Ten Years (Part 1)

You've probably noticed me blogging a lot more about 5E lately. And if you've read any of that, you'll know I that I have pretty complicated feelings towards it.

It's still my main group's main game. We've been together since early 2017 and have played multiple 5E campaigns together, including one that went all the way to level 20. But I was also playing it from the day it first released, including a few long-term campaigns and a whole lotta one-shots. I wouldn't even know how to begin calculating a modest estimate of the time I've spent with it. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours.

I myself haven't run a session in 5E in years, though. I've just been too interested in exploring different possibilities. It's how I started in the hobby, and it was inevitable I'd return to that instinct.

I may never end up playing a newer version of D&D ever again. So I thought it might be fitting to write my big retrospective on this game. I hope the amount of experience I have, coupled with my experiences across the rest of the RPG world, gives my perspective some value. At least, more value than 99% of the discourse out there about 5E.

The Ghosts of WotC Past, Present, and Future

Before I talk about the game, I first have to talk about everything surrounding the game. Sorry, I'm sure that's an annoying way to start things off. But I think my perspective benefits a lot from context. So here goes.

I don't care for WotC these days. Controversial opinion, I know. But I can't write an honest retrospective without talking about how the D&D team was doing a lot of things right in 2014.

The thing I hate most about 5E discourse is all the opportunistic haters seizing on the current zeitgeist to just be shitty. Smug pricks bragging about how they've always said that WotC is evil and that everybody on the 5E train was a chump from day one and that it's actually always been bad.

I don't want them to take control of the conversation. I don't want to see them get away with rewriting everyone's memories. I can be fully anti-WotC in 2024 and still say a lot of positive things about the WotC of 2014. That's not a contradiction, I don't have to cede any ground, I don't have to admit that the smug pricks were right all along. And if I can, I want to reassure you of the same. Back in 2014, you were not a sucker for feeling good about the direction of the game, about choosing to support a big brand, about having optimism for the future. Damn near everybody was stoked about 5E when it came out and it was not just bandwagoning or hysteria or people drinking WotC's kool-aid or something. It's because they made a good game!

The DnD Next team especially did a lot to earn the community's goodwill. Have you ever seen this video? It's Mike Mearls and Rodney Thompson doing a post-mortem on 5E shortly after its release. What their process was, their thinking, what worked, what didn't, etc. I really love it, and I think it's extremely illuminating,

Perhaps this is my silly naïveté, but I believe that the group of people assigned to work on D&D Next actually gave a shit and tried their best. They listened to the feedback about 4E. They wanted to bring the game back to its roots. They played every version of D&D ever made to try and figure out what was core to the game. They did tons of public playtesting and they incorporated the results, even when they disagreed with the feedback's consensus. They brought back the OGL and they made the basic version of the game free and open source. They got rid of shitty money-grubbing bullshit like subscription-based digital tools and tactical miniature skirmish game design. They actively encouraged DIY. Back in 2014, all of that was so refreshing.

But Dwiz, you say. If 5E was good back then, how do you explain why everything sucks now? Apparently this is somehow a serious "gotcha!" question for a lot of people. How oh how could you explain this? What answer could there possibly be other than "maybe it really was bad all along, actually." And... I'm sorry y'all, but there is no mystery here.

Brace yourself: the main reason the materials that WotC has put out for 5E since its initial release are of a different quality is because most of the people involved in creating those materials are different. Dear lord this isn't rocket surgery.

Companies are not monoliths. They're made of people. They are a Ship of Theseus. Robert Schwalb left the team in 2014 to make Shadow of the Demon Lord. Rodney Thompson left in 2015. Peter Lee left in 2018. Other people left voluntarily, got laid off, moved within the company to some other project, etc. And that's all pretty normal, to be honest. Nothing nefarious going on there, but it also shouldn't be a surprise that maybe the quality might go down (or at the very least, move laterally).

More importantly, the people calling the shots have changed, too. Everyone knows that Mike Mearls was dropped around 2019. D&D has steadily been filling up with parasites since then. Chris Cocks took over WotC in 2016, an 8-year veteran of Microsoft. Then he climbed up to CEO of Hasbro itself and was replaced by Cynthia Williams. And Williams? Microsoft executive, before that Amazon. Dan Rawson? Microsoft executive, before that Amazon. Kyle Brink? Plenty of actual design work, but mostly product development with a focus on bringing e-commerce into games. All of them bringing their shitty ideas from the world of video games to the world of RPGs. The same tech sector poison that's been ruining your favorite digital games is now going to ruin your analog games, too.

