Has That Good Old Feeling Returned?

I think I like 5E more as I see more of it.

When I first started playing Basic D&D, I was hooked immediately and it only grew from there.

It slowed down during the middle era of 2E. They released so much stuff that you couldn’t keep up unless you played a campaign every other day and had a job that would pay for all the books and still somehow had the time to read those books.

Then 3E came and reinvigorated the game.

And then 4E hit and ruined the game for me. And no one can tell me I didn’t give it a fair chance. I ran a campaign from level 1 to 15 (I think, it’s on the blog here somewhere), so I gave it a good try.

5E has not undone all that damage.
I still don’t trust Hasbro/WotC, nor do I care for Mike Mearls’s style, but the path they’ve currently set for the game I’m seeing some positive things.

They are not making a new sourcebook every 1-3 months.
And I am totally ok with that.
1E only released modules every month. Heck, unless I’m getting my 1E & 2E books confused, they released less than a dozen 1E AD&D hardcover books.

With 4E they glutted the market with a new hardback book way too often. In fact, it gave players so many damn options some players would want to switch PCs every few weeks.

Release player options too slowly and players get bored. Release them too fast and some DMs will get frustrated when their storylines get shredded from constantly changing PCs. (Yes that has happened.)

(Side note: 5E definitely needs some monster manuals. We need some variety in foes badly.)

As for the 5E hardback modules, I’m not particularly impressed.

This isn’t nostalgia talking, but I’d rather have a small paperback module with a basic premise and plot given, and let the DM fill in the rest as needed, than a $50 hardback module full of art and options and sweet looking maps.

Give me just what I need and I’ll do the rest. Not a novel that fills in every nook and cranny of information.

(Unless it’s a starter adventure that helps new players and DMs figure the game out.)

“Didn’t you run a giant module called the World’s Largest Dungeon?”
Yes, but it was 15 modules combined into one super-module, each with its own personality and feel. And those regions were filled with little more than basic guidelines to get you going. You fleshed out the rest in the manner you saw fit.
Some of the best times we had in the WLD were when I modified a region to fit my style of DMing.
You really can’t do that with a novel module. They’re set up a certain way, and if you change one thing, it may impact other things.
I’d rather just make up my own stuff.

So 5E modules aside, the potential for 5E is looking very good.

The rules themselves so far have not detracted from the game.
With 4E you had to work your game around the rules all the time. If you changed one rule, it impacted everything. (Want to remove sliding? That kills probably half powers in the game.)
With 3E you had to work your game around the rules at higher levels. If you changed one rule, you had to be careful how much it would impact other rules and options. (Want to nerf a feat? Be careful it’s not going to impact other feats and abilities.)
With earlier editions, the rules were there, but not in your face. If you changed a rule, you had to maybe slightly adjust another rule. (Wave your hand and the rule goes away. It’s only a problem if a player doesn’t like it.)

5E is giving me hope that the rules are back to being malleable, and that is refreshing.

While 3E was fun, and even aspects of 4E were too, it’s time for the rules to step aside again and allow us to run our own games as we see fit.

A couple weeks ago, after my first 5E campaign session, everyone seemed happy and that there was potential there in the game. It was a different kind of energy that hasn’t been at the table in a while.

I want to keep that going. I hope 5E helps.

I’m feeling positive about D&D again, and I want it to stay that way.

