D&D 5E Discussion

[Cryomancer]

The amount of QoL improvements 3E introduced is the reason why there's a lack of DMs for earlier editions.

You've watched the Muppet Show and think yourself qualified enough to bring your words of wisdom about frogs and pigs to the farmers

I disagree.

Despite not playing 2e, I watched streams about 2e AD&D, played tons of 2e adaptations into CRPG's and played 3e and watched streams on 3e and can say that 2e is far easier to track numbers. Mainly at higher levels. If far easier to challenge a high level party on 2e than on 3e cuz PC's has less hp and monsters has nastier abilities. Only because I never found a group to play 2e in a world where 5e takes over 55% of the P&P market, doesn't means that I can't have a opinion based in reading, playing adaptations into another media and watching others playing acknowledging the differences in the media.

Maybe next week, I will play S&W, online. Maybe not. Will depend on the rest of the group. The DM said that I will be in if someone don't appear and that I could watch their playing if not. Will my opinion become valid if I can play the closest game to 2e actually supported and with books being written for it?

3e/3.5e might as well be considered a completely separate game. 2E was iterative upon AD&D, 3E threw everything out the window.

Retroclones like S&W and LotFP are more close to the original D&D than any WoTC edition. I just think that they should have included kits and other things as OPTIONAL rule. Kits are much more interesting than prestige classes on 3e and subclasses on 5e.

Didn't 2e do away with the race-based stat limits and relied purely on racial stat adjustments?

Nope. The WoTC revised edition of player's handbook for 2e - page 44. Manlets and Brainlets can't be casters on 2e.

And some times, even KITS had racial requirements. On the complete wizard's handbook. See Allowed Races. To be a mage, you must be human, elf, half elf (or gnome, but only illusionist). To be a necromancer, you must be a human.

Manlets being able to be glorious magic users is a 3rd edition BS.

It makes reincarnation spell the worst spell to be hit on old school D&D. Imagine being a glorious human above 6 feet with high intelligence and then, reincarnated into a manlet dwarf or a brainlet half orc.

 

[Cael]

The amount of QoL improvements 3E introduced is the reason why there's a lack of DMs for earlier editions.

You've watched the Muppet Show and think yourself qualified enough to bring your words of wisdom about frogs and pigs to the farmers

I disagree.

Despite not playing 2e, I watched streams about 2e AD&D, played tons of 2e adaptations into CRPG's and played 3e and watched streams on 3e and can say that 2e is far easier to track numbers. Mainly at higher levels. Only because I never found a group to play 2e in a world where 5e takes over 55% of the P&P market, doesn't means that I can't have a opinion based in reading, playing adaptations into another media and watching others playing acknowledging the differences in the media.

3e/3.5e might as well be considered a completely separate game. 2E was iterative upon AD&D, 3E threw everything out the window.

Retroclones like S&W and LotFP are more close to the original D&D than any WoTC edition. I just think that they should have included kits and other things as OPTIONAL rule. Kits are much more interesting than prestige classes on 3e and subclasses on 5e.

Didn't 2e do away with the race-based stat limits and relied purely on racial stat adjustments?

Nope. The WoTC revised edition of player's handbook for 2e - page 44. Manlets and Brainlets can't be casters on 2e.

And some times, even KITS had racial requirements. On the complete wizard's handbook. See Allowed Races. To be a mage, you must be human, elf, half elf (or gnome, but only illusionist). To be a necromancer, you must be a human.

Manlets being able to be glorious magic users is a 3rd edition BS.

I said stats, not classes.

 

[Mortmal]

Theres 20 players for 1 dm for 5E . For 2E ? its quite impossible. The only way to make it works is to pay someone to do it , then probably pay players as no one is interested at all.

I would DM it. Is not 2e but I entered the discord server of Frog God games and there are a lot of people organizing play for it. IDK if is due lockdowns or what, but looking into the "notifications" about groups formed, on the last 20 games :

• 16 games on 5e
• 2 games of S&W
• 2 games on PF1e

In the discord of the creators of the most famous retroclone, D&D 5e is 8 times more popular than their retroclone. I don't get the popularity of 5e. I mean, a lot of people say that is "easy to get into", but is not as if D&D 1e and 2e are complicated, nor the retroclones. On S&W, there are a "basic" version where you only need d6 and d20 to play. And even in the most "complicated" book, the player session ends on page 73. If you don't plan to hire hirelings, play as a magic user or build stronghold, you can learn how to play the game by reading just 45 pages.