I know some people didn't like the Mearls era, but I cannot imagine preferring the people who replaced him. Their vision for D&D fucking sucks. They bought up D&D Beyond and set their sights on making a shitty, over-produced VTT. Likely subscription-based, likely the only way to get D&D content in the future. They tried to take away the OGL and they'll probably try to add AI and NFTs to D&D somehow in the future. They've already been caught trying out some AI art. And who knows? Maybe they'll send the Pinkertons after you if you try using a dice rolling app not officially licensed by WotC.

Maybe you can excuse me for being nostalgic for the days when D&D was still being run by someone who gave a shit about the game itself. Nostalgic for the Happy Fun Hour stream. Nostalgic for regular new Unearthed Arcana that clearly built on each previous feedback survey. Nostalgic for seeing Mearls commenting on Reddit and encouraging people's homebrew.

All of this is just to say that I want to be granted a little bit of leeway here to say a lot of positive things about this game without anyone thinking that I support the company currently publishing it. I hope you're with me so far.

The Good

I've written before about how badly people misremember 5E's early years. Many people attribute its success entirely to Critical Role and Stranger Things. But while those two variables were indeed extremely influential, people forget that this edition was already an unprecedented smash hit before either of them. Like many folks, I was playing Pathfinder when 5E came out, and in that context it honestly felt like the holy fucking grail. So starting from that point of view, what was so dang special about 5E to people like me?

1. Advantage and disadvantage fucking rule. It's easy to take for granted now because it's become a ubiquitous mechanic. But let's remind ourselves that it became ubiquitous because it fucking rules, and D&D 5E really does deserve the credit for that. While D&D did not invent the idea, it both popularized it and, maybe more importantly, saw the potential in crafting the whole system around it as a lynchpin mechanic.
   
   
2. Proficiency was extremely refreshing when it was introduced. In 3E / Pathfinder, characters had a base attack bonus, combat maneuver bonus, saving throw values, and skill points. Proficiency merges all of those into one number, which steadily scales with level. It's a good example of prudent streamlining. That one new mechanic probably freed up half the character sheet.
   
   
3. Backgrounds are a great addition to D&D. Character creation in D&D has always been based on Race + Class as the main question. It works really well because people love mix-and-match. It's not as complicated or tedious as a granular point-based system like in GURPS or HERO System, but it still offers a bit more choice and variety than the kind of game where you simply pick one of 3-7 character types. It's a good sweet spot in the middle. Elf wizard? Classic. Halfling barbarian? Hilarious. Warforged druid? Intriguing!
   
   But we can admit that Race + Class is still pretty limited. Characters are often reduced to their Race/Class combo, stereotypes form easily, and there are only so many combinations (especially when a lot of them are really unoptimized). Thus, adding a simple third variable does the trick. Race + Class + Background isn't actually that much more complicated, but it allows for an extra layer of characterization to come through and it explodes the number of permutations.
   
   Let's say you have two PCs who are both Human Fighters. If that's all you're looking at, then they're hard to distinguish. But by having one be a Noble and the other be a Sailor, they don't bare much resemblance anymore. Nobody mistakes the knight and the pirate.
   
   There's also less stereotyping. What's the "default" background for a Rogue? The most vanilla, obvious choice? I feel like Criminal, Urchin, and Charlatan are all equally fitting. Even better, if you do go with a truly novel combination, it'll never really be punishing. Why not Rogue + Sage? Sounds cool to me.
   
   Another thing I love about backgrounds is that the "special feature" each one gets is very fluffy. They're "rules, but not mechanics," if that makes sense. They're things like "you have a good rapport with X faction," or "here's a way you can get safe lodging" or "you have an NPC ally." There's no crunch to these. You can't really factor these into your character build. Instead, they place the world first, rather than the character. They set the expectation that you should treat the game like, y'know, "playing pretend." How do you fit into this world? What would you do in this world, and how would it respond?
   
   
4. Subclasses, likewise, are a great fit for a mix-and-match character creation system. D&D had done similar things before. AD&D had variants of each class (e.g. Druids were just modified Clerics, Rangers and Paladins were just modified Fighters, etc.). 3E had prestige classes, but... that got a bit out of control.
   