I hope the higher levels work, whereas they broke down in previous editions.
I hope they don’t release too much, or too little. (I don’t count modules that I won’t buy.)
I hope they release an SRD equivalent to allow smaller companies to support this game like with 3E. This would really help unite the gamers into one system again.
I hope they release a new monster manual once a year.
I hope they release new player’s options every other year.
I hope they don’t release a 5.5E. That will undermine trust in them.
I hope they keep their release of information for previous game worlds limited to a 20 page free pdf online. A decade later I still loathe Eberron, but there will always be a soft spot for Dragonlance even though I haven’t played it in nearly 30 years.
I hope that when they do release new material, they keep to their modular D&D idea so we can keep or dump what they give. Some people love psionics, but I still dislike it.
I hope they keep the game in a status where a battlemap is not needed, but the rules aid it if there is one. I want to switch between using one and not.
I hope they understand that we older gamers are more into the grim and gritty high-fantasy D&D and the younger are more into the anime style D&D, so the designers can strike a balance between the two. I don’t want to see certain things in the game, yet I don’t wish to have it taken away from others, so long as it doesn’t impact me.
I hope that 5E and Pathfinder can exist alongside one another. Ok, this one is me being selfish. I want PF to keep all the wargamers/munchkins so 5E can grow without their input, yet still have a competitor to keep it on its toes.

This Campaign

I am tired of the same cookie cutter and min-maxed PCs I’ve been seeing for the past…since 4th Edition made point buy and standard array the norm instead of rolling dice for stats. (No this is not another entry of me blasting 4E. It’s a blast at making things so equal they’re boring.)

“It makes everything even and fair” you say.

Meh. Life ain’t even, and life ain’t fair.

And I miss rolling dice for stats.

So I thought about how best to allow dice rolling for stats, while not allowing things to go crazier with the min-maxing that can accompany that too.

After much deliberation, I decided that I would allow the “4d6 drop the lowest” method for all stats, but not allow the players to choose where the stats go. And I had to limit them to a reasonable number of attempts.

4d6 gives for a decent average, but a 3 is still possible (1 in 1296 chance). It also averages a better score than the standard array. But if they can’t pick where the stats go, they may not actually be better than the standard array.

So I decided to have the players make a 6x6 grid. The top of the grid is labeled the 6 stats, and the side of the grid is labeled likewise. Then they roll 4d6 into each box from left to right, then top to bottom.

The result is 12 possible characters with a wide variety of stats instead of the same-old-same-old PCs we’ve been seeing for too long.

Are they stronger than other PCs? Absolutely
Are they ridiculously strong? No

I don’t think anyone rolled an 18 for a stat. Several 17s, at least one 4, and several 5s were rolled. There were a few tough ones the players had to pass on.

Would you take a 4 on constitution but a 16+ in every other stat?
I wouldn’t, but it’s a rough thing to pass.

There may have been a focus on certain stats.
There were no dump stats unless the dice chose it.
The highest stat at level 1 was 19. It was dexterity that had a 17 rolled and wood elf race adding +2. And if you think that’s insane and broken, the wisdom bonus didn’t do much to help more than another +2 to AC. The monk’s AC was 16 at level 1. Probably the same as most other first level monks.

In the end, everyone was happy.

To my chagrin though, no one took any straight forward classes, unless you count a ranger.

But we’ll see how well a bard works as an arcane caster…especially if he multiclasses into paladin like he plans.

We’ll see how broken a monk can be if he’s not restricted to the standard array.

And we’ll see how well a ranger can tank without a dedicated healer.


Our next dilemma – we only have 3 players, and one has said he can’t make it all the time (darn school getting in the way of our gaming).

Could we just run 2 PCs per player? Yes, but no.

I’m the DM who wants most combats to be quick. And while 5E PCs are not as complicated as 3E or 4E PCs, they still require special attention, especially when the edition is still a bit new. And 2 PCs split attention and slow combats down.

So I’m setting up what I call 1/2 PCs.

The idea is simple; players make various PCs in their free time of varying levels.
They then send them to me and I simplify them down to fit into a 3”x5” note card and nothing more (unless it’s a super common spell like Magic Missile or Fireball).

The complicated things I take away, but replace them with something fast and easy to deal with.

You send me a level 5 invoker wizard and I’ll send you back a guy who can cast Magic Missile 9 times a day and Fireball once and not much more.

This way whoever is running the 1/2 PC, can make a quick decision rather than scan a 1-4 page character sheet before they’re ready to decide.

