Dungeons and Dragons is a game with baggage. As the earliest
major/popular example of a role-playing game is casts a long the over genre. It
is the money-maker (however small the pie actually is), and its influence is
fairly ubiquitous thanks to video games. The concepts of cooperative play and
continuous character improvement are two of the most important innovations in
game history. Arguably the success of collectible card games, non-historical
war games, and the current tabletop board game phenomenon all owe a debt to
D&D.
All this is meant to say one shouldn’t review D&D
lightly. Each edition has been met with the gnashing of teeth and the grinding
of axes. My thinking is that you should reserve judgement until you’ve given
the new system a descent workout, perhaps a year or so. This is what I did with
4e, and while I eventually soured on it in 2010, it did provide the backbone
for a very enjoyable 2 year, 5 month campaign which is among the more memorable
I’ve run. This review is essentially a DM’s review. I have not played 5e, but I
have run it.
By way of background: I started playing D&D in 1988,
after some proto-rpg experiences, and then moved on the AD&D, mostly a mix
of whatever 1e and 2e material we had, along with some BEMCI material. I played
a lot of Rules Cyclopedia D&D and then played 2e through the late 90s until
3e came along in 2000. I ran a lot (and played a little) 3rd
edition. From 2000 to 2006, it was essentially the only game played weekly.
Gaming was a bit sporadic in 2006, but again, 3.5 was the game. Like I
mentioned above, I felt it necessary to give 4e an honest try, and ran it from
2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2014, I ran a mix of different games, including 3.5
and Pathfinder, until 5e came out in 2014.
My group and I have had two 5e campaigns: the first was a
play through of the starter set and its adventure “The Lost Mine of Phandelver”
(silly name though). Then we switch to a homebrew setting and we’ve been
happily playing along a developing series of stories. So far the players are at
6-7 level, and so I won’t be commenting on high level situations until I get
there.
My Review of 5e: Fifth edition is a very good game, four
stars.
That’s really the summation of a year of play.
The best parts
Like 4e, 5e is easy to run. There’s less rulebook review
than the first 3 editions, DCs are broadly easier to set. The whole “bounded
accuracy” idea, which just creates a game with lower numbers of math is great.
The game is robust and fun to play while reducing the prevalence of magic items
and returning to an ethic of homebrewed ideas and DM interpretation.
The art is more inclusive, and generally well done. The
cover on the Monster Manual is great. I’m glad to see artists other than Wayne
Reynolds gracing the covers of a major fantasy game. I’ve enjoyed many of his
covers, and I think his work on the Eberron books was genius, but he’s gotten a
bit omnipresent and the choice of different artists is to be commended. The humorous
doodles in the indexes and appendices are wonderful and a welcome change from
the seriousness of 4e.
The classes are interesting, but as I’m not playing them, I
can’t comment on them too much. I will say that I’ve liked the way characters
have leveled. The PHB follows the same pattern as all the PHBs have. The
backgrounds are really well done and fun. Character creation is simple and
fast. Levels 1 to 3 are fragile and dynamic. Characters between 4 and 7th
level feel hardened and defined. The spell system is good and flexible enough.
The majority of classes are interesting from a story perspective. We’ve had
multiple fighters, a rogue, barbarians, wizards, a monk, a paladin, a druid in
the party and each one has had good hooks to present a game.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide is very good. For a new DM, it
offers strong advice and practical tools. The magical items are gold and loads
of fun. The treasure tables are awesome. If anything, this stands out as the
best contemporary DMG. The 1e DMG is eccentric and inspirational, and the 3e
(not the 3.5) DMG was brilliant. All the other DMGs have been lacklustre and
unappealing to me. This book provides ideas for an experienced DM and makes
prep light.
The Starter Set is great. It’s cheaper than other “starters”
and while it lacks the same production quality and goodies of other games
starter kits, the content is solid. The adventure, “Lost Mine of Phandelver” is
a great adventure, especially for new DMs. We had fun playing it and I thought
it developed very well.
The legendary monsters are fun and a good mechanical
solution to the problem of outnumbered big villains. I do miss the “elite”
monsters of 4e though.
What’s bad
The cover of the PHB is another bad cover. We haven’t had a
good cover on the PHB since 1e, although the unified codex appearance of
3e/3.5e gives that edition a pass. I don’t know why it’s so hard to commission
a painting that is clearly dynamic and shows the player characters doing what they do in the game. Also, I'm rather bored with the "plotting/threatening monster/wizard" on the DMG cover.