   3.X Edition D&D had, by my count, 84 base classes with every official sourcebook included. There are, on top of that, 73 variants on these classes and then literally hundreds of prestige classes. I'm not kidding. According to Wikipedia's record, I counted at least 695 from published books alone.

   4E suggested two main builds for each class, then let you pick a "paragon path" at 11th level and an "epic destiny" at 21st level. Very MMO-coded, but we're almost there.
   
   5E's subclass system is smart because it allows the developers to keep a reasonable cap on the total number of classes while still having somewhere in the design that they can proliferate new customization options for players. Much like with backgrounds, it's the perfect sweet spot of granularity in differentiating characters.
   
   Some games are lacking in customization, like B/X D&D. Every fighter is exactly the same, every thief is exactly the same. Almost feels like there's no point. But other games have too much customization, like Pathfinder. A "fighter" is just someone who gets to pick X billion feats in such-and-such category, whereas a "rogue" is someone who gets to pick Y billion feats in this-and-that category. Good luck making a build, buddy.
   
   Once again, 5E found a really comfy middle ground. "You wanna be a thief-y Rogue, an assassin-y Rogue, or a magic-y Rogue?" Each one is a simple package of features. It's also a clever way for the designers to preserve the greatest hits of 3rd Edition's prestige classes without having to revive that whole mess.
   
   
5. Equipment packages are also awesome for similar reasons. It's a great compromise between not enough choice and too much choice. Being told "all rangers get XYZ gear at 1st level" with no room for debate is a bit disappointing. But being told "here's 200 bucks, spend the next hour with your head buried in the equipment list" is too much for most people. Some folks love it, which is why it is preserved as an optional rule that's really easy to use instead. But for the majority of the audience, the best answer is the middle ground, which 5E has made the default:
   
   1) You want weapon A or weapon B?
   2) You want armor A or armor B?
   3) You want supply package A or supply package B?
   
   Easy peasy. I personally don't think there's one true superior way to do starting equipment. I sincerely enjoy every major option for different reasons. But for the core of the D&D audience? They made the right call.
   
   
6. Skills are better. Still not perfect, definitely have some changes I'd make, but in my opinion it's a better system than any previous edition of D&D. Universal to all classes instead of being Thief-exclusive, tied into the core d20 mechanic like 3E but with some bounded accuracy in place, simple proficiency instead of highly granular skill points. I like all that. I even like the skill list better than any previous edition, despite still having some changes I'd make.
   
   
7. Quick builds are really underrated! Even with all this streamlining to character creation compared to 3E and 4E, there's still probably too much analysis paralysis for some old-fashioned gamers. Still a little too much theory crafting and build-planning for their taste. So... just don't! Every class offers strong, reliable quick builds that you can and should use instead. If you liked how simple and uniform the B/X classes are, then you can still have that! It's honestly so weird to me how many people complain about the burden of having to build their own character... when they could just choose not to.
   
   
8. Feats and multiclassing are optional. I think this is one of single best decisions in all of 5E, and that many people underestimate how valuable this choice was. "To feat or not to feat" is a silly question in hindsight. Cutting them from the game entirely leaves behind the minority of the audience who's really into crunchy character-building stuff. But making them mandatory alienates the majority of the audience who find crunchy character-building stuff to be daunting at best and a slog at worst. So what do you do? Just make it optional. You can have your cake and eat it too!
   
   5E's masterstroke was to make the game simpler and more accessible than its predecessors. Make no mistake, that is the reason for its success. That is what attracted so many new players into the hobby. Thus, the "default game" should be designed with that casual majority in mind. But you can also give the hardcore gamers what they want without compromising on that. Complexity can still be included as long as it's opt-in.
   
   I cannot think of any downsides to this implementation. I know people who take as many feats as possible and I know people who've never taken a single feat after years of playing. More than either, though, are folks like me: not really into it, but when you've reached level 8 or 12 and you've maxed out your top 2 or 3 attributes, you hit a point where you're saying to yourself, "alright, maybe I'll try out a feat. Just one. As a treat." So glad that option is there.
   
   Also, y'know, I like the actual design of feats way more now. Simpler, chunkier, not nearly as many of them. Still not super well-balanced but it's honestly not that big of a deal in most cases. And if it is giving you a headache? Then just don't allow it. Remember, that's the default. It's optional for a reason.
   