I’ve got the campaign set up for 4 PCs, so 1/2 PCs will probably be required.


As for the game world, I want to test and see if combats can be fast, so I’m bringing back random encounters and those won’t be using the battlemap. So hopefully these combats will last 5-20 minutes and the PCs won’t be tempted to rest in dangerous areas, thus removing the last vestiges of the 5-minute adventuring day (5mad).

(Battlemaps cause a huge time sink, so removing them for minor combats seems like a no brainer.)

For simplicity, gold is just going to be gold. There will be no silver, copper, gems, art, and so on. I’ll give X amount of gold after combats and that’s that. That’s just for this campaign. The players can still deck out their PCs in jewels and such; it’ll just be hand-waived.

Also for simplicity, identifying magic items is as simple as marking off 100gp from treasure. If this was a module-based campaign, I’d have the items kept track of by the room they were found in so I could just reference where in the module when the PCs got around to identifying their magic items.

“The oddly shaped sword you found in room N55Q of module ‘Weasel Stompers’ is a Sword of the Planes.”

But this campaign has treasure as a minor feature of the game, so I don’t want to spend too much time and effort keeping track of the items.

(I will note though, it seems as though over half the low to mid-level magic items the party gets seem like they’re going to be temporary ones, like potions and scrolls.)

I will be giving out quite a bit of gold I suspect, so I will be draining the PC’s coffers a bit through training levels. It will cost each PC 100gp per level and 1 day per level of the level they’re going to be. I may adjust this as needed.

There aren’t many uses for gold in 5E unless you sell them magic items, or get them to build strongholds and hire retainers.

Another idea is to have them learn extra skills. This won’t be as easy as “you spend 1000gp and a week to learn the best ways to sneak around”. It will be more than that, probably through doing quests and impressing the right people.

Races allowed: All except tieflings are allowed (the outer-planar breeding with mortals doesn’t happen here). Half orcs are allowed, but they would be unwise and likely to be attacked on sight.

Classes allowed: All, though warlock are viewed as people who deal with dark and evil magicks, so they’re often shunned or attacked.

After certain quests are completed, PCs may get some boon of some sort. If a PC permanently dies, or is abandoned, the PC that replaces him loses all these boons, but will otherwise be at the same level as the original PC.

This world will live and breathe whether or not the PCs interact with it. If the PCs decide to open up a mercantile and ignore adventuring, then they are going to be hosed when the goblin hordes are knocking on their door.

Rumors the PCs have heard:
- Dragons are rare, but when you see one, there are a hundred more behind it. And they're all greedy beasts.
- Comets bring doom.
- Magic is in everything, except the silver spheres known as magebane. They drain magic from the air.
- There is rumored to be a 4th huge continent. It is also hidden and protected from us...for our own good.
- Arcane is the language of magic. It is rumored that there are a few who mastered it so well that they could feel the magic of their words.
- Warlocks should be killed on sight. They turn into demons and eat your children.
- Humans are the first and favorite race of the gods! The other races are just plain inferior and should stay put in their own lands!
- It is said that glowstones are worth a hundred thousand gold pieces, to the right buyer...IF you can find someone trustworthy.
- My friend's cousin once explored the Dragon Desert. He got killed by dragons. Go figure.
- The Church of Arimu is doing a lot of good for the poor. You should check them out.
- Bah! There ain't no gods. You ever seen a god? Of course not. No one has. Priests don't get their spells from some invisible wizard. No, they're no different than wizards if you think about it.
- I swear, every time there's an earthquake, the stars move.
- The town of Newton is where we should go to hide from the goblins.
- I almost won 100 gold in the arena last week. But my back gave out.
- Don't ever fly near a dragon tower. They protect folks from dragons. They just sometimes get confused.
- Nothing ever good comes from volcanoes, just lava and fire monsters.
- Rumor is that there's an honest to goodness seer that the leaders of this land are hiding from us.
- I swear I saw a cloud with a castle in it! I ain't lying, and I wasn't that drunk.

