What We Shouldn't Learn From 5e

Over at his blog , Aaron wrote a great post about which elements he thinks we should take from Dungeons & Dragons 5e and port into other roleplaying games. Because while everyone is always trying to do the reverse – steal mechanics from other systems to make their 5e home game bearable – why not look at the most popular roleplaying game in the world and pilfer it for parts? Surely the result can only be positive?

Well... yes and no. Because while I think there are elements of 5e that are worth stealing (Aaron's canonical example of Advantage/Disadvantage certainly being one of them), the ones Aaron lists aren't among them in my opinion.

So this will be a well-meaning, good-natured rebuttal of his post. Feel free to disagree.

What I Do Agree With

But first, let me say what I do agree with. One thing I really like is the whole conceit of the post, flipping the general direction of cross-pollination on its head. Because it is a worthwhile question to ask if 5e has things to offer, and as I already said above: I even think that it does.

I also love the observation that the way 5e implements long rests effectively constitutes a self-selectable difficulty system on the part of the players. This is very astute and a great way to think about this aspect of the game.

Long Rests

So I accept that long resting constitutes a self-selectable difficulty system. The question then becomes: is a self-selectable difficulty system something you want in your TTRPGs? To which I say: hell no, get that out of my game!

For a long time, I would've said the same about difficulty systems in video games. But over time, arguments about accessibility and inclusivity have slowly eroded that conviction. To the point where I would now probably even welcome a From Software game offering multiple difficulty levels.

But why then don't I think the same goes for RPGs? Because ideally, RPGs are already offering an inherent difficulty selection in the sense that they allow you to deal with an encounter in any way you can imagine and that makes sense inside the fiction you have established. While a video game necessarily forces you to engage with its systems on its terms, mostly only allowing you to do what its creators have thought of beforehand, a big leg up RPGs have over their digital counterparts is that they don't have to force these restrictions upon you. In an RPG, the mechanics of the system act as fallbacks and facilitators, they are not everything there is.

In that sense, deciding to simply sleep through the challenge the fictional world poses is the least creative and interesting option to engage with and potentially neuter that difficulty in most cases. And only relevant in a system that reins in your creativity at every opportunity to the degree modern Dungeons & Dragons does. The culture of 5e has the least interesting option in every context as the default baked into its system. Encounters? Probably fights. Fights? All according to the basic tabletop-esque mechanics. Difficulty? Overcome by ensuring all your characters are always well prepared for those tabletop-mechanic-moments.

What I do agree with is that games tend to be better and more interesting – and, ironically, easier on the game master – when they redistribute power from the game master to the players when compared to how these things are distributed in 5e. But please do so in creative ways. Give players the option to influence the narrative in unexpected ways that make their life easier, as well as yours. Let them have an ability where they can come up with an NPC that helps them when they are in need. Now they don't need to sleep, and you have a new NPC you can use and know the players are interested in.

Another problem is that, as things stand, there's no real reason to ever "select a higher difficulty." Why wouldn't I make life easier for me? So rather than porting this system from 5e into other games, I would highly recommend once again importing things into 5e, to mitigate this problem. For example, you could incentivise "pushing on" after an encounter, by granting the party a bonus either in the form of actions they can only perform after a certain number of encounters, or by granting them XP multipliers after each. That turns a mere selection with the easiest as the default and only "logical" one, into a decision with trade-offs – the one thing every single RPG is built on, in my opinion, regardless of the general culture of play.

Every encounter where the party is fully rested. ("Inflato the Magnificent" by Phil Foglio, from The Art of Dragon Magazine.)

Long Combat

My opinions on long combat are a bit less strong. Because I have felt what Aaron describes. Knowing that you can simply spring an encounter on players, and this being 5e, knowing that it will be a fight and that the players will engage with that fight on only the most well known of terms, is a nice, soft cushion to fall back on whenever you need a break from the grind.

But I will say that I'm of the opinion that you only need this kind of creative break because the rest of the system gives you so few tools to deal with its other pillars. The only thing that is well-structured in modern Dungeons & Dragons is combat, and it's on you as the game master to give a similar level of structure to both exploration and roleplaying. This is a very demanding task, and it does feel nice to know that if things grind to a halt, you can simply call for initiative and have the PCs fight a group of Goblins or re-skinned Bears.

So again, I think saying that long fights constitute a creative break is a valid analysis of the role they play in 5e's culture of play, but I don't think it's something you should need in the first place, or strive to recreate in other systems.

Rather, give players and yourself tools to make roleplaying easier. We are in a post-Powered By the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark world. We know what this looks like, and we continue to improve and invent new mechanics and procedures that give structure to roleplaying while incentivising creativity. Have characters form relationships from the beginning, reward them for playing to their weaknesses, and give them playbooks with beats they have to hit to complete their development arc. Simply let your players tell you what they want to do, and then let them do it.

Also, there are games that have great, strong exploration procedures. And a myriad of tools to come up with places and encounters on the spot.

And if you still want more of 5e's slog combat, maybe think about picking up a pack of space marines and head to your local shop's tabletop evening. At least there, the expectation won't be that combat will be crunchy and cinematic at the same time.

Average DM running 5e. ("Check" by Denis Beauvais, from Dragon Magazine #89)

Conclusion

While I like the idea of looking at what modern Dungeons & Dragons might have to offer other systems, both long rests and long combat have hit sore spots with me. So next time, in a separate post, I will offer my own thoughts on what things other than rolling with (Dis-)Advantage 5e has to offer.