And yes, I tried to play S&W. A lot of DM are only accepting players from previous sessions among other problems. But you guys have no idea about how much I wanna play Glantri in Myastara for 2e. I know that there is a guy wanting to convert Mystara to 5e but Glantri on 5e would't make ANY sense. For eg, taking out some 2e dwarf limitations and advantages, makes the reason which Glantri hates then nonsensical. There are monsters with really nasty abilities that if you nerf to fir the low lethality 5e gameplay style, you would kill the atmosphere. Having to deal with powerful enemy mages on 2e and on 5e are completely different. And in Glantri, you DON'T WANNA make a high level magician your enemy. And they have spells that doesn't exists outside of Glantri that has really nasty effects and the PC can only learn this spells by working for the high members of the principality for a long time.

Morblot why roll eyes ? You tried to organize things? i am not kidding at all. You got a perfect exemple here
On 20 games, 16 are 5E already, we are speaking of the discord for a niche third party indie. A place you'd expect 40+ year old people a lot more interested in retroclones. That makes not much sense indeed , their sword and sorcery game is as easy to play than 5e . Then again amongst those groups, what kind of DMs, how many shitty homebrewers, how many lacrymas, how many furries with rape fantasy, how many shitty one shot .Once you culled them , how many groups will have the lasting power for a full fledged campaign from 1 to 20 .Oh and is their time zone even compatible ?

Let say you finally manage to find people , you get another big problem viktor ,glantri as far as i know was not converted to any popular virtual tabletop, Fantasy Grounds Unity Store , you see at D&d classic there's not so much . Porting something takes lot of time , porting whole of mystara , scanning gridding and fogging maps, entering critters stat blocks from a scan OCR . Thats colossal work and require owning all of that too . Playing just over discord is too slow and unconvenient, local shop is forbidden and anyway everyone play 5E .If i want to manages hordes and 50+ enemies i need FG, especially for something like 2e.

You got all that ? Great , they still arent doing one tenth of what i am doing in my sessions....
And that's why D&D CRPG are a great thing...

 

[Morblot]

Morblot why roll eyes ? You tried to organize things?

Because I'm tired of your constant whining about the same thing. I ain't even gonna read that post any further than the part I quoted.

I have never had no problem whatsoever finding players for whatever I want to run, and there are plenty of options available should I desire to just play something. And I live in a very sparsely populated country of less than 6 million people. Yes, 5e might be the most popular game, but there are still uncounted people running and playing other games as well. Stop crying, wipe away the tears and look harder.

 

[Mortmal]

Morblot why roll eyes ? You tried to organize things?

Because I'm tired of your constant whining about the same thing. I ain't even gonna read that post any further than the part I quoted.

I have never had no problem whatsoever finding players for whatever I want to run, and there are plenty of options available should I desire to just play something. And I live in a very sparsely populated country of less than 6 million people. Yes, 5e might be the most popular game, but there are still uncounted people running and playing other games as well. Stop crying, wipe away the tears and look harder.

I am not whining nor crying, i am playing rpg since years , no decades, i see how things are working in the real world . I doubt you get any quality gaming if any groups at all, we arent speaking of the same thing at all.

 

[Cryomancer]

On 20 games, 16 are 5E already, we are speaking of the discord for a niche third party indie. A place you'd expect 40+ year old people a lot more interested in retroclones. That makes not much sense indeed , their sword and sorcery game is as easy to play than 5e . Then again amongst those groups, what kind of DMs, how many shitty homebrewers, how many lacrymas, how many furries with rape fantasy, how many shitty one shot .Once you culled them , how many groups will have the lasting power for a full fledged campaign from 1 to 20 .Oh and is their time zone even compatible ?