My First 5E Campaign

We recently finished the Hoard of the Dragon Queen.M
It took us forever (as compared to everyone I read about online), and we even somehow skipped some parts (role-playing, lucky rolls, and choosing not to attack everything in sight).

Next we’re onto my first campaign. We just played this past Friday and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I’m going to be relatively loose in my game setups compared to my previous campaigns.
I actually wanted to run a different campaign, but our lack of players caused me to delay that one. It was going to a PC backstory driven one, and with only 3 players, that kind of uses up the stories pretty quickly.

This world is sandbox type one. It will be split up into overall regions where the party goes in and takes care of various quests and other issues. When that region’s quests are completed, the next batch of quests will send them to a new region.

The start involved the party preparing for a horde of goblins that they had to keep blocked at a pass.

The history: The goblinoids were confined to their own continent, which worked well for a long time.
Then someone managed to stop them from fighting one another and become organized. They left their continent and attacked the one the party was on.

The goblinoid armies were very successful.

The PCs’ jobs were to “hold the line”; to keep the goblins getting through the pass as long as possible.
The remaining people were fleeing the last unconquered city. For every 5 rounds the party delayed their location, another 50-100 people on another boat to the only remaining free continent. (That means bonus XP.)

The party did quite well. They lasted longer than expected by using the terrain and a proper conga-line-of-death setup.
But the goblins numbered in the thousands. After round 15, it was obvious the party was holding the line well, and it would take all night for me to roll enough damage to put them down. So I called it a combat and moved forward.

The party was vanquished, but they woke up an unknown number of days later in an old wooden cabin. They had been saved by a very old druid.
He told them they had much work to do, and his time was coming soon.
He gave them some training in the month they spent there (leveled up to level two and a free skill a druid would know).

He never gave them his name and when he passed on, his last words were “Aja is outside”.
The first thing the party sees outside is a bear in a charging position. The party prepares for an attack but they never attack. Then Aja, a dryad, introduces herself and tells the party what she knew of the druid.
While this is going on, the druid’s cabin is rapidly reclaimed by nature, and a pair of pixies plays tricks on the party.
Aja tells them that the druid never gave his name and they thought he might have been mad, but he probably was just affected by things he saw. The party had given up their lives for a noble cause, and he needed a tool for some prophecy.
When they stopped they were at the edge of a forested area and another, but darker forest that felt “wrong”.

She gave them some replacement gear (they had very little on them), and asked that they took care of whatever darkness that was creating the “wrong” feeling in this part of the forest. This darkness was starting to attract other dark creatures and none of their scouts could report anything.

It was really a test by Aja to see if the party had potential. If they did, she left some gold and better gear for them to take.

First they had to defeat some blights that had been attracted to the area, then climb down a hole in the ground hidden in a dead tree.

30’ below was a large cleared out space and a sleeping beholder (spectator with an illusion).
On the opposite end of the room was a large chest. And spread throughout the room were wire traps with bells attached to them. The wires were easy to see, but there were so many.

The group got halfway before they woke up the beholder and it verbally berated them.

They attacked it first, and it toyed with them. Instead of hurting them, it used its eye rays to fear them and paralyze them. They tore that thing up enough that I doubled its hit points, actually I just kept the fight going until they realized it wasn’t trying to hurt them.

Then it disappeared and left a feast in its place.

They ate and checked out the chest. It was trapped with an explosive (loud bang, nothing more), and the hinges were rusty and creaking.

Inside it was some potions, a magic dagger, and gold.

With that we stopped for the night.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Characters:
Dale – Rumi, woof elf monk, level 2
Aaron – Rhoanel, elf bard (with plans to become a paladin, or at least impersonate one), level 2
Justin – Cedraic – half-elf ranger (two weapon version), level 2