Looking back at D&D 2014 and the fifth edition so far: Nat20s and critical failures
It’s easy to view the expiring version of D&D (which has been running since 2014 and whose core rulebooks are being replaced this year) as an attempt to reconcile with players new and old after the last set of rules drew mixed reactions. And yes, fifth edition is praised by those interested in the roleplaying hobby for its simpler mechanics, its use of iconic fantasy tropes, and its popularity. However, when you compare Dungeons & Dragons 5e to its previous namesakes, things start to go awry. With a fresh start for the game in sight, I wanted to look back at the rules we’ve played over the past 10 years—and by and large, what we’re left with is a mixed bag.
Those who have played more than just the current version of the game say that D&D 5e is everyone’s second favorite edition, and it’s hard to disagree. Fourth edition had its tactical approach, third offered a wealth of character options, Advanced D&D offered an expansion into much of the lore popular today, and those original little brown books contained a world of dark and dangerous dungeons that would prove to be the origin of the best tabletop RPGs and the industry as a whole. But even so, and even if it’s only a second favorite edition, fifth edition D&D has a lot to offer. The core system is simple and flexible, players and Dungeon Masters have plenty of options for their classes, monsters, and adventures, and, perhaps most importantly, 5e has a wealth of community-developed resources that endlessly expand the game.
Judgments, not rules
At its core, D&D 2014 works the way the game has always worked. Before you embark on epic adventures from D&D books or your own imagination, one of you must take on the fabled role of “Dungeon Master.” He acts as the adventure’s narrator, the medium through which the player characters see and interact with the world around them. As players hone individual adventurers unique to them by describing their actions and recording their progress, the Dungeon Master challenges them with monsters and traps and rewards them with treasure.
None of this is unique to D&D, of course, but the interactions between these stories and the ruleset are what sets 5e apart from its predecessors and its contemporary competitors. Originally, 5e seemed to have a looser approach to rules, giving the DM more freedom: “rules, no rules” was the much-vaunted phrase. In many ways, this has been a great strength of the game over the past decade, and has certainly not hindered its rise to popularity, as much of what is needed at the core of the gameplay can be boiled down to its essentials. X Skill check (rolling a d20 and adding/subtracting a modifier), possibly with advantage or disadvantage. This is really easy for new players to understand; an Athletics check to jump over a chasm is intuitive and requires no understanding of the rules other than looking at the sheet to see what number to add to the die.
But as adventurers and adventurers grow beyond Phandelver’s Lost Mines (that original 5e starter set is surely the most played tabletop RPG adventure in the world today), those lightweight rules have been strained. D&D 5e 2014 wasn’t quite simple enough to be rules-light, but also not crisp enough to fully support a diligent DM or enterprising player.
The rules-light approach also fails once you present a new player with a blank character sheet. I believe that filling out the sheet is the hardest part of the game for someone new to the hobby, and comparing ability score and ability modifier, for example, is a holdover that feels unnecessary when you have to explain it to a new TTRPG convert. The nature of magic and spells also doesn’t lend itself to a rules-light setting, and classes that most directly interact with this subsection of the rules are often the hardest for players to learn and master, which is a shame given the appeal of the tropes of playing wizards and clerics.
On the other hand, 5e’s aversion to anything too concrete has, in my opinion, negatively impacted the DM’s ability to decide games quickly and fairly. Encounter design, for example, the process of setting up cool, thematic fights for your players, is paper-thin and woefully unbalanced, making it difficult to present challenges that you’re sure will make for epic moments at the table. At higher levels, this is only made worse by the immense powers of the player characters and the disparity between them. A fighter at level 20 can beat up a mind flayer a few more times than at level 1, while his magical companion can recreate the world in six seconds. Also, I’ve never played a game before or since where I had to go to the designer’s Twitter account as often to get answers to rules questions as I did in 5e.
Fame and weaknesses
However, 5e has seen some updates and quality of life changes over the course of its release in the form of books like Tasha’s Cauldron of Space, which have introduced new player options as well as optional rules, clarifications to original decisions, and additional subsystems that, while not groundbreaking, have added something new to the original Player’s Handbook/free core rules.
It can be argued that the latest edition of the game, coming in 2024 (formerly known as “One D&D” and now a sequel to 5e), will be more of a Tasha-style facelift rather than as dramatic a change as from fourth to fifth edition, which causes some confusion. Still, it could represent a great opportunity to get more people into roleplaying. Certainly, the current edition made some questionable decisions, both in terms of text and lore, that didn’t sit well with the community, and the new edition will hopefully remove those parts.
Overall, I really think 5e had a lot to offer, but I don’t think that had much to do with the actual rules of the game. The main appeal was that there was no shortage of other people to play it with, and that made up for a lot of the game’s inherent weaknesses. Other people, other players, are creative, imaginative, smart, funny, warm, and they are the ones who made D&D 5e the success that it is. For so many people, the memories they associate with this hobby come from this game in particular, and more often than not, those memories are of triumph, joy, and friendship, of unlikely nat20s, surviving an attack with 1 HP, and battling liches and demons and dragons in deep dungeons for the fate of the world. And beyond that, as a stepping stone into other games, D&D 5e is quite worthwhile. The curious can grab what they know about D&D and from there find all the other games, niche or not, that they want to fill their imagination with.
In other words, the game is not without its flaws despite its fame. Yes, D&D has become as famous for dice-rolling high fantasy RPGs as Google is for search engines, thanks in part to The Edition. But despite its fame, it was not without weaknesses.
Essentially, D&D 5e was good enough to represent what many people think of as TTRPGs, but I usually recommend exploring other options if it whets your appetite or leaves you unsatisfied. You wouldn’t regret playing Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, but you’d also regret not continuing once you find out what else is out there.
Looking for something else to play? Be sure to check out the best board gamesor the best card games.