A correction, is swords & wizardry. But marketing and brand recognition is very important, lets suppose that you somehow makes something better than Coca Cola. You will sell more? No, because everyone recognizes the brand. And Frog God games publishes stuff to 5e too. Is ironic that when you "scroll" in "product lines" in their own site, 5e appears above their own game.

But they have interesting adventures, but are IMO a bit expensive. Of course, in a world where a remake of ToEE into a edition that takes out all danger and tension of the game costs US$100,00...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The irony of arguing popular=good on the codex.

 

[Morblot]

I doubt you get any quality gaming

:D

Fuck off.

 

[Mortmal]

On 20 games, 16 are 5E already, we are speaking of the discord for a niche third party indie. A place you'd expect 40+ year old people a lot more interested in retroclones. That makes not much sense indeed , their sword and sorcery game is as easy to play than 5e . Then again amongst those groups, what kind of DMs, how many shitty homebrewers, how many lacrymas, how many furries with rape fantasy, how many shitty one shot .Once you culled them , how many groups will have the lasting power for a full fledged campaign from 1 to 20 .Oh and is their time zone even compatible ?

A correction, is swords & wizardry. But marketing and brand recognition is very important, lets suppose that you somehow makes something better than Coca Cola. You will sell more? No, because everyone recognizes the brand. And Frog God games publishes stuff to 5e too. Is ironic that when you "scroll" in "product lines" in their own site, 5e appears above their own game.

But they have interesting adventures, but are IMO a bit expensive. Of course, in a world where a remake of ToEE into a edition that takes out all danger and tension of the game costs US$100,00...

Frog god games are amongst the best, Rappan Athuk if you are into dungeon crawling , think there's pretty much a version for every popular system.Tome of horrors has decent critters to add some flavor to your campaign too.

 

[J1M]

At the end of the day the system you use for make believe is a lot less important than the people you make believe with.

The activities D&D players engage in go beyond how to add and subtract numbers from a d20.

There's campaign/session planning, miniature/diorama cratfs, theorycrafting characters, and the arcane activity the helps move everyone to the latest version that seems to be a blind spot for people here: converting older materials to another game version is something people enjoy.

 

[Cryomancer]

At the end of the day the system you use for make believe is a lot less important than the people you make believe with.

I strongly disagree. Try to get immersed in 4e and try to get immersed on 1/2e...

 

[nikolokolus]

At the end of the day the system you use for make believe is a lot less important than the people you make believe with.

I strongly disagree. Try to get immersed in 4e and try to get immersed on 1/2e...

The biggest mistake 4e made was calling itself D&D, if it been D&D Tactics and sold itself as a miniatures skirmish game it probably wouldn't have pissed so many people off.

As for "immersion" in other editions of D&D most of that comes down to the quality of the GM and his ability to convey and sustain verisimilitude. The rules just help facilitate styles of play. If you want that quintessential dungeon crawling, zero-to-hero experience play some version of TSR D&D, if grid-based combat, theory crafted, medieval superheroes is your jam play 3.5 or Mathfinder, if you want to play medieval superheroes that have almost no chance of dying, and have special rules for wheelchair accessible ramps in your dungeons, play 5e . . . If you are retadred, play 4e.

 

[Mortmal]

At the end of the day the system you use for make believe is a lot less important than the people you make believe with.

I strongly disagree. Try to get immersed in 4e and try to get immersed on 1/2e...

4e is the exception that confirm the rule . But do not despair you will play 2E viktor , apparently in some far foreign country with frozen steppes, finland, people gather in their ancestral yurts to play those ancient editions and retroclones . Like estimed member Morblot says you have to look harder.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

know what the worst part of 3E is?
they renamed mage->wizard for absolutely no reason, but wizards don't use wisdom

 

[Snorkack]

As for "immersion" in other editions of D&D most of that comes down to the quality of the GM and his ability to convey and sustain verisimilitude. The rules just help facilitate styles of play. If you want that quintessential dungeon crawling, zero-to-hero experience play some version of TSR D&D, if grid-based combat, theory crafted, medieval superheroes is your jam play 3.5 or Mathfinder, if you want to play medieval superheroes that have almost no chance of dying, and have special rules for wheelchair accessible ramps in your dungeons, play 5e

You can play any style you named with any edition you named easily by adding just minor houserule tweaks. (Exception: you're the special kind of breed that considers DnD a game that needs to be "won" and uses terms like 'Sorcalock', then pre-3.5 will probably disappoint you)
Once you tried to run a megadungeon campaign in something like The Dark Eye 4.1 RAW, you realize that 1,2,3 and 5 are more or less the same game.