   
9. The material for role-playing fluff is pretty good. Y'know, the stuff that goes in the last chapter of character creation. "Fill in the rest of the details, come up with some personality, blablabla." D&D has tried a lot of things to provide for this step, and I think 5E's material is the best thus far. In particular, I remember the system of "traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws" being extremely well-received in 2014. It's not revolutionary, but it's a decent prompt for helping a first-time player fill in some blanks without overthinking it. I especially like 5E's take on...
   
   
10. Alignment. Yes, really. This one is controversial, but that's unavoidable. Hear me out: I really enjoy alignment in nearly all its forms (yes I might be a psychopath) but this one especially I find to be pretty easy to sell new players on. Why? Because for the first time ever it's just been reduced to purely fluff. No mechanical impact whatsoever.
    
    That might confuse some of you. A lot of people saw this version of alignment and asked, "what's the point?" Why bother including it if it's not relevant to the rules anymore?
    
    Because it's a role-playing game you ding dongs. It's no different from bonds and flaws and appearance and funny voices. It's just role-playing fuel. Does it help you get into character and guide your decisions in interesting ways? Then it's a useful tool for enhancing your roleplay. If not, then don't use it. Simple as. If this were how alignment were implemented from the beginning, I bet it never would have been nearly as controversial as it's become. It's just a nice little suggestion for another character aspect you may be interested in thinking about. There are entire RPGs that are constructed exclusively out of stuff like that and honestly they're often enormous fun.
    
    
11. Magic items aren't as important. They're (basically) optional. Don't get me wrong, I love me some magic items. My games include lots of them. But in 3E they were pretty much required and not even fun. Every character was stuck on a treadmill of magic gear they needed in order to stay viable as the campaign progressed. It just became a part of the core balance of how characters are constructed. Even worse, it meant that boring "+1 bonus to spell saves" and "+2 bonus to attack rolls" were the main benefit of most magic items. Remember that? That sucked. And now it's not really a problem anymore. Thanks, 5E.
    
    
12. Opportunity attacks have been fixed. 3rd Edition introduced a new rule called the "Attack of Opportunity" (or AoO for short. God, what an embarrassingly clunky name). Intentionally or not, it's one of the most important, defining mechanics of the whole system. And also, it sucks. I have previously highlighted it as a prime example of "bad crunch," the exact sort of thing you want to avoid in game design. Which actions provoked an AoO and which ones didn't was often arbitrary and nonsensical so you couldn't just intuit it, there were dozens of them so you couldn't memorize the list, and looking up the chart in the rulebook every single turn was a pain in the ass. Across the RPG hobby, there's a widespread lingering resentment over how often 3E combats became sluggish and boring because of this frustrating rule.
    
    5E D&D has "Opportunity Attacks," which are extremely simple. If you're wielding a melee weapon, and an enemy willingly exits your melee range with their movement, then you can spend your Reaction to make a single free attack against them. That's it. What if I'm a Fighter and I get multiple attacks on my turn? That doesn't apply here. Does it impede their movement? No, stop overthinking it. It's simple. Quick. Easy to learn and understand. The basic logic is, "when you try to leave someone who you're in a swordfight with, you're gunna leave yourself wide open for a moment. They get a freebie." Former 3E / Pathfinder players sometimes get confused, but every new player seems to immediately understand this rule, in my experience.
    
    I like this rule. It adds a small wrinkle to battlefield tactics. It makes attacking someone a commitment. "Run away" isn't the easy solution to every problem you face. But it's also not that punishing. If you're hit by one, the worst that can happen is a bit of damage. Plus, characters have to spend their Reaction to perform an Opportunity Attack, which they only get one of per round. It's a minor variable, but there are many times I've found it made a combat situation a little more interesting by its inclusion.
    
    
13. Extra Attacks are a good design anchor. D&D is an action game, so its combat rules need to have some meat on their bones. I ultimately think it's best to keep it pretty simple and open-ended, but just a few bits of tactical complexity go a long way. And in 5E's case, a lot of the combat rules and balance are designed around action economy rather than numerical bonuses. D&D has long allowed Fighters to get multiple attacks per round, but I don't believe previous editions really fully explored this direction. 3E especially was very much a "numbers game." It was built on trying to get higher and higher bonuses. Since most of the arithmetic bloat has been removed, the number of attacks being made became the most important factor in a fight. And I think that's an improvement. Compare these two possibilities: rolling 3 attacks that do modest damage versus rolling 1 attack that does tons of damage. The former make your average damage output a lot less swingy, but I also think it just feels better.
    