Here's a much better image for a DMG:
It's dynamic and properly reflects the DM's responsibilities to create fun and challenge.
In all fairness, Paizo’s Pathfinder books demonstrate a much
better approach to art, but in all honesty, the graphic designers of 3e were
probably on to something with the unified codex appearance of the books.
The encounter design system is interesting, but needlessly
math-heavy and not really effective. 4e did this better and maybe Pathfinder does, too. The encounter design is so unwieldy, it seems
odd, mostly because my biggest “mechanical” gripe with 5e is that it seems
adverse to procedural rules, except in adventure design. Many smaller press
games, I’m thinking of Burning Wheel games, or Dungeon World, use procedure
very well, and I think the downtime rules are a major missed opportunity for
adding a bit of procedural clarity to the player’s side of the game, while the DM is burdened with poor encounter design advice. I'm now building encounters like I did in 2e and 3e.
The inspiration rules are interesting, and provide a way for
player’s to manipulate the game a bit, but they aren’t well integrated to the
play style of D&D. Games like Fate and Numenera add these features by making
them integral, but with D&D, it seems like I’m having to remember the rules
even exist. This is possibly a behavioral flaw on my part – two plus decades of
habit is difficult to overcome. But, on the other hand, D&D has an established moment in which PCs are rewarded: the procedural moment at the end of the session when XP is handled. I think I'll be houseruling an inspiration procedure similar to Burning Wheel's end of session Artha recounting.
The Monster Manual is a real mixed bag. Yes, the quality of
production is fine and the monsters well-chosen and diverse, but there’s two
big problems:
One, the art lacks a sense of presence. Monsters are
presented is good written detail, but the visual images place the creatures
against a smoky parchment background and there is little sense of motion or
intent to the art. Even more maddening is the lack of scale in most pictures.
There are images that look small and others that look huge, but the images
convey incorrect impressions of the monsters. It’s too bad the art doesn’t show
the monster doing something, or including some element for scale.
Two, the monster design is boring. Compared to the 4e
Monster Manual, 5e feels like a step backwards, and not in a good way. Most
monsters are simply a melee attack and a multi-attack. There’s not much
interesting about the creatures and a DM will have to work to make the majority
of encounters interesting. Encounters can become static 2e slugfests if things
go badly or the DM and players are having off nights. There’s also a lack of depth in the NPCs presented in the
back. Many of them are great, but there needed to be clear analogues to the PC
classes – there’s no ninja/monk, no wizard, no barbarian analogue for me to
just drop into a session.
While the Monster Manual is a necessary book and the writing
is good, the mechanics are a big let-down. The DMG and PHB are full of creative
and sometimes imaginative mechanics, but the MM seems oddly devoid of those
elements. Given that it is a book of monsters, that’s kind of unforgivable.
The Tiresome parts
Skills are still floating about, and I’m not sure
why…Non-weapon Proficiencies would add a bonus in the same way as skills, and
so I’m not sure why we’ve kept skills about, especially as everything is
supposedly an ability check. So long as you’re including “skills” players will
think of them as “skills” and not “proficiencies” and there’ll be a level of
dissonance at the table. Either use skills or ditch ‘em, I say.
I’m not really enamored with the large format used by RPG
publishers. In fact, I find the standard 8.5x11 book a lazy and unappealing
default. Every game book I own that isn’t that size reminds me of how much I
don’t like reading these unwieldy tomes. Also, why aren’t the booklets in the Starter
Set perfect bound? The reuse value of the booklets is pretty limited as they
get bent and torn easily.
The sorcerer is largely undefined and limited in interest.
The warlock is not bad, but always feels boring. I see how
its different magic provides a different play experience, but the whole “deal
with otherworldly power” doesn’t really do much other than force the character
and DM into a Faust story. Any class should be able to do this (and yes, I know
you can multi-class), and spell casters should be able to do so as a matter of
story, not a mechanical class requirement. Overall, the warlock is a
disappointing class to me, both in narrative and mechanical terms. The mechanic could
have been folded into the sorcerer class and the room used to provide another
nature-based class, like the 4e Warden, which was a great idea all around, or a psychic/divine class, akin to a
mentalist or mystic.
Overall, in play I’d give 4 stars overall to fifth edition.
It is a very good, fun, but somewhat expensive RPG.
If pressed, I’d give the following stars to the main
products:
Starter Set: 4.5 stars
Player’s Handbook: 4 stars
Dungeon Master’s Guide: 4.5 stars
Monster Manual: 3 stars