 

[J1M]

At the end of the day the system you use for make believe is a lot less important than the people you make believe with.

I strongly disagree. Try to get immersed in 4e and try to get immersed on 1/2e...

Can you provide any specifics?

 

[Stella Brando]

I remember reading some article about D&D saying that it's typical world building was not really medieval or European.

That the wide open spaces, exploration and base development were very American.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I think it was fun to read, but I may be recalling it wrong.

 

[nikolokolus]

As for "immersion" in other editions of D&D most of that comes down to the quality of the GM and his ability to convey and sustain verisimilitude. The rules just help facilitate styles of play. If you want that quintessential dungeon crawling, zero-to-hero experience play some version of TSR D&D, if grid-based combat, theory crafted, medieval superheroes is your jam play 3.5 or Mathfinder, if you want to play medieval superheroes that have almost no chance of dying, and have special rules for wheelchair accessible ramps in your dungeons, play 5e

You can play any style you named with any edition you named easily by adding just minor houserule tweaks. (Exception: you're the special kind of breed that considers DnD a game that needs to be "won" and uses terms like 'Sorcalock', then pre-3.5 will probably disappoint you)
Once you tried to run a megadungeon campaign in something like The Dark Eye 4.1 RAW, you realize that 1,2,3 and 5 are more or less the same game.

Sure, but I'm just talking about the "out-of-the-box" experience as it was designed. Personally, I'm much more of a BRP/d100 GM and player these days, so I don't really feel like I have much of a dog in this fight, but I played enough of these iterations of D&D over the last 30 years (Jesus Christ im old) to suss out that there are very different play style assumptions baked into their core mechanics; be that level progression, powers, implied, magic, methods of advancing, implied setting, etc.

 

[Bara]

Morblot why roll eyes ? You tried to organize things?

Because I'm tired of your constant whining about the same thing. I ain't even gonna read that post any further than the part I quoted.

I have never had no problem whatsoever finding players for whatever I want to run, and there are plenty of options available should I desire to just play something. And I live in a very sparsely populated country of less than 6 million people. Yes, 5e might be the most popular game, but there are still uncounted people running and playing other games as well. Stop crying, wipe away the tears and look harder.

I am not whining nor crying, i am playing rpg since years , no decades, i see how things are working in the real world . I doubt you get any quality gaming if any groups at all, we arent speaking of the same thing at all.

Mortmal I have to contest that it's easy to get quality groups for OSR. I've gotten into four really awesome campaigns since the pandemic started and several pick up games frankly I've had way more success finding consistent groups for anything OSR than 5e.

Sure as a DM for 5e its easy pickings to make a group because you have a pick from the mob of people but trying to get into a group as a player really bites. And yes while there are less people playing OSR finding a group as a player or DM is easier because the systems are generally easier to run so DMs can easily support groups of 8 should they so desire.

I'll give 5e this as there's so many more players than DMs really forces people to accept what the DM says goes with people new to TTRPGs as it should be.

 

[Cryomancer]

I've gotten into four really awesome campaigns since the pandemic started and several pick up games frankly I've had way more success finding consistent groups for anything OSR than 5e.

Please. Share how do you manage to find OSR groups? I wanna play 2e but OSR is close enough.

 

[Larianshill]

I have been sitting on a certain dungeon for literal months (my group is on a break, because one of the player had a personal tragedy, but it's going to end soon), and I still can't come up with any ideas for it. It's supposed to be a sandbox set in a more whimsical, fairy land of mythical creatures like dryads and talking animals, but apparently my brain doesn't work in that direction. I can only do human politics. I just don't have any ideas at all.
For the tenth time just today, I'm thinking about cutting the whole thing from the campaign, but this dungeon is too central to the story, I can't not have a whimsical fairy adventure.