    
14. Likewise, it was smart to focus on Cantrips. The OSR spellcaster has only a handful of spells, but each one is powerful. And few, if any, are meant for direct attack. It paints the mage as a figure who appears unassuming or even weak, but who secretly contains tremendous strength. It preserves the awe and mystery of magic. It makes spells a precious resource that must be deployed carefully and cunningly.
    
    All of that is great and I love it. But that doesn't make it the be-all, end-all interpretation of fantasy spellcasting. I think it would be inappropriate for the type of game that modern D&D is striving to be. Remember, it's an action game. It should be a high energy, do-or-die game about larger-than-life heroes throwing themselves headfirst into peril. And to that end, even the Wizard needs the freedom to be flinging spells left and right and feeling like an action hero.
    
    But there is a very real risk that a player can have too many spells. Things grow out of hand quickly. To address this, 5E put a lot more emphasis on the role of "0th level spells," i.e. cantrips. Previously, these were often just minor "magical tricks" you could do. Spells like prestidigitation and mending. But now they're promoted to the most important tools in your toolbelt. Fireball is still a jackhammer, but firebolt is your screwdriver and wrench.
    
    In previous editions, spellcasters constantly faced a shitty choice: do I cast a spell or do I suck for the round? You don't have enough spells to cast one every single turn, but you also don't have a great alternative option to keep yourself useful. In 5E, cantrips fill that gap. They can now be done "at-will" (thanks, 4E) so you always have a basic attack option you can fall back on. It may not be the right moment for a fireball, but you can still contribute in some small way.
    
    
15. Upcasting spells and spells scaling with level is good. We don't need ten different cure wounds spells. Better to have fewer total spells, each with more mileage. This is also critical to making those attack cantrips work. They keep getting better as you level up, so you never truly outgrow them.
    
    
16. Legendary Monsters are a good idea and a success in practice. There've always been problems with "solo monster" fights. The classic picture we have of an "epic boss fight" consists of the team of heroes squaring off against one huge enemy. But the game's balance just doesn't favor that scenario. The party wins initiative on round 1 and immediately gangs up on the boss, disabling (if not outright killing) it immediately. And if the boss wins initiative? It gets out one big attack... and then its turn is over and the party gangs up to curb stomp it anyway. This is the downside of a combat system that privileges action economy. Even a monster with astronomical HP and damage can be outdone by simple "strength in numbers."
    
    Thus, the Legendary Monster: just give it a bunch more actions per round. Functionally the same as fighting multiple enemies, but narratively still just the single big bad boss monster. For pacing sake, those extra actions get spread throughout the round instead of all happening at once. And it keeps the situation dynamic so that players' plans for the round routinely get disrupted by a surprise action. It's not just a good idea from a balance standpoint. It's also cool. It's dramatic.
    
    I'm not saying this is the perfect recipe for the ultimate boss fight. This remains fertile soil for great thinkers to continue innovating. But in my experience, it's a pretty reliable way to elevate a normal fight into something really challenging and memorable.
    
    
17. Modularity and the DIY ethic. Did you know that 4E was not released under the OGL? Yup, it's true. 5E is actually the edition that brought it back. This was part of an overarching shift in WotC's attitudes at the time. It was now the era of "DIY D&D." Character backgrounds are designed to be customizable, feats and multiclassing are optional, several of the races are designated as optional, tons and tons of variant rules sprinkled throughout. And the DMG? Once you get passed the bullshit about worldbuilding and the massive page count devoted to treasure and magic items, you get to the good stuff: tons of advice on making rulings, suggestions for houserules, guidelines on crafting homebrew content, and so on.
    
    And back in 2014, a ton of people took advantage of that. You couldn't turn your head without coming across a new hunk of 5E homebrew, or even a hack of the system itself to create a whole new game.
    
    Nowadays there's a stigma attached to the norm of 5E players obsessively hacking this flawed and limited game rather than simply trying something new. Don't get me wrong, I totally get it. It's really frustrating to watch a DM attempt to houserule D&D into an urban gothic fantasy steampunk heist game about running a crew that does capers, with less crunch and magic and more faction gameplay, rather than just fucking trying out Blades in the Dark. Trying to talk a 5E group into playing a different game for once can be a maddening experience.
    
