Why I don’t play 5th edition D&D: Part 1

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a long time. I got the red box for my birthday when I was maybe ten. In second edition we went into the Undermountain, travel between worlds in Spelljammer, and set up shop in the Sigil, the city of doors, in Planescape. In third edition we ventured briefly into Ravenloft. In three five we went back into the Undermountain, I started taking part in the organized play program, and I started regularly going to large events like Gencon and Origins. In fourth edition I continued to play at conventions, started organizing and running the organized play program at my friendly local game store (FLGS), I even started running battle interactives, and I started going to Winter Fantasy.

I’ve talked in different place about how I don’t play fifth edition D&D how one day I should probably explain why. This is that explanation. Before I go too much further I want to take a moment to say this. I don’t hate fifth edition, the people who play it, or the ideas behind it. In fact, I have several friends who play fifth edition, I enjoy many of the mechanics that I’ve seen on line, and I even understand the things that caused it to come into being.

Back on point. There are three things in my recollection that lead to the way I view 5^th edition. It all started at Winter Fantasy. This is a small convention in Fort Wayne, Indiana that takes place in late January or early February. As I understand it, Winter Fantasy was run by a group called Baldman games. They had a deal with Wizards of the Coast that made Winter Fantasy a Dungeons & Dragons only event. This meant that all of the officially scheduled events were Dungeons & Dragons with one or two pick-up games of whatever you wanted on some free play tables. Until one year when they opened the convention to any game which let a large number of Pathfinder Society games get scheduled. I may have some of that wrong, and I apologize if I do, but this is my perception of how things were set up.

The year that the convention opened was the same year that Wizards of the Coast announced D&D Next or what came to be known as Fifth edition. It was pretty exciting. There were going to be demo games of the alpha rules for fifth edition, they were planning a couple of panels to answer peoples questions about the game, and people representing Wizards of the Coast and a couple of actual game designers were going to be there to answer questions. There was a lot to look forward to that weekend. I know I was excited.

Part of what went wrong was based on the difference between fourth edition and every other edition of D&D ever. There is a wonderful video by a man named Matt Coville that explains the difference and what happened far better than I can. To shorten this as much as possible, fourth edition was a huge divergence from and Dungeons & Dragons edition that came before it. Fourth edition was a massive overhaul of the entire system. People either loved it or played Pathfinder, which was based on the three five edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

A couple of things went wrong that weekend. The first and most honest mistake was the Alpha rules demos. I played a warrior in the demo. My reasoning is that the warrior is the most straight forward class and traditionally one of the hardest to make playable. In early editions of Dungeons & Dragons warriors became increasingly less useful and interesting at higher levels. Where wizards were calling down meteors, clerics were wielding the divine powers of their god to perform miracles, and rogues were infiltrating temples and fortresses to assassinate targets; warriors were swinging a sword. That is an exaggeration, but not much of one. In fourth edition warriors kept pace with everyone else, they had interesting things to do at every level. They could control the flow of the battle, protect their friends, and they could deal enough damage to get and keep a creatures attention.

In the alpha demo, I wanted to see if I would be controlling the flow of battle, protecting my friends, or swinging my sword. I was really disappointed that on my turn all I did was swing my sword. However, I did have a lot of Hit Points and a high Armor Class. Unfortunately, the Dungeon Master/monsters quickly realized that they could not hit me. Additionally, due to their high Dexterity and ability to dodge I couldn’t hit them either. Thus, they immediately ignored me to beat up the rest of the party. An ogre did eventually show up. I could hit the ogre. However, I didn’t do enough damage to warrant the ogre’s attention and it went after the rest of the party. I was completely useless. I could not control the flow of battle, protect my friends, or keep a creatures attention. I was so disappointed that I submitted two and a half pages of feedback on the alpha.