 

[Bara]

As much as I don't like discord it's been the easiest place

I've gotten into four really awesome campaigns since the pandemic started and several pick up games frankly I've had way more success finding consistent groups for anything OSR than 5e.

Please. Share how do you manage to find OSR groups? I wanna play 2e but OSR is close enough.

As much as I don't like using discord it's really easy to find good groups on there. I'd join only the ones created for a specific system your interested like the Frog God Games server first and checking their lfg sections they'll either post directly there or have invites to their bigger discord groups meant for a variety of systems. It's how I found my new DCC group when checking the good man games server and got into a game the very next day even though roll20 or other lfg sites have barely any postings for DCC.

Before that I was checking facebook groups was where I had more success finding people playing the older editions purely.

It's supposed to be a sandbox set in a more whimsical, fairy land of mythical creatures like dryads and talking animals, but apparently my brain doesn't work in that direction. I can only do human politics. I just don't have any ideas at all.

So purely whimsical or a little bit of horror with the beauty too? Whats the over all campaign theme been?

 

[Mortmal]

Morblot why roll eyes ? You tried to organize things?

Because I'm tired of your constant whining about the same thing. I ain't even gonna read that post any further than the part I quoted.

I have never had no problem whatsoever finding players for whatever I want to run, and there are plenty of options available should I desire to just play something. And I live in a very sparsely populated country of less than 6 million people. Yes, 5e might be the most popular game, but there are still uncounted people running and playing other games as well. Stop crying, wipe away the tears and look harder.

I am not whining nor crying, i am playing rpg since years , no decades, i see how things are working in the real world . I doubt you get any quality gaming if any groups at all, we arent speaking of the same thing at all.

Mortmal I have to contest that it's easy to get quality groups for OSR. I've gotten into four really awesome campaigns since the pandemic started and several pick up games frankly I've had way more success finding consistent groups for anything OSR than 5e.

Sure as a DM for 5e its easy pickings to make a group because you have a pick from the mob of people but trying to get into a group as a player really bites. And yes while there are less people playing OSR finding a group as a player or DM is easier because the systems are generally easier to run so DMs can easily support groups of 8 should they so desire.

I'll give 5e this as there's so many more players than DMs really forces people to accept what the DM says goes with people new to TTRPGs as it should be.

Then you get extremely lucky, thats not what i am seeing here.

 

[Snorkack]

I have been sitting on a certain dungeon for literal months (my group is on a break, because one of the player had a personal tragedy, but it's going to end soon), and I still can't come up with any ideas for it. It's supposed to be a sandbox set in a more whimsical, fairy land of mythical creatures like dryads and talking animals, but apparently my brain doesn't work in that direction. I can only do human politics. I just don't have any ideas at all.
For the tenth time just today, I'm thinking about cutting the whole thing from the campaign, but this dungeon is too central to the story, I can't not have a whimsical fairy adventure.

Not entirely sure what your actual problem is, but if you need inspiration for worldbuilding, I would suggest having a look at the Wormskin zines. The setting that is presented in the 8 issues, Dolmenwood, fits the whimsical fairytale bill perfectly and is full of creative ideas. Afaik, there is also a whole 5th edition Dolmenwood campaign book planned, although I'm not sure whether that's coming anytime soon.

 

[Larianshill]

The campaign is all about vikings getting progressively over into their heads with world politics. The party's current quest is to visit the realms of the gods and personally ask for their help. This particular dungeon is home to two gods - a neutral Thor rip-off, and an evil Hera rip-off, the favor of both of which, ideally, must be sought. Their main foe is supposed to be another man, the Green Knight, who also seeks their favor.
I have quite a few scenes that I want to happen very vivid in my mind - such as getting drunk with one of not-Thor's depressed avatars to the point where he loses his legendary weapon during the revelry. Fighting their arch-nemesis, the trickster Green Knight, on the branches of the world tree (I actually have the map for that ready). The problem is, I can't connect those separate scenes into a compelling story. There's no coherent plot emerging in my head, and no other memorable NPCs other than the avatars of gods and some dead people they remember from earlier in the campaign. I've never had this problem before in my life.

Part of not-Hera's domain below. WIP.