    But here's the thing: this was the first time in ages that the norm among the player base was to embrace the DIY ethic. To not be afraid to experiment, to not make themselves beholden to whatever was "official," and most importantly, to make the game their own. I find it very encouraging how many DMs approach D&D as something that's meant to be tinkered with, as something that belongs to them, and not a corporation.
    
    Obviously, those norms have not fully survived over the last ten years.

The Messy

There are a lot of things about 5E that I really like in theory, but for one reason or another I couldn't include on the previous list. Promising ideas, but flawed execution. I think they're worth acknowledging, too.

1. Bounded accuracy in general is a big breakthrough. A lot has been written on its flaws, on 5E's failure to follow through on the principle, and especially how it falls apart at high levels. But compared to what preceded it, it's a huge improvement. The DC treadmill caused runaway bonus inflation that just sucked to deal with. Dice rolls needed a container of some kind. It may not achieve all the goals it set out to do, but I'd like to see it iterated on further to maybe get closer.
   
   
2. Short rests and long rests are a cool idea. An iteration on 4E's design, they're pretty intuitive to new players and can be a useful framework for pacing challenge. Unfortunately, I don't think the intended pacing lines up with the natural way that any group actually plays the game. I have written about this at length before, but in short: I think the dev team was mistaken to use "1 day" as their standard unit of adventure, because the amount of adventuring they intended to take place within an average in-game day ends up taking most groups several in-game days (and many real-life days). From this simple mistake then comes many other complications and frustrations. I believe it's still salvageable, but ultimately one of the bigger failings of the edition.
   
   
3. Theater of the mind as the default for combat, rather than grid and minis. So like, I think it's pretty evident that the design must have failed to accomplish this goal. But the intention is correct.
   
   One of the design team's biggest takeaways from their "play every previous edition" experiment was that nothing slows down combat more than using a grid and minis. It makes a way bigger difference than you realize. Now of course, there are lots of factors that make modern D&D's combat slower than old school D&D's combat. Individual initiative. Multiple actions per turn. Opportunity attacks. HP bloat. But all of them pale compared to just the simple act of including a visualization of the battle itself. It's easy to underestimate how much time you lose to setting up a board, moving tokens around, counting squares, etc. It's the difference between a fight that takes 10-15 minutes versus a fight that takes 45-60 minutes. It's bananas.
   
   As with everything else in the game, I feel that the best move is to 1) prioritize the experience of the casual newcomer by making the default rules as accessible as possible, while also 2) preserving the crunchier stuff as optional content that your group may opt into if they wish. And indeed, this is what 5E chose to do with gridded combat. It's listed as a mere variant rule that you aren't necessarily expected to use.
   
   And yet... seemingly everyone chooses to use that variant anyway, for better or worse. There just remain too many factors that make it hard to run the game without a visual and some lines drawn.
   
   But the intention to make the game easy to run in theatre of the mind forced the designers to trim a lot of fat. No more flanking rules. No more line of sight and other targeting mechanics. Streamline opportunity attacks. Streamline the size categories. Simplify cover rules. I appreciate all of this. And further, I believe that a version of D&D where "tactical combat" can be seamlessly achieved in theater of the mind is a good goal, and that it's still achievable.
   
   
4. Action types are less clunky than before, but still kinda clunky. Alright, so it's a game about tactical combat, built around action economy, meaning that the framework of actions you get in combat is a pretty important ingredient. The standard "on your turn, you can move and take one action," isn't going to cut it. But 3E's inclusion of "full-round actions" and "restricted activity," or the bizarre and arbitrary distinction between a "free action" and a "not an action," or the many things that for some reason cost your move action even though they have nothing to do with movement, are all unintuitive and unwieldy.
   
   5E's action types are a lot better... but "bonus action" is still a bit weak. It doesn't help that the name causes endless confusion. And don't get me started on that one spellcasting rule that intersects with it. Ugh.
   
   I haven't played Pathfinder 2E, but it sounds like its three-action system is pretty popular and works well. Simpler is better. Who would have thought?

And there you have it. That's the stuff I like about 5E. In broad strokes, at least. I can't count every small joy it's ever brought me. Every fun moment that I can credit to this game, its rules, its text, its art, its memes. At this point, I've experienced nearly everything there is to experience in 5E, it feels like.

But there's a reason I don't run it anymore. Stay tuned for part 2.

-Dwiz