doesn't even go for the eyes
That's the problem with all high fantasy. It gets out of hand.
The solution is low fantasy. Restrictions. Realism. And TPKs enough until players gain in skill versus having some min/maxed stat block Incredible Hulk had a baby with Doctor Strange superhero.
I started playing in 1980 and was a forever DM. I used to lose sleep over being a hated DM because the game was that deadly to anybody's beloved adventurer. You could be minding your own business and fall on your sword for no apparent reason other than it was a cursed path. Grab a new character sheet.
I remember it taking six months to achieve level 3 and at that level you felt like a god. Not superpowers. Just, confident you weren't going to die before you even got to the dungeon's guard room at the entrance.
"What we are testing here is the advanced version of the game" - Said Jeremy Crawford, in 2012 video. It is still up in the main D&D yt channel (code VQrUZJICAlE -- won't link it in case youtube auto-deletes this)
Make no mistake; this was all planned.
Get out of my MIND! It's already crowded in here!
The thing with the 5e campaign settings is that they are basically superficial theme park versions of their former self, done _by_ people who haven't actually done much in the way of research, and done _for_ people who ideally have never actually come into contact with the setting before (outside of maybe video games).
They don't like race/class restrictions - if they are even aware of them in the first place - because they see these books as video game DLC that only ever _adds_ content. Plus is every setting is effectively the same with different location names, they can probably draw from a pool of generic D&D art.
3rd edition is for Math Nerds...and Mage players who were mad at the first 2 editions hence why Martial classes are fucked and the one book meant to help Martial classes was reviled. And yes, I did start with 3rd edition.
It was designed by Monte Cook. Of course Martial Classes were doomed.
Great video. I've found myself walking away from 5e, and you've articulated far better than I can the reasons why. Pretty much word for word. I've turned my attention back early editions, particularly B/X by way of picking the OSE sets.
All hail Mystara! May the Order of the Sand guide those who are without knowledge of this realm.
I just use all 2e materials and adapt them to 5e rules. Its close enough for me and I dont have to look at current year writing.
I didn't finish watching, but quite frankly, I play to finish my Mystara campaign in 5e and then seek a different system, even if I will still run 5e adventures in it. I lost faith in WotC when I saw how they realized 3rd party publishers flesh out flawed aspects of their game and....decided to destroy them.
That being said, t feels to me a number of your complaints would be adressed by EN World's Advanced 5e and some books from Kobold Press (Beyond the Damage Dice is whole supplement for weapons for example). I think if you have any lingering sympathy for 5e it would be best channelled by supporting these publications. Plus it sticks to WotC.
Ok got to the settings part and I'm just gonna double down on recommending Kobold Press because soemthing tells me you may like some sensibilities of their Midgard setting (for one, they follow some of your sensibilities like "Why are there no Drow or Illithids? Ghouls from Empire of Ghouls ate them". And that's not even in the "if you want to stick to 5e", Kobold Press decided to make their own game due to WotC's recent fuckery. And it seems they're aiming on basics similiar to 5e, but built upon (like what Pathfinder did to 3e) and for free.
I'm from the ancient aeons of 0E D&D, and there is nothing about 5E D&D that looks interesting to me. Looks like a superhero version of D&D for soy crybabies. Art sucks too, as you so aptly pointed out. EXCELLENT presentation
in all honesty, would the complainers want Chult to resemble Africa's history? because I've fairly literate on the subject and most people usually are quite shocked and appalled at all the excessive racism, slavery and genocide and that before I mention anything about the Europeans if Chult resembled Africa in anything more then vague esthetic and geographic sense they'd complain more, heck Pathfinder did the opposite and made their Africa magic Wakanda and even then they weren't happy
My take on African cultures for Eastern Skothar was pretty well received, focused on the great heroes and folklores with a little bit of fantasy elements sprinkled here and there so it wasn't all human. Never could find anymore about the legend of Housa, the Roman version of Prester John sadly.
I like that scene from Three Amigos, surprising how much I reference it.
My biggest complaint was that I dont feel like I fully played a full game of 5e. I have friends that talk about long campaigns that reach 20 in previous editions. I have never as a GM run a game passed 8th level because the players are ready to move on, and as a player my gms have decided they wanted to try something else (aka bored). I want to play a game when I make my sacrifice meaningful, or pull a sword from a stone, or make a decision that affects the setting.
Nope, it was all oneshots string together. Sure i had fun with my friends but that is a given. I want to play a long game that has meaning. Now I am looking at this fallout and my players are ready to move on, but I just want to play a game that lasts for a year and not because we could only meet once a month.
I’m almost always 1 or 2 edition’s behind what’s “current”. I might get into an edition right at what turns out to be the end of its run. So of course it figures that just as I’m thinking about giving 5e another try, all this OGL stuff blows up. Been using 3.5 for a while, after years of 2e. Between your Mystara setting book and what ‘The Dark Elf 007’ had been putting up on his blog (some of which I really like, some I don’t) I was starting to think Mystara 5e could work. Oh well, maybe I’ll try hunkering back into BECMI for a while (and perhaps work on my Italian for some of the additions coming out of the Italian Mystaran community), at least until 7th edition comes out.
D&D players just want to play a pen and paper version of Skyrim. I guarantee most of them would prefer 4th edition but no one will ever go back to that game.
3.5 for life!
Hallelujah, brutha!
Dr Rockso getting his ass kicked by Klokateers!!🤣🤣🤣
You get a like for the Metalocalypse clip.