Before anyone says anything, I understand that this was an alpha build of the game and was going to go through a ton of work to get to the final form. It’s why I filled out two and a half pages of feedback. I wanted to make sure my concerns were heard. At the time Dungeons & Dragons was one of my favorite things. I wanted it to succeed. I even understood what they were trying to do. I could see the framework of something that could one day be great. I just wanted it to get there. If this had been the only thing that went wrong that weekend I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. But then there were the panels.

Winter Fantasy fits inside one of the large rooms at the Grand Wayne Convention Center. It’s a big room, it holds a couple of hundred people. There were smaller meeting rooms available, and some of them were often used for smaller panels and discussions. For the D&D Next Panels they set up a stage in the back corner of the room. They had a sounds system, chairs, and a microphone set up to answer audience questions. This had the effect that everyone at the convention could hear the panels as they were going on. Even if you weren’t in the audience, you were in the room and could listen to the panel if you wanted. No matter what you did you were going to hear pieces of it.

I’m sure there are many reasons for the panels to be set up the way they were. It could have been cost, space, acoustics, or any number of other things. Unfortunately, the general belief was that the reason they set it up that way was so the Pathfinder players could hear the panel even if they didn’t attend it. A lot of people, myself included, believed that the idea was to try and lure the players who had stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons because they hated fourth edition and get them to come back to the game. That’s most likely not even close to the reason, but most of the people I talked to were joking about that the whole weekend.

The panels were on days two and three of the convention. Which meant that by the time the first panel was held, people had already played in the alpha. The general consensus of the alpha was that nobody liked it. I did not attend any of the panels. I spent my time focused on the game I was playing and vaguely hearing things floating away from the panel. I cannot personally speak to the quality of the panels. That said, a lot of people were really angry at the panels by the end of day two. I don’t know what happened, who started it, what occurred, or even if it was real. But, a couple of people who attended the panel told me that an argument broke out between the people in the audience and the people on stage. I like to think I remember being skeptical of this. I hope I was. However, I remember at the end of day three hearing someone from the panel scream into the microphone, “I don’t understand why you’re fighting us on this. We’re going to fix D&D. We’re going to make it good again.” I have never heard a convention go as quiet as Winter Fantasy did right then. The panel ended shortly after that.

I going to say something divisive. I love fourth edition. I get that it’s not for everyone. Still, I adore it. I love how the powers work, the classes are all useful, and everyone feels like a part of the party. I know that it’s a different as it can be from all of Dungeons & Dragons, but I love it. The idea that they were going to fix D&D and make it fun again meant that they thought it was broken and bad. It was the worst possible way to end the convention, to hear someone representing the company that made the thing you love announce that it was broken and bad. And remember, I wasn’t the only one there that loved fourth edition there was a room full of us.

I understand that the person who said that was probably frustrated, worked up from arguing with people, and under siege from an angry audience. They came expecting people to love the idea of a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons that was going to be a return to form. Had they done that at any other convention, they probably would have been right. Unfortunately, in a moment of frustration and rage, he probably said something that had no actual reflection on his views. He had the bad luck of saying what he did while holding a microphone in a room full of people who had been joking for two days that they were replacing fourth edition because they didn’t care what we thought, they wanted the Pathfinder players back. I’m probably not the only one it had a long quiet drive home that day.

Those were the first two things. I realize that they seem small. Sometimes it’s the little things that get in and grate the gears, like sand. I wouldn’t come back in contact with fifth edition for over a year. I still took part in fourth edition, I continued to run the adventure league events and monthly living campaign at my FLGS. I had friends who were playing in the alpha, and taking part in the playtest forums, and they moved forward with it into the beta rules. I had decided that since my experience with the alpha had been as negative as it was that I would wait until the game was released or at the very least almost finished before I looked at it. We talked about it. They mentioned things like advantage, disadvantage, and a couple of other mechanics. What they talked about sounded promising and I was willing to wait until it was more complete. Then the third thing happened.

This has gotten much longer than I had anticipated. If you want to read the rest you can head here.
Let me know what you think in the comments down below. Tell me about the article, your experience with D&D, or anything else that comes to